David Steinberg: mobile music machines - Lots of interesting musical software have been developed more or less recently for portable videogames consoles (Gameboy, PSP, etc.), PDAs or other similar platforms. I’ll present many of these applications (for Nintendo Gameboy, Palm OS, Sony PSP, Nintendo DS, Gamepark consoles, etc.), explain what’s needed to use them, who created them, what are the advantages and disadvantages of developing musical software for each platform and of course show some examples of what can be done with these new instruments.

Sam Pluta: data structures/monoliths ii (for chion) - Video samplers. Software as musical scores. Data structures as musical materials. Copyright laws. Data loops. Why Chewbacca is not in the OS X spell checker. Blocks of sounds. Laptop improvisation. And Michel Chion. All this and more will be discussed as Sam Pluta presents his work, data structures/monoliths ii (for chion).

Christina McPhee: Shake Stations - California-based filmmaker and artist Christina McPhee is ‘outback’ in earthquake country this summer, shooting HD video at Parkfield, California with new media installation artist DV Rogers (New Zealand / Sydney). DV is building and activating a major land art work- a hydraulically activated, remote -sensor activated seismic intervention table. DV’s PIEQF installation reacts to mini-tremors and shakes in realtime.

Following DV and crew as they install the project this summer and fall, Christina’s documentary takes on the gradual installation of the table as an elaborate time-based performance, with ironic and playful resonances to land art and the highly saturated dramatic space of sixties nouvelle vague (new wave) film. Via abstract drawing, experimental video and photomontage, Christina makes performative recordings at generative ‘moment-tensors’ where biological systems clash and meet with technological, and often security-challenged, sublime landscapes at the urban edge.

At places of emergence, at folds or ‘tesserae’ in landscapes of latent energy, her methods involve meditative engagement in remote sites like Parkfield, and also this year at live geothermal plants over the San Andreas Fault, next to the declining aquifer of Salton Sea, near the Mexico / California border. Her work slips past the indexical to trace dynamic loops between biological and technologically emergent states, making connections between human traumatic memory, disturbed terrains, and bare life.

Players can learn to play an instrument starting at low levels and what this does is that when the player chooses to take out their instrument, the keyboard switches to a configuration where specific keys are mapped to specific notes. For instance, 1 is C, 1 + cntrl is C#, 1 + cntrl + alt = C# up one octave, etc. In this way very specific chords can be created. Compositions can also be saved as an “ABC” file and set as a macro so that players can bust out a tune whenever after they’ve done the preliminary work or share it among the community.

Often while waiting for members of a party to arrive, players will play music or listen to the bard in their party perform for them. For me, it raises my involvement with the game another notch as I have also macroed some of my tunes to my Minstrel abilities, really adding that touch of personalization. Other players will remember specific minstrels based on the songs that they play while they’re in the party, because of that custom touch in their experience.

So what gets me now is all the emergent play centering around music that I’m seeing in the game, from random rowdiness and role play in the auction house and taverns in the game to bands and guilds of minstrels that spend most of their time playing music in-game. People I’ve shown this to have commented on the absurd “nerdity” of this system, but I really believe that this open-ended system in a MMO, a very limited environment where players really have little say on player created content, really has created an entirely new brand of emergent play without unbalancing the game world…

Bonds of Sea and Fire Duet (Xenogears)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Tjnuvb0Xwk

Megaman 2 Theme / Dr. Wily Stage 1 Theme (P.S. OKKUSENMAN)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrRuNOWfIIM

Overworld Theme (Dragon Warrior)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h69fzUG67iU

Original Harp Composition (This one is amazing.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PfSD7MBdt0

The Entertainer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_C02HAAneA

Hotel California
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmWqlKyVEV8

Stairway to Heaven
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFm9ifgB6OY

[Posted by Al Yang on The Asian Power Hour]

While the genesis of this piece is in SAKAMOTO Ryuichi’s opera LIFE (first performed in 1999, for which TAKATANI Shiro created the video aspects), as is evident in the title’s “fluid, invisible, inaudible …” this installation revisits the resources of sound and vision in LIFE for an entirely new deconstruction and evolution of the work. While LIFE was an experiment conducted in opera’s linear, modern form at the end of the 20th Century, LIFE - fluid, invisible, inaudible … is a non-linear, decentralized flow of audio and visuals which the visitors themselves enter to experience.

A grid of 3 x 3 acrylic aquariums, 30cm high and 1.2m square are hung, in a darkened room. Each carries a thin film of water inside. Each has speakers affixed at both ends. Inside of each a fog is artificially created using ultrasonic waves, percolating fluid patterns which hover between transparency and opacity. Imagery transmitted down into these tanks from projectors attached above them–at times synchronizing all aquariums, at times decoupled and seemingly autonomous–shines down through this screen of kinetic patterns woven of water and fog, connecting the imagery while ceaselessly melting, floating endlessly between flows of meaning and meaninglessness, the concrete and the abstract.

“I wanted to distance myself from the curse of time.” (SAKAMOTO)
“I wanted the imagery to project completely free of control.” (TAKATANI)

In both of their comments we can see their embrace of the emergent potential of the flowing phenomenon that is fog and the randomness of the computer to escape typically linear and conclusively established time and space.

“LIFE–fluid, invisible, inaudible …” was produced as a commissioned work at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM), and exhibited from March 10 to May 28 2007 at YCAM to great critical and popular acclaim.

Thanks to SPECTRE Digest, Vol. 54, Issue 31.

Semiconductor (UK) :: July 4, Time: 8.30 p.m. For Brilliant Noise the most beautiful satellite images of the sun have been selected from an open access archive. The radiation intensity is translated into audio fragments so as to focus attention on the hidden forces of the solar system. A computer that ‘listens’ to audio files and is able to translate these into digital images, depending on the amount of resonance, is at the heart of the performance Sonic Inc: Where has the Future Gone?

Interactive Sonic Systems (ES) and Sensors_Sonics_Sights: July 7, 8.30 p.m. :: The Interactive Sonic Systems team demonstrates the electronic music instrument reactable. reactable consists of a multi-touch interface on which objects can be moved. Shifting, turning or directing these objects creates a dynamic audio art. SSS gives a performance in which visual music is created based on body movements. With their own subtle movements the trio influence the image and sound that are generated by means of sensitive sensors.

In (in)visible sounds the visitor enters the world of invisible technology. This is the world which employs the electronic fields, radio waves, frequencies and air pollution that are present around us. Erich Berger, David Haines & Joyce Hinterding, Rob Davis & Usman Haque, Informationlab (Ursula Lavrencic & Auke Touwslager), Olga Kisseleva, Brandon LaBelle & James Webb, Semiconductor, and Theodore Watson.

Invisible technologies are a part of our lives even if we are not aware of them. The rise of invisible networks had such an impact that it changed our manner of communicating, working, learning and playing. Many of our daily experiences are shaped by invisible structures based on technologies employing electromagnetic fields, radio waves and wireless networks. Whether it is computers, television networks or mobile communication instruments, many of the tools we take for granted have an invisible body that we do not consciously interact with or even think about because it is invisible for the human eye. But when technologies disappear from sight, they also disappear from our consciousness, and although we are surrounded by a whole world of invisible structures, we no longer experience our environment as constructed. We interact with invisible technology in every realm of daily life, be it through mobile phones, the TV set, radios or even electronic kitchen appliances, without actually thinking about them or knowing about their functionalities. The interest in objects is therefore shifting from the technology itself to the value they have for shaping our experience: we are no longer interested in the way a tool works but in what social or cultural status it signifies. As a result, we become increasingly removed from the technology and its influence on our daily lives, actions and thoughts. To break the cycle, the exhibition (in)visible sounds goes in search of invisible networks that exist around us. Artists visualize those unperceived yet very present technologies. Some literally expose both analogue and digital networks, while others make use of exactly the invisible, surprising us with the amount of information passed on and possibilities opened up by invisible networks.

Working with sound and the specifics of the location is the main interest of artist and writer Brandon LaBelle. For his project Radioflirt (2007) he has worked together with artist James Webb, whose work explores the realms of magic, exoticism and alienation and impossible environmental phenomena. Radioflirt lets the user hear the secret narrative of the building. Utilizing a series of mini-fm radio transmitters located throughout the building, visitors are invited to follow traces of incomplete messages, hidden whispers or trembling static that appear as an ambiguous and secret narrative. Radioflirt is an intimate radio experience that aims for the heart and explores the emotional geographies of listening.

Semiconductor makes Sound Films which reveal our physical world in flux. Since 1999 UK artists Ruth Jarman and Joseph Gerhardt have been exploring many processes of digital animation to produce experimental films and live animation. Earth Moves (2006) is a continuation of their exploration into how unseen forces affect the fabric of our world. The south-east of England is explored through a series of five audio controlled photographic panoramas. Semiconductor collected sound recordings and photographs on location along the A23 at Pease Pottage, Witterings NT reserve, Findon Valley, John St Brighton and the Adur Valley cement factory. The sounds were used to re-animate the landscape at each location. The results are captivating images and sound that seem to reveal a different reality usually hidden from us. The limits of human perception are exposed, revealing a world which is unstable and in a constant state of animation as the forces of acoustic waves come into play on our surroundings.

Rob Davis is a systems developer in the Psychology Department of Goldsmiths College, University of London, particularly interested in systems that are contingent upon the environment and the entities that inhabit it, and the adaption within such systems. Usman Haque is an architect who has created responsive environments, interactive installations, digital interface devices and mass-participation performances. His skills include the design of both physical spaces, and the software and systems that bring them to life. Evolving Sonic Environment III is an acoustically-coupled analog neural network, consisting of a society of devices whose behavior collectively changes in response to the pitch ascendancy or descendency that each one detects. In contrast to earlier versions of the project (which operated at much higher frequencies), humans will be able to participate more directly in the adaptation process by making sounds of their own. Each device can output at any one time a rising and/or descending tone: however, if a device hears too much of one type of tone it may get ‘bored’ and slowly modify its behavior. On the other hand, they may all coalesce in an equilibrium where they are all ‘content’ with the state of pitches in the room. This ‘contentedness’ may get disrupted when humans enter and start making their own sounds, thus perpetuating the evolving acoustic characteristics of the space. The system will remain active for the entire duration of the exhibition, so there will be many Gigabytes of data for analysis which, it is hoped, will demonstrate that adaptation has occurred over both short term and long term occupancy of the space. If this is so there should be correlations between occupancy and acoustic spectrum patterns that may change over the weeks.

Erich Berger follows a rich tradition of video artists such as the Vasulkas, Livinus van de Bundt and Bas van Koolwijk who specifically investigate into the world of electromagnetism. His audiovisual installation TEMPEST (2004) takes its name from the U.S. government code word for a set of standards for limiting electromagnetic radiation emanations from electronic equipment. Every electronic device that is switched on, whether a mobile telephone, a laptop or a GPS receiver, generates constant electromagnetic emissions, even on standby. Hidden under the user-friendly surface are autonomous processes with their own dynamic, what British designers Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby called ‘The Secret Life of Electronic Objects’. TEMPEST utilizes the basic principles of the ‘Van Eck Phreaking’ technique to transform purely generative graphics into a tight and intense composition of sound, noise and light. Following a long tradition of subverting military technologies for creative purposes, Erich Berger creates an audiovisual piece in which the relationship between images and sounds is precisely determined by the electromagnetic emissions produced by the monitor. The graphics that appear on the screen in TEMPEST produce radio waves which, when captured using various radios tuned to different AM frequencies, become the sharp and vibrant sounds that go along with the images.

In their work the Australian artists David Haines and Joyce Hinterding make a connection between natural phenomena and our electronically saturated world. In the live sound and video installation Purple Rain (2004) they explore the world of data transaction: the digital video projection of a mountain avalanches in response to fluctuations in the television broadcast images detected by antennas. The more signals the antennas detect, the more raging and violently the snow collapses. The power of the avalanche thus depends on the amount of electromagnetic energy and communication data that reaches the installation room via the antennas. The false video image of an illusionary natural disaster is of intense sublime power. It displays the raging energy around us produced by telecommunication and satellite networks. Haines and Hinterding use the image of the avalanching mountain like a metaphor for the natural world as threatened by and interwoven with the power of invisible networks.

Audio Space (2005-2007) is an interactive 3D ‘augmented aural space’. In the installation, visitors can leave messages for each other in space in the form of text or sound. The user - wearing a headset made up of headphones and a microphone - hears all the sounds left in simulated 3D audio, allowing them to pinpoint the location of the sound and find it in the space. Interactive artist and designer Theo Watson turns the space into a memory of the people who have interacted with it. The user can respond to messages left by previous users or seed conversation for future discussions. The combined sounds create rich, evolving atmospheres for different parts of the room, and for the user it creates a superimposed sonic environment that seems tangible and very real. The visitor gets the feeling of walking in a space filled with the ghosts of previous visitors.

Olga Kisseleva is interested in the ways people use electronic information-gathering and data-processing technologies to visualize our environment. With Landstream (2006), the Russian artist found her own way to translate a continuous flow of digital information, a stream of waves and signals understandable for only a small scientific audience, into graphic images that anyone can read . For realizing Landstream she worked with scientists from Russia, the Sorbonne and Stanford to measure the density, quality and movement of electromagnetic fields around nuclear stations, airports, and other locations. They developed an experimental program to track and translate them into graphical images. Her colorful paintings are translations of those graphics and map the dynamic flow of electronic information through the landscape in real time. Besides the new images, Kisseleva also presents documentation of the work process in order to give the audience a new insight into what she calls the electromagnetic pollution that surrounds us. The poetic abstract images let us discover a new world.

Cell Phone Disco (2006) is an experimental installation made of flashing cells. By multiplication of a mobile phone gadget, Ursula Lavrencic and Auke Touwslager from Informationlab created a space for experiencing the invisible body of the mobile phone. The flashing cells consist of one or more LEDs, a battery, and a sensor that detects electromagnetic radiation transmitted by an active mobile phone. When the sensor detects EM waves it sets off the LEDs to flash for a couple of seconds. The installation has two parts: Flashing cells with sensors of higher sensitivity are used to detect electromagnetic radiation from active mobile phones. This way a mobile aura appears around the phone, revealing a part of its invisible body. While the user moves around talking on his phone, this aura follows the conversation like a light shadow through the space. Much less sensitive cells are used to create a canvas for an inkless marker. Moving the phone close to the cells leaves a trace of light, an electromagnetic drawing. Cell Phone Disco lets the visitor experience the invisible body of his or her own mobile phone, a function that we use but never consciously experience.

In addition to the works in the exhibition a selection of video works from the Institute’s own collection can be viewed on monitors. These afford insight into an important historic tradition.

Music Rooms: The hive23 environment contains three rooms. Each room is associated with a separate musical stream that is determined by the avatars currently within that room. Each avatar is “tagged” with music they have chosen from a list of musical pieces, available outside the entrance to the three rooms. When an avatar enters or leaves a room, a new sequence of musical variations is produced for that room. These variations combine and rework parts from the songs identified with those avatars then inhabiting that room.

Music Analysis and Remixing: Each musical variation embodies harmonic and rhythmic manipulations that impose musical coherence on each combination of parts drawn from the songs worn by avatars within a particular room. These manipulations introduce variety into the note structure within each part, and the contrapuntal structure across parts, in order to make each remix unique.

Scenario: Each avatar will start by exploring each of the three rooms, encountering shifting populations of other avatars that are also exploring those spaces. Eventually each avatar would presumably spend increasing amounts of time within the room that most consistently produces musical output preferred by that avatar. This preference develops collectively as other particular avatars also increasingly spend time within that space. The shifting population of avatars in each room potentially evolves into a collective musical author with discernible musical preferences.

Other Applications: The rooms in Second Life could potentially be implemented as physical spaces in a club or art installation, where persons (each tagged with a particular song) take the place of the avatars. Or the rooms could be implemented as channels in a location-based multi-user application, tied to something like GPS navigation systems in cars. A driver following approximately the same route at roughly the same time each day would gradually settle on a particular channel, as other musically compatible drivers do likewise.

The rooms could also be seen as publishing spaces, for example, web pages where several advertising jingles coexist in the form of ongoing remixes that evolve increasing compatibility over time. The necessary ingredient for each of these applications is a music software engine that can create coherence and variety, on-the-fly, among unexpected combinations of musical inputs.

Implementation and Hosting: The music engine is a Smalltalk/Seaside/C++ based process that runs on a separate server. It receives requests via http from Linden scripts attached to Second Life objects. The server process calculates new remixes, renders MIDI-based scores into audio results via Quicktime, and streams the audio via Shoutcast servers to SL land parcels underlying each shared musical space. The music engine / web server is currently hosted on a four-core Intel Mac Pro.

Location in Second Life: The hive23 environment is located on the Second Life mainland at Mabinogion (190, 43, 63). Or it can be found within Second Life by searching Places for “hive23″. The software is currently in testing mode. The list of musical inputs currently available will be augmented over time, including the addition of musical results generated within the environment itself.

Web Site: A web site describing the environment, as well as an existing Croquet-based implementation can be found at: http://tone23.org. For a closer look at the music engine there’s a Seaside-based single-user remixer called Qtone online: http://tone23.org/qtone.

Moscow Laptop Cyber Orchestra is a net of spatially separated mobile workstations, having local sound and integrated into wifi network. It explores all sorts of interaction between players, algorithms, sensors, environments and audiences. It is an ‘open source’, improvised and highly integrated sonic environment, created by musicians, artists and programmers. Although CybOrk programs contain pre-composed and structured music, the core aesthetics are based on Cyber-Jam idea — free improvised session, based on exploration of some predetermined common algorithms, when no other formal sonic, compositional or genre boundaries are fixed, no rules of acting are applied. There is only an entry point that triggers adventurous search for constantly changing identity evolving in common time and place, resulting in a self-generative and self-organizing sounding and visual textures raveling and unraveling, fraying and renewing back producing a rich palette of clippings, raw digits, dense overdriven noises, deep drones or skipping solos.

Andrey Smirnov
Lubov Pchelkina
Viktor Chernenko
Alexander Kulagin
Dmitry Savinov
Alexey Petrov
Dmitry Baikov
Dmitry Subochev
Artem Rukovichkin
Alexander Zenko
Eugeny Kuzmin (more)

Every cell is born with a unique set of characteristics (its DNA) that control the way it will react to sound. If it’s not fit enough, the cell dies and is reborn with a new DNA (you can also adopt a cell, btw.) The result is a musical organism adapting to its environment, evolving with neighbouring cells and spectators and becoming musically smarter and smarter. The piece was developed by Olle Corner, Christian Horgren and Martin Lubcke. I asked Olle a couple of questions about the Bacterial Orchestra:

What motivated you to make this installation?

We are really interested in systems that are self-organizing and has it’s own life. You never know what would will be created in the end. The only thing you could do is to give birth to the creation. Then wait. I have been interested in sound installations for a while now, but I often think that they’re more “sound” than “music”. This is musical organism. It might sound a bit random, but it creates music. All sounds from the Bacterial Orchestra are played in interaction with the other cells and with sounds in the room. It’s music.

Any plan to show the installation at other venues or to keep on improving it?

Yes, we have just showed it one time. First we are interested in showing it in another environment - since it will react competely different. We’re also interested in making it larger. Today it’s built around 16 cells, but the idea is to add a few cells every time we show it. It can easily be scaled - since the cells only are communicating through (analog) audio. We hope to one day be able to show it when it’s built of hundreds of cells. That’s what I call a pendemic!

The work sounds kind of “human”, did you develop some sort of affection for it?

Yes, actually we did. It really didn’t react the way we wanted it to, which was really interesting. For example it started to scream - from self oscillation in the room. This is not supposed to be possible, since the cells don’t listen and play sounds at the same time. Feedback is impossible. And still sometimes there would be strange noises, similar to a musical feedback. At that times all the other cells picked up the uncontrolled sound and the whole installation was screaming. At points when we were in other parts of the building, me and Martin would react to the screaming sounds down in the basement, where the installation was showed. I think you could compare it to a father or mother reacting to a crying baby in the room next door. You think you hear it, but it’s not there all the time… It comes from your concern.

Thanks Olle! [blogged by Regine on we-make-money-not-art]

The Heart Chamber Orchestra is a one-hour performance that literally creates music “from the heart”. The orchestra consists of 12 classical musicians of the Trondheim Sinfonietta and the artist duo TERMINALBEACH (made of Pure and Erich Berger.) Using their heartbeats, the musicians control a computer composition and visualization environment.

The musical score is generated in real time by the heartbeats of the musicians. They read and play this score from a computer screen.The musicians and artists are equipped with ECG sensors. A computer monitors and analyzes the state of the 12 hearts. A software analyzes the data and generates via different algorithms the real-time musical score for the musicians, the electronic sounds and the computer graphic visualization.

While the musicians are playing, their heartbeats influence and change the composition and vice versa. The musicians and the electronic composition are linked via the hearts in a feedback structure. The music is the expression of this process and of an organism forming itself from the circular interplay of the individual musicians and the machine.

Videos.

Related: brain-orchestra; Sensors_Sonics_Sights. [blogged by Regine on we-make-money-not-art]