Sculpt is work for sensor gloves, interactive electronics and interactive projected image that explores the relationship between synthetic sound and synthetic image through the tactile nuance of human gesture.

Robert Griffin Byron won the A.B.C. Young Composer’s Award in 1995. Since then, Byron’s chamber music and orchestral works have been heard all across Australia, the United States, and Asia. His work has been performed by the most of Australia’s state orchestras. To date, Byron has received four commissions. In 1997 the West Australian Ballet commissioned the score for the ballet Orlando. In 1998 Future Films commissioned a soundtrack for an art film by Glen Eaves called Structures. The score won the A.B.C. Young Composer Film Award in 1999. Also in 1999 the Australian Ballet commissioned the full-length ballet Mirror Mirror. In 2002 the Ensemble Arcangelo commissioned the chamber work Kaleidoscope, with support from ArtsWA.

In addition to these commissions, Byron’s Piano Sonata No. 2 (Cobalt) was premiered by Michael Kieran Harvey in 1999 at the Calloway Auditorium, U.W.A. Byron’s dance work, Enlightenment, premiered in Bloomington, Indiana, at the Black Box Theater in 2004. Byron collaborated with Choreographer Liz Shea and Lighting Designer Robert Shakespeare, exploring interactive lighting, interactive sound, and choreographic movement. Byron gained second place in the Australian National Harp Composition Competition in 2004 for the work The Moon Methinks Looks with a Watery Eye. In 2006 Byron’s acousmatic work Hip or Hype? was performed at Pixerations in Providence, Rhode Island. His most recent work Swarm, for Perriott Ensemble and Interactive electronics, was premiered by the Boston-based group Dinosaur Annex in 2007.

Byron’s electronic works have been performed at numerous conferences, including the Australasian Computer Music Conference in Melbourne (2002), Perth SPECTRUM conference (2003), Western Australia Converging Technologies conference (2003), SEAMUS conference in San Diego (2003), THRESHOLD at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana (2004), and Midwest IDEAS Festival (2004, 2005, and 2006). Byron won first place in the audio section at the 2004 and 2005 IDEAS Festivals.

Byron earned his B.Mus. from Edith Cowan in 1997. In 2000 Byron received a Peggy Glanville-Hicks Composer’s Fellowship-in-Residence, where he continued his studies. He earned his M.M. in Computer Music Composition from Indiana University while on a Fulbright Fellowship in 2006. At Indiana, Byron won the 2005 Dean’s Prize for Electroacoustic Composition. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in multimedia art at Brown University.

Workshop: Music Improvisation – gadgets and non-traditional instruments :: Presenters: Gayle Young, Jeff Morton, Tina Pearson :: Date: October 29, 7 pm, Open Space. Drop in fee - Focuses on alternate objects, tools and ‘instruments’, and discusses the authority of musical gesture. Gayle Young’s Amaranth and Columbine, tuned tubing, circuit boards, circuit bent electronics, circuit boards, no-input mixer, contact mics, toys, bells and other gadgets will be available to explore – and bring your own stuff.

Workshop: Instrument Building, Design and Practice
Presenter: Gayle Young
Date: November 5, 7 pm, Open Space
Drop in Fee
Visiting sound artist Gayle young will demonstrate the physical requirements for building acoustic instruments, and how to develop unique playing techniques by focusing on enhancing vibration, and offer practical experience designing, creating and listening through tuned tubing.

It features: (1) Video capturing from USB/FW-cameras (2) Playback of video files (any QuickTime-readable format) (3) Adjustable resolution and playback rate (4) Brightness, contrast, saturation controls (5) Zoom, offset and displacement controls (6) Cropping functions (drag and crop) (7) Automatic cropping based on contraction (8) Computer vision analysis (9) Save snapshots and image sequences (10) Save video from the analysis (11) Contraction and centre of gravity (12) Audio analysis: spectrogram, sonogram, spectral centroid, noisiness, loudness…

“…(T)here are many different kinds of gestures associated with music, but it could be useful to consider gestures in view of the following three main categories:

A. Sound-producing gestures, such as hitting, stroking, bowing, blowing, singing, kicking, etc. Mental images of such gestures, including the associated modes of execution such as fast, slow, hard, soft, short, long, etc., are usually indissociable from our notions of musical sound, evident in music-related metaphors (e.g. “hammering”, “sweeping”, “caressing”, etc.) and mimicry (e.g. playing “air drums” or “air guitar”).

B. Sound-accompanying gestures, including all kinds of movements we can make to music such as marching, dancing, and more vague sound-tracing gestures such as following the melodic contours, rhythmical / textural patterns, timbral or dynamical evolutions, etc. with our hands, arms, torso, etc.

C. Amodal, affective or emotive gestures, including all the movements and/or mental images of movements associated with more global sensations of the music, such as images of effort, velocity, impatience, unrest, calm, balance, elation, anger, etc., gestural images and concepts which are also encountered in dance.

These categories of gestures often overlap, and a gesture may belong to more than one category, e.g. energetic drumming may be perceived both as sound-producing gestures and as emotive images of joy or elation. Musical gestures thus encompass a large territory stretching from details of sound-production to more global emotive and aesthetic images of music, and also include considerations of cultural-stylistic vs. more universal modes of expression. In all cases, we believe musical gestures manifest the primordial role of human movement in music. For this reason, we speak of embodied perception and cognition in music in the sense that we as listeners relate musical sound to mental images of gestures, i.e. that listening (or even merely imagining music) also is a process of incessant mental re-enactment of musical gestures.

We believe the idea of embodied perception and cognition could represent a change of paradigm in music theory and other music related research, research which has often tended to exclude considerations of bodily movement from its conceptual apparatus in favour of focus on more abstract, notation-based elements of music. In our project, the focus on musical gestures provides us with a coherent and unifying perspective for what we see as a much needed renewal of music theory and other music research. Fortunately, recent developments within the cognitive sciences, music technology, and technologies for capturing and representing gestural data, converge to give us very favourable circumstances for this shift of focus towards musical gestures.”

A new device allows musicians to control sound effects with a wave of the hand. While electric guitarists typically control distortion effects with an array of foot pedals, the HotHand device, made by Source Audio, translates their gestures into the wah, phaser, and flanger effects that are popular for electric sound. A musician can wear the device as a ring, affix it to his or her head or torso, or allow someone else–such as the band’s vocalist–to use it to control effects. A wireless option leaves the wearer free to roam the stage.” As one reader has already remarked: Donald Swearingen and Pamela Z have been doing this since the 90s; and Laetitia Sonami has been waving her glove with amazing results for longer than that. But this device is new.

“HotHand uses a MEMS accelerometer to detect motion. Information from the accelerometer is sent to a chip that converts it into a digital signal, processes the signal according to the settings selected on the effects box, and then converts it back into an analog signal that is sent to the musician’s amp. The way different gestures affect the sound was decided subjectively, says Roger Smith, cofounder of Source Audio. ‘It’s like tasting wine.’” Read more here.

Guests/performances: Miller Puckette - Pure Data; Amy Alexander - CyberSpaceLand; Ejival - Mix set.

[translated from the site…] Monthly meeting of artists and audiences interested in electronic culture and new media / event is free and open to the public. Organized by DreamAddictiveLab / Hosted by the Centro Cultural Tijuana / Affiliated with Upgrade! International.

Drop Spin Fade is the documentation of work completed so far on a collaborative project between Chris O’Shea and Owen Lloyd. “We wanted to create a playful and game like experience, with no goals or objectives. We began to play with the metaphor of the hands, what possibilities are there if you could sculpt, stretch, push and spin sounds.“

Disparate Bodies is a network performance that explores multi-modal remote presence. The performance happens simultaneously in three sites (Belfast, NY and Stanford, California). The stage performance in NY features a laptop musicians and two Remote.bots. These are robotic entities that host the physical and musical gestures which are performed by the remote participants in the various locations. They consist of reflective elements which move according to the analysis of each audio stream and project glimpses of 3D rendered imagery around the performance space. The performance is based on the notion of performance entities as reflected by telepresence, robotics and sound systems. As such, each performer (local and remote) has a specific sound diffusion set up and a chosen 3D avatar which consists of abstract representations of movement and gesture. The performance is improvised with reference to strategies that intend to explore the relationship between sound and movement. The performance uses high quality audio streaming software developed by CCRMA and gesture, robotic and 3D rendering technologies developed at SARC.

Instrumentation: Saxophones (Franziska Schroeder), Moustrap (Mark Applebaum), Piano/Computer (Pedro Rebelo), Remote.bot (Tom Davis) and Frequencyliator (Alain Renaud).

Mossalibra is an interactive game installation, operated solely by intuitive human gestures. While dancing to surrounding music, the user (represented in pixelated form as a pure gesture) can mimic a given set of gestures in order to gain points. These gestures are actually pixelated snapshots of previous players. The game is therefore constantly generated by the players and constantly represents the current musical vibe.

A concert series consisting entirely of works commissioned for LEMUR’s musical robots. The series will feature live pieces by composer/performers John Flansburgh and John Linnell (They Might Be Giants); J.G. Thirlwell (Foetus); Morton Subotnick; and George Lewis,; along with pieces for solo robots by R. Luke DuBois, and Brendan Adamson. (The same program will be performed on each of the three nights.) FOR TICKETS VISIT: www.brownpapertickets.com.

SENSORS & GESTURES: Sunday, June 3 at 8:00 pm · $20 · 3LD: 80 Greenwich St. @ Rector.

North American premier of the SSS trio (Atau Tanaka, Cecile Babiole, and Laurent Dailleau) performing visual music with sensors and gestures, along with the audio-visual electronic trio Fair Use (Luke DuBois, Matthew Ostrowski, and Zach Layton), multi-instrumentalist and sound artist Miguel Frasconi, and a new video work by American composer, saxophonist, and flutist Henry Threadgill. Presented by Harvestworks. FOR TICKETS VISIT: www.brownpapertickets.com/event/15623

ELECTRONICS & VIRTUOSITY: Monday, June 4 at 8:00 pm · $20 · 3LD: 80 Greenwich St. @ Rector.

Performances by virtuosi and electronics, including Montreal-based Lori Freedman, clarinet; New York-based Mari Kimura, violin, and Kinan Azmeh, clarinet; Australia-based Michael Atherton and Garth Paine, flute and didgeribone (a slide didgeridoo); and a new music/video work by Paris-based composer Marc Battier and artist Ramuntcho Matta. Presented by the Electronic Music Foundation. FOR TICKETS VISIT: www.brownpapertickets.com

HISS, CRACKLE, AND LIGHT: Tuesday, June 5 at 8:00 pm · $20 · 3LD: 80 Greenwich St. @ Rector.

Electronic sound and video with sonic environmentalist Anne Wellmer in collaboration with live video artist and musician Adam Kendall; interactive sound-art and live cinema by NoiseFold (David Stout and Cory Metcalf); Bay Area electronic performer Elise Baldwin; and video artist Leslie Thornton. Supported by the Gaudeamus Foundation. FOR TICKETS VISIT: www.brownpapertickets.com

VIDEO SYNTHESIS PERFORMANCE: Wednesday, June 6 at 8:00 pm · $15 at the door (Harvestworks and DTW members, students, and seniors $10) · Roulette: 20 Greene st. (btwn Canal and Grand).

A live audio and video performance of solos and duos by Andrew Deutsch, Stephen Vitiello, Tammy Brackett, and Peer Bode (via cellphone from China). This performance is part of Video Synthesis: an Interactive Exhibition, a show outlining the history of live video synthesis. Presented by The Institute of Electronic Art in cooperation with the School of Art and Design at Alfred University. TICKETS @ THE DOOR

NEW INTERFACES FOR MUSICAL EXPRESSION (NIME 2007): THURS. JUNE 7, 6:30 PM; FRI. JUNE 8 AND SAT. JUNE 9, 7 :00 PM · $15 :: Frederick Loewe Theater: 35 W. 4th St.

A series of performances featuring selected works by NIME 2007 conference participants. The June 8 concert will highlight works commissioned for pianist Kathleen Supové and violinist Todd Reynolds. TICKETS @ THE DOOR.

NIME @ NITE: June 7-9 at 8:00 pm · $15 :: Over 20 performances at various clubs in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Check www.NIME2007.org for details. TICKETS @ THE DOOR.

COLUMBIA DAY: Sunday, June 10 noon to 10:00 pm · FREE :: CMC: 632 W. 125th St.

Columbia University Elecronic Music Studio birthday celebration Day exhibitions, workshops and concerts by the Princeton Networked Laptop Orchestra (Plork) and others.

The New York Electronic Art Festival is produced by Harvestworks, the New York University Music Technology Program, and LEMUR: League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots, with support from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, the Columbia University Computer Music Center, Roulette, Electronic Music Foundation, 3LD Art and Technology Center, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the Institute of Electronic Art.