Ajay Kapur - Electronic Sitars, Robotic Tablas, and Sarawati’s ElectroMagic :: April 3, 2008; 5 - 7 pm :: Machine Project, 1200 D North Alvarado Street, Los Angeles, CA.

TABLACENTRIC is thrilled to present Ajay Kapur, whose work revolves around one queston: “How do you make a computer improvise with a human?” Using the rules set forth by the north Indian classical tradition, Ajay strives to build new interfaces for musical expression by modifying the tabla, dholak and sitar with added microchips and sensor systems, while building robotic musical instruments which can be programmed to perform along with the human performer. Continue reading

[1] The Omnisound Generator :: Electric motor, mechanical sound generator, spherical mixing chamber, plastic tubing, industrial headphones :: 34″ x 24″ x 10″ :: Warning: extended use with the headphones may induce slight nausea, vertigo and mental confusion in some sensitive persons. Use at your own risk.

Seven octaves, 84 discrete tones, all at once all the time, a history of western music as played back in its entirety as one incessant chord. This drone, this filler of space and monster of the twelve-tone scale, is unrelenting in its ever pervasiveness. As a pneumatic sound engine, the Omnisound Generator allows for remote placement into the machine via air coupled headphones. Monitoring the insides with stethoscopic precision, hear its heartbeat, its scream, its infrasonic rumblings and the wind rushing by. ALL SOUND ENGINES ARE GO! Continue reading

Sphere Of Influence - The Ball Project: Music, chance and games by Jon Rose.

Best known for his work on, around and about the violin, Jon Rose is a global performer, presenting his group and solo projects regularly in over 30 countries. He brings over 25 years experience pioneering the use of digital technology in live music performance to the Ball Project and this Festival outcome Sphere of Influence. The ball as symbol is universally recognised. A ball flying through space has an inherent mystery; it replicates our lonely and insecure position in the universe. To sport fans, the ball verges on being a sacred object. Ball games, especially in this sport-obsessed city, are nearly a religious rite. The earth is our favourite ball - our future on it less than certain. Continue reading

Baby Love by Shu Lea Cheang :: October 1 - November 2, 2007 | Mon - Sat | 10am - 12pm & 2pm - 5pm :: Free :: Carriageworks, Sydney.

Baby Love is art that moves you and your imagination…. Climb aboard a giant teacup and glide into a futuristic fantasy with a dummy-sucking baby doll clone to your favourite love song at Sydney’s new home for contemporary arts, CarriageWorks. Its cathedral-scale foyer will play home to 6 giant teacups, each with a larger-than-life baby doll clone. Baby Love is a wi-fi mobile installation by New York based Taiwanese artist, Shu Lea Cheang, who calls cyber-space ‘home’. Shu Lea is a multi-media artist working in the field of net-based installation, social interface and film production. Continue reading

Surfing gains a whole new dimension with TurntablistPC by Danish artist Mogens Jacobsen. Featured in the WEBSCAPE exhibition at The Art Museum of West Sealand in Denmark, TurntablistPC reacts to online traffic by playing a record in the exhibition space every time a participating website is visited. Take part in this “global DJ” project and make a record spin miles away every time someone visits your website!

TurntablistPC is on show from September 21 - November 25, 2007. We need your participation! All you have to do is place a small piece of html code on your website. Continue reading

N. is an artistic visualization and sonification (direct translation of data to sound) of near real-time Arctic data. N. is an ongoing, evolving composition.

A dramatic warming trend has been experienced by the Arctic over the last decade that may accelerate global climate change. The N. installation expresses the isolation and environmental extremes of this remote region and addresses the importance of the region to the global ecosystem. Data and images for N. have been provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Arctic research program. A portion of the raw sound material used in N. comes from live sferics (short for atmospherics), electromagnetic transmissions of lightning from the INSPIRE VLF (very low frequency) receiver at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. N. also makes use of a custom, open source object for Max / MSP called Datareader created by Andrea Polli and Kurt Ralske. Continue reading

Jo’s post on CyberTracker got me to thinking again about geotagging and its aesthetic implications. Without stepping into the cultural/economic/sociopolitical ramifications of the CyberTracker story, it is interesting to note that what the Kalahari Bushmen are doing is, at least technologically, not that different from what Chia Ying Lee’s ‘Sonic Graffiti’ intends for its participants to do, which is to create a location-specific record of an activity at a particular time and place, and have that record persist indefinitely, tied to the location of its creation. This data can then be accessed again via wireless technologies when one is in the location of the original ‘recording’. Continue reading

Silophone by Lee Rosevere :: July 16, 2007 at 9:30pm EST :: The performance, which will last 35-40 minutes, will be an exclusive live internet event, where Lee will perform new original material from his home studio and stream it to the Silophone. Log on to Silophone to participate in the performance. (Real audio required to listen, Flash required to participate).

“Silophone makes use of the incredible acoustics of Silo #5 (an abandoned grain storage facility in the port of Montréal) by introducing sounds, collected from around the world using various communication technologies, into a physical space to create an instrument which blurs the boundaries between music, architecture and net art. Sounds arrive inside Silo #5 by telephone or internet. They are then broadcast into the vast concrete grain storage chambers inside the Silo. Continue reading

Abstract: In this paper we report on the current state of the newly established Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk), a collection of 15 meta-instruments each consisting of a laptop computer, interfacing equipment, and a hemispherical speaker. Founded in the fall of 2005, PLOrk represents the first laptop ensemble of its size and kind, and brings together many of our research and aesthetic interests as musicians, composers, and computer scientists. Here we chronicle the first steps of the ensemble, including details about the technology, the music, compositional challenges, and what we have learned in the process. Continue reading

DaveX recently started a new experimental music label, Naked Arrival, a personal outlet for extremely limited-run releases of experiments in sound– recordings located somewhere between the natural world and the realm of music. He plans to make frequent recordings, each of which will be available to a single purchaser. Upon receipt, the recording will be made freely available online. No other actual physical copy of any recording will exist save the original, which he hopes to feature in imaginative packaging with extensive information.

The first Naked Arrival release (SOLD OUT), Tenex, features three massive conference calls with over thirty U.S. government agencies digitally recorded, with the results mixed to microcassette– a little over fifteen minutes long. “Tenex” is housed in a burgandy card file, with a full list detailing each call participant.