A few months ago I wrote a note to myself: “Try to create a mask that that doesn’t have anything to do with anything” and kept wondering what that could mean until I started to imagine Mask/Mirror. Mask/Mirror a sampler to process recordings of spoken language in real time… The sampler follows both sound and meaning criteria in sorting, organizing and processing samples and in formulating utterances. It is a software tool based on MaxMSP and speech recognition software interacting with my own voice during performances. It’s also a state of mind enabling expanded spoken and vocal improvisation, expanded communication and ecstasy.

It has been developed in collaboration with Harvestworks Digital Arts Center in New York and STEIM in Amsterdam. Mask/Mirror has to do with virtually everything but at the same time it does not have anything special to do with anything special. As well as being a blank mask I can put on my face - and my voice - it’s also a mirror that let me browse and talk to my memory while I am watching into it.

All mirrors are masks and vice versa. Both are tools enabling identity.

“It is difficult not to treat Mask/Mirror, with its randomized garble of words, as a willfully cryptic Oracle of Delphi reincarnated as an Apple laptop. While Bosetti had described the project as “about the aboutness of being about” what Noise got out all of this is that it’s devilishly hard not to seek meaning even where it’s clear none is forthcoming. Not until the program, in a moment of absurd hilarity, spit forth the word “hamburgers” did it all click: Mask/Mirror is a tool for shearing all meaning from language. It’s a liberation, of sorts, like the sound version of Rorschach tests: The mind is encouraged to wander freely and delight in words purely for their sound. In the information overload of contemporary times, Mask/Mirror’s playful rupturing of sense–its nonsense, in other words–is a welcome respite.” Raven Baker - Noise/Citypaper

ALESSANDRO BOSETTI, voice, electronics, Berlin / Milano / Baltimore: Alessandro Bosetti, composer and sound artist, was born in Milan, Italy in 1973. He works on the musicality of spoken words and unusual aspects of spoken communication and produced text-sound compositions featured in live performances, radio broadcastings and published recordings. In his work he moves on the line between sound anthropology and composition often including translation and misunderstanding in the creative process. Field research and interviews often build the basis for his abstract compositions along with electro-acoustic and acoustic collages, relational strategies,trained and untrained instrumental practices, vocal explorations and digital manipulations. Since he’s curious about differences he travels. Just in 2006 he’s been living and working in West Africa, China, Taiwan, Holland, Scandinavia, United States , Germany and Italy. For the future he plans to be living and working between Berlin (D), Milano (I) and Baltimore (USA).

CHRISTIAN KESTEN, voice, Berlin, Germany: Christian Kesten was born in 1966 and works as composer, performance artist, vocalist and stage director. He lives in Berlin, Germany. His interest lies in the “space in-between”: between music and theatre, music and language, between music and the visual arts. His pieces work with the space which opens up between the sound of language and the parallel, non-illustrative action (-cycling 1990; des Kleinen Übergewicht 1995; 45 seconds 2006). They make use of everyday spaces and their sounds, including works made for train stations, in which minimal sounds of winds and brass are spread over the station and mixed with sounds of trains and passers-by (nordbahnhof 1996, bahnhof westend 1996, bahnhof zoo 1997). welcome home is written for the squeaking doors of the Nordbahnhof station in Berlin and two violins which mirror the door sounds: the passers-by experience the music while on the move. In (o.T.) für klarinette in einem raum mit langem nachhall 1(1999) and 2(2000) [(without title) for clarinet in a space with a long reverberation time] the clarinet plays to its own reverberation as a second voice, microtonally, and thus refers to the presence of space. parochial (1998) – for the group “Maulwerker” (4 female voices, trumpet/voice, clarinet/voice, alto saxophone + additional instruments) – was written especially for the space of the Parochialkirche in Berlin: sculptural shaped sounds are moved in space, while trumpet, clarinet and sax move mostly outside the space and so extending acoustic perception beyond the walls of the church.

Recently he developed the “video audio field recording”, by recording field sounds with a video camera, composing dense and light sound textures of field recordings and live instruments. The projected images are always fixed camera angles, filming spaces in-between, the incidental, the mundane: the Los Angeles catalogue; dodger stadium; cypress park; urban cafe restroom (all 2007). Kesten studied at the University of Arts (UdK) Berlin (Music: guitar, piano, voice; counterpoint/twelvetone-technique with H.Fladt; musicological thesis on “Silence in the works of John Cage and Morton Feldman”; Experimental music and music-theatre with Dieter Schnebel | Performance Art | Projects with the stage design class of Achim Freyer) and TU Berlin (German literature and linguistics). 1989-91 he studied privately with Michael Vetter (overtone singing, vocal improvisation, calligraphy/notation etc.). Movement studies with various teachers (Amos Hetz a.o.).

Since 1987, he has been performing new vocal music and experimental music-theatre throughout Europe and in New York, Rio de Janeiro, Israel, Moscow and Tokyo. He currently works with the ensemble “Maulwerker” and as soloist. In a long collaboration with Dieter Schnebel he premiered most of his music theatre works since 1987. He has recently worked with Alessandro Bosetti, Jacques Demierre, Chico Mello, Makiko Nishikaze, Iris ter Schiphorst, who wrote solo works or operas for him. Kesten conceives and curates the series “maulwerker performing music” (since 2005) in Berlin with programs like ?poems for feet“, ?pro cedere. Music as Process“, “Situationen.. Interpenetrations of art and life” or “Halt’s Maul. Screaming pieces from four decades”, with World Premieres by Antonia Baehr, Alessandro Bosetti, Bill Dietz, Jürg Frey, Robin Hayward, David Helbich, Michael Hirsch, Sven-Åke Johansson, Travis Just, Christian Kesten, Andrea Neumann, Pauline Oliveros, Dieter Schnebel, Emmett Williams, István Zelenka, a.o. Since 2006, he is co-curator of the experimental music concert series Labor Sonor at KULE Berlin.

Diapason gallery for sound and intermedia was founded by composer Michael J. Schumacher in 2001 and its program builds on the efforts of Schumacher’s previous sound space, Studio Five Beekman, founded in 1996. Diapason is the sole venue in New York City and one of few internationally dedicated to the presentation of multichannel sound installation where composers and sound artists can realize their work for an interested public. By providing an optimum listening environment, two high quality multi-channel sound systems, a regular audience, and a place for experimentation, Diapason seeks to engage composers and the public in dialogue about the place of contemporary music and sound practice in a broader cultural context. Diapason is supported by NYSCA, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Phaedrus Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, The Trust for Mutual Understanding, Kirk Radke, and by generous individuals. Diapason is a 501(c)3 organization.

Music plays a pivotal role in many people’s lives as part of everyday popular culture because it is so unmediated. At times as a real world, at others as a reflecting surface for one’s own and others’ projections, music provides scope for manifold liberating, activist or subversive strategies at a far remove from consumption or glamour.

Just Play – Music as Social Praxis discusses music as an open system, as a field for potential connections and dissociations, feedbacks and appropriations; as myth and the possibility of freedom and scope, of authenticity and commitment, of enthusiasm and alternative action. The works shown are about a social praxis that raises issues relevant to society as a whole rather than merely exposing the usual market mechanisms or deconstructing symbols and signs. Music becomes the vehicle for constructing identity and différance, orientation and dislocation, collectivity and individuality.

Through her work Ana Carvalho explores ideas of identity, both theoretically and in her practice: she performs under the name Magenta Interior. Ana is one of the two editors of the project VJ Theory which compiles theoretical works about VJing and realtime performance and is interested in exploring ways for people to develop Artist Theory, theory based in practice, individually and collectively.

To create each performance, this performer misuses software or many technological devices not specific for VJing. Stories based in daily life are told through the selection of the toys and objects she uses.

In this workshop Ana will present her work to an audience as an opening to a dialogue. Attendees of the workshop are invited to bring examples (audiovisual, text, whether online or on DVD) of their own work or of other artists who also use a diverse range of technologies or create their own. This will be base for a debate on the creative ways of using technologies and an inspiration for new or ongoing work.

We hope to see you at both the performance and the workshop. For more information:
Ana Carvalho
Magenta Interior
VJ Theory

Floating Fabulousness: Representation, Performativity and Identity in Musical Ringtones by Isabella van Elferen and Imar de Vries - ABSTRACT: In this paper, we consider musical ringtones of mobile phones to act as virtual, communicative and cultural performances. They appear unpredictably, they communicate signs which are interpreted by a variegated and dynamic audience, and establish stages upon which cultural meanings are portrayed. We will argue that the musical ringtone functions as a musical madeleine in Marcel Proust’s sense, an involuntary mnemonic trigger of a complex web of individual and collective memories. Having this quality, the ringtone lends itself perfectly for the performative manifestation and display of (sub)cultural identities in the public sphere. Keywords: Performativity, ringtones, mobile phones, communication, representation, identity. Mobile Music Workshop Proceedings, page 38 [PDF]

URBAN SENSING: Urban Sensing systems research is a collaboration between CENS and the Center for Research in Engineering, Media and Performance (REMAP) that seeks to develop cultural and technological approaches for using embedded and mobile sensing to invigorate public space and enhance civic life.

Unlike scientific applications, many sensors for urban applications are already ‘out there,’ watching and listening. Mobile phones provide us with sounds and imagery from our homes and neighborhoods, and the near ubiquity of wireless access in many future urban settings will allow us to publish or share data easily, immediately. Soon private citizens will have access to a great diversity of sensors, allowing them to make even more detailed observations of their communities. They will be able to cross-reference spatially and temporally tagged data they gather with publicly available data from private and municipal monitoring of the city—traffic, weather, air quality, pedestrian flow—the environment and rhythms of urban life.

At the edges of culture, lightweight web applications, built on this publicly available information and free web services, emerge already almost daily to explore new linkages among these varied data. Expanding on their approach, we are exploring how these intermittent georeferenced media records of everyday life can be coordinated to achieve ‘distributed documentation’ of the urban environment, as well as be fused with other sensed data about the city and fed back into the physical, collective experience in urban public spaces. Unlike scientific applications, the hardware is not owned and managed by a small number of central authorities. Citizens carry sensors and contribute data voluntarily. A single entity does not pose interesting ‘hypotheses,’ design experiments, force participation. Instead, the process of learning from an urban environment can be organic and decentralized, existing more in the realm of social networking software. However, the power of this network still comes from our ability to verify the context of shared data, to actuate (to filter, identify and respond to events); to aggregate data in space and time; and to allow individuals to coordinate activities.

By Amy Alexander, Wojciech Kosma, Vincent Rabaud with Nikhil Rasiwasia and Jesse Gilbert. Production Assistants: Marilia Maschion, Annina Rüst, Cristyn Magnus. The project that asks the question: If computer vision technology can be used to detect when you look like a terrorist, criminal, or other “undesirable” - why not when you look like a rock star?SVEN (Surveillance Video Entertainment Network) is a system comprised of a camera, monitor, and two computers that can be set up in public places - especially in situations where a CCTV monitor might be expected. The software consists of a custom computer vision application that tracks pedestrians and detects their characteristics, and a real-time video processing application that receives this information and uses it to generate music-video like visuals from the live camera feed. The resulting video and audio are displayed on a monitor in the public space, interrupting the standard security camera type display each time a potential rock star is detected. The idea is to humorously examine and demystify concerns about surveillance and computer systems not in terms of being watched, but in terms of how the watching is being done - and how else it might be done if other people were at the wheel.

As part of the Festival in central Perth Echoricochet was presented from an orange transit van. The public borrowed headphones and CD players and embarked on a sound-walk through the city, guided by instructions. Perth ebbed and flowed with its usual rhythms as the soundscape evolved around the listener, offering a relaxed yet heightened awareness of the urban environment’s passing details. [Read an interview with Scanner on neural.it]

Found Mobile Phone Conversations

Scanner’s diverse practices include audio CDs, soundtrack composition for films, performances, radio, and site-specific intermedia installations. He has performed and created works internationally including SFMOMA USA, Hayward Gallery London, Pompidou Centre Paris, Tate Modern London, Corcoran Gallery DC and the Royal Opera House London. He has collaborated with artists from numerous genres including musicians Bryan Ferry and Laurie Anderson, The Royal Ballet and Random Dance companies, composers Michael Nyman and Luc Ferrari, and artists Mike Kelley and Derek Jarman.

Scanner continually seeks unconventional environments for his works: in 1999 he performed Surface Noise on a London Bus around the city, in 2000 he performed over 20 KM of beach in Italy on the public speaker system, re-soundtracked Jean Luc Godard’s seminal film Alphaville, and wrote the soundtrack to a working morgue in Paris in 2002.

Among his recently completed works are Into The Blue, a gallery installation using 10,000 latex balloons, soundtracks for The Royal Ballet’s Qualia and Random Dance Company’s Nemesis, a string quartet entitled Play Along, three feature film soundtracks, and CD releases of 52 Spaces commissioned for film director Antonioni’s 90th birthday, and Warhol’s Surfaces, commissioned for German Radio.

Scanner’s work can be heard on permanent display in the Science Museum London (Sound Curtains) and the Raymond Poincare hospital in Garches France as part of the bereavement suite (Channel of Flight). His BBC radio production of Jean Cocteau’s ‘The Human Voice’ won the prestigious Prix Marulic Award and most recently he won First Prize Neptun Water Prize for his installation Wishing Well in Germany. In 1998 he became ‘Professor Scanner’ at John Moore’s University in Liverpool.