Adam Nash will lead a tour of his work on Thursday, May 22, 2008 between 6:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. US EDT. If you would like to take part in the tour, please contact adam at yamanakanash dot net.

Trace Aureity is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., for Networked Music Review. It was made possible with funding from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

BIOGRAPHY

Adam Nash is a new media artist, composer, programmer, performer and writer. He works primarily in networked real-time 3D spaces, exploring them as live audiovisual performance spaces. His sound/composition and performance background strongly informs his approach to creating works for virtual environments, embracing sound, time and the user as elements equal in importance to vision. Adam’s work has been presented in galleries, festivals and online in Australia, Europe, Asia and the Americas, including SIGGRAPH, ISEA, and the Venice Biennale. He also works as composer and sound artist with “Company in Space” (AU) and “Igloo” (UK), exploring the integration of motion capture into real-time 3D audiovisual spaces. He is currently undertaking a Master of Arts by Research at the “Centre for Animation and Interactive Media” at RMIT University, Melbourne, researching multi-user 3D cyberspace as a live performance medium; and he’s a Lecturer in “Computer Games and Digital Art” in the School of Creative Media at RMIT University. Read an interview here.

The Telephone Game: Oil/Water/Ether is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., for Networked Music Review. It was made possible with funding from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

BIOGRAPHY

The Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk) is a newly established ensemble of computer-based musical meta-instruments. Each instrument consists of a laptop, a multi-channel hemispherical speaker, and a variety of control devices (keyboards, graphics tablets, sensors, etc…). The students who make up the ensemble act as performers, researchers, composers, and software developers. The challenges are many: what kinds of sounds can they create?; how can they physically control these sounds?; how do they compose with these sounds? There are also social questions with musical and technical ramifications: how do they organize a dozen players in this context? with a conductor? via a wireless network?

In its first year of PLOrk’s existence, composers and performers from Princeton and elsewhere developed new pieces for this unprecedented ensemble, including Paul Lansky (Professor of Music at Princeton), Brad Garton (Director of the Columbia Computer Music Center), PLOrk co-founders Dan Trueman and Perry Cook, and several graduate students. They have made extensive use of a new music programming language created by Princeton graduate student (now assistant professor at Stanford University|CCRMA) Ge Wang, called ChucK, which allows the performers to develop new code in performance. In their first major performance (April 2006, Richardson Auditorium) we were joined by the renowned tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain, legendary accordianist and composer Pauline Oliveros, and the exciting young percussion quartet from New York City, So Percussion. PLOrk was featured in the April issues of the MIT Press Technology Review and Wired Magazine, and performed at the Dartmouth College “Orchestras of Sameness” festival in May 2006.

During these travels, she has often been struck by the similarities between Cleveland, a city of the Rust Belt, and New Orleans, a city of the bayou. Both cities dwell on the shores of bodies of water with global reach: Cleveland on Lake Erie, New Orleans on the Mississippi River. Both cities have seen the boom and bust of industry and population throughout their histories – past and present. Cleveland and New Orleans look remarkably different, but Christensen has often noticed that they have sounds in common: industry, birds, water, tourists. Rust Belt / Bayou offers an interactive document of aural snapshots from recent trips to both New Orleans and Cleveland.

Rust Belt / Bayou is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., for Networked Music Review. It was made possible with funding from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

BIOGRAPHY

Julia Christensen is an artist whose work treads on the thin line between art and research. She also likes to tread on most of the thin lines between various media, between the electronic and the non-electronic, and between audience and performer. Julia is the author of Big Box Reuse (MIT Press, Fall 2008), a book about how communities are renovating abandoned Wal-Mart and K-Mart structures for creative new uses. Her photography, sound work, and electronic installations have shown recently at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Lincoln Center in New York City, and the DUMBO Art Center in Brooklyn, among other venues. Julia lectures widely about land use, art, music, and interdisciplinary research. She likes hearing stories, playing with her rock band in Troy, traveling in the depths of the United States, and thinking about the future.

Thus, van Veen turned to reel-to-reel (RTR) tape machines and Konstantin Raudive’s experiments with blank media in which he attempted to record the ‘voices of the dead’. (Little did van Veen know that John Hudak was exploring similar terrain in Voices from the Paradise Network.)

“This led to a series of investigations of the sonic realm arising between two networked R2R machines, a simple mixer and a DSP processor (to add spatialization and stereo channel manipulation to sometimes mono signals). These investigations revealed a performative realm, a space to improvise and to develop a capacity to ‘play’ the machines, or rather tweak & twiddle their hard knobs into spasms of ecstasy, cries of joy &, at times, moans of despair. The machines sang to me & each other, & I was drawn into the deadzone…”

[’til death do us a part] will be performed live at Programmable Media II: Networked Music tomorrow [Not in New York? Join us in Second Life].

Read Greg J. Smith’s interview with Tobias on Serial Consign.

[’til death do us a part] is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., for Networked Music Review. It was made possible with funding from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

BIOGRAPHY

Tobias c. van Veen is a renegade theorist and pirate, techno-turntablist and writer. Since 1993 he has directed conceptual and sound-art events, online interventions and radio broadcasts, working with STEIM, the New Forms Festival, the Banff Centre, Eyebeam, the Video-In, MUTEK, MDCN.ca, the Vancouver New Music Society and Hexagram. His work has appeared in CTheory, EBR, Bad Subjects, Leonardo, Locus Suspectus, FUSE (contributing editor), e/i, the Wire, HorizonZero and through Autonomedia, among others. He has sonic and mix releases on No Type’s BricoLodge and the and/OAR labels. From 1993-2000 he was Direktor of the sonic performance Collective [shrumtribe.com] in Vancouver. He is co-founder of technoWest.org with Dave Bodrug, controltochaos.ca with DJ FISHEAD and thisistheonlyart.com with artist ssiess. From 2002-2007 Director of UpgradeMTL [upgrademtl.org] and Concept Engineer at the Society for Arts and Technology [SAT.qc.ca]. Tobias is doctoral candidate in Philosophy & Communication Studies at McGill University.

Network Sonification is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., for Networked Music Review. It was made possible with funding from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

BIOGRAPHY

Zach Layton, a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory and the Interactive Telecommunications Program, is a composer, curator and new media artist with an interest in biofeedback, generative algorithms, experimental music, biomimicry and contemporary architectural theory. His work investigates complex relationships and topologies created through the interaction of simple core elements like sine waves, minimal surfaces and kinetic visual patterns. Zach’s work has been performed by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony and he has performed and exhibited at Roulette, The Kitchen, the New York Electronic Art Festival, Eyebeam, and many other venues in New York and Europe. Zach is also the curator of Brooklyn’s monthly experimental music series “darmstadt: classics of the avant garde” which features leading local and international composers and improvisers.

“In 2007 I began to learn to ride a bicycle. This for me was a choice not so much determined by reasons of pleasure but as a way of manifesting my need to literally move on with my life. Around the same time, I began to read Beckett’s famous Three Novels, and was moved in particular by “Molloy.” Bicycles are a very important metaphor in this book.” Haeyoung Kim

“To escape their lack of freedom, Beckett’s characters travel, taking with them a few private possessions, which reflect their personality. Of these emblematic items, by far the most important is the bicycle: it is a moving man-powered machine made for traveling (which can be both easy and difficult, according to the conditions prevailing); and it is also a prized possession through which an owner may express his personality. In this respect the bicycle is like the plot.” Janet Menzies

I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., for Networked Music Review. It was made possible with funding from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

BIOGRAPHY

A sound artist, composer, and audio engineer, Haeyoung Kim explores the territory of sounds in electronic music. Currently, under the name Bubblyfish, she has been creating 8-bit and experimental sound works. Haeyoung has collaborated with many respected sound and visual artists such as Malcolm McLaren, the founder of Sex Pistols, Hans Jochim Rodelius, and the Brussels based media art group, Lab[au]. Her work has been presented in art venues, clubs, festivals, and galleries internationally including The American Museum of the Moving Image, Pompidou Center, Kunsthalle Wien, MUTEK, LABoral, Lincoln Center Walter Reed Theater, and The New Museum.

Voices from the Paradise Network is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., for Networked Music Review. It was made possible with the funding from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

BIOGRAPHY

John Hudak has been interested in sound and music from the age of four, when he began to play a variety of instruments. At the University of Delaware and the Naropa Institute for the Arts, he studied English, video, photography, creative writing and dance. John then began to create taped soundtracks for his solo performance-art/dance pieces, that later developed into audio, audio-video, and mixed-media pieces. Language has also been a predominant focus, and John has studied and published haiku poetry, the literary equivalent of the reductive, minimal, and nature-based sound forms that interest him.

John’s current work focuses on the rhythms and melodies that exist in our daily aural environments. These sounds usually remain hidden, as we tend to overlook their musical qualities; or, their musical qualities are obscured through mixture with other sounds. This work takes the form of audio CDs, web-based projects, mixed-media installations and performances. In simplified terms, what John is doing could be considered reframing and transforming sound in our environment so it can be noted, admired, and valued.

Air Detritus is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., for Networked Music Review. It was made possible with the funding from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

Miya Masaoka is a classically trained musician, composer and sound/ installation artist. She has created works for solo koto, laser interfaces, laptop and video. She has also made works for sculpture installations and written scores for ensembles, chamber orchestra and mixed choirs. In her pieces, she often works with the sonification of data, and maps the behavior of brain activity, plants and insect movement to sound. Read an interview with Miya on Networked Music Review.

Flou (pronounced “flew”) is not exactly a game; you do fly a ship through space, but you cannot shoot anything, score points, or win or lose. The focus, rather, is on the soundtrack: as you navigate through a 3D world and zoom through objects in space, you add loops and apply effects to an ever-evolving musical mix. You can also design your own worlds to fly through and share them with other Flou users.

Flou is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. for Networked_Music_Review. It was made possible with funding from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

BIOGRAPHIES

Jason Freeman uses new technology and unconventional notation to break down barriers between composers, performers, and listeners, creating music that “stands as an example of the Web’s mind-expanding possibilities” (Billboard) and helps to “bring composition into the Xbox age” (Wired). Recent projects include “Flock”, a full-evening performance for saxophone quartet, dancers, and audience participation commissioned by Carnival Center for the Performing Arts in Miami; Graph Theory, a solo violin and web-based work commissioned by Turbulence; “iTunes Signature Maker”, a software artwork commissioned by Rhizome; and “Glimmer”, an audience-participation piece commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra. Freeman received his B.A. in music from Yale University and his M.A. and D.M.A. in composition from Columbia University. He is currently an assistant professor at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, where he teaches in the Music Department in the College of Architecture. [Read an interview with Jason]

The students in Freeman’s Networked Music course at Georgia Tech (Andrew Beck, Xiang Cao, Mark Godfrey, Jagadeeswaran Jayaprakash, Al Matthews, Rachel Ponder, Alex Rae, and Sriram Viswanathan) are currently pursuing M.S. degrees in music technology, digital media, and human-computer interaction, and they have diverse backgrounds as composers and performers of experimental and popular music, as computer scientists, and as engineers. Over the course of the fall 2007 semester, they collaborated to develop the concept for Flou, to design its user interface, visual components, and sound worlds, and to write, test, and deploy the software. They are currently creating a live-performance version of the work for presentation in spring 2008.

Although the commission money has been exhausted, Slocum is still accepting submissions. If you are interested in participating, read the PDF document on the website. Your footage will be added to the video sequence online and exhibited in future gallery exhibitions.

About the Process: In an email he wrote to Helen Thorington (January 11), Slocum describes the difficulties he had finding participants for the project:

Originally I was posting on Internet message boards for Full House, fan film making, and other related topics offering $80 for each completed video, hoping I could get about 18 videos. But nobody was taking the offer so I increased it to $150 and accepted that I had to reduce the number of videos. I ended up having the best results with Craigslist. You can’t post an ad to multiple cities, so I rotated the ad between different locations.

I gradually built a list of people willing to participate, which was complicated to maintain since people frequently expressed interest and later stopped responding to my emails. Most participants did not meet the deadlines I set. I received the first video in early November, and the last three in early January, less than a week before the launch date.

He then goes on to describe the formal challenges he faced:

Originally, I’d wanted the voicing of the dialogue to be so close to the original that it would maintain the hypnotic rhythm of the mockup loop I had created. I specified this in the documentation, but nobody could do it well enough, and the sound from the reshoots didn’t maintain the rhythm of the original concept. I was concerned that the piece wouldn’t work until I had the idea of overlaying the original audio onto the reshoot audio. This maintained the rhythm and emphasized the room reverb (and space) from the reshoots.

I found that the key to making the piece work out was subtle changes. Very slight timing changes made a big difference, equalization of audio, selection between two slightly different takes… Also some of the reshoots did not work aesthetically, but after a lot of experimenting I found that changes in color saturation of the clips could fix problems without changing much about the original authorship of the reshoot. I could bring out colors in dull clips, and control overly complex clips. I also discovered that the transition from under-saturated clips to over-saturated clips can be interesting.

You’re Not My Father is included in Slocum’s solo show “More House” which opens tonight at Dunn and Brown Contemporary, 5020 Tracy Street, Dallas, Texas.

You’re Not My Father is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. for Networked_Music_Review. It was made possible with funding from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

BIOGRAPHY

Paul Slocum is a musician and new media artist living in Dallas. Computers and computer culture are often the medium and subject of his work. Some of his projects are “The Dot Matrix Synth”, an 80’s dot matrix printer with re-programmed firmware to transform it into a musical instrument, “The Century Callback Project”, a phone number that calls you back 8 times in a century, and “The Time-Lapse Homepage”, a video made with HTML. He is also half of the “Tree Wave” project that creates music and video with obsolete assembly-language-programmed computer and video game gear. Paul is the director and co-founder of “And/Or Gallery” in Dallas, a gallery that specializes in new media artwork. Some of Paul’s performances and exhibitions include Transitio MX in Mexico City, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, Deitch Projects, and Eyebeam in New York, Le Confort Moderne in France, README 2005 in Denmark, and The Liverpool Biennial.