Different objects, manufactured and natural, through their molecular structures, or their shapes or the resonant properties of their volumes, provide an infinite variety of sounds which can be delightful to those who have developed a taste for them. Gesner and Johnson will play solos that exploit these materials; sandwiched between the solos will be a duet .

It is no longer novel to listen to non-musical sounds as music. Different objects, manufactured and natural, through their molecular structures, or their shapes or the resonant properties of their volumes, provide an infinite variety of sounds which can be delightful to those who have developed a taste for them. Gesner and Johnson will play solos that exploit these materials; sandwiched between the solos will be a duet .

(SURformalism, ((INSTRUMENTISM), Lower Consciousness) examples; Eleven Brick-Flip Compositions Lewis Gesner

This solo performance gives examples that are derives from three principles I developed and continue to refine as performance guidelines. The words of the title have specific unique meanings within a system. SURformalism is a principle in which a vacuum is ideally generated- form and concept supersede material and action- action and material are open and subject to circumstance and setting at performing- open to infusion- rather than performing directed outward. This confronts issues of relevance in terms of performing language and subjective content- in structure, content becomes as matter, and, an INSTRUMENTISM method of actions and choice continue the open channel principle- for the invitation to local infusions. The motivation of SURformalism is a drive toward a universality and complete adaptability of all parts of the performing process, from inception to preparation and to “performing”- with a special emphasis on the broader envelop of performing, inclusive of all of these, as the body of performing. INSTRUMENTISM involves materials as they lend themselves best to use as “instrument”, circumstance, and act- all consider equally and evenly distributable to fulfill any required aspect of a “composition”, be it previous composed, or spontaneously rendered. Lower Consciousness is a term referring to the state best applied to explore the simple principle of INSTRUMENTISM. Lower Consciousness is being in the moment, with materials present- acting on them in a way without reference to previous knowledge, memory, or predetermined desire for a result. The eleven compositions here ( eleven, pointing to one more, or one less- so, suggesting movement- like the lines going to the edge of the canvas on a Mondrian painting- continue off the canvas- the brick-flips- are previously composed graphic plans- this seeming inconsistency with Lower Consciousness is allayed by my desire to give examples that are ideal- of my principles- so, they are an artifact- of the performing, which was the act of their writing.

Duet- using fabricated raw material- which could be applied to many uses- I further explore with INSTRUMENTISM- which is in conjunction with Lawrence Johnson’s use of objects at the same time, sharing the space- and, interacting- while my method will be specific, it is consistent and sensitive to Lawrence’s use of materials and objects- and, responsive to it. I will work with predetermined sets of material- in a non-returning series. This will give my end or side of the performance a sequence from beginning to end, and a relatively fixed set of sounds to which Lawrence may or may not choose to respond.

Lapis: solo by Johnson. A phallic stone and a Victrola-like horn from a nineteenth century scientific device provide the means for various evocations. What does each object or material wish to say?

This upcoming performance of Gang Clan Mafia unravels over 1,440 minutes. Performance actions become sonic rhythms; soundscapes dictate the flow of video information; sound becomes objects which inform the actions that transform the physical, sonic, and psychic space of the location.

Gang Clan Mafia creates improvised, live sound. It is a sound collage, landscape, journey and conversation. Video, installation, and performance actions are used as a visual Transportation Pod.

Gang Clan Mafia is:
Vela Phelan (turntable, knobs, mic, tapes, etc.) and Dirk Adams (found sound, constructed sound, mic, effects) and occasional collaborators.

Contact GCM : vela@templeofmessages.com / mrdirky@yahoo.com

Mobius, founded by Marilyn Arsem in 1977, is known for incorporating a wide range of the visual, performing, and media arts into innovative live performance, video, installation and intermedia works. Mobius has produced hundreds of original works that have attained critical acclaim in Boston, nationally and internationally. Works created at Mobius have been presented throughout the North and South America, Europe and Asia.

Mobius has long been committed to creating artist exchange projects bringing artists from different geographic regions to work together. The international exchange projects with artists from Macedonia, Croatia, Poland, and Taiwan have focused on site-specific and publicly-sited work. Mobius has presented work involving thousands of artists over its 30-year history and is recognized as one of the seminal alternative, artist-run organizations in the U.S.

This workshop introduces participants to the use of creative interaction design methods when exploring the design of sonic
interactions with computational artefacts. Specifically, focus will be on physical interactions that rely on continuous sonic feedback. Participants will generate future scenarios and concepts for such interactions, and everyday sounding objects in context will be taken as a starting point. By taking part in the workshop activities, participants will get an embodied understanding of the challenges of designing for meaningful and engaging physical interaction with computational sonic artefacts. Methods employed in the workshop will thus be good complements to the cognition or technology-based approaches to designing sounding objects that are mainstream within the ICAD community.

This one day, hands-on workshop will be divided in fours parts: warm-up exercises, creative idea generation, concept exploration through bodystorming and final presentation and discussion. The workshop is aimed at an ICAD audience, but welcomes a wide range of participants with various backgrounds such as artists, designers, musicians, programmers, cultural and media studies scholars, etc. No previous technical knowledge or design experience is required.

The workshop will give participants the opportunity to explore key aspects of tangible interaction and continuous sonic feedback, all in an activity-based way: the fact that the workshop consists of low-tech small group exercises and interaction-focused creative activities instead of paper presentations or technology tutorials, invites participants to have an active role and to engage all senses in the exploration of this type of situated sonic interaction. The focus is taken away from technology itself and turned instead towards the situated activities of using technology.

If you would like to participate in this workshop, please e-mail an expression of interest to sonicinteraction at googlemail dot com by 6 June 2008, as places are limited. Your expression of interest should explain in a few sentences why you are interested in participating in the workshop and include a short biography. The submission should not excess one A4 page. Please state if you are a member of SID or are applying for a Short Term Scientific Mission (http://www.cost-sid.org/wiki/STSMCall3).

DATES
Deadline for expression of interest: 6 June 2008
Notification of acceptance: 10 June 2008
Workshop: 23 June 2008

CONTACT AND INFORMATION
sonicinteraction at googlemail dot com
http://sonicinteraction.wordpress.com/
http://icad08.ircam.fr/site/

One example of this (shown in the top two images above) is as follows:

Vibrating motors cause glass plates, on which various materials are placed, to oscillate. The vibrations move the materials and the frictions caused by this generate sounds, which are amplified via contact microphones and edited through DSP (Digital Signal Processing). Through a multiple channel speaker system amplified sounds are projected and reassembled into new sound architectures.

The artists’ aim is to selectively:

…mix between living structures continuously generated or evolving by chance and chain reactions on the one hand, contrasting with specifically delimited and contained space, in which these events are allowed to happen. Our compositional intentions are manifesting themselves through our deliberate containment and cautious monitoring. Thus, we are not busying ourselves with chance factors and generative systems in order to discover unexpected results, but rather to attain the vitality aspired in the compositions.

Untitled Sound Objects as an installation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6P4FJxbS3GM

Untitled Sound Objects as a performance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoB1zvJupY4

Untitled Sound Objects exhibited autonomously
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiiIb_ki8Tc

[blogged by Garrett Lynch on Network Research]

Eng and Linton have been working in a similar vain exploring experimental cinema and sound in the electronic arts scene in New York. This is the first collaboration between these two artists who have spent a life dedicated to observing, manipulating, pushing the limits of vision and listening. Here at Maison Populaire, they have combined their ideas of nomadic movement (Eng) with continual optical spirals (Linton). Change in the perspective of character, window, reflection of light, scale and mirroring are subjects at hand. The sensitive observer will notice the subtleties in the connection between image and sound which affects one another. Here lies the interactivity between the substances rather than the moving hand of the passerby. Using a simple set up of a digital camera, a moving glass ball, a computer with the software by Vidvox.net, and the feedback of the projected image, the viewer witnesses a process of remaking moving light and object.

Biographies

Angie Eng is a media artist who works in video, installation and time-based performance. Her current work draws from inspiration from nomadic cultures. In 1993 she moved to New York City to pursue her career in the arts. During this time she became involved in the downtown electronic arts scene and has collaborated on numerous video performance projects. She co-founded The Poool a live video performance group with Nancy Meli Walker and Benton Bainbridge in 1996-1999. Her work has been performed and exhibited at the Whitney Museum at Philip Morris, Lincoln Center Video Festival, Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, The Kitchen, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute, Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, Roulette Intermedium and Experimental Intermedia. Her videos have been included in digital art festivals in local and international venues in Cuba, Greece, Japan, Germany, France, Holland, Former Yugoslavia and Canada. She has received numerous grants and commissions: New Radio and Performing Arts, Harvestworks, Art In General, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York State Council on the Arts, Jerome Foundation and Experimental TV Center.

With his Bicameral Research Sound & Projection System David Linton aims to make vibrational wave induced perceptual energy states manifest by deploying interconnected measures of electric sound & light in live action with hand manipulated objects in physical (live camera) space. He employs an integrated recursive audio & video feedback system of his own perversely simple design modulated by freehand intervention to deliver vigorous eye, ear, and - sometimes - body shaking realtime audio visual performances from which a kind of retro-tech animistic ritual “medicine show” emerges where subject and object blur.

OTTO (Greek for ‘ear’) is a device that makes hidden sounds audible. This is achieved via a thin polymer piezoelectric contact that senses weak vibrations and plays them as a sound through an integrated speaker. OTTO can be positioned on almost any surface through a combination of suction and magnets. By placing several units on different objects, one can select and create a new sonic experience and a form of ambient music appreciation, thereby utilising our space as a multidirectional audio platform.

Every object and surface in our environment has a whisper; subtle tremors and vibrations that are usually undetectable to the human ear, produced by the activity and movement of daily life. What if these sounds were audible? How would that change our aural awareness, perception of space and attitude towards objects? Would it be possible to ‘compose’ our own soundtrack using our walls and objects as a new form of instruments? Madsounds is a proposal for a different appreciation of our environment, space and objects by making it possible to identify, combine and manipulate these sounds.

More projects from the RCA. [blogged by Cati Vaucelle on Architectradure]

Dimensions: -31dB * 1.35s / w 80 * d 70 * h 85; Materials: polyethylene foam, water-jet cut. You can see a demo at http://www.plummerfernandez.com/. Click on “sound/chair.”

Sound/Chair is the initial stage of a project exploring the translation of furniture into sound and sound into furniture. The link between the two is that sound can be visualized as a 3-dimensional object when it is graphed mathematically on a volume/time/frequency plot. When sound is presented in this manner, the beautiful and unexplored aesthetic of sound is discovered; a landscape of spikes and shapes that vary accordingly to the type of sound. This is taken further by altering the sound’s volume, length and frequencies to create a soundwave in the shape of a chair. The end result is a chair that carries the inherited aesthetic of sound and also a chair that can be heard as a sound.

The 3-Dimensional graph is used as the lines to create the full-scale chair, made up of layers of polyethylene foam. Prototypes of the chair were exhibited in Milan this year, and the final product was launched at the London Design Festival in September and is now on sale - made to order.

Matthew Plummer Fernandez is a designer of British and Columbian nationality and runs his own design studio in Shoreditch, London. Thanks to Information Aesthetics

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.

After the sun has set at Federation Square, a huge white ball is pushed, heaved, thrown, and rolled around in a game – or is it a ritual? As this two and a half metre ball moves, it sings, it speaks, it screams. It’s a clever ball: its motion can manipulate both sound and images. The music it makes includes sounds from the environment and vocal samples composed by Rose and sung by The Song Company and Aku Kadogo, while Hollis Taylor plays the live violin obligato. As the ball spins, it juggles with words of wisdom, power and warning. The ball, aided by purpose-built interactive technology, has evolved from an object to a virtuoso multimedia performer.

From Rose’s website:

The use of games of chance to determine musical content has fascinated composers as different as Mozart in his Musikalisches Würfelspiel, Stravinsky in his stage works based on card games (also his neo-classical wind Octet of 1923), Cage throughout his entire career, and John Zorn in his ‘game pieces’ (which are in essence structures for improvisers). Richard Strauss spent much of his time playing skat (not improvised jazz vocals but a version of the card game whist); Schoenberg and Britten were very keen on tennis; Prokofiev was a chess master; Mozart was often to be found at the billiard table; Percy Grainger was outstanding at Badminton and possibly the first recorded jogger - sometimes running from concert to concert (once accompanied by 100 Zulu warriors) and even running from stage to back of concert hall and back again, when he had too many bars tacet in a blockbuster piano concerto.

Outside of western music of course, most societies have had their practice of music integrally linked to every ceremonial necessity of their social activities - from birth to death. Also, in many non-western cultures the idea of music without physical movement (dance) would have seemed strange, if not perverse.

Functional music, cultural replacement

In Australia, we live in a country that has the oldest surviving practice of gebrauchsmusik - it is only 50 years since the chief elder of many Aboriginal groups still knew how to sing into existence every significant animate and inanimate object, the keys to survival. It is unlikely that such sophisticated and rich cultures of aurality will ever exist again. But anybody who has ever witnessed an Aboriginal Australian Rules tournament in the Northern Territory will know that ‘footie’ has gone some way to filling the physical (if not the spiritual) cultural void left by whitefella destruction. This game may have been invented by Victorians, but the Aborigines of the north have seized it with both hands and feet and made it their own. If ballet was this good, I’d go every night. Unfortunately it is for blokes only; it also (sadly) has no music. The women have to make do with basketball or must stick with painting; but there is cause for optimism, painting is still often accompanied by song.

What is it about the ball?

A ball flying through space has an inherent mystery; it replicates our lonely and insecure position in the universe. Any young child seems to recognise the universality and truth of the ball. It’s global. All children, even those who show little interest in games or sport, respond to this user-friendly object. Add the random qualities of the oval ball to our philosophical observation, and we approach notions of twentieth century physics - the Uncertainty Principle and Quantum Mechanics. The oval ball may adhere to Newtonian gravity, but its chance bounce-ability gives lie to Einstein’s own belief that ‘God does not play dice with the Universe’. To football fans the ball verges on being a sacred object; the ball game - a religious rite. Bill Shankly, the legendary manager of the Liverpool soccer club, was once asked if football was a matter of life and death. ‘No’ he said, ‘it’s more important than that’.

New musical forms

A casual listen to the programmes of concert hall music, jazz festivals, rock spectacles, or other mainstream genres in 2005 will inform you that very little has changed in the way that most music is structured. There seem to be very few new forms for music (content is an equally unadventurous story, but let’s not go there). In classical music, they still haven’t got over the sonata form; in jazz they still unthinkingly play the head, the solos, and the head again. In electronic dance music, there is no form; you basically switch it on, mix it with something else, then switch it off again at the end (if you’re lucky). Most team games in sport provide a set of fixed macro and mobile structures that can be utilised as a formal basis for sonic compositions. A composition can utilise the basic parameters and agreed dimensions of place, time and space, to notions of technique, base strategy, flexible game plans, sportsmanship, or fooling your opponents (theatre?). All the codes of team games such as football, volleyball, basketball, and netball have the adaptive potential for setting up musical structures with satisfying yet unknown sonic outcomes - in fact I am suggesting that the practice of sport is akin to many methods of group music making such as Gamelan or the antiphonal singing that grew out of the European Renaissance. In the interactive badminton game PERKS, I thought that it would be enough just to have two adequate badminton players simulating the game. As it turned out, the best musical result was achieved by the best players (both in technique and commitment) - faking it wasn’t possible.

The ball project

The project will consist of a series of compositions utilising the structures of team sports (such as netball and quadrugby - otherwise known as murderball) and incorporating at least four custom made balls (an Australian Rules football; a Volley ball or Net ball; a huge 3 metre plus ball for a gallery space; a small kindergarten friendly ball). The balls will be fitted with pressure sensors and accelerometers providing continuous controller data streams via radiophonic transmission for interactive software driving audio and visual content. Some games will generate visual and text commentary on the nature of competition and tribalism, and be accompanied by string quartet obligato. Other games will function on an abstract level, concentrating very much on the essence of what it is that makes the ball such a powerful object and icon in our culture. The music generated by the ball will include original composition for sampled choir (The Song Company), the sounds of the body, physical exertion, and the sounds of electronic transmission. A composition for violin and juggler, using the same interactive ball technology, is also planned. This, I hasten to add, is not an exercise in touchy-feely therapy but the rigorous development of a hybrid art form.

A short history of ball games

The Meso-American ball game Pok-A-Tok has been around since 3000 BC; players used their elbows, knees and hips to get a small rubber ball through a hoop. Being an ersatz war situation (like most ball games since), the losers were often summarily executed. In North America, the Indians had their own version of soccer called Pasuckuakohowog. When the British turned up in the 1600s, they noticed similarities to their own crazed inter-town ball tournaments (which often lasted several days). The pitch could be over a mile long, the teams consisted of as many players as possible, the ball or bladder was stuffed with anything animal or vegetable - including body parts of a recent enemy (with grass as the ubiquitous filler), and the games were always extremely violent affairs. The Chinese can also lay claim to the origins of soccer. Around the 2nd and 3rd centuries BC, during the Han Dynasty, the army trained by kicking a ball into a smallish net. Almost everyone, including the Greeks and Romans it seems, had their ball games.

Ballspeak

The Age of Enlightenment sowed the seeds of humanity’s salvation in giving us most of the useful ideas that we associate with a modern rounded society - a franchised democracy, rational behaviour, social equality, wonder at (as opposed to ruling over) the natural world. However it couldn’t contain the grab for empire and the pathological exploitation of natural resources - which continues unabated. The Enlightenment has also not prevented the recent backward summersault to about the 12th century as our species’ insecurity and evermore desperate plight on our little planet is highlighted in the current burst of reactionary religiosity.

The moon, the earth would be balls in existence and travelling through space whether we were here to observe them or not. Unlike most of our cultural language-dependent notions like money, democracy, religion, etc - playing with a ball-like object could well have existed before language. It is an ontological artefact like none other whether it be a rolling stone or a pig’s bladder. After all a wild dog will perceive a moving ball as prey and play with it without understanding the rules of either physics or soccer. Once set in motion, a ball object seems to take on a life of its own. For all intensions and purposes, in the eyes of the wild dog, the ball is alive. The domestic dog can be trained to fetch the ball. But no dog, domestic or wild, can understand what a goal or a try is. Nor does an animal understand that our continued existence on this small finite ball is tenuous - we should however.

Blow the whistle.

Metaphors of music

Music as food, or politics as music, abound throughout literature, but a spontaneous look through the sports pages of The Guardian and the culture pages of The New York Times a few years ago revealed the following:

‘For the first 45 minutes, they could find no way through the Hammer’s defence; Dicks, often at walking pace, conducting the orchestra with the Croat, Pilic, as leading violinist. Only Carbone looked to have the wit to break the tempo. West Ham’s game was too fancy for its own good at times; Dicks would play the 1812 Overture, but a minuet through midfield seems to be Harry Redknapp’s preferred melody and, on this evidence, they don’t play it well enough.’

‘The program for Saturday night’s Alice Tully Hall concert described the ‘most distinguishing features’ of The Double Tenth Junior Hight School in Taichung, Taiwan, as ‘the experimental music class and female volleyball team’. The place must therefore be positively jumping with experimental music, and has to be a major force on the Taiwan volleyball circuit, since its orchestra - which were the point of this concert - was most engaging.

The Ball Project is supported in a two year fellowship (2006/7) by The Australia Council, and with generous help from STEIM, Amsterdam.

Sitting comfortably in your chair, one lamp on either side, you will get stereo quality, and a strange spatial sound experience. Moving your head wearing the headphones closer to one of the channels increases the volume. Adding physical response to the thrilling story, and, as Skjelvik writes, eventually a stiff neck…

Ouest is a trio formed in 2004 to establish large bodies of static music. Ouest works slowly and patiently to build a sound field that is the product of activation of objects and amplification, not the deliberate interaction of players or instruments. Howard Stelzer plays in many live situations and records solo compositions, usually involving the manipulation of cassette tapes. He is the sole proprietor of Intransitive Recordings. Jay Sullivan makes music with amplified turntables, microphones, field recordings and occasionally a harmonium, and runs the We Break More label. Jay and Howard perform and record together as the band Skeletons Out. Brendan Murray’s solo work is based on long-form electronic music compositions, in addition to many types of collaboration. He also plays drums and electric guitar.