[Thanks to information aesthetics]

The installation is in a former water reservoir located in Prenzlauerberg. The reservoir is very large and the acoustic fingerprint is unique. The architectural properties are very simply laid out, it consists of five concentric passages in the form of rings. The space is very complex to grasp. This is mainly because of an utilitarian architecture, which is based on function (holding water in the early days) rather than anthropomorphic proportions. All these elements have an unusual impact on perception and is at first disorientating. Soundwise it has huge reverberation and echo. Sound travels in different and therefore unpredictable directions. Sounds become very diffused.
Our spatial awareness is dependant of only a fraction of a second of a sound reflected in our environment. This intuitive information is quite rudimentary when navigate our environment and we are mostly unaccustomed to use it consciously and or adequately. Some animals, however, use it as their main navigation system. They ’see’ with their ears. The skill has been first discovered in the mid-eighteenth century. The term echolocation was introduced much later in the mid-twentieth century.

The idea for this installation is based on the concept that sound can be used for investigating acoustic and architectural properties. Sound can be also be used as a cue for loctation. In general sound will be applied as a tool for perception. For this installation I developped a device that is a kind of sound space investigator; the Echolocator.

The Echolocator incorporates a sound device, a laser tool and a communicating tracking device. It can emit short sounds that are optimal for echolocation. These sounds are based on sounds that animals use for echolocation. There will be in total a dozen of those devices. Each device will sound slightly different and will interact with each other.

With the Echolocator you are able to explore the acoustic and architectural properties of a given space with sound. This tool triggers our sonic perception and helps in understanding how sound and space correlates.

On Arnaud Jacobs:

Generally Jacobs sets out from a fascination for sound, in any form. This explains how he takes his raw material from reality: with a microphone and recorder he makes field recordings. With these fragments Jacobs composes on his computer. His sound works are the result of a research to the different aspects of concrete or daily- sounds and how to assimilate and tune this material to the context of a musical work. The sound hovers as some kind of an interaction between micro and macro, inside and outside, fieldwork and studio, reality and fictionalization.

Born in Wilrijk, Belgium, in 1968. Arnaud Jacobs lives and works in Brussels since 1995. He has studied architecture. After his studies at the Sint-Lucasinstituut it did not take long, however, before he chose music. Today he has released music under several aliases: MarkMancha (electronic music), missfit (assigned music for film and other media), tmrx (autonomous collages constructed from everyday sounds). From 2004 he has been working under the name Aernoudt Jacobs and concentrates on installations, performances, sound design and commissioned work for film, dance and theater.

In his installation work he investigates mostly correlations between sound, matter, space/location, perception and psychoacoustics. Since 2005 he is with - Benoit Deuxant, Anton Aeki, Johan Vandermaelen and Frederik De Wilde - a member of zoning. He has been performing in Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Mexico, New York, Norway. He has released two albums on critically acclaimed labels as Staalplaat (NL) and Selektion (D) and contributed on different compilations.

Perception is an important aspect in his sound work. Perceiving music, sound, harmonies is a physical, emotional and intellectual activity that is always linked to personal memories. The properties of a particular sound/music/… will change the values of perception for each individual and thus hearing a tune on the radio can have an as deep impact on perception as listening to a car passing by. This association is an ongoing preocupation that is visible in most of his work. With the aid of psychoacoustic theories, he explores how perception can be influenced and how to express sound physically, spatially and emotionally.08 (from http://www.tmrx.org/bio00.html)

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/

Developers can freely access the current analysis via a web services API that, given an MP3, will return an XML file that describes all the information we can extract from a song file. Visit the registration page to request an API key. For more direct and commercial use, they also offer heavily optimized libraries and stand alone binaries for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows platforms on Intel, AMD, Power PC, and ARM hardware. Please contact audioapi@echonest.com for more information on direct licensing.

The Echo Nest Analyze API powers the automatic beat matching technology “Capsule.” As we know the beat of a track at any moment, we can seamlessly transition between two different pieces of music in real time. You can try this technology yourself on This is my jam at http://www.thisismyjam.com/

Go to the site. Drag instruments, switches, and transporter pipes from the conveyor belt to the checkerboard to make music. Rotate the pieces. Choose a melody. Change pitch, tempo and volume to fine-tune the composition.

Original concept and production by LeCielEstBleu on an initiative of the Cité de la Musique. FluxTunes, the new version of Pâte à Son, all grown-up, will be available soon.

Herbier, by LeCielEstBleu, is an Interactive Kaleidoscope you can play with your microphone. You’ll find it here.

You need Shockwave for both.

Using the RiffWorks desktop recording application, up to four musicians can connect and collaborate on a song simultaneously. As a layer records, it instantly streams to other players’ running RiffWorks. As the Riff loops, other players can add more. All contributions are saved on RiffWorld.com and can be opened later for further collaboration.

As Mike at Garagespin says: It’s “kind of an interesting spin on the space touched on by music collaboration & social networking sites Kompoz, Light Speed Audio, eJamming Audio, SpliceMusic, and a bunch of others. They’re all pretty different — some focusing on loop-generated music, some focusing on pure songwriting ideas, and others focusing on live interaction. ” (Mike hadn’t tried it out yet and neither have I; still you might want to have a look.)

Riffworld recording software includes automatic track creation, loop recording, guitar-oriented effects, InstantDrummer, professionally recorded drum tracks, online music collaboration, and instant podcasting so you can broadcast any song created in RiffWorks – whether it’s a solo effort or collaboration – for the RiffWorld community to hear. You can listen to songs, get feedback about them, talk about what your fellow musicians are creating, and find other musicians to jam with.

Thanks to MikeB.

The musician Beck said in a recent interview that it would be cool if people could take his songs and “play them like a videogame.” Jason Van Anden’s newest project, BubbleBeats.com makes his dream a reality, and then some. Based on technology he originally invented to enable robots to interact improvisationally, anyone can visit and combine colorful bubbles filled with music (or other sounds) to create new living compositions. Jason and musician Nat Hawks will be presenting the beta version of BubbleBeats to the early adopters at Dorkbot NYC. Visit dorkbot.org for more info.

The goal of the Handbook is to be a signpost, a source of practical information and content that bridges the gap between new users and the platforms and resources that are available, but not always very accessible. The Handbook will be slowly filled with articles written by invited artists and specialists, talking about their tools and ways of working. Some articles are introductions to tools, others are descriptions of methodologies, concepts and technologies.

When discussing software, the focus of this Handbook is on Free / Libre Open Source Software. The Handbook aims to give artists information about the available tools but also about the practicalities related to Free Software and Open Content, such as collaborative development and licenses. All this to facilitate exchange between artists, to take away some of the fears when it comes to open content licenses, sharing code, and to give a perspective on various ways of working and collaborating.

The digital artist handbook is brought to you by folly and has developed out of ongoing consultation with artists working with technology, which has shown a need for removing the barriers for artists to use digital tools. The project is supported by Arts Council England.

From August 2007 until January 2008, the editors of the Handbook were Marloes de Valk and Aymeric Mansoux of GOTO10.

xxxxx-workshops: [in]tolerance presents a series of constructivist workshops specially programmed for the ClubTransmediale 2008 festival, emphasising making and connection within the field of the existent. Workshops are led by international, field-expert practitioners, extending over realms of environmental code, noise, signal transmission, reception, and electromysticism. The workshops will utilise household materials and chemistry, readily-available electronics components, free software and the GNU toolbase.

Over the course of five days, participants will have the opportunity to construct a set of various electronic audiovisual artifacts (being either code or hardware) with which a final presentation/performance will be made. In learning how to create complex sound and image generators from the most basic elements, the participants will explore liminal electronic experiences and intriguing phenomena where carefully-engineered borders and parameters are twisted and transgressed, producing unexpected results in performance.

Workshops:

29.1. NOISE_PRODUCE by Martin Howse (UK) & Martin Kunetz (DE)
30.1. ONE BIT MUSIC by Frederik Olofsson (SE)
31.1. DIGITAL THEREMIN WORKSHOP by Andrei Smirnov (RU) & Derek Holzer (US/NL)
01.2. CHAOS IN NODES AND NETWORKS by Jessica Rylan (US)
02.2. BASTARD NATURES by Alejandra Nuñes Perez (CL)

The series takes inspiration from and continues the development of the (semi)weekly xxxxx workshops held at the Pickled Feet space in Berlin over the last year. It is supported by Arduino.

Theme: “…in the good old days of Shannon’s mathematical theory of information, the maximum of information coincided strangely with maximal unpredictability or noise…” [Friedrich Kittler: There is no software]

Engineers and scientists are concerned with prediction and thus predictability. Inside black-boxed apparatus the faint markings of tolerance, deviations from a predictable scenario towards the encryption of noise, can well be observed by the wily artist. Technology is thus exposed as a material expressing a certain chaos, pure noise of all voices. In return, materiality and an artistic concern with the matter of technology allows for the entry of the unpredictable, environmental noise within an otherwise closed circuit or economy.

Registration: xxxxx-workshops is open to anyone, from novice to experienced electronic artist. The workshops will be held in English. You can register for single workshops or for the whole series. In addition to the actual daily workshops, a free open work-area gives everyone opportunity to pursue projects begun in one of the workshops over the course of five
days. The registration fee for a single workshop is 10.- EUR, the fee for the series of all five workshops is 30.- EUR.

For descriptions of the workshops and workshop leaders go here. You can register till January 14, 2008, by sending an email to: xxxxx [at] clubtransmediale.de. Please don’t forget to indicate which of the workshops you wish to attend.

xxxxx-workshops: [in]tolerance is curated by Martin Howse and Derek Holzer, and produced by Jan Rolf and Anke Eckhardt for Club Transmediale.

View the Table of Contents and abstracts for LMJ 17

CALL FOR PAPERS: LMJ 18: Why Live? Performance in the Age of Digital Reproduction (2008)