Volkmar Klien - Start Ziel Siege

(Sound and Music Computer Conference Concert Reviews)


This was a dark ambient performance. Very dense and hard. Volkmar had a controller which looked like an airplane "manche" joystick. He made very agressive shifts in pitch and timbre of the sound by moving the manche. Very interesting piece, filled with ambient sounds, some field recording, voice, etc.

Here you can hear 2 extracts of the piece presented at the conference.

His website is very informative with sounds, installations,projects, bio, dates, etc.

Laura Maes and Kristof Lawers - Waiters at a gallop

(Sound and Music Computer Conference Concert Reviews)



I will speak more about Laura Maes because I got to know a little bit of her, since we studied together at the Summerschool. Very smart girl. Here's a little bio from her (site). Born in Ghent, Belgium. Currently living in Ostend, at the seaside. Studied classical guitar at the Royal Conservatory in Ghent. Plays besides guitar, cello, hammond organ, electronics, analogue synths & theremin.

This was one of the only pieces that had women involved. It was mostly a male dominant concert. This piece was for guitar, computer and field recording. At the beggining she did a guitar strumming with some slides as Kristoff in the computer started processing them. As it went by, some frequencies from the strumming seem to be processed into a granular percussive sound, creating a very cozy ambient. At the end, some field recordings came on the background, revealing the theme of the title of the piece.

There's no recording of the presentation, but here is an extract of a video of Laura's performance at the UFO gallery in Detroit, USA.



Laura Maes and Kristoff Lauwers discography.

John Bischoff_Audio Combine

(Sound and Music Computer Conference Concert Reviews)

This piece was one of my favorites. Mr. Bischoff's sounds and combinations were very mature and nourishing. Although you can listen the heavy synthesis on Max/Msp, everything sounds very light and "small". The performance consists on a series of small objects set on a table. All of then bent or prepared with microphones and wires to be processed by the computer. He starts touching and playing with this objects in a very sutil manner. Small movements of hand and fingers begin to generate continuos build up of textures on the background. Granular growth, but still very organic.

Listen to the piece AUDIO COMBINE.

Mr. Bischoff is very important for the experimental music scene since he's been active in performing, researching and teaching for over 30 years now. Here are some pictures and info on his older works.


The League of Automatic Composers in performance Fort Mason, San Francisco in 1980
L > R: Tim Perkis, Jim Horton, John Bischoff
Photo: Peter Abramowitsch

Bio (from his website)

JOHN BISCHOFF (b. 1949, San Francisco) is an early
pioneer of live computer music. He is known for his solo constructions in real-time synthesis as well as his ground-breaking work in computer network bands. Bischoff's music is built from intrinsic features of the electronic medium: high definition noise components, tonal edges, imperfections, transitions, digital shading, and non-linear motion. Through empirical play and investigation he builds pieces that can be described as sonic sculptures, shaped in real-time. He has been active in the experimental music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 25 year as a composer, performer, teacher, and grassroots activist.

The Freesounders Laptop Band

(Sound and Music Computer Conference Concert Reviews)

This project was to me a smart sarcasm and yet, a very cool way to think of "live". In the middle of so many academic and virtuous concerts, there was still some space for those who are thinking some simple philosophy and usage of internet tools. Let's understand the name of the project by it's parts:
"the freesounders" relates to The Freesound Project, which is a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sound samples uploaded by users.
By using some features of the Freesound Project such as search results, preview and loop sound, the performer is capable of playing the website's search results as if it was a sampling-loop program. So "lap top band" refers to the performer choosing the TAGS in freesounds.org that will define the "concepts" and sound pool he will use in his composition. This different way to exploit the website can be thought of as a collaborative work in which the performer decides the structure and the Freesound community provides the content. Copyright? No problems with that. Being the sound samples free to download and available under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License, the performer must state every author of every file used in the performance: this is accomplished as long as the computer screen is videoprojected at the back of the performer and every sound preview already includes the name of the author.



The project explanation was taken from HumanPaperRecycle video-website

Nicolas Collins - Salvage

(Sound and Music Computer Conference Concert Reviews)





Nicolas Collins wrote the book Handmade Electronic Music: The art of Hardware Hacking, which you can read online here. The performance he presented was Salvage (Guiyu Blues) For 7 performers trying to reanimate dead circuitry. This circuit bending performance was a little different from the usual statics and squarewaves noise. There was something jokish and funny about the seven performers on stage stumbling their hands on each other trying to reach or find an enclosure for the circuit that sounded interesting using the whole 14 hands!
Lots of times this performances are monophonic and it was interesting to see the dead circuitry becoming poly. This is the picture of the performance in SMC2009.



You can also see the video here, but it's of his students performing in Tokyo, in 2008. From Nicholas' site, an explanation of how it works:

Seven players attempt to re-animate deceased and discarded electronic circuitry (cell phones, computer motherboards, fax machines, etc), using test probes to make connections between a simple homemade circuit and the electronic corpse; feedback between my circuit and the components on the dead board produce complex patterns of oscillation, that change with the slightest movement of the probes. The seventh performer "conducts" by periodically signaling the others to try to freeze the current sound texture by holding their hands as still as possible.






All pictures taken from Nicolas Collin's official site.

Andante

Well, at the Projects session I just posted the project developed in Portugal. There you can check the specifications of the project. Andante

I would like to thank everyone involved, it was definitly amazing to spend some time with all you spanish, danish, belgian, american, german, austrian geeks!

Here is a simple video-photo of one of the walks, since we didnt have time to make a video that showed the images of the routes we followed.

Untitled from Vanessa De Michelis on Vimeo.

Sound and Music Computing Conference + Summerschool

I am preparing to go to the sixth edition of Sound and Music Computer Conference 2009. This year it will be held in Porto, Portugal. One of my recent projects has been selected to the Summer School, which is a one week sound research residency held by the Sonic Interaction Design group. They are the organization behind the conference, which is held each year in a different country in Europe. Their main research is on sonification, interactive art ,music and sound cognition.
Full conference programme click here
Full concert and music programme click here
(casa da musica pic by pioforsky)