A couple of weeks ago the Oslo Mobile Orchestra (OMO) got the chance to perform with a set of HTC mobile phones. Unfortunately, I do not have any recordings of the performance we did, but I do have a recording of a small improvisation I did while setting up the 10 phones for the performance. The improvisation is based on the wonderful little Android app called Melodrone. Thanks to HTC for lending us the phones. ...
Yesterday, I performed with the Norwegian Noise Orchestra at Betong in Oslo, at a concert organised by Dans for Voksne. The orchestra is an ad-hoc group of noisy improvisers, and I immediately felt at home. The performance lasted for 12 hours, from noon to midnight, and I performed for two hours in the afternoon. For the performance I used my Soniperforma patch based on the sonifyer technique and the Jamoma module I developed a couple of years ago (jmod.sonifyer~). The technique is based on creating a motion image from the live camera input (the webcam of my laptop in this case), and use this to draw a motiongram over time, which again is converted to sound through an “inverse FFT” process. ...
Together with Victoria Johnson I have developed the piece Transformation, a piece where we are using video analysis to control sound selection and spatialisation. We have been developing the setup and piece during the last couple of years, and performed variations of the piece at MIC, the Opera house and at the music academy last year. The piece will be performed again today, Monday 28 March 2011 at 19:00 at the Norwegian Academy of Music. The concert is the final performance of Victoria’s 3 year research fellowship in the arts(PhD-equivalent).
I heard about the initiative last year at Music & Gesture 2 in Manchester, and now I see that the new online journal Music Performance Research is actually up and running. Music Performance Research is an international peer-reviewed journal that disseminates theoretical and empirical research on the performance of music. Its purpose is to disseminate research on the nature of music performance from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. The journal publishes contributions from all disciplines that are relevant to music performance, including archaeology, cultural studies, composition, computer science, education, ethnomusicology, history, medicine, music theory and analysis, musicology, philosophy, physics, psychology, neuroscience and sociology. […] ...
[]{.imagelink}Dagsavisen wrote a story about the experimental concert I played with Kjell Tore Innervik (quarter tone marimba) and Arve Henriksen (trumpet). I had brought down a bunch of equipment from my office to the Music Academy, including a couple of music balls, a Lemur, game controllers and some video cameras. It took a couple of days to get everything up and running, but it has been great fun to make everything work and explore the musical possibilities. ...
{#image349}I performed with the music troll yesterday. It has been resting in the lab for a couple of months, and was a bit “rusty” to start up. What caused the biggest headache was to get my performance patches to work on my new MacBook. Last month I found that PeRColate was released as UB, but I hadn’t tested them. First I had problems making Max finding them, which seemed to be because of the source-folder resting in the path (thanks to mzed for the tip). But when I finally got them working, they perform really sluggishly on my system (particularly metashaker~). W[henever I change the energy parameter, only a few “grains” are played every second, as opposed the continuous stream I am used to. The strange things is that they seems to be output at an even rate. I have been using these objects extensively on my previous systems, so something is definitely wrong. PeRColate is still only in UB-beta so I hope they will look into this problem for future releases.]{.MsgBodyText} ...
Yesterday, someone commented that improvisation is all about being able to play some random stuff, in realtime. My experience is really the opposite. Learning to improvise on a musical instrument is really all about learning scales, phrases, motifs, and getting experienced in putting them together in a structured way. In realtime. The same is true for improvised presentations and speeches. After holding a number of presentations on my research lately, I have been thinking about how similar the preparation process for a presentation is to a music performance. I never write down exactly what I’m supposed to play or say, but I always create a rather detailed outline of what I will be going through. I also prepare some punch lines, similar to how I would have practiced musical breaks. This leaves me with a sketch with certain key points, some more detailed sections, and plenty of space for “interpolation”. ...
I found some pictures from my performance in the Oslo Concert Hall yesterday. Here I’m squeezing the music troll. {#image290} Each of the four heads of the troll had different musical identities. {#image324} I also demonstrated the Musical Gestures Toolbox with dancer Åshild Ravndal Salthe. {#image325}
I have been busy with a number of things lately, most notably preparing for a performance during the Norwegian Research Council’s annual celebration in the Oslo Concert Hall (today, Wednesday 27.10. @ 18:00, free entrance). There I will play one piece with the “Music troll” we just finished for the Norwegian Research Days. I will also present the newest version of the Musical Gestures Toolbox, and show how it can be used to generate sounds from dance movement. Pictures and videos will be posted shortly. ...
There were lots of concerts at NIME 06, and many interesting things to comment about. Ben Neill played Mutantrumpet, a hybrid acoustical and electronic instrument which was very interesting. Circumference Cycles by Chris Strollo and Tina Blaine was very captivating. Glass plates suspended by metal wires with amplification and some effects sounded great. Mari Kimura’s two pieces (Polytopia and Tricot) were great and showed how well electronics can be used together with an acoustic instrument (violin). Interesting to see that she was recently in Tromsø to work with physicist Dr. Alfred Hanssen on subharmonics research. George Lewis presented a piece for two disklaviers, himself playing trombone and Alexander von Schlippenbach on piano. The two disklaviers were placed on either side of the stage and it was interesting to notice how this changed the focus of attention. George went on stage to start the piece, then left the disklaviers to play for themselves for a while, and after a while the two human musicians came on stage. It was interesting to notice how different it felt with human presence on stage. Sensors_Sonics_Sights: I found the Biosignal Gesture Identification by Atau Tanaka (Sony Paris) to be most interesting during this performance. He describes this as: A technique for extracting information from user arm gestures that applies pattern recognition to arm muscle biosignals (electromyogram, or EMG), and is able to recognize six basic gestures in real time. The technique analyzes unconstrained free-space movements, and is able make an identification before completion of the gesture. Two electrodes placed on the user’s forearm are used to acquire EMG data. Statistical analysis matches incoming data against a training set. The program outputs a gesture by name to a process allowing control of musical playback. I finally got to see Michel Waisvisz (Steim) play The Hands live. Next to the Meta-instrument, this is one of the few NIME instruments that has been refined and performed extensively over many years. Tomomi Adachi’s piece for voice and infrared sensor shirt was an interesting piece and a great performance. I particularly liked how he tucked away both the shirt and the sound in the end. John Richards had a rather bizarre setup, including a plastic hand in a grainer. Miya Masaoka played a piece with sensors hidden in three plants. Saburo Hirano performed with transparent sheets with various symbols on a turntable, doing some kind of tracking of the symbols for sound generation. Mark Applebaum played on the Mouseketier, a nice setup consisting of a bunch of different metal things mounted on three boards with contact microphones attached. As he writes, “Not only does it set up in minutes […], its flight case - meeting the airline specifications - was designed first.” Bent Leather Band played on various semi-acoustic leather instruments. They look great in pictures and even better in real life.