Monolake Atlantic Wave Balloons

Monolake plays Istanbul with The Field soon enough, and a quick visit to his page shows plenty of busy projects extending his music ( & Ableton Live involvements etc ). First up, he’s been writing “small max + jitter patches.. to create interesting video for my monolake concerts. The complexity is low, but all is generated in real time and constantly morphing, which is a very different asthetic than the usual live mixing of pre prepared video footage. but faster laptops will allow more complexity and higher resolution in the future.”
monolake

Screenshots look simple indeed, but undoubtedly match well the vast number of sonic parameters he relentlessly tweaks live. The Atlantic Waves project also features a heavy visual component, being a networked sequencing project that allows online remote jamming, and an intricate, stylised interface which allows audiences to see ( guess at?) the processes being played with. Most interesting though, is Monolake’s recent Atom performances – where balloons are arranged in a grid and connected to tubes that allow them to be filled with certain amounts of helium. The balloons also have LED lights inside, which can vary the brightness of the balloon. The end result is a computer controlled three dimensional display that can shuffle between arrangements in time with the soundscapes being triggered. The gallery of photos look great.
monolakeballoons

UPDATE:
Greg Smith points out in the comments, this related Monolake interview :

“VT: ‘How does visual representation of sound (i.e. waveform editors) changes our perception of it?’
RH: Visual representation of sound is evil. A waveform editor is an enormous help when editing sound but at the same time it has the potential to keep the composer effectively from listening. The visualization by nature stresses the abstract formal quality of a work but makes no statement about its content. The result is obvious, a lot of music these days works correctly according to a formal scheme but lacks beauty within. It takes quite some courage to work against the visual scheme, because oddly structured parts look so wrong. The timeline always tells us how long a piece is in bars or seconds but it knows nothing about our perception of time. We might think a part is too long because it looks long on screen but in fact it is interesting enough to be much longer and we would not shorten it if we could not see it but just listened. I often turn off the screen or close my eyes when listening to my edits because the visual representation is a false friend.”

by Sean Healy, October 25, 2007 2 Comments

Music For Hatters – Mad-EP

Point a big X-Ray machine at all the connected rabbit holes of Matthew Peters, and you’ll find the following scampering skeletons : Mad/EQ ( glitch/hiphop with MC ), the Manhattan Gimp Project ( plays cello ), the Psychasthenia Society ( live audiovisual theatre & storytelling trio ), and the stuttery honey of Mad-EP. There are trapeze artists, breakdancers and movie soundtracks lurking in there somewhere too, but this’ll have to do for this week.

What kind of processes do you enjoy for creating music (live or studio) with your current tools/instruments?
madepCurrent composition studio is pretty basic – an old G4 tower, still running OS9. No outboard gear, just a couple MIDI controllers for VSTi’s or to perform live (using an iBook & Ableton Live in OSX). Am constantly recording with my microphone and minidisk – grabbing as many sounds as I can to chop up and blend with others to create my own. Also like to create my own physical instruments – but so far, most’ve been for sound sources rather for performing in real-time (that’s the next step!)

Sometimes I have melodic or chordal ideas that I want to turn into a piece, but usually the inspiration comes from creating & sculpting the sounds. Once I have the right palette of sounds, the music just plays itself out in my head and it is a race for my hands to keep up, arranging it all in a sequencer. Once I have a rough sketch, I just keep refining and reworking till it matches the original idea in my head.

How are software and hardware transforming the ways traditional instruments are being played?
Well they’re certainly transforming the way music is composed for those instruments. With the current ease of micro-editing, one almost doesn’t need to have much more than a couple 1-note samples of an instrument. By re-pitching and arranging, phrases can be assembled that had never been played at all. I can play piano pretty well, but I haven’t owned a piano in years, so I found some single note samples from a few different models of grand pianos, re-pitched them into as many different notes as I needed, and created my own chord progressions and melody lines. This technique also allows me to create melodies from instruments I don’t play. It doesn’t however, create phrases natural to a true player of an instrument. There can be both pro’s & con’s to that, but it does offer a new level of freedom to the composer without being confined to the limitations of an instrument (or instrumentalist).

The Psychasthenia Society blended theatrical productions of storytelling, video, and live music – what was interesting / challenging for you within this?
I was first interested because Jon Brunelle was ‘sampling’ movies to help tell his story the same way that I sample musical notes to help create my music. Dan Vatsky’s live video work and my sound helped create a new way of telling multimedia stories – but really, it wouldn’t be what it was without Jon’s stories. At the final night of our month-long residency at the Collective:Unconscious theatre, after at least a hundred hours of rehearsals and several performances, I was still laughing at all the jokes because it’s just so funny. He is the DJ Shadow of video-sampling – always getting the very best one that is so perfect, you have to remind yourself it wasn’t originally created for his purpose.

It was challenging because in addition to technical issues, the three of us were constantly rotating between primary & secondary roles, so it was a delicate choreography of sight and sound. I told Jon and Dan it reminded me very much of playing in a string quartet – and considered our performances to be a new form of chamber music.

How well did it operate live (and who steered)?
I think it worked quite well – especially because the 3 of us rehearsed quite thoroughly. Before our month-long residency at the Collective:Unconscious theatre, we rehearsed a few times per week for several months in preparation. It paid off though – we played to capacity crowds and it was really well received. Steering? Jon – his creation, he writes all the stories, and guides the performances with his narrations. However, there are always a few ‘audio/video jam sessions’ between Dan & I… and those are very collaborative. He and I bring our own ideas & preparations to the jam, but we also react to and bounce off each other very much.

What would you do differently in another AV project in the future?
I would much rather try to find a way for the three of us to continue collaborating across the new geographic distance rather than try to recreate it with different people. We are talking to some festivals and hoping to get involved on that circuit – and I think there is a future online for what we do, as well as in live settings.

What feels different when producing soundtracks to accompany video?
The main difference for me, is that when I write music to be listened to by itself, I still write it with the hopes that it will create images & feelings for the listener to lose themselves in – and with the addition of actual video, the weight isn’t purely on the music itself to create that experience. Subtleties can be even more delicate, and act as a support to the video (or vice versa). As long as the ideas aren’t completely contrary, a lot of give and take can be had between the video and the music.

Upcoming releases / events of interest for you?
My next full length CD is coming out in Dec on Ad Noiseam tentatively called “Bass.hed”. Also in December, am playing on an Ad Noiseam label showcase in Rotterdam, which will be coupled by a 12” compilation on NGM records. In 2008, I have a 12” with the Shadow Huntaz also coming out on Ad Noiseam, plus I’ve been working on a new CD for Hymen, a full length Manhattan Gimp Project album and a number of other projects.

by Sean Healy, October 19, 2007 0 comments

Condoms, Microphones and The Death of Death

Condoms on microphones, the Yangtze river dolphin, Douglas Adams, audiobooks & wondering what archaeologists in the future will think of this era.

Poker Machines in the Future
Measuring 5.6 on the richter scale, 1989 in Newcastle introduced many people to the idea that an earthquake was even possible on the East Coast of Australia. It was certainly news to my brain, which had instantly attributed the sudden shifting of the houses walls, to the neighbours next door, who who had been reversing a caravan into their driveway a short while ago. Rushing outside of that previously stable house, enabled the sight of everyone else on the street rushing outside of their previously stable houses. And the radio revealed this to be a Newcastle wide phenomenon, an actual earthquake, with all the fear and panic it brings. A few suburbs away, The Newcastle Workers club, a den of bad carpets, bad music and poker machines, was apparently the worst hit building, with many feared dead. In the end, the earthquake claimed 13 lives, and over 50,000 damaged buildings. Interestingly a US academic claimed in early 2007 that the Newcastle earthquake was probably set off by stress changes in the earth’s crust, after two centuries of coal mining. And the poker machines were not long without a home.

Douglas Adams @ The Newcastle Worker’s Club 1999
douglasadams
(the above photo is from one of Douglas’s many speaking engagements elsewhere )

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is the main way people have encountered the absurd and deadly sharp wit of Douglas Adams. Like most absurd science fiction, his work also serves to interrogate the present, gently reminding us just how strange our behaviours and societal habits actually are. In conversation with Robyn Williams ( ABC’s champion science reporter ), and charming all at the revamped Workers Club, it became clear that the science fiction of Adams was built upon mountains of scientific reading, an incredibly broad knowledge of the sciences, and a relentlessly curious brain. And something about being a very, very funny man. When he died in 2001, Douglas Adams left behind a rich collection of fiction, and only one work of non-fiction, a meditation on death, or rather the ‘death of death’, a book exploring the threatened extinctions of many species.

Last Chance to See
last chancePublished in 1990, and co-authored by Mark Carwardine, this is a book that details the exploits of Douglas and Mark ( a zoologist ), as they travel the globe attempting to witness actual living examples – in the wild – of some of the world’s most prominent endangered species. Along the way, we learn about what makes each of those species unique, filtered by Adam’s eye for the absurd, and discover the factors contributing to the disappearance of each species. A kind of comedic thriller whodunnit – where humans are always the bad guys. The book is a great jolting reminder of the biodiversity that exists beyond our urban centres, and the escalating threats our footprints are placing on species everywhere. Threatened species I remembered most from the book was the Yangtze river dolphin, because of the BBC audio recorder’s technique for trying to record that dolphin – placing a condom over a microphone, thereby allowing the recording of underwater sounds. As it turns out, there’s an audiobook torrent for this floating around online, read by Douglas himself, the storytelling humour amplified even more by his rich, comedic delivery. And supposedly, a follow-up TV series is due in 2008. This will unfortunately feature no new footage of the Yangtze river dolphin, as in August this year, this species was declared to be extinct.

Distinctly Extinct
And so, the Yangtze river dolphin can die no more, a fate that happens to many species over time. What disturbs in 2007 thought, is the rate at which species are being wiped out, forever. Archaeologists and biological historians point to five eras of mass extinctions during the earth’s history, and many scientists argue that the current rate of extinctions sees us on the cusp of a sixth era of mass extinction. Time will tell.

by Sean Healy, October 12, 2007 1 Comment

Honey For Eyeballs

Visual curators and connoisseurs abound on ze web, scraping together ‘news services’ for the wow brain. A few faves of late below.

Dark Roasted Blend(.com)
Presumably takes a special breed of hyper-caffeinated noodler to maintain this kinda relentless flow of delicious. On a given day, spectacular cloud formations, bizarre roadsign collections, an amphibious cars photo series, and it was worth subscribing for one picture alone this week – a photo of someone dressed up as a robot holding a cup for spare change and a sign that reads “Replaced by CGI, please help”.
darkroast

Generator.x: Generative strategies in art & design
Evolutionary architecture, interface exploration, interactive design, snapshots and provocations related to generative art. Thumbs up.
generatorx

Suzanne G
Squirrels, squids, and not for the squeamish. Victorian era delicacies slipped into a macabre sci-fi blender. A browse of the archives will reveal cuteness and blood in equal measure, an animal kingdom perverted, mechanical oddities, regular snapshots of gorgeous contemporary art, and ultimately, the very quirky yet refined tastes of 1 x Suzanne G.
suzanneg

Ektopia
Hiphop and grafitti flavoured filter for all things visual. This might be a plastic toy design, an album cover, a Japanese robot, street art in South America, or whatever else tickles at the time.
ektopia

notcot.org
Bit heavy on the fashion/gadget stakes, but the sheer volume of links inevitably unveils a daily wonder.
notcot

Diburtimentos
Ongoing sketches uploaded for others to goggle at – whimisical, perverse, improbable.
dib

VADE
New York based VJ who regularly posts video snippets of his max patch experiments, and recently linked to an eyebeam video interview where he discusses his process.
vade

The Perry Bible Fellowship
Nicholas Gurewitch brings the absurd pen and ink noise webside with weekly comics including such hits as ‘Boy Scout Condom badge, The Dreamcatcher 3000, & trampoline hero.
perrybible

Activate Comics Collective
Rad collection of weekly updated comics by a rad crew, including Dan Goldman of ‘Kelly’ and ‘Shooting War’ fame. We’re talking a dozen or so fine comics updated everyweek in the one convenient location. Bellisimo!
activate

ffffound
Discovered this recently via kottke, and it’s a pretty addictive eyeball fix, each click taking to another array of related imagery. Some social-web functions as well, can get lost in here. Wonder if sites like this will be made redundant to some extent when digg.com finally launches it’s image ranking functions.
ffffound

Would Subscribe In a Heartbeat
To : a sketchbook by runwrake.com.
To : an extension of the stupendous Leviathan comic by Peter Blegvad.
To: a blog of dream cartoons by Aleksandar Zograf, a Serbian cartoonist with a unique capacity to capture and transmit his vivid dreamlife.
And you have to like someone who has work in an exhibition titled POOR IS A COUNTRY THAT NEEDS SUPERHEROES TO SAVE IT.

( Prefer real life superheroes? Welcome some of these people into your life. )

Dairy Shout Outs :
cheese

Or, last night a slab of cheese saved my life, buon giorno : ‘mozzerella de bufala‘.

by Sean Healy, October 8, 2007 0 comments

Libran Tech Medley

Aligning the movement of stars with the state of human affairs on the ground may not be everyone’s cup of tea ( including mine ), but the Sep23 – Oct 23 calendar phase that marks folk as Libran around the world, is as good a marker of time as any for a tech round-up.

Up And Coming:
Australia’s annual tech-creative implosion happens from Thu 27 Sep – Mon Oct 1, all capitals and satellite towns suffering brain-drain as peeps converge in Newcastle for the Electrofringe.net / thisisnotart.org etc. Highlights include Canada’s white-noise-delicious aka the orchestral sweeper of tones known as 1 x Tim Hecker, a deserved champion of late night playlists the world over. Tim also plays ethereal sounds with a more bangin’ techno orientation under the Jetone moniker, but the show should be fantastic to check out live no matter what way it swings. The typically eclectic collection of DIY workshops, panels, performances, screenings etc is again a monster, gathering the cream of electronic artists from across the continent, and far too much to summarise in print, especially when it’s all clickable at the freshly updated : Electrofringe.net.

Happening :
At the time of writing, Italy is hosting the Live Performer’s Meeting, where 250+ live video performers gather in one place for a Roman orgy of pixels Sep 20-23. Mentioned it before, but worth reiterating that to encourage exploration of the huge list of VJ artist websites included. My hosts in Istanbul, Artificial Eyes, have been busy installing their moving mirror projectors since arriving, (they’ll be appearing on stage 4 times all up ; ), this fresh on the tail of having successfully managing to control their 3L app with an iphone using virtual network computing. (see video)

Still Cooking Til Mid Oct:
Melbourne’s Digital Fringe, the electronic sideshow alley accompanying the Melbourne Fringe Festival, happens again from 26 Sep – 14 Oct ( see http://digitalfringe.com.au for more info and a smorgasbord of festival related webstreams ).

A Disaster Movie Named Capitalism
Naomi Klein author of the well received ‘No Logo’ book, has recently released ‘The Shock Doctrine’, a book exploring what she calls ‘disaster capitalism’ – the use of public disorientation following massive collective shocks ( wars, terrorists attacks, natural disasters ) to achieve control by imposing ‘economic shock therapy’. Director of the ‘Children of Men’ Alfonos Cuaron was so impressed by the book he decided to make a short
film about it, which is currently happy ping-ponging it’s way around the internet to to some kind of viral marketing nirvana.

And South American Style Shock Therapy?
Mr.Synesthete noticed an Alejandro Jodorowsky film on my hard-drive and mentioned he’d attended a lecture by the infamous /notorious / South American film director ( now aged 77 ). Unsurprisingly, the lecture was lucid, provocative and hilarious. As is this Fortean Times interview:
“Shooting Santa Sangre we found a site where they were demolishing a house and creating a huge dust cloud. It was terrible, dirty, dirty! But I thought, ‘Go inside the cloud.’ And we went inside the cloud, we crossed the cloud, and there was the church. It was exactly what I needed, it was a church built specially for prostitutes. They all sat nearby and charged three dollars for their sevices. One dollar for the woman, one dollar for the pimp, and one dollar for the priest! Incredible, no?!! One dollar for the priest for every fuck!

Religious Drums?
Also pushing buttons for people around the world at the moment is Ramadan, one month of the year where Muslims fast during daylight and other practices. In muslim-dense cities such as Istanbul, this also means a nightly parade of raucous drummers and chanters at 3 or 4am, waking people for their pre-light prayers and meal-time.

Swiss Army Knife-Hand-Chop-Quick-Timey
Audio and video codecs can be a pain to maintain, but a combination of the VLC player and Perian ( a free, open source QuickTime component that adds native support for many popular video formats ) takes some of the headache away. And you wants some FLAC (a lossless audio codec ) with that?

“oh, the juice is in the heritage: the s3kr!t is that FLAC is a Xiphophorus codec, hence:
http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/ ” – Dan McKinlay, possumpalace.org

FON-erific
Beameing this in via ‘Fon‘, ‘the largest WiFi community in the world’. What it is, what it is – a community friendly modem router that allows sharing your wifi connection, and once registered as sharing, allows access to other wifi spots around the globe as you travel. Cool idea, but impressively enough, it actually seems to work. How much must 3letter URLs be worth now? This one is taken anyway.

by Sean Healy, September 21, 2007 0 comments