MOBILE MUSIC TECHNOLOGY :: FOURTH INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP :: AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS, 6-8 MAY 2007 :: Registration deadline: 16th April 2007

Combining music and mobile technology promises exciting future developments in a rapidly emerging field. Devices such as mobile phones, Walkmans and iPods have already brought music to the ever-changing social and geographic locations of their users and reshaped their experience of the urban landscape. With new properties such as ad hoc networking, Internet connection, and context-awareness, mobile music technology offers countless new artistic, commercial and socio-cultural opportunities for music creation, listening and sharing. How can we push forward the already successful combination of music and mobile technology? What new forms of interaction with music lie ahead, as locative media and music use merge into new forms of everyday experiences? Continue reading

spinCycle by Spencer Kiser is a turntable that allows you to arrange and play colors visually and musically. spinCycle is fitted with a camera that takes the place of tonearm on a normal turntable. Rather than a needle playing grooves in a record, spinCycle creates sounds based on colors that the camera sees. The DJ places brightly colored plexiglass circles on the spinning platter, creating beautiful color patterns that are then translated into sounds. The DJ can rearrange the discs at any time, thereby creating a new soundtrack on the fly.

spinCycle also captures the colors the camera sees and can either project them on a wall or display them on a computer monitor. This hypnotic display changes as the music changes, providing a fun synchronized multimedia experience.

Max/MSP/Jitter is used to do the color-tracking and sound reproduction. Future versions will use a color sensor rather than a web camera, and sound will be emitted from the built-in speaker using tones generated by a microcontroller. For more information, download the NIME paper. With thanks to Francesca Tomassini, Neural.

Turbulence Commission: DISCO-NNECT: An Experimental Video Podcast by Abe Linkoln, with guest remixers Jimpunk and Subculture [Needs Quicktime plugin] :: “DISCO-NNECT” is an experimental video podcast that will broadcast weekly from March 20 to September 23.

“DISCO-NNECT” is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from the National Endowment of the Arts.

BIOGRAPHIES: Abe Linkoln (2001): Born on the Internet. Lives and works on the Internet. screenfull.net universalacid.net :: Jimpunk (bio) :: Subculture is artist Antonio Mendoza. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, two children and five working computers. He is younger than Mouchette, sexier than Olia Lialina and more hermetic than jodi.org.

Our environment is filled with noise. The border between private and public has vanished. We are exposed to the situation and not aware of it. Our intuitive reaction is either to close all windows (of your room/ of your mind) or to cover it by loud music. What is missing in our environment is the sensibility.
Our strategy with the Acoustic Survival Kit is to work with subtle sounds emitted from special clothes. A person wearing the cloth interweaves with the sounds of the environment. With the filigree sound tentacles the individual fuses with other signals and information. In this way the individual acts neither passive (closing the windows) nor dominant (play loud music) but active.”

Rock *N* Scroll: Performance with audience participation by media artist Annina Rust.

Oldenburg: On Friday, 30 March 2007 Annina Rust is going to turn laptops into musical instruments using her software Rock N Scroll at two places in the city centre of Oldenburg, to rhythmically move and make music with laptop-users. Everyone is invited to participate. Just use your mouse as rattle, your keyboard as drum kit, and your mobile as microphone and make music! the artist asks the inner city public. The first performance is taking place at 2 p.m at the Cafi Loft, Baumgartenstra_e 2. Other performances are planned at 4 p.m at other sites in the city centre. This event is part of the program accompanying the exhibition Sound//Bytes_electrical and digital sound scapes, which is shown at the Edith-Russ-Site for Media Art until 15 April 2007. Continue reading

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmiWTKZzBLY[/youtube]

In his 1995 film Telephones, artist Christian Marclay spliced together snippets of actors from Hollywood films answering phones. Apple contacted Marclay, he says, to get permission to use the concept for a new iPhone ad (above) debuted during the Oscars. Continue reading

Non-Event and OpenSound present CHARLES CURTIS playing Eliane Radigue’s Naldjorlak (2005) with Nate Wooley :: Third Life Studio, 33 Union Square, Somerville, MA :: April 6, 2007, 8pm, $10 :: A podcast featuring music by each of the artists will be available shortly at: www.rarefrequency.com/nonevent/.

About the Musicians: CHARLES CURTIS studied at Juilliard under Harvey Shapiro and Leonard Rose. Since the early eighties he has pursued a dual path, working in the worlds of experimental rock and sound art while continuing as a highly respected performer of the traditional cello repertoire. In 1983 he was a founding member of the ground-breaking poetry-rock group King Missile, and he appeared in the downtown New York rock scene with groups such as You Suck, Dogbowl, Borbetomagus and Bongwater, on record and in live shows. Continue reading

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28 :: DARMSTADT “CLASSICS OF THE AVANT-GARDE” PRESENTS AN EVENING WITH RADIO WONDERLAND AND LUKE DUBOIS :: 8 pm at GALAPAGOS ART SPACE, 70 N6th St, Brooklyn, NY :: FREE

Armed with soft- and hard-wares of their own invention, electronic composers Joshua Fried (aka Radio Wonderland) and Luke Dubois recycle the detritus of our mass-market culture into wild expressions of new media music. Armed with an 1980s-era boom box and an array of bizarro MIDI controllers (fashioned out of a steering wheel and old shoes), the antenna of Radio Wonderland receives messages from FM radio, transforms them in real time and rebroadcasts into rhythm-heavy improvisations. Feet have been known to dance.

Luke DuBois uses original software to deconstruct the greatest hits of modern culture—Oscar-winning films and Billboard Number One hits—into mind bending a/v abstractions. Nick Hallett and Zach Layton fill in the blanks with music fit for academic curricula by Terry Riley, Boris Blacher, Luciano Berio, Laurie Anderson, Meredith Monk, Olivier Messiaen, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Yoko Ono, and Arthur Russell.

The Ravezooka –created by Benedetta Piantella Simeonidis and Lesley Flanigan — is a musical weapon that shoots a wide range of powerful “hardcore” sounds based on your target’s distance from the instrument.

A playful visual synthesis of a guitar and a bazooka, the Ravezooka is simultaneously a stylish musical weapon of audio destruction and fun with its solid canon shaped form, comfortable wearabilty, and fan.

The sound resembles an analog synthesizer manipulating sine wave frequencies with the aggressiveness of a machine gun. User controls include the range of frequencies (based on distance of target), distortion effects (based on handle slider position), volume control (potentiometer dial), and on/off (handle trigger switch).

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Upgrade! Johannesburg is proud to present: The Art of Sound – James Webb presents his major gallery installations and radio projects :: March 16, 15:00 – 17:00 :: Convent Seminar Room, University of the Witswatersrand, Johannesburg :: All Welcome!

James Webb is a leading South African sound artist with a growing international reputation. He will discuss the challenges of his large-scale sound installations including Prayer (2002); The Black Passage (2006) and Autohagiography (2007); his collaborative radio projects including A Compendium of Imaginary Wavelengths (2004) and works in progress such as Beau Diable (2007).

From the profile of James Webb by Carinne Zaayman on www.artthrob.co.za: “James Webb is a pioneer of sound art in South Africa. But his production extends far beyond that of gallery installations. Webb also works as a sound designer, curator and teacher. A keen collaborator, Webb is always involved in a number of projects where his expertise on sound as well as project coordination is invaluable. Continue reading