Programming Music in Networks with Julian Rohrhuber, Alberto de Campo and the IMM/UdK networkers :: Monday, January 11, 2010, 8:00pm - 10:00pm :: N.K., Elsen str 52 2HH, Berlin/Neukoelln :: Free entrance

Republic! Just in time programming music in networks. Algorithms as letters; acoustic code art; writing programs while they run. Conversational programming in a networked ensemble.

Already in the 1960s, conversational programming languages arose in the intersection of telecommunications, programming and conputer experiments. As graphical interfaces dominate the interaction with computers today, the literary aspects of programming have taken the back seat. Algorithmic sound synthesis have given this form of improvisation an interesting objective: in acoustics we depend on experiments. Programming becomes part of algorithmic music, and not just its preparation. Continue reading

Breakthrough — an experimental 12 hour event distributed across Berlin locations, inter-network and radio space :: June 27, 2009; 12 noon - midnight.

The term breakthrough describes a sudden shift in understanding or technologies, and, finally, a clearing (Lichtung), an entry into unknown and unmapped territories. An enclosure is breached allowing access to another, totally unforeseen state or space. Communication is thus implied, a new form of exchange, perhaps between two otherwise unconnected domains, between the living and the dead, between many worlds. What does the sheer possibility of a breakthrough imply for communication between the past and the future?

Breakthrough, as event, signals a change in direction, a pointing towards new ways of actively describing and creating the world. Continue reading

Spy Numbers :: May 28 - August 30, 2009 :: Opening: May 28; 8:00 pm (with Gypsy Sound System: DJ Olga and Dr Schnaps) :: Palais de Tokyo, 13, avenue du Président Wilson, Paris. [See Yoshi Sodeoka’s Prototype #44, Net Pirate Number Station]

On the short waves of our radios, voices read out uninterrupted series of numbers. 2… 11… 58… 35… 23… Whether they are encrypted instructions intended for sleeping agents, messages exchanged between traffickers, or simple telephone settings, the “Spy Numbers Stations” have been broadcasting for several decades without their precise function becoming known. In the wake of GAKONA, the previous exhibit inspired by the work of Nikola Tesla, Spy Numbers continues the exploration of the electromagnetic spectrum and its margins in this second session of 2009. Beyond the visible and closer still to the infra-thin and the spectral, the Palais de Tokyo experiments with forms of art that elude any wistful desire for fixed interpretations. Continue reading

Suite 4 Mobile Tags — Nomadic Music for Nomadic People by Giselle Beiguelman e Mauricio Fleury @ FILE Rio 2009 :: March 9 - April 19, 2009 :: Oi Futuro, Rua Dois de Dezembro 63, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Suite for Mobile Tags is a project based on QR-Code (Quick Response Code), which proposes an exercise of random and anonymous collective musical composition. Don’t say: I cant go to Rio. Test the suite on-line.

Suite para Mobile Tags é um projeto baseado em QR-Code que propõe um exercício de composição musical coletivo, repentino e anônimo. Não diga: Não vou ao Rio…Se não puder comparecer, faça um test drive no site.

Cuckoo Radio, Caged Songs Sung (Tick Tock Tick) by Ven Voisey — created for the City of Pittsfield’s 2008/9 Artscape exhibition :: November 29, 2008 - September 2009 :: Opening: November 29; 4:00 - 6:00 pm :: Ferrin Gallery, 437 North Street, Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

A clock: twelve cages sing twelve songs for twelve hours of the day. A flock: which has temporarily gathered up high on a lamp post, as birds are wont to do, and every hour, on the hour, they sing a song. These songs, composed of recorded bird calls and simple synthesized tones, are warnings, expressions of joy, crooning love songs, mating calls, questions, frustrated cries… Simultaneously they’re mysterious offerings and homages to the wind, the air, and to the things that slip through the rungs of a cage. Continue reading

TINA B - The Prague Contemporary Art Festival presents Stefano Cagol: Un-Secret Signals :: October 9-13, 2008 :: Janovského 23, Prague 7, Czech Republic.

Mass communication and Babilonia. Fragmented communication and freedom of expression. Secrecy and disclosure. Locked and open. Black and white. Morse Code and Light. Hallucinatory flashes of light from the top of the Petrin Tower in Prague illuminate and disorient the nocturnal cityscape of this historical and fascinating place. Sound sequences play intermittently night and day, concurrently accompanying light signals that simultaneously spell out cryptic messages in Morse Code. Continue reading

Piksel08: code dreams:: December 4-7 2008 :: Bergen, Norway.

How does code dream? What are the dreams of code? Piksel08 examines the other side of code, an alternative side to a hard-coded reality of work and play. Open hardware and free software project a utopic vision, yet exist within economies of capital, the dream factory of mainstream technology. Within the chance meeting of sewing machine and umbrella on the dissecting table, hardware and software are flattened.

Piksel08: code dreams explores the dreams of this soft machine; bachelors coding for pleasure, reverse engineering paranoiac constructs of the real, automatic coding practice, soft hardware, and everyday magic.Open Call: Continue reading

Pulsecode by Fokke de Jong (NL) PulseCode was designed by Fokke de Jong (NL). It is an experimental programming language for audiosynthesis and audioprocessing. Basically, it is a modular synthesizer, with which you create ‘patches’ by writing code. It has a very straightforward syntax and is easy to learn. There are roughly forty or so (increasing all the time) built in modules. These include various kinds of delays, oscillators, filters and noisegenerators. You can easily build more complex modules with these, and then reuse them in your code.

PulseCode is still under development and more information and examples will follow. In the meantime, if you are interested, you can download an alpha version here. PulseCode currently runs on Mac OS X 10.4 and later, but should be relatively easy to port to other platforms. It is released under the GPL. If you have any questions or suggestions, you can send mail to: fokke [at] pulsecode.org.

Singing Website Wallpaper (2007) — A Web Driven Installation with Wallpaper and Sound by Ursula Endlicher — gives voice to html by re-interpreting code as a musical score and by visualizing the musical scales as printed patterns on wallpaper. While the sound component of the installation is influenced by the actual “flow” of activity on yahoo.com, msn.com and google.com, the wallpaper pattern is inspired by the “frozen” source code from each site translated into a visual set of functionality-related symbols.

Watch a video.

“If relational aesthetics and open source were always commercial, can the musical score provide a way of thinking through different relationships between creativity and code? The return to improvisation in ‘livecoding’ draws parallels with experimental practices developed by maverick musicians, programmers and educators from Sun Ra, The Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Scratch Orchestra to Seymour Papert. Simon Yuill argues that these ‘distributive practices’ are worth extending today.

In recent years the foregrounding of ‘collaboration’ in artistic practice has acquired an aura of inherent benevolence and emancipation, as though the very act of working with others in itself ensures some form of resistance or alternative to conventions of cultural production, and confers positive moral value. Continue reading