The pre-premiere of Performance for the touch sense (”Pièce touchée No 2″) :: Saturday, August 28, 2010 from 17.00 :: at the Tanzfabrik Berlin, Möckernstr. 68, 10965 Berlin :: The number of available places is limited. Performances on appointment only at T +49.30.786 83 43 or: ticket@tanzfabrik-berlin.de :: Further performances will take place on September 18, 19 and 20, 2010 at the Uferstudios of the Tanzfabrik (Uferstr. 23, 13357 Berlin) during the “Perfect Wedding” festival ::

“Pièce touchée No 2” is a performance centered on the touch sense. Starting with purely haptic choreography, it explores how sounds, music, language and narrative can be translated into the medium of touch. The piece is performed directly on the body of the visitor. Continue reading

IRZU (Institute for Sonic Arts Research) (Paris part3) :: with Miha Ciglar (Sound) and Nika Autor - (Video) :: Sunday, January 24, 2010, 6:30pm - 11:00pm :: at La Generale nord-est, 14 avenue Parmentier, Paris, France

IRZU is presenting the last event within the “Paris” component of the project “IRZU on Tour”, which is going to continue on 5 continents throughout 2010. “IRZU on Tour” features a series of artistic productions and research projects of the IRZU institute. On Sunday the piece “Sonic beams / Acoustic shadows” will be premiered at the venue “La Generale” in Paris, France. Continue reading

Miha Ciglar, from IRZU (Institute for Sonic Arts Research in Slovenia) will give a talk on: Artistic productions and research projects @ IRZU :: January 20, 2010 from 12:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. :: IRCAM - Centre Pompidou 1, place Igor-Stravinsky, Paris, France ::

The Institute for Sonic Arts Research (IRZU) is a non-governmental organisation. It is based on an interdisciplinary concept and is conducting artistic productions in the field of electro-acoustic music / sonic arts, as well as audio technology research and educational activities. The research activities include digital signal processing with the focus on Music Information Retrieval, as well as the development of new interfaces for musical expression. Continue reading

Kaffe Matthews :: July 15, 2009; 8:00 pm :: Cafe Oto, 18 - 22 Ashwin Street, London.

Kaffe Matthews was born in Essex, England, and lives and works in London. Since 1996 she has been making new electro-acoustic music through a system of self designed software matrices through which she pulls and pushes different sounds live. The variety of sounds, things and places she has worked with have ranged from self played violin and theremin, sounds of spaces, kite strings on an uninhabited Scottish Island, flight data from NASA scientists, Scottish and Irish pipers, melting ice in Quebec, Continue reading

The HAptics GUidance System (HAGUS) is a device that Graham C. Grindlay, a first-year PhD student in the Electrical Engineering department at Columbia University, built as part of his master’s thesis at the MIT Media Lab.

While the motivation for the project grew out of the FielDrum (see image), HAGUS was designed and built for a set of experiments looking at what effect physical guidance has on motor learning in a musical context. The basic idea of the device and Grindlay’s thesis project is to be able to “record” and playback” drumstick motions involved in percussion performance. Continue reading

Colony ::: symbiosis … electronic light + sound flash mob :: December 12, 2008; 8:00 - 9:00 pm :: Life.Lab, Digital Harbour, Corner of La Trobe Street and Harbour Esplanade, Docklands, Melbourne, Australia :: Rain or Shine!

You are invited to participate in a multiplayer performance within Colony, an interactive urban art environment. Bring your iPhone, borrow a friends or steal one and download the free Colony app from the App Store. Up to thirty people may simultaneously play the urban art environment and feed energy to the media creatures that inhabit it. Each of the totems in the networked sculpture may be played like a musical instrument responding to touch with light and sound.

Colony, by Troy Innocent (weathering steel, acrylic, computer-controlled light, 12-channel sound, interactive installation, iPhone web app), is part artificial lifeform, part icon of a digital media landscape. Continue reading

[1] The Omnisound Generator :: Electric motor, mechanical sound generator, spherical mixing chamber, plastic tubing, industrial headphones :: 34″ x 24″ x 10″ :: Warning: extended use with the headphones may induce slight nausea, vertigo and mental confusion in some sensitive persons. Use at your own risk.

Seven octaves, 84 discrete tones, all at once all the time, a history of western music as played back in its entirety as one incessant chord. This drone, this filler of space and monster of the twelve-tone scale, is unrelenting in its ever pervasiveness. As a pneumatic sound engine, the Omnisound Generator allows for remote placement into the machine via air coupled headphones. Monitoring the insides with stethoscopic precision, hear its heartbeat, its scream, its infrasonic rumblings and the wind rushing by. ALL SOUND ENGINES ARE GO! Continue reading

Ztretch - Stretchy Fabric as a Music Controller by Angela Chang: There has been much prior research on integrating electronics into textiles. However, I felt that many of these projects did not take into account the usability and interactivity of the fabric. Much of the prior work is focused on rigid, exact places for touching the fabric, rather than supporting the many actions our hands and bodies can create. Thus, I wanted to make a device that could capture the richness of active touch interactions. These haptic interactions could be used to create expressive music. Here is are 2 videos of a performance fabric.avi (100Mb) and fabric2.avi (100Mb download).

“ABSTRACT: We present Zstretch, a textile music controller that supports expressive haptic interactions. The musical controller takes advantage of the fabric’s topological constraints to enable proportional control of musical parameters. Continue reading

Touch is a research project that investigates Near Field Communication (NFC), a technology that enables connections between mobile phones and physical things. Touch is not about music or anything musical at this point. Based at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design in Norway, this project is developing applications and services that enable people to interact with everyday objects and situations through their mobile devices. There are musical potentials here.

Touch consists of an inter-disciplinary team involved in social and cultural inquiry, interaction/industrial design, rapid prototyping, software, testing and exhibitions.
Continue reading

Amebeats is a project by Melissa Quintanilha that allows “people to mix sounds by manipulating physical objects instead of twisting knobs or clicking on a music production software”.

The amoeba shaped board has little boxes in its center that when moved to the arms, activate different sounds. My interest in music and design merged to create a haptic interface (based on touch) that allows people to use gesture to mix sounds with their hands. My inspiration for this robotic installation came from going to parties and seeing DJs create the music on their tables, but no one knowing what they do to make the sounds. Generating music using gesture allows for a much more expressive way of creation. [blogged by Nicolas on pasta and vinegar]