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Simon Blackmore, Anthony Hall and Steve Symons are one of six artist groups that have been nominated for the Share Prize 2008. Blackmore, Hall and Symons have proposed an unique installed durational performance in the form of a furniture workshop. Using their unique hand-crafted technological tools, they will make dynamic audio through chopping, sawing and lathing. Continue reading

Open Space introduces a New Music Workshop Series facilitated by an array of local and visiting composers, musicians and sound artists, each offering their unique perspective on the creation of real-time music. All workshops are hands on, offer musicians of all abilities a place and time to explore their craft and practice in a group setting.

Workshop: Music Improvisation – gadgets and non-traditional instruments :: Presenters: Gayle Young, Jeff Morton, Tina Pearson :: Date: October 29, 7 pm, Open Space. Drop in fee - Focuses on alternate objects, tools and ‘instruments’, and discusses the authority of musical gesture. Gayle Young’s Amaranth and Columbine, tuned tubing, circuit boards, circuit bent electronics, circuit boards, no-input mixer, contact mics, toys, bells and other gadgets will be available to explore – and bring your own stuff. Continue reading

From blog.wired.com, Kompoz: Socially-Networked Music Creation by Eliot Van Buskirk, September 26, 2007.

Social networking is an activity in and of itself, but as the preponderance of applications and widgets on social networks indicates, things get a lot more interesting when there’s something to do other than adding friend after friend. For specialized activities like making music, it makes more sense to create an entire social network centered around the activity than to embed an application in an existing network. Continue reading

The Breath Car by Matthew Brown is for beginner musicians just learning to handle horn instruments. It’s object is to help the beginner train their controlled breathing. The car is controlled by a mouthpiece. When the person blows hard it will steer to the right, and softer blowing will result in the car turning to the left. Much of the skill behind playing wind instruments requires good controlled breathing. The skills required for this gadget can significantly improve the controlled breathing, therefore improving musical abilities.

How does it work? The controller contains a MIDI breath controller which converts breath pressure to MIDI data. This is sent to MAX/MSP which converts MIDI to serial data. Serial data is sent via Bluetooth and PIC chip to a servo on the car which controls the steering. The forward and backward controls are hacked from a cheap toy car.

From an interview with Bert Schiettecatte about AudioCube by David Zicarelli. Bert Schiettecatte is the founder of Percussa, a music hardware and software company located near Leuven, Belguim. The company’s first product is the unusual controller system called Audio Cubes.

DV: If someone asks you to explain what the AudioCubes are, what’s the first thing you say?
BS: A tool for creating and performing electronic music and sound, which aims to stimulate creativity and lower user interface barriers.
DV: Can you give me an example of the kind performing interface I can make?
BS: If you use the AudioCubes out of the box as a MIDI controller, you can map relationships between the cubes and distances to trigger and continuous controller information. For example, Continue reading

Bodily Movement and the Music Theory Paradigm: The University of Oslo Department of Musicology is developing the Musical Gestures Toolbox, a collection of applications with useful features for video and audio analysis. The toolbox is built with Max / MSP / Jitter from Cycling ‘74, and will be available as standalone applications for Mac OS X and Windows, as well as the original patches.

It features: (1) Video capturing from USB/FW-cameras (2) Playback of video files (any QuickTime-readable format) (3) Adjustable resolution and playback rate (4) Brightness, contrast, saturation controls (5) Zoom, offset and displacement controls (6) Cropping functions (drag and crop) (7) Automatic cropping based on contraction (8) Computer vision analysis (9) Save snapshots and image sequences (10) Save video from the analysis (11) Contraction and centre of gravity (12) Audio analysis: spectrogram, sonogram, spectral centroid, noisiness, loudness… Continue reading

A special presentation of Stefan Smulovitz and Viviane Houle from Canada, and a lecture on a lecture on the live performance tool, Kenaxis :: August 7, 6:30pm :: Admission: FREE at HARVESTWORKS, 596 Broadway, Suite 602 (at Houston St), New York :: Tel: 212-431-1130 (Subway: F/V Broadway/Lafayette, 6 Bleeker, W/R Prince).

Join Vancouver, BC based duo Stefan Smulovitz (laptop) and Viviane Houle (vocals) for a short performance followed by a lecture on Kenaxis. The performance will demonstrate the versatility and power of Kenaxis Software as a live performance tool. Stefan and Viviane have played extensively as a duet including performances at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, the Sound Soundwave>Series, San Francisco, and the International PuSH International Performing Arts Festival. Continue reading

The Sound of One Hand Waving by Erica Naone: Musicians can now control sound effects for electric instruments by waving a hand [from Technology Review].

A new device allows musicians to control sound effects with a wave of the hand. While electric guitarists typically control distortion effects with an array of foot pedals, the HotHand device, made by Source Audio, translates their gestures into the wah, phaser, and flanger effects that are popular for electric sound. A musician can wear the device as a ring, affix it to his or her head or torso, or allow someone else–such as the band’s vocalist–to use it to control effects. A wireless option leaves the wearer free to roam the stage.” As one reader has already remarked: Donald Swearingen and Pamela Z have been doing this since the 90s; and Laetitia Sonami has been waving her glove with amazing results for longer than that. But this device is new. Continue reading

CyberTracker: The most efficient method of field data collection - CyberTracker software can be used on smart phones and handheld computers to record observations of any level of complexity. It allows anyone, regardless of their field of interest, to customize a series of screen interfaces specifically adapted to their own data collection needs. CyberTracker’s unique design allows users to display icons, text or both, which makes data collection faster. It also allows field data collection by non-literate users and school children.

“African researchers have developed a software for PDAs that turns the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert into digital wildlife trackers. Most of the Bushmen cannot read or write, but they can see what is alive in front of them — and the icons on their PDAs. Continue reading