From June 7-23, composer-percussionist Eli Keszler transforms Eyebeam’s Project Space with L-Carrier, a large-scale, mechanical stringed instrument that will immerse audiences in rich harmonies and sparse, multi-directional rhythms. Fluid, dynamic acoustic sounds will push and pull against the installation’s sonic control. The website displays the piece’s evolving visual data score, and streams real-time audio from the physical environment. When people go to the website, they activate invisible “targets” distributed around the visual field. As “targets” intercept with Eli’s drawings the code that controls the installation is altered which, in turn, changes the percussive patterns of the strings (at Eyebeam).

On June 7, both the physical and web installations will serve as accompaniment to a live ensemble performance, composed by Eli Keszler and featuring Keszler with Ashley Paul, Anthony Coleman, Alex Waterman, C Spencer Yeh, Catherine Lamb, Geoff Mullen, and Reuben Son.

This event also inaugurates the release of Eli Keszler’s double CD Catching Net, a collection of installation and ensemble recordings released by the Berlin-based PAN – ACT label.

Biography

Eli Keszler is a composer, artist and multi-instrumentalist based in New York City. He has toured extensively throughout Europe and the US, performing solo and in collaboration with artists such as Phill Niblock, Aki Onda, Tony Conrad, Loren Connors, Jandek, C Spencer Yeh, Ran Blake, and Ashley Paul.

Credits

L-Carrier is a 2012 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. for its Turbulence website. It was made possible with funds from the Jerome Foundation and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Additional support has been provided by ISSUE Project Room.

L-Carrier is presented as part of Eyebeamʼs sound series Rec.Play., a curatorial initiative founded by Eyebeam Creative Director Roddy Schrock.

The exhibition Sound Art. Sound as a Medium of Art presents for the first time the development of sound art in the 21st century at the ZKM | Media Museum and in a public space. From Futurism to Fluxus, through to Twitter sonifications, the ZKM charts the history of Sound Art during the 20th century. However, focus is placed on contemporary practices: with works from 70 artists from which approximately 30 new productions from recent years will be represented, the visitor gains insights into the unique sound cosmos of contemporary art. The sound world visualizes its own exhibition architecture, and the exhibition visitor himself becomes the generator of sounds.

Visual experience dominates in numerous exhibitions. Sound Art. Sound as a Medium of Art emphasizes auditory experience and transforms the visual experience. The visitor is thus provided with the opportunity to become acquainted with an entirely new sound cosmos, which neither radio, film nor the music industry has been able to establish to such an extent.

The Futurist painter and composer Luigi Russolo published the musical manifesto “L’arte dei rumori” in 1913 elevating urban noises to the level of an art. In the 1950s and 1960s representatives of musique concrète and the artists of the Happening and Fluxus movement (from Yoko Ono through to La Monte Young) extended the performative aspect of music; hence, in place of composition there could be randomness, in place of music, silence, in place of an orchestra, the sea and in place of the musician, a horse. In the 1970s and 1980s Industrial Noise influenced even pop music, as well as punk music.

At the same time, loudspeakers became the building blocks of monumental sculptures, light and sound were compressed into mobile immaterial environments, inaudible realities were rendered audible in a synthesis of arts and hearing was gauged again by means of psychoanalytical experiments. Sonifications of information and medial communication, sound environments as well as telematic or medial constellations exert an influence on the present-day multiplicity of creative output. In this connection, those political questions in sound art that lead to critical examination of sound and listening, occupy a central place.

The exhibition Sound Art. Sound as a Medium of Art makes new sound perceptions not only experienceable in the museum: passers-by may encounter sounds in the three installations located in the forecourt of the ZKM and five installations in public areas around the city of Karlsruhe. In addition, a selected concert program with outstanding performative projects enriches the exhibition: LaMonte Young, Xenakis, Cage and Ryoji Ikeda are representative of the program’s broad spectrum. The exhibition’s wealth of sounds has also been facilitated by the richness of the archives made accessible to the Karlsruhe public for the first time to this extent. Included are the “unheard avant-garde” from Scandinavia, the Broken Music Archiv from Berlin and curated audiopoints from european archive inventories.

Curator: Peter Weibel
Project coordinator and co-curator: Julia Gerlach

Mario DeVega and Victor Mazon have been developing a special device that amplifies wireless internet traffic, bluetooth data transfer, mobile phones, microwaves and other devices with electromagnetic activity in the 2.4 GHz range. During two sessions on Saturday/Sunday (Feb 25/26) their Sonifying Wireless Data: Snuff Workshop will allow students to construct and experiment with a portable device able to amplify and de-modulate frequency ranges between 0.1 to 2.4 GHz. They will also discuss in detail the philosophy behind it.

About ICAD : The 18th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD2012) will be held June 18-22, 2012, at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the heart of midtown Atlanta, Georgia. The event will mark the 20th anniversary of the 1st International Conference on Auditory Display. Since 1992, ICAD has been the premier international venue for the dissemination and discussion of work related to the science, art, and practice of sound as a communicative display. Through its active Sonification Lab and Center for Music Technology, Georgia Tech is pleased to host ICAD’s vibrant community of researchers and practitioners on its campus.

Competition Theme

ICAD 2004 titled its sonification competition ‘Listening to the Mind Listening’ and invited entrants to sonify EEG data captured while a subject was listening to music. The ICAD 2012 competition is inspired by this same idea: music (or sound) about listening to music. It is also inspired by the radical changes over the past decade in how we listen to music and how we share our listening activities with others. As portable media players and always-connected smartphones have become our primary listening platforms, social media services have become our primary sharing platforms.

This competition adopts the theme ‘Listening to the World Listening’ as it challenges us to explore what we can learn about listening through the analysis and sonification of social media data about listening.

There is no static data set for this competition; instead, entrants are invited to use a set of data APIs to obtain social media listening data. Use of a Twitter Music Trends data feed, which aggregates music listening data from Twitter by artist, is required. Entrants may optionally gather related data about the tweets themselves from the Twitter API, and about the referenced artists from the MusicBrainz and Echo Nest APIs. Detailed information about each API is included in the full call at http://distributedmusic.gatech.edu/icad/.

Deadline for submissions: March 1, 2012

Notification of finalists: April 1, 2012

Submission Requirements:

Sonifications may be fixed-media audio files, interactive software programs or web sites, smartphone apps, musical performances, or sound installations. They may sonify the data in real time or out of real time. They may work with as little as a single set of fifty artists from Twitter Music Trends or as much as several months worth of data collected across all of the APIs.

Submissions must include an audio or video recording, no more than five minutes in length, of the complete sonification, excerpts from the sonification, or documentation of the sonification, as appropriate. Submissions must also include a 2-4 page statement, following the ICAD 2012 paper template, that describes the techniques used to create the sonification and the motivations behind them.

All questions should be addressed to Jason Freeman, ICAD 2012 Music Chair.

Jury, Finalists, and Winners:

A jury will select finalists to be featured during ICAD 2012, and the winner will be announced during the conference. The statements of each finalist will also be published in the ICAD conference proceedings.

Jury:

Alberto de Campo, Professor of Computational Art, Universität der Künste Berlin

R. Luke Dubois, Assistant Professor of Integrated Digital Media, NYU-Poly

Adam Lindsay, chief scientist, SocialGenius

Brian Whitman, co-founder and CTO, The Echo Nest

Full Details on the data sources and the competition are available at:

http://distributedmusic.gatech.edu/icad/

Link: http://distributedmusic.gatech.edu/icad/

Deadline: Thu March 1, 2012

Join artist Andrew Demirjian for a workshop where participants will design their own distinctive tones for sonifying the stock price fluctuations of the three largest music companies. Participants will audition and perform each other’s work working from Andrew’s audiovisual installation, The Week in Review, presented in Eyebeam’s Project Space (June 21-July 9). The control interface for Week in Review is a custom built LED clock interface and turntable, which enables a user to play through a week of stock price data. This is a workshop for Max/MSP and/or Ableton Live users.

This workshop is presented as related programming for Andrew Demirjian’s Eyebeam Project Space exhibition, The Week in Review.

▪ Politics and Poetics of satélites. MSST, Joanna Griffin, Reni Hoffmuller ….
▪ de/Construction of a satélite. David Pello.
▪ Listening, Spotting y Sousveillance. Alejo Duque.

“Galileo collapsed Geocentricity but this has been reconstructed through the unstoppable and insatiable ambition for connectivity that is today represented by the ring of artifical geostationary satellites. The Earth thus re-becomes an immobile object in the middle of a spinning “universe”.” Mathurin Milan

Orbitando Satélites proposes an exercise in the visibilisation and investigation of these “rarae aves” that operate in habitually imperceptible frequencies and distances. We listen to them with DIY antenas and radios, showing how to locate them and observe them with free hardware and software.

In the tradition of the independent groups involved in the creation of free/libre infrastructures the meeting unites amateurs and experts, from various countries and cultures, to develop a declaration which poetically sketches this occult ring that surrounds us.

Trying to invert the logic of the panopticum, we observe the satelites that are observing us, exploring their political dimensions as an opaque system of control as well as a potentially liberating force. Using visualisation and play techniques we investigate the poetics of satelites, developing new astrologies and detailled mythologies.

And, finally, we design our own communications / observation satelite, to be launched in July 2011 by balloon, around the same time as the inauguration which will visualise our investigation.

Some key themes and topics :

▪ Satélites and micro-satélites.
▪ Dispositives of power y contra-power.
▪ Listening to satélites. Satellite Hacking,
▪ The Astrology and Astronomy of satélites
▪ Celestial voices, Satelite soundart
▪ Design of open source satelite with radio & wimax
▪ Estratoferic baloons, Drones and Kites
▪ Arduino in space.
▪ Space politics.
▪ Satélite Tracking and Radiofrequencies
▪ GNU/Radio USRP Software Defined Radio
▪ Calculating & charting celestial mechanics
▪ Orbital Dreams
▪ ……

Deadline for applications : 18.04.11. Attendance is free, space limited. Email to p0[at]laboralcentrodearte.org a CV and letter stating your interest.

If you’re interested in the music/data Calliope will produce– all royalty-free MIDI tracks for musicians to remix, you can help make it possible. The whole purpose is to fly something in orbit that we can ‘hear’ on the ground.

You can support the project by buying mission patches and flight pins (http://tinyurl.com/calliopebase)

Lineup: Bernd Schurer (CH) Zurich :: Daisuke Ishida (JP) Berlin :: Lee Gamble (UK) London :: Martin Supper (DE) Berlin :: Yutaka Makino (JP) Berlin.

Bernd Schurer (CH): My artistic focus lies on the work with sound in a broad spectrum of different contexts: a constant shift, although, mostly investigating the experiential relationship between sound and what one would generally describe as space. There is a strong fascination in the study of the perception of sound and our interpretative patterns, and i have done some artistic “research” in the domains of Psychoacoustics, Architecture, Auralization, Sonification and AudioVisual Representation.

Presentations may vary from Computer Music Diffusion to Installation work to abstract Sound Art. Some of it has been exhibited internationally on various scales, from micro galleries to public space, from “art at home” to the Venice Art Biennial. Since 1996 he is co-editor and curator for electronic sound pieces at the domizil.ch imprint in Zurich, together with Marcus Maeder.

Bernd Schurer was born 1970 in Zurich; he studied Philosophy and Film Science with Professor W. Schobinger at the University of Zurich in 1993 and Visual Art at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts 1998. He currently is a Master Student with Professors Germ?n Toro- Per?s and Martin Neukom of Electroacoustic Composition and Theory / Media-technology at the Z?rich University of the Arts (ZHdK). He lives in Zurich and Berlin.
see: http://www.domizil.ch/

Daisuke Ishida (JP) :: Daisuke Ishida is a Berlin based artist working with sound and contemporary media.
He is interested in designing processes, physical environments in artistic contexts. His works pursue aesthetics and consequence of computer music, and seek to realize synthetic space in sound. His research includes Acoustics, Auditory Perception, Complex Systems and Machine Learning Based Algorithm.

Ishida established AUSREIHE, an independent organization committed to experimental electronic/computer music since 2009, is involved with the artist collective NK, which is dedicated to sound art practices in Berlin. in 2005 he participated in the MobLab project, a Japanese-German media camp. Together with Ken Furudate, Kazuhiro Jo and Mizuki Noguchi, he founded The SINE WAVE ORCHESTRA and The SINE WAVE QUARTET in 2002, which received Honorary Mention in Digital Music category of the Prix ARS Electronica 2004 and Stiftung Niedersachsen work stipends for Media Art 2009 at Edith Russ Site for Media Art.

Daisuke Ishida has presented his artistic activities internationally such as ICC - InterCommunication Center(Japan), deaf - Dutch Electronic Art Festival(The Netherlands), transmediale(Germany), ART + COMMUNICATION WAVES - ARSENALS of the Latvian National Museum of Art(Latvia), SMT - Sendai Mediatheque(Japan), YCAM - Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media(Japan), International Triennale of Contemporary Art YOKOHAMA(Japan), Japan Now modern performing arts festival(Germany), MART - Museum of Art, Rovereto and Trento(Italy), Interferenze new arts festival(Italy), ISEA - Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts(USA), steim(The Netherlands), La G?n?rale(France) and Edith Russ Site for Media Art(Germany).

Lee Gamble (UK) :: Founding member of the UK-based CYRK collective, explores abstraction through computer software, improvisation, digital synthesis, process, and the deconstruction, mutation and reconstruction of form.
He has performed solo throughout the U.K and Europe and in collaboration with electronic composer John Wall. His computer compositions are published via UK label Entr’acte. His recent full-length album Join Extensions has just been released; his second full length will be released in late 2010 on Berlin based computer music imprint AUSREIHE. Collaboration with artist and researcher Yutaka Makino follows, also a work for Thomas Bey William Bailey’s Belsona Strategic Label and GX Jupitter Larsen’s Zelphabet series.

Lee has curated and co-curated various events and has produced and curated radio series? for London arts radio station Resonance 104.4FM. He has DJ’ed for many years at venues and on several radio stations. He has created podcast mixes for various organizations, the most recent one for the Icasea podcast series.

Martin Supper (DE) :: Supper has studied computer science, linguistic and musicology in Technical University Berlin. As a DAAD stipendiary, he studied computer music and electroacoustic music with Gottfried Michael Koenig in The Institute of Sonology in University of Groningen Utrecht, The Netherlands. He holds Diplom in computer science and PhD in musicology. Since 1985, He is the director of the Studio for Electroacoustic Music and Sound Art in Berlin University of the Arts.

Yutaka Makino (JP) :: Yutaka Makino is an artist and researcher currently based in Berlin. His research seeks to amalgamate the historic precedents of computational composition and science, involving research in non-standard sound synthesis, spatial perception, acoustics, collective behavior, complex dynamical systems and new materiality. His works range from sculpture to sound works including computer music compositions and spatial sound installations that utilize spatial projection processes such as Wave Field Synthesis to achieve total physical immersion.

Makino’s works have been recognized/performed at numerous festivals and competitions internationally. He has been awarded the Prix Ton Bruyn?l 2007 and the DAAD Berliner K?nstlerprogramm 2010. He was in residence at the MacDowell Colony, Visby International Center for Composers, TU Berlin Electronic Music Studio and STEIM.
With the turntablist Takuro Mizuta Lippit alias dj sniff of STEIM, he frequently performs as Audile.
In 2009, he founded an independent computer music label, Strukto.

AUSREIHE is an independent organization dedicated to experimental electronic/computer music, founded in Berlin, Germany 2009. Contact; AUSREIHE : Daisuke Ishida info(at)ausreihe.com

There is a several thousand year history of associating music with cosmic phenomena, the famous “Music of the Spheres” created from the regularities in the astronomical universe. Even though of course there is generally no sound in outer space, because the conditions of pressure and density to allow acoustic waves are very rare.

The same urge motivates artists and scientists interested in sonifying

Sound Artist Peter Gena has a large collection of DNA Music and other sonifications of molecular structures: http://www.petergena.com/DNAmus.html

Like Kepler, and many others who subscribed to the Pythagorian ideas, Gena believes that:

“… a musical reading of DNA ought to be rendered literally. As the sequences represent life of many sorts, I am reluctant to tamper with the “score.” The DNA mixer can realize sequences as digital sound and/or print them out in musical notation. Ideally, performances of the gene sequences should be executed live from the computer as in an installation, where the ribosome simulations can be positioned spontaneously before playing. Red Blood Cells is a mix of five genes that are present in human blood: alpha and beta globin, heme synthetase, transaldolase, and glucose 6 phosphate. These are realized simultaneously, just as they are produced in the body. “

For more, go here.

Earthquakes Generate Music in Realtime from Micah Frank on Vimeo.