Turbulence Commission: WoodEar by Peter Traub [Needs download, and Speakers/Headphones]:

Bringing the body of the tree to the network is a natural fit — a tree is a network too: roots sensing and absorbing nutrients, leaves sensing and photosynthesizing sunlight, and phloem and xylem running throughout to carry nutrients across the structure. WoodEar attempts to merge the dynamic qualities of this biological network with the digital network. A series of sensors attached to the tree stream data on the state of its environment — light, temperature, air pressure, and wind. This live data is merged with photos and recordings of the tree’s immediate surroundings into a generative application/installation. By downloading and running the application, anyone can access the live environmental experiences of the tree — one that may be very distant from them, but that still shares the same air, sun, earth, and sky. Continue reading

Transcripts are now available for Radio MACBA’s Composing with Process: Perspectives on Generative Systems Music (the podcast series by Mark Fell and Joe Gilmore on generative approaches to composition and performance):

Transcript episode #1.1. Continue :: Transcript episode #2.1. Systems :: Transcript episode #3.1. Determinacy and indeterminacy :: Transcript episode #4.1. Time :: Transcript episode #51. Duration

Generative music is a term used to describe music which has been composed using a set of rules or system. Continue reading

Swiss acoustic artist Robin Meier and Ali Momeni manipulate the sounds of insects and birds to create ethereal soundscapes. Read an interview with him about his mosquito-inspired musical installation Truce recently aired in the French city of Nantes. Meier talks about firefly synchrony and setting up feedback loops in nature.

From the interview:

Why did you choose to work with mosquitoes?

Male mosquitoes serenade potential mates with a ‘love song’ by vibrating their wings. They synchronize their wingbeats with those of the females to mate in mid-air. … The constant glissandi — gliding from one pitch to another — and ‘tuning in’ of mosquito wingbeats reminded me of dhrupad, an ancient form of Indian classical music often sung by brothers in unison. My collaborator Ali Momeni and I played male mosquitoes some dhrupad and, sure enough, they tuned in.

Zimoun “Volume” :: February 2 - March 10, 2012 :: Opening: February 2; 6:00 - 8:30 pm :: bitforms gallery nyc, 529 W. 20th Street, New York, New York City.

bitforms gallery is pleased to announce Volume, the first solo exhibition in New York by Swiss artist Zimoun. On view will be an immersive, site-specific sound installation based on prepared dcmotors and cardboard boxes.

Part of a series that received its U.S. debut in a solo exhibition at the Ringling Museum of Art this Fall, the installation emphasizes the grid as a method of visual organization. Precariously balanced rows of cardboard boxes form an architectural space containing a rumbling din produced by mechanical motors humming in unison. Continue reading

Composing with Process: Perspectives on Generative and Systems Music #5.1: Duration (97′ 56”) by Mark Fell and Joe Gilmore. Narrated by Connie Treanor.

The fifth episode in the series continues to explore the idea of time in music practice, particularly in relation to duration. The show looks at how music is measured in terms of both micro and macroscopic intervals: through granular synthesis, where sound is constructed from microscopic sonic ‘grains’, to extended works whose duration is measured not in minutes and seconds, but years. Bringing together ideas and theories of the engineer Denis Gabor and composers Iannis Xenakis and Curtis Roads, this episode examines early tape and computer music works using granular and pulsar synthesis. The show closes with a focus on two recent treatments of time in music by the German artist Hanne Darboven and media producer Terre Thaemlitz.

Workshop: Neuro Reality Check (Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science, Berlin) Performance: GenComp Collective Berlin & Book Launch: Critical Neuroscience: A Handbook of the Social and Cultural Contexts of Neuroscience :: December 2, 2011, 10:00 pm :: N.K., Elsenstr. 52/2, Hinterhaus Etage 2, 12059 Berlin :: Open to the public (register for the workshop here).

GenComp Collective Berlin: Chaotic, cybernetic, and hybrid systems — Neurological and cybernetic research techniques have been adopted by many experimental music protagonists, such as Louis and Bebe Barron, Alvin Lucier, David Tudor and others. Continue reading

Nathalie Miebach is a Boston-based artist who translates weather data into complex sculptures and musical scores.

“Recently, I have begun translating weather data collected in cities into musical scores, which are then translated into sculptures as well as being a source for collaboration with musicians. These pieces are not only devices that map meteorological conditions of a specific time and place, but are also functional musical scores to be played by musicians. While musicians have freedom to interpret, they are asked not to change the essential relationship of the notes to ensure that what is still heard is indeed the meteorological relationship of weather data.” (Scroll down for the Call for Composers.) Continue reading

Composing with Process: Perspectives on Generative and Systems Music #4.1: Time (62′ 02”) :: Curated by Mark Fell and Joe Gilmore. Narrated by Connie Treanor.

The fourth episode in this series introduces the idea of time and its relationship to musical practices. The show opens with thoughts about time drawn from philosophy, science and musicology and shows how these are expressed in musical form, and looks at the origins of sonic action, musical behaviors and notational systems as a way of engaging with the temporal realm. With a specific reference to the emergence of sound recording technologies – both vinyl and tape – the show examines how new technologies have impacted musical vocabularies and changed the relationship between sound, time and music. It closes with a brief look at how computer based editing has extended this paradigm and opened the way for stochastic methods of sound generation. Continue reading

Vague Terrain 19: Schematic as Score; curated and edited by Derek Holzer: Over the past few years, a strong reaction against the sterile world of laptop sound and video has inspired a new interest in analog processes, and a fresh exploration of the pioneers of the electronic arts during the pre-digital era of the 1960s and 1970s. Artists and inventors such as Nam June Paik, Steina & Woody Vasulka, Don Buchla, Serge Tcherepnin, Dan Sandin and David Tudor all constructed their own unique instruments long before similar tools became commercially available or freely downloadable — through a long, rigorous process of self-education in electronics. John Cage once quipped that Tcherepnin’s synthesizer system was “the best musical composition that Serge had ever made”, and it is precisely Cage’s reformulation of the concert score from a list of deterministic note values to a set of indeterministic possibilities that allowed the blurring of lines between instrument-builder and music composer that followed. Continue reading

Synchronator by Gert-Jan Prins + Bas van Koolwijk :: December 20, 2010; 7:30 - 10:00 pm :: Nivell Zero, Fundació Suñol. Rosselló, 240, Barcelona.

Since the early years of video art, works have been made which do not actually produce a standard TV signal waveform and therefore cannot be directly recorded. To overcome this problem Bas van Koolwijk and Gert-Jan Prins have created their own hardware to get non-video signals accepted by regular video equipment.

Aided by current digital and analogue means and drawing from the tradition of experimental video pioneers such as Nam June Paik and Woody and Steina Vasulka, Koolwijk and Prins shared their technical know-how and with their Synchronator project set out to tackle the difficulties concerning the recording of complicated, merged and distorted video and audio signals. Continue reading