Enrico Costanza, PhD student at the Media and Design Laboratory of Lausanne’s Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale, has focused his research on designing objects that can bring digital and physical worlds closer. His Audio d-touch project, developed with Simon Shelley, is a clear example of this approach. It consists of three tangible interfaces that are used for musical composition and performance. They have been suggestively named, Augmented Stave, Tangible Drum Machine and Physical Sequencer.

The latter has been used in two live performances by the Sicilian cellist and composer Giovanni Sollima. Using the sequencer Sollima is able to record audio or voice samples and organize them in variable length loops. Continue reading

Birds on a Wire performed by Terri Hron (Canada) – recorder/electronics :: November 10, 2008; 7:00 pm :: Harvestworks Digital Media Center, 596 Broadway #602, New York City.

Among bird fanciers the word record is used to signify the first essays of a bird in singing. Sir John Hawkins, in A General History of the Science and Practice of Music, 1776

Any set of transmitted electrical impulses received as a sound or image, e.g. via wires; the message conveyed by them. Wikipedia, Definition of Signal, 2006

Signal-based processing. Interactive improvisation environments. Real-time image to audio synthesizers. Recorder player Terri Hron walks the tightrope of new developments in computer-assisted composition and improvisation. Continue reading

Mobile Music In Decline — What’s The Problem? The big questions at the mobile music panel at last month’s EconMusic conference: why is mobile music in decline and what will an effective business in this sector look like? Tom Erskine, Head of Go-to-Market, Nokia Music explained the problem lies in the relationship between the digital industry and music labels, while Ian Henderson, VP Digital Business EMEA, Sony BMG, gave a pessimistic view, saying that mobile music was a lot bigger proportionally a year or two ago. Tom McLennan, Head of Music for Mobile Internet and Content Services, Vodafone UK, and Julian Zmood, Head of Business Development, Music, O2, joined the panel that was moderated by Mark Mulligan, VP and Research Director, JupiterResearch.

You can see a video of the panel here.

According to Pallab Ghosh, Science correspondent, BBC News, scientists have recorded the sound of three stars similar to our Sun using France’s Corot space telescope. The sounds have enabled them to get information about processes deep within stars for the first time.

The subtly pulsating, haunting sounds are very similar to artist Aphex Twin’s minimalistic nineties album ‘Selected Ambient Works, Vol. 2,’ only stripping away what little melody it had and leaving just the beat.

You can listen to the sounds here. Continue reading

A clever flute-playing robot offers an impressive rendition of Flight of the Bumblebee. Its “lungs” consist of a bellow that moves air in and out, and its “tongue” can block air in two places to transition between notes. Its “vocal cords” are a vibrato device that can change vibrations according to the air flow, and it even has elastic “lips” that can control its airstream, changing in width, thickness, and angle as it plays. Video here — by Takanishi Lab.

Thanks to Technology Review and Kristina Grifantini.

Babbling / Sounding / Noising Cubes by Catherine Béchard and Sabin Hudon :: November 8 – December 13, 2008 :: November 8; 5:00 pm :: OBORO, 4001 Berri, 3rd floor, Montreal, QC, CA.

The Cubes à sons / bruits / babils (Sonic Cubes) are pleasant-to-touch wooden objects containing a multitude of sounds and composing together an acoustic vocabulary. By holding them in your hand and turning them in all directions, you discover their contents and, in the course of manipulating them, unexpected and unpredictable associations and entanglements occur that you can model as you wish. Sighing, coughing, sneezing, leaves rustling, thunder, car humming, water gurgling in metal pipes, door banging — brief and fleeting stories thus unfold and fold, each time reinvented, starting from a tactile, visual and sound object. Continue reading

Terry Riley’s In C :: November 16, 2008; 8:00 pm :: Galapagos Art Space, 16 Main Street at Water Street, DUMBO, NY.

New music series DARMSTADT “Classics of the Avant Garde” celebrates its 4th anniversary with an annual performance of Terry Riley’s groundbreaking work, In C (1964). Darmstadt’s curators invite a broad range of musicians and media artists across New York’s performance community to participate in a rendering which New York Times critic Allan Kozinn recently dubbed as “the most vital, audacious, and energizing performance of the work I’ve ever heard.”

Performers include Christine Bard, Shelley Burgon, Jason Cady, Luke Dubois, Bradley Eros, Lesley Flanigan, Gisburg, Nick Hallett, Zach Layton, David Linton, Emily Manzo, Shahin Motia, Dafna Naftali, Evan Rapport, Joshua Rubin, David Soldier, Hans Tammen, Ryan Tracy, Katherine Young, Alex Waterman and many others! Continue reading

Kabir Carter and Shared Frequencies, a portable sound installation … part of the exhibition Perverted by Theater curated by Franklin Evans and Paul David Young :: November 1, 2008; 4-7 pm :: apexart, 291 Church Street, New York.

Shared Frequencies is a portable sound installation and performance environment that relies on multiplex radio communications events as its primary performance material. An array of radio scanners is paired with a set of analog synthesizer modules, and assembled on a set of small, modest folding tables. The scanners pick up a wide variety of speech, encoded data streams, and noise that are converted into (more) synthetic sound. The results of these electroacoustic interactions are projected into the air, and the sounds heard are physically modified by the shape and volume of the installation’s site. Continue reading

[Image: Magnetic Migration Music by Zoe Irvine] Floteson – Sonic Sources, Courses, and Rearrangements with Nikos Arvanitis, Nate Harrison, Ralf Homann, Zoe Irvine, Andreas Kurtsson, Henning Lundkvist, Sony Mao, Tisha Mukarji, Laurence Rassel, The Tape-beatles, Terre Thaemlitz, Ultra-red – Curated by Jens Maier-Rothe :: October 25 – November 8, 2008 :: KHM Gallery, Ystadsvägen 22A, Malmö, Sweden.

This exhibition examines diverse forms in the recycling of sound. Floteson was the Anglo-Norman precursor of the English word flotsam which loosely describes objects found floating or washed ashore. Combining “float” (Old-Fr. floter) and “sound” (Fr. son), the exhibition jumps on the sonic track of permanent reuse and follows the loop of discarding, recycling and transforming of sonic source material. Traveling with the flow it shows some of the key strategies and instigators for a use of diverse sound recycling methods within contemporary art. Continue reading

CIRCUIT BENDING – FROM START TO FINISH with Peter Edwards (Casperelectronics) :: November 8 + 9; 2008; noon – 6 pm :: Harvestworks :: $350 [one price].

Over the course of two intensive workshops we will focus on all aspects of circuit bending from basic circuit modification to complex interface design. Each student will leave with a finished, well built instrument as well as an abundance of valuable info and experience which will help them in their future bending endeavors.

To sign up, or if you have questions, call Hans Tammen at 212-431-1130 x130, or sign up at the Harvestworks webstore under “Classes”. Continue reading