Lemurs Over Laptopia: Will new performance interfaces rejuvenate live electronic music? asks Thomas Bey William Bailey on Vague Terrain:

For roughly 160 years since Richard Wagner published his Artwork of the Future, Western audio culture has been forced to take sides on the issue of music and its relation to the other arts: should music be just one element in a fully-integrated artistic program, or should ‘absolute music’ unfettered by lyrics (let alone other sensory effects) run the show? … Continue reading

Pamela Z and Dan Joseph– solo sets :: October 25, 2008; 8:00 pm :: LISTEN/SPACE, 195 Skillman Avenue (@ Humboldt), Brooklyn, NY.

Pamela Z will present a set of new and existing works for voice, electronics, sampled sounds, and processed found objects. Dan Joseph presents a new work-in-progress for solo hammer dulcimer and electronics that offers a new perspective on this ancient and largely unknown instrument.

Pamela Z is a composer/performer who makes solo works combining a wide range of vocal techniques with electronic processing, sampled sounds, and The BodySynth™ gesture controller. She has also composed scores for dance, film, and new music chamber ensembles. Continue reading

AXIOM presents: A Live Experimental Sound and Video Performance :: June 26, 2008; 8:00 pm :: AXIOM, Green Street Subway (“T”) station on the Orange line, at the corner of Amory and Green Streets, Boston.

Brian Dudak, Frank W. Carroccino and WiiWhorld – presented by Chris Korda, Jeff Mission, and Jen Rosselli: WiiWhorld translates human movement into digital art – using the Nintendo Wiimote as a real-time controller for the visual software synth Whorld. The WiiWhorld project, which is built upon the principles of free, open-source software and low-cost, readily available technologies, empowers people to explore modern technology as a means of personal expression.

April ReSiDeNt Show: New Works, New Instruments, New Artists :: Featuring new works by Dafna Naphtali, Andrew Schneider and Simon Morris :: at LEMURplex, 461 3rd Avenue, Brooklyn, between 9th & 10th Streets :: Friday, May 2nd :: 8 pm – 11 pm :: $5 at the door

Dafna Naphtali is a sound-artist and improviser-composer from an eclectic musical background. As singer/guitarist/electronic-musician she performs and composes using custom sound processing of voice and other instruments. Besides her composing and improvised projects, she co-leads the digital chamber punk ensemble What is it Like to be a Bat? with Kitty Brazelton (http://www.whatbat.org) and has collaborated/performed with Lukas Ligeti, David First, Joshua Fried, Continue reading

“We all love driving down a open road with music on the car radio, at times there seems to be an almost magical synchronization between the music playing and the passing landscape, the speed, the hum of the motor, sounds harmonize with the machine…” This was the impetus for Peter Sinclair’s Road Music. With Road Music, the music played on the car HiFi is generated entirely by the car itself: vibrations of the car on the road, recognizable movements (accelerations, gear changes, bends etc.) and the passing landscape. Continue reading

Once the domain of the few, creating and customizing sophisticated DIY controllers is now more accessible than ever. That means, if you can’t find what you want, and you’re ambitious and knowledgeable enough, you go make your own. Josh Boughey was impressed by the Monome enough to buy one — but the Monome, a grid of on/off buttons, doesn’t provide any kind of variable control. So Josh built his own, combining a series of parallel touch strips with LED indicators. (The lights are the tricky part, requiring an obscene number of connections.) Continue reading

Visit pank.tv (click on DNA)to see a video and hear the sonification of GENE – LUXR :: ORGANISM – VIBRIO :: FISCHERI TRANSLATION – CNA :: It’s a one-minute sample and quite beautiful.

According to the very limited information on the site, DNA, mRNA and Protein sequences are translated into MIDI to generate the sound and control the image variables in realtime. When presented in live performance a MIDI controller is used. The gene information and sequences are available here. Other audio samples are available here.

LEMUR announces ReSiDeNt, a major new residency and performance/installation series :: Open Call for Submissions: Deadline: December 17, 2007. Artists from all performing and installation disciplines are encouraged to apply, including musicians, composers, dancers, choreographers, video artists, interactive installation artists, performance artists, multimedia artists and others.

In January 2008, LEMUR will inaugurate ReSiDeNt, a unique new creator-in-residence program, hosted at LEMUR’s Brooklyn space in Park Slope. Each month, we will award three artists a month-long residency at LEMUR, enabling them to create a work utilizing LEMUR’s resources, including robotic musical instruments, MIDI audio/video controllers, video projection and tracking system and more. Each group of residencies will culminate in a public show at LEMUR at the end of the month. Continue reading

Arduino Sound – Part 1: This is the first in a series of articles about generating sound with an Arduino. The goals are to generate good quality sound which can be used to play simple tones, stored music, sampled sound, and even act as a MIDI synthesizer. I will cover the basic design, including code and hardware that anyone can use to add sound to Arduino microcontroller projects.

Arduino Sound Part 2: Hello World: This is the second in a series of articles about generating sound with an Arduino. In this article we take a small step; “Hello World” for Arduino sound. We prepare for our future experiments by hooking up a PC or powered speaker so we can hear the Arduino sing. Also see Arduino Sound Part 3: Playing a Melody.

Ingrid Bachmann (Canada) is an interdisciplinary artist who explores the complicated relationship between the material and virtual realms. Bachmann uses redundant, as well as new technologies, to create generative and interactive artworks, many of which are site-specific.

Symphony for 54 Shoes is a kinetic artwork that involves 27 pairs of shoes collected from a variety of second hand and thrift stores. Each shoe has a toe and heel tap used in tap dancing attached to it. The shoes move or dance independently of each other. The mechanical motion of tapping is created using solenoids (tubular magnetic sensors) that move up and down when activated by a switch. Each switch, 52 in total, is controlled by a microcontroller and software that activates the sequence of the tapping of the shoes. Continue reading