Remediation #4 of Marbh Chrios (Dead Zone)

In 2008, Virginia Institute of Marine Science Professor Robert Diaz showed that the number of “dead zones”—areas of seafloor with too little oxygen for most marine life—had increased by a third between 1995 and 2007. Diaz and collaborator Rutger Rosenberg of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden found that dead zones are now “the key stressor on marine ecosystems” and “rank with over-fishing, habitat loss, and harmful algal blooms as global environmental problems.” The study, which appeared in the August 15, 2008 issue of the journal Science, tallied 405 dead zones in coastal waters worldwide, affecting an area of 246,000 km2.

It is currently estimated that there are 20 such dead zones in Ireland and two contested dead zones were identified in the study at both Killybeg’s Harbour (1999) and Donegal Bay (2000).

With a number of unique and purpose designed statistical algorithms and heuristics, Softday (Sean Taylor and Mikael Fernström) translated some of the related scientific environmental data into abstract live sonifications and vocalisations. Softday worked collaboratively with three partners: local traditional musicians from An Charraig/Amhainn a’Ghlinne (Cairdeas na bhFidiléirí) in Donegal, Met Éireann (the Irish Meteorological Service) and The Marine Institute of Ireland, to explore the relationship of climate and culture to sound.

Softday is a collaboration between Sean Taylor and Mikael Fernström that started in 1999, exploring ideas in multimedia art. www.softday.ie/

tr4nc3f1gur4t10n for dancer, real-time video processing, and electroacoustic music creates a synergy of three different mediums through interactive technology. An amplitude threshold analysis of the audio is used to trigger video processing of an iconic public domain video about the atomic weapon tests at the dawn of the Nuclear Age. Motion sensors worn by the dancer are used to manipulate the processing of the video during the performance. The title of the work refers to society’s changing attitudes and perceptions of nuclear energy and warfare, and the possible consequences.

Bradford Blackburn (composer, performer) is an Assistant Professor of Music & New Media Production for The University of Tampa, where he teaches electronic music, theory, and composition, as well as directs the recording and music technology programs. His primary compositional interests include microtonal and extended just tuning systems, experimental instrument building, and interactive computer music. His music has been presented in festivals, and radio broadcasts throughout the United States and South America. Blackburn earned a DMA from the University of Illinois, an M.M. from the University of Miami, and a B.M. from the State University of New York at Fredonia. www.bradfordblackburn.com/

Ya-Ju Lin (choreographer) is a dancer and choreographer, originally from Taiwan, whose work includes Modern, Ballet, and Chinese Folk Dance. She has performed professionally with the Chicago Opera, the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, and the Lyric Opera of Chicago. As a choreographer her works have been presented in the United States and Taiwan. She currently teaches choreography, improvisation, and the Alexander Technique at The University of Tampa.

Micro-Coastings

Electro-Acoustic Music and Video

During the recording process of sound sources for “Micro-Coastings“:, I performed and produced rhythms through moving, striking and scraping objects, or I simply captured the natural rhythms of sound sources.  I focused on recording short expressive gestures and using lots of close microphone positioning, sometimes even rapidly moving the microphones during takes.   The video camera, like the microphone during the recording of my sound sources, was likewise positioned to frame objects more closely to capture things expressively.  Using analogous processes to develop the music and video was especially enjoyable for me, as I could apply my musical intuition to video production in making my choices.

Timothy Polashek writes in a variety of media and styles, including vocal, instrumental, electro-acoustic music, text/sound compositions, and interactive performance systems.  His work can be found on “Wood and Wire”, published by Albany Records, and The Electric Music Collective’s albums “Incandescence” and “Defiant”.  Tim earned his Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition from Columbia University and coordinates the music technology program at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky.

www.tdpmusic.com/

Spaceship Earth Redox (2011)

The extremely slow combustion of utopian models (Spaceship Earth by Buckminster Fuller and Walking City by Archigram) forms a symbolic image and an aesthetic experience: the ineffable beauty of destruction.

Buckminster Fuller’s Manual for Spaceship Earth embodies thoughtful early environmental activism with the adagium ‘do more with less’ (1968)

Archigram’s Walking City can be seen as a jubilant notion of consumer choice combined with optimised technology that relies on infinite resources. (1964)

Michiel Van Bakel (1966, lives and works in Rotterdam, the Netherlands)  makes films and videos as well as sculptures and interactive multi-media-installations. In these he combines the elementary foundations of photography and video with digital animation techniques. While his approach is technical, his work focuses on people in their surroundings, often resulting in a kind of poetic estrangement. www.michielvanbakel.nl/

Voice (a Retracing)

Composer: Tom Williams, Video artist/dancer: Vida Midgelow, Video assistant: Tim Halliday

Qualities of live movement are visually re-articulated through the use of moving image and sound. Focusing on notions of memory, (dis)appearance, nomadism and pleasure the video material seeks to capture ‘in the moment’ acts of dancing by movement performer Vida Midgelow, revealing the experiential and embodied nature of solo dance improvisation.

Voice, the sound score, gives voice to the utterances of a diffused and disparate voice: “listen.. there is nothing… but wait… dear dancer/ dear practice” – “Shifting, sliding, tracing routes, finding pathways” in an effluence of articulations, where fragments of words and ideas tumble, stumble forth.

The score explores semantic resonances and their qualities of onomatopoeia within the spoken text as well as its complex unfolding into an abstract electroacoustic music discourse where words, sonic space, soundscapes and musical processes collide.

Tom Williams studied composition at Huddersfield and Keele Universities and completed a doctorate in composition at Boston University. He was runner-up at ALEA III 1993 for his piano and tape piece Ironwork, his acousmatic work Break was a finalist of 2004 Music Viva, and Shelter received an honourable mention in IMEB (Bourge) 2006, and in 2010 his acousmatic work Can won the medal of the Senato della Repubblica Italiana for the “electro-acoustic music” section of the VIII International Contemporary Music Contest “Città di Udine”. His music has received numerous international performances and broadcasts, and he has written for dance, theatre and education. In 2008 a CD featuring his acousmatic work, Taking Shelter was released. Tom Williams is Principal Lecturer and Course Director for the BA in Composition at Coventry University, UK. www.tw-hear.com

Vida Midgelow is Reader in Dance and Performance Studies, University of  Northampton, UK, and Co- Director of The Choreographic Lab. As a dance artist and scholar she has particular interests in creative processes, improvisation, and the interface between theory and practice. Her book ‘Reworking the Ballet: Counter narratives and alternative bodies’ was published by Routledge in 2007 and she recently completed a US / UK tour of her improvised performance work ‘Trace: Playing with/out memory’ – which she made as part of The Choreographic Lab ‘Articulating Dance’ project.

Tim Halliday is a performance and video technician at the University of Northampton and a freelance video artist.

exact

The work is about exact moment, the moment when you are going reverse and forward at the same time. The beauty and the darkness at the same time.

When something is about to happen but has not happened yet or you don’t know if it is going to happen.

The moment on the sea when you are vulnerable surrounded by the sea.

And no way out.

The image of mountains and sea is from Greece shoot in my way from the Island of Dreams to Oropus. The Icelander in me looks for the mountains and the sea wherever I go.

The video is shoot on I still image Leica camera so the frames are fewer than in usual vide recordings. So the process of the editing is unusual and the sequences are layered in many broken forms of the image.

The sound is produced in Abelton live and I use similar process as used for the vide editing. Where sequences are reversed and forwarded multiplied and time and the beat of the sound and images are corrupted to get the exact moment and the feeling I am looking for. Like earthquake or emotional chaos.

The contrast between the beauty of the image and the pain and darkness of the sound makes a little story for the viewer to experience the exact moment.

Björk Viggósdóttir (b.1982) graduated from the Art Academy of Iceland in 2006 and has since produced a number of videos and installations. In her general practice Björk deals with visual images, emotions, sounds and sensations in a similar way to what occurs involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of live, whether in dream or at wake. Björk works with colors, emotions, signs and other things from the everyday, which she brings to other dimensions by creating for them new perspectives and settings. In her art Björk likes to encourage her audience to use all their senses for viewing her work by using combinations of different media in her works. She has exhibited her work across Europe, the United States and in Iceland where she frequently collaborates with composers, musicians, dancers and other artists in both solo and group exhibitions. http://bjorkviggosdottir.wordpress.com/

Bloomy Girls

Video by Takagi Masakatsu, music by João Pedro Oliveira

The soundtrack for the video Bloomy Girls tries to establish a dialog between the music and the image, in both technical and artistic ways.

Technically, the type of image synthesis and transformations used in the video suggest the use of synthetic sounds (most of them created through the use of granular synthesis techniques, as well as other computer generated sounds). These synthetic sounds are used together with recorded and subsequently transformed female voice sounds, that specifically relate to the suggestions of the images of girls, in the video.

João Pedro Oliveira is one of the most prominent Portuguese composers of his generation. He studied organ performance and architecture. From 1985 to 1990 he moved to the US as a Fulbright student, where he completed a PhD in Music at the University of New York at Stony Brook. He has received numerous prizes and awards, including three Prizes at Bourges Electroacoustic Music Competition, the prestigious Magisterium Prize at the same competition, the Giga-Hertz Special Award, 1st Prize in Metamorphoses competition, 1st Prize in Yamaha-Visiones Sonoras Competition, 1st Prize in Musica Nova competition, etc.. His music is played all over the world, and most of his works have been commissioned by Portuguese and foreign groups and foundations. He is Senior Professor at Aveiro University (Portugal) and teaches composition, electroacoustic music and analysis. The music of Bloomy Girls received the 1st Prize at the Roma Soundtrack Competition. www.jpoliveira.com

POSTRIBOLO: Substitution of original soundtrack of the scene “Le case di Tolleranza” from the movie “Roma” (1972) by F. Fellini with an original soundtrack made up with sounds of coins. The main idea is based on the use of the sound produced by coins: 1 cent, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 cents of € and 1,2 €.

Coins were “played” for a training period until it was decided to use 4  categories of sounds:

• “Ruotii”: coins were kindly thrown onto a wooden surface till they falls;
• “Sfregolii”: coins ( in a range from 2 to 8 ) are rubbed in the hands;
• “Splash”: coins are dropped from a height of ~20 cm. inside an aluminum pan (diameter ~22cm., height  ~12 cm.) filled with 2 liters of water;
• “Percorsi acquosi”: in the same pan filled with 2 liters of water, coins ( in a range from 2 to 8 ) are put under the water surface. The pan is gently shacked, holden by the 2 pan handles, while coins covered the pan bottom.

The substitution of original soundtrack of the scene with an original one made up with sounds of coins follow up a thorough analysis of the scene (editing, narrative rhythm, characters, cinematography, etc…)

Paolo Girol (1972, Venice, Italy) studied mandolin and classic guitar with Livio Marcolin and attended master classes with Emanuele Segre and Alvaro Pierri and studied Computer Science with Andrea Sgarro at the University of Trieste. He has got two A. A. degrees: “Sound Engineer” and “Sound Recording Techniques for Musicians”. He obtained his Bachelor Degree in “Music and New Technologies” from Academy of Music of Trieste and his Master Degree in “Audio Visual Composition” from the same institution. His interest is the hybridization of different artistic languages. His works have been played nationally and internationally, they have been selected to several festivals/conferences and they have been awarded with national and international prizes such as First Prize in “Multimedia & Musical Arts” for Best Italian Digital Composition in Musical Field 2006 and First Prize “Work for multimedia”, International Competition of Electroacoustic Music and Sonic Art 2005, IMEB, Bourges, France. He teaches “Sound Recording” at the Baltic Film School and “Fundamentals of AudioVisual art” at the Estonian Academy of Music. http://paologirol.com/

A Journey beyond the Event Horizon

Current scientific understanding posits the existence of black holes throughout the universe. However, it is not completely clear what takes place beyond the event horizon of these objects. This piece is an interactive aural voyage into the unknown. The participant manipulates the user interface and thereby determines the outcome of the piece.

Julius Bucsis is a composer, music producer, guitarist and guitar teacher. He has performed extensively in many styles including jazz, rock, and improvisational music. His compositions cover a broad range of categories including jazz, contemporary classical, and electronic music. Several of his acoustic pieces have been performed by the Relache Ensemble and he has also released two CD’s of all original electric guitar oriented instrumental music.

Via Lactea

It has been said, through folkloric stories and legends,  that  making a wish upon a shooting star makes the wish comes true.

This is why I decided to become a shooting star to help others in their luck, through a performance, by wearing Christmas lights and running in front of a projection of a port at night. Using the lights emanating from the dock as a metaphor of the galaxy, I invite by passers to make their wish as a I run, engulfed in a trail of lights, in front of them. It is through that performance that I hope to bring good fortunes to the spectators by embodying a shooting star.

Jean-Pierre Mot, born in Montreal in 1982, is an artist base in Montreal. He has received a B.F.A. in visual and media art in 2009 from the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQÀM) and will complete a master (M.A.) degree in communication in the summer 2011 at the same university. His master thesis is on the epistemic imaginary and transcend from the works of the French philosopher Gilbert Durand. His researches, either artistic or as a theorist, question the notion of identity through the relationship between the physical body and his tacit imprint on common object and familiar surrounding through mythologies, folkloric stories and legends. http://unmot.carbonmade.com/

Phase vox is an interactive installation of sound and image manipulated by natural elements. The silhouette of an individual’s face (in profile) is projected onto a loosely hanging white sheet in the gallery. The sheet is installed either outside or by open doors/windows to allow the flow and movement of air to hit the screen and cause ripples and waves to flow across the image. The movement of the screen is captured through a camera and motion detection and the data is used to manipulate the audio of the voice. As people move throughout the space they naturally affect the flow of air in the space. As more people add their videos (captured as part of the installation) then the anomalies of the human voice are played with and exposed as slowly each video repeats the affected audio is captured and played back into the system to be affected by the elements again.

David Strang is an artist who works with sound and interactive elements.His work looks closely at the natural surroundings we live in and amplifes certain aspects to heighten our perception of space/place. Recent work includes site-specifc installation, feld-recording, networks, re-appropriating media objects, hacking and noise. He has collaborated and exhibited with visual artists and scientists as well as exhibiting solo work in the UK, Europe, Russia and USA.He currently lives and works in the UK. www.davidstrang.co.uk

Approximating π (2007)

A Sound Installation

Construction Method

Point of departure: the converging series π = 4 – 4/3 + 4/5 – 4/7 + 4/9 ∙∙∙

Each convergence gets a time window of 5040 samples (double the LCM of the numbers 1 to 10), in which ten square wave partials of frequencies 8¾n Hz and amplitude 2^dn are set up, ‘8¾’ deriving from the 5040 samples, ‘n’ being the partial number and ‘dn’ the nth digit in the convergence’s decimal representation; e.g. for ‘3.141592654’, the ten partials’ amplitudes are 23, 21, 24, 21 ,25, 29 etc., thereafter rescaled by the arbitrary sawtooth spectral factor 2π/n, where ‘n’ is still the partial number. The convergences make the digits stabilize from left to right to a value approaching π, the resultant timbre moving from turbulence to constancy over 4 x 109 x 5040 = 20.16 x 1012 samples or ~14½ years. The installation can be pitch-transposed (by sample dropping) and/or time-truncated. Here the eight sound channels are transposed from 8¾ Hz to frequencies 9, 28, 50, 72, 96, 123, 149 and 175 times higher (= [9 x π(1+½+⅓+ ∙∙ +⅟χ))], χ being the channel number plus one); the duration is truncated to a millionth of the total, i.e. 7′ 37″, the highest transposition thereby reaching the 700,000th approximation of π, where the first six digits are already stable.

Clarence Barlow (1945): born into the English-speaking minority of Calcutta, going there to school and college, studying piano, music theory and natural sciences. 1957: first compositions. 1965: graduated in science at Calcutta University, thereafter active as conductor and music theory teacher at the Calcutta School of Music. 1968: moved to Cologne, studying (until 1973) composition and electronic music at Cologne Music University. 1971-1972: studied also at the Institute of Sonology, Utrecht University. 1971: began to use computers as a compositional aid. 1982: initiated, 1986 co-founded, 1986-1993 and 1996-2002 chaired GIMIK: Initiative Musik und Informatik Köln. 1982-1994: in charge of Computer Music at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music. 1984-2005: lecturer on Computer Music, Cologne Music University. 1988: Director of Music, XIVth International Computer Music Conference, held in Cologne. 1990-1991: visiting professor of composition, Folkwang University Essen. 1990-94: Artistic Director, Institute of Sonology, Royal Conservatory, The Hague. 1994-2006: Professor of Composition and Sonology at the same conservatory. 1994-2010: member of the Académie Internationale de Musique Electroacoustique in Bourges. 2005-2006: visiting professor of composition, School of Music and Performing Arts ESMAE in Porto. Since 2006: Corwin Professor and Head of Composition, Music Department, University of California Santa Barbara; concurrently also Affiliate Professor, Media Arts and Technology as well as College of Creative Studies, UCSB. www.rlow.org/