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Blog archive for April 2004

OM 4.8000

April 1, 2004
For a couple of months I’ve been struggling to install Open Music on OS X. I had similar problems installing Jade. A while ago Tim Place figured out that Fink caused problems with the installer script he was using and managed to solve the problem. In Open Music version 4.800 the installer problem is solved as well and now I’m looking forward to digging into OM.


Thanks to Tim and Karim Haddad at Ircam for helping me out! :-)

Norway Remixed

April 1, 2004
Asbjørn Flø has remixed sound material from the installation Norway Remixed by Asbjørn me and Risto Holopainen to a radiophonic sound-art work with a total duration of 23’ 50". The composition is the Norwegian entry for the Radiophonic Competition at the Quinta Bienal Internacional de Radio Mexico 2004.000 It’s also a “pink offer” of NRK to the EBU and is to be broadcasted by at least 14 radio channels around Europe.

New Max externals

April 1, 2004
  • Objects and visualisation software for dealing with spatialisation and ambisonics.
  • Luigi Castelli has made objects for dealing with virtual analog bandlimited waveform generators and a quadraphonic panner and crossfader.

  • RTcmix~ is a Max encapsulation of RTcmix. Brad garton has been plugging it the best he can at the Max mailing list lately. I took a quick look at it yesterday and it seems to be a very powerful tool well worth checking out.
  • CMJ vol 28/1 contains two articles on banded waveguides. The DSP techniques are implemented in Max and can be downloaded here.

Meeting at the board of BEK

April 1, 2004
Most of today was spent for a meeting at the board of BEK the second meeting this year.

Sound workshops and more

April 1, 2004
My supervisor at the Art Academy Jeremy Welsh is launching a three week focus on sound in the arts this spring. I will be holding a three days workshop on Max/MSP April 21-23 Maia Urstad is doing a workshop on sound installations and sculptures Fast Forward is holding a workshop on sound and performance and Robert Worby will be doing lectures discussions and offering student supervision.


In addition: a two days seminar April 29-30 featuring David Toop (GB) Anna Karin Rynander (Se) Bjarne Kvinnsland Maia Urstad (N) Jørgen Larsson (N) Fast Forward (USA) and myself.

There’s more info here.

More Max externals

April 4, 2004
  • A-Chaos Lib by André Sier is a library of objects for chaotic processes. It is an extension of the Chaos-Collection by Richard Dudas (1996) with new additions to the objects that were present in it and the introduction of OS 9 and X support and also the introduction of new objects with new non-linear equations for which Paul Bourke’s www
    pages
    have been a precious assistance.
  • Eric Singer has ported the MIDI file playing object SeqPlayer to OSX
  • Jeremy Bernstein has ported Gary Nelson’s seedable random objects to OSX.

Autechre Interview

April 4, 2004
The latest issue of Sound on Sound features an Autechre interview (online version here) and a number of Max patches screen shots.


The Max patches reminds me of Halli‘s description of his first Max project done during a sonology course in Copenhagen with Andrew McKenzie. He was creating a huge patch with lots of patch chords metros buttons and toggles. It wasn’t supposed to do anything but blink in different ways sort of the mad professors fascination with machines.

Tuesday Afternoon

April 6, 2004
Jeremy has been in Kristiansand for a couple of days packing down the Dialogue – Transition installation and getting all of the equipment paintings and images to Bergen. I helped getting the stuff into the offices of Jeremy Jon Arne and myself at the Art Academy in the afternoon.


On my way back home an ambulance passed my car. It turned out that someone was attempting to or already had jumped off the Sotra bridge.

Blogs of other artists

April 7, 2004
Willem Sanders mailed me a link to the web log of Deutch artist Jouke Kleerebezem. “You will see that there is a possibility of having it personalized and at the same time a lot more silent.”


Checking in at the blog reviews that the students of Jill has been writing Terje Urnes’ review of the blog of Ivan Pope subtitled “My life as an artist” catched my attention. I didn’t find Terje’s review particularly useful but Ivan’s blog certainly is interesting. It’s mainly made up of images of works in progress. They are not necsessarily commented on but I find it fascinating to see how the material is evolving as time passes. Here’s a self portrait with computer.

Ivan is also maintaing a minimalist blog called Can’t code won’t code. It is supposed to address issues around the idea that it is worthwhile for artists to learn to write software code in order to control what they do.

A ride through Chernobyl

April 7, 2004
At the Spectre list I found a link to a photo essay of a motorbike ride through Chernobyl.


I drove through Nikel a little more than ten years ago and that was a pretty depressing experience too.

Changes to CoreBlog settings

April 8, 2004
The CoreBlog mailing list is useful. The other day Klaus described how to change the first day of the week to Monday.


Currently I’m creating a new skin and modifying css and dhtml settings to get a more customized look. If you see all kind of strange colors bear with me for a while I hope to be done in the next couple of days.

KwMap

April 9, 2004
KwMap is a different search engine. Based on current keywords it suggest related keywords. Here’s one of my first tests searching for sound installation. It’s surprising that so many terms and names relating to the Norwegian art scene pops up:
  • car sound installation
  • computer music
  • dj equipment
  • dj sound
  • elektronisk kunst
  • feil
  • glitch
  • henrik rylander
  • kinetic and sound installation
  • kme
  • lydkunst
  • music
  • musikk
  • netart
  • noize
  • performance
  • pling plong
  • rylander
  • samtidsmusikk
  • scottish sound installation
  • sound art
  • soundart
  • støy
  • uk sound installation
  • video installation

Notes on how to customize coreblog

April 11, 2004

Here’s notes I’ve been writing while trying to figure out how to customize the look of lostlog.

There’s a very brief description here but it’s far from sufficient for what I want to do.

  • I’ve created a custom skin as described above named “TrondSkin”. Problem: When attempting to change content of lossius/lostblog/skins/TrondSkin/style_css nothing happens. Instead I had to change lossius/lostblog/style_css to get visible results. This pussles me and I’ve been writing a mail to the CoreBlog mailing list askin if I’m missing out on something obvious.
  • In order to change content and layout of the sidebar: change modules/index_html to change what is to be displayed change content of each of the mudole dtml files in /modules/ to alter layout. This also pussles me a bit.

Yesterday I spent most of the time making a scetch for what I want lostlog to look like in the future. Here’s a scetch as plain html.

Back in Gray (temporary)

April 12, 2004
The blog is back at default settings for a short while. Mike Malloch of The KnowNet responded to my CorBlog-l mail with some exciting news on current development for coreBlog.


If I can use css for customising the layout instead of modifying css and heaps of dtml files I definitively prefere that.

Apart from that Klaus pointed out what I was doing wrong when dealing with CoreBlog skins.

Not enough silence

April 13, 2004
My website is named “musikk fra stillheten” roughly translated to “music from stillness”. This term has been a framework for my thoughts on music and my own music for 20 years now ever since I first got concerned with the ambiend music of Eno and several years before I first learned about Cage or Satie.


The website design was created last year by German design student Moritz Tredup during an internship at BEK. He intended the digital drawing images to be but a rough scetch for further design development but I really liked them the way they were and asked him to use them. I’m quite happy about his design it leaves silence and room in the web pages the illustrations are simple. My music tends to be the same. Even if it can be technically quite complicated the complexity is a mean for me to create life and variation but the overall expression is quite simple and minimalistic.





What is the visual parallell of auditive silence or quietnes?





Black?


White?




Space?



Low spatial frequency of information?







For me the curent default blog layout is aestheticly inadecvate in a number of ways.

It’s totally text based and it’s densily packed with text. In addition the fonts used are rather large IMO making the text pretending to be “big thoughts or statements”. I’d rather want the blog entries to be “small” and open-ended.



Will I have to blog in a different way as well in order to achieve this?




What is textual silence?









I don’t fancy the heavy emphasis on dates and times. Days with no blog entries simply disappears in the blog apart from being present in the calendar as days of no entry and thus seemingly waisted or unproductive. Why is it so important to emphasise what day and what time of the day the blog entry was made? Do it make the thoughts any different? To me it’s more distracting than relevant.

I don’t like the condensed perspective on time that the blog currently presents if I’ve been away from it for a day or two. That might possibly be the most important days but the blog is denying their existence.

To a certain extent it’s OK that there’s a trace of how the my projects thoughts life and blog developes over time but the date shouldn’t be to prominent or become the framework of all the blog entries. I’ll proberbly leave the sidebar calendar out. Furthermore it’s tempting to remove date and time for listings of recent entries comments and trackbacks in the sidebar. Instead I’d like to add a list of books I read and music I’m currently listening to.

Kicked myself in the butt

April 13, 2004
and joined Rhizome.org. Should have done that years ago.

Max Porn

April 14, 2004

By Matthew Aidekman.
Nerd stuff… :-)

Below is the patch itself.
max v2
#N vpatcher 0 44 1020 768
#P window setfont “Sans Serif” 12.000
#P comment 226 55 100 196620 by: me.
#P comment 226 39 130 196620 bored erotic fiction.
#P window setfont “Sans Serif” 9.000
#P newex 160 132 49 196617 bangbang
#P newex 108 132 49 196617 bangbang
#P newex 78 86 61 196617 sysexin
#P newex 165 153 32 196617 swap
#P newex 43 218 27 196617 pipe
#P newex 3 218 33 196617 pink~
#P newex 350 110 40 196617 peak
#P newex 3 86 32 196617 offer
#N movie 100 100 400 400
#P newobj 3 43 40 196617 movie
#P newex 40 86 35 196617 metro
#P newex 118 110 45 196617 groove~
#P newex 3 63 45 196617 forward
#P newex 50 63 35 196617 dialog
#P newex 126 175 50 196617 degrade~
#P newex 297 110 16 196617 in
#P newex 319 110 29 196617 out~
#P newex 264 110 29 196617 out~
#P newex 244 110 16 196617 in
#P newex 3 24 38 196617 begin~
#P newex 57 132 49 196617 bangbang
#P newex 37 110 41 196617 touchin
#P newex 42 175 79 196617 teeth~
#P newex 393 110 35 196617 spray
#P newex 82 110 35 196617 poke~
#P newex 167 110 41 196617 plugin~
#P newex 3 153 34 196617 play~
#P newex 3 153 33 196617 pink~
#P newex 211 110 29 196617 out~
#P newex 3 175 33 196617 kink~
#P newex 3 110 29 196617 grab
#P newex 86 153 40 196617 drunk
#P newex 42 153 40 196617 date
#P newex 37 197 33 196617 asin~
#P newex 127 153 35 196617 buddy
#P newex 3 132 49 196617 bangbang
#P newex 3 197 29 196617 anal
#P window setfont “Sans Serif” 12.000
#P comment 226 22 100 196620 the date
#P pop

Diagram

April 15, 2004
DIAGRAM is an electronic magazine of text art schematic and (as of recently) sound.


Helge Gaarder 1953-2004

April 15, 2004


Helge Gaarder died a month ago but I only learned about it yesterday while reading Ballade.

I started playing instruments when I was 7 but I didn’t get seriously involved with music until I was a teenager. At that time punk and new wave hit Norway. After at least 10 years of mediocre Norwegian pop music with bad lyrics in English singing in Norwegian became an important part of the “nyrock” movement as it was called. For several years I almost exclusively listened to Norwegian nyrock e.g. The Aller Værste Gjennomslag Stavangerensemblet Kjøtt Montage Circus Modern Program 80/81/82/… Can Can and Alle Tiders Duster. Helge Gaarder was the vocalist of Kjøtt.

This era is often reconned as the second gold age of Norwegian popular music (there was some good music made in the late 60s as well) with a lot of exciting stuff going on. I was to young to be allowed in at concerts but I listen to the music as much as I could often together with friends and I played in a band myself named MuzAk (with an anarchy circle around the A). That’s where I first started making my own music.

While at high school we had to do a rather large analysis of litterature and I chose to write about Norwegian nyrock lyrics analysing texts by Gjennomslag The Aller Værste Alle Tiders Duster Kjøtt and Circus Modern. The lyrics of Kjøtt and Circus Modern were the ones I focused the most on. The lyrics for both of the bands where mainly written by Helge Gaarder and for some years he was proberbly the one artist that influenced me the most. Later on I discovered Eno and got stuck with him.

The analysis was close to 50 pages all written on a typewriter dating from 1920 or so. It was supposed to be able to write black and red letters but most of them ended up being a bit of both. The resulting look felt perfectly right for the general feel of the subject at hand.

For some strange reason I’ve since working with and befriended several of my past heroes. The first LP I ever bought was by Program 81 featuring Maia Urstad on keyboards. Fellow BEK-er Gisle Frøysland played the guitar for Alle Tiders Duster and Jøran Rudi at NoTAM was the guitar player of Kjøtt. I never got to meet Helge though.

I tried to embed the video for “Beat Allegro” from Jørans Kjøtt web page as a homage to Helge but CoreBlog didn’t like the idea so I’ll have to make do with a link:

Beat Allegro

Nei det ekke lett men valget er ditt
hva vil du gjøre med livet ditt
vil du kremeres eller begraves i kristen jord?



RIP

On April 27 at 3 o’clock in the afternoon

April 18, 2004
On April 27 at 3 o’clock in the afternoon I instantaneously mastered to perfection all languages Such is the poet of the current era I am here reporting my verses in Japanese Spanish and Hebrew:


iké mina ni
sinu ksi
iamakh alik
&ensp &ensp &ensp &ensp &ensp zel
GO OSNEK KAID
M R BATUL’BA
VINU AE ESEL
VER TUM DAKH
&ensp &ensp &ensp &ensp &ensp GIZ
&ensp &ensp &ensp &ensp &ensp SHISH


Russian Futurist Aleksei Kruchenykh in Explodity (1913).
Quoted in Douglas Kahn: Noise Water Meat pp. 370-371.






The quote reminded me of a mail sent by Lisbeth to the internal mailing list for members of Verdensteatret as we were about to start development of what would gradually become “Konsert for Grønland”:

The 18 th of November 2003 the wind change over night and it become winter




Last November we tried to make decisions on several technical solutions for the production so that we should run into less problems in the middle of the production. This involved the decision of moving to Max for OSX and testing out Jade as a way to make it easier to capture settings for audio and video processing when improvising. The development is a rather non-linear process even if we end up with the production being a quasi-linear and dramaturgically predefined sequence of events.

The mailing list for some weeks were mainly used for discussions of technical matters. Lisbeths mail sort of marked the transition into the production itself and the shift of focus from tools to the artistic process.



Also futurist and dadaist litterature seems relevant to our attempts in the last two production at processing voices in real time often to the point of completely destroying the capability of semantic communication.


Sonorities

April 18, 2004
The program for the upcoming Sonorities contemporary music festival in Belfast seems very interesting and features a lot of electroacoustic works. It’s also a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Sonic Arts Network as well as the opening of the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen’s University Belfast.

tl.envExp ported to Pd

April 18, 2004
At the request of ROC one of my Max/MSP objects tl.envExp has been ported to Pd (Mac OSX and Linux) by CK.

Max evangelist

April 19, 2004
The Focus on Sound program starts today. I’m doing a Max intro workshop later this week. It only took 2 minuites for the workshop to be fully booked.


I’m planning a different approach to earlier workshops that I’ve been delivering. Instead of doing a systematic introduction to Max and MSP I’ll try to link the workshop to whatever projects the students are currenlty working on and would like to apply Max for. Hopefully it will not just be an introduction to a rather major topic but instead give them an impresison of whether Max can be of any use to their artistic projects and if it’s worth spending time getting to know or not.

I’ve sometimes considered making an intro-level Max mailing list in Norwegian. There’s quite a few persons around Norway digging into Max and the main Max list might be a bit heavy for newbies.

Meetings

April 20, 2004
Når fanden vil at intet skal skje

nedsetter han en komité.

Three meetings today and almost no time for anything else. Gert Lovink was visiting the school but I didn’t get to much time to talk to him. Also an interesting meeting on a project that might happen this autumn.

Line

April 21, 2004
Me and Kurt Ralske currently use the intranet at BEK to exchange video and sound for the devellopment of our “joint venture”. Very handy!


I’m thinking of using a multi-speaker setup with all loudspeakers hidden behind a discrete surface and all on one very long line. Sort of the total opposite of the project in kristiansand where loudspeakers where used for embedding the whole of the room in sound.

Long mail to Kurt this afternoon. I have to send one for Willem as well.

Also spent some time showing video for this and other projects to Jeremy and discussing upcoming projects and documentation of past project.

Max workshop

April 21, 2004

Preparing for the Max workshop has been a hassle. At BEk I knew the system it was a small organization and to me at least easy and fast to do what had to be done. At KHIB I’m amazed at the number of people I have to get hold of in order to know what room to use make sure there’s funitures power supply computers projector headphones you name it. I’ve spent several days trying to organize the workshoop and I’ve been very frustrated in particularly when I didn’t get admin passwords for the Macs so that I could install Max. So far onle the tech staff has known passwords for the computers. In my opinion the teching staff has to be able install programs in the Application folder system folder etc. Installing and updating programs is part of preparing for this kind of workshops.

I’m doing a quiet revolution though (well there’s a bit of shouting and yelling involved). As I get hold of passwords I’m changing to the same one for all the computers and forward to the rest of the teaching staff. I was so mad yesterday at 23:00 when I had still not managed to set up the computers. No-one dared refuse me anymore….

Topics covered for the first day:

  • simple example of adding two numbers. introducing concepts of objects patch chords inlets outlets argument and a faint taste of the right to left order principle of Max.
  • basic audio example gradually evolving:
    • cycle~ and ezdac
    • adding gain~ and meter~
    • stereo volume fader with linked gain~ objects. This you use all the time.
    • using two cycle~ objects in order to test it out
  • Use a number box to controll frequency. Multiply by 2 for the second cycle~ object kind of linking the first and second example.
  • Connect MIDI keyboard controller and use MIDI to play this really simple monophonoc synth.

We also talked about:

  • The history of Max/MSP/video modules (Nato Jitter SoftVNS)
  • What is Max and what is MSP?
  • Learning more about objects from the help files
  • Substituting a keyboard controller for other kinds of sensors

The problem about the current Max/MSP documentation is that it’s aimed at musicians. Art students don’t have the musical knowledge nor the will to work their way through 45 MIDI-based max tutorials and then on to MSP and/or Jitter.

Architecture and Contemporary Art

April 22, 2004
Lisbeth Bodd and Asle Nielsen of Verdensteatret is giving a talk on architecture and stage art together with Jon Refsdal Moe at Villa Stenersen at April 27th.

Program

30.03.04: Arkitektur og litteratur: Forfatter Kjartan Flagstad i samtale med stipendiat ved AHO Mari Lending.

27.04.04: Arkitektur og teater: Scenekunstnerene Lisbeth Bodd/Asle Nilsen i samtale med universitetslektor Jon Refsdal Moe.

11.05.04: Arkitektur og fotografi: Fotokunstner Eline Mugaas i samtale med kunsthistoriker Ida Kierulf.

Samtalene om arkitektur i Villa Stenersen er et forsåk på å nå et publikum utover en avgrenset fagkrets og vi tror at Villa Stenersen vil utgjåre en spennende ramme for vårens samtalerekke. I tillegg til at Villa
Stenersen kan regnes som et av funksjonalismens hovedverk i Norge er boligen et eksempel på et radikalt prosjekt igangsatt av en samtidskunstinteressert byggherre med stor respekt for det selvstendige kunstverk. Rolf Stenersen engasjerte arkitekt Arne Korsmo i 1937 en av datidens mest avantgardistiske arkitekter i
Norge.

Klokkeslett: 1800
Sted: Tuengen allé 10 c Vinderen
Inngang: Kr. 40 -
www.villastenersen.net

The Monty Pythons of Net Art?

April 23, 2004
pavu.com

Avgangsutstilling

April 23, 2004
Partyparty

Tonight is the opening of the graduation exhibition of students at the Academy of Fine Arts. The opening of the exhibitiontakes place at Bergen kunsthall at 20:00.

Afterwards there’s a party at the Art Academy. As you can see from the poster this will be a dark and stormy night…

Mode

April 25, 2004
Mode are 5 new plug-ins from Cycling 74 built using Pluggo technology.


Darwin Grosse one of the developers of Mode has a blog at CreativeSynth.

Live Cinema

April 25, 2004
Live Cinema is a new form of performance which is emerging on the boundary of Image and Sound it does not seek to illustrate one with the other but aims to investigate ways of communication and

interaction.

More info posted at BEKdot.

Editing skin again

April 26, 2004
I’m working on the look of the blog again. Mike Malloch from The KnowNet mailed me a preliminary version of the CSS-based skin for CoreBlog during the weekend. Gisle at BEK imported it into Zope/CoreBlog earlier today and now I’m trying to figure what it’s all about.


I’m not all that experienced on HTML and CSS so it will proberbly take a while to get it all right. In the meantime the blog might look really messy at times.

Abolish intellectual property wherever it kills !

April 26, 2004
On April 26th the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) organizes a global day of celebration for patents and intellectual property. For persons living with HIV &amp aids like us this event is a scandal. Because patents are being used to keep affordable life-saving medication from India or Brazil away from millions of dying people with aids in developing countries. Since the advent of life-prolonging HIV therapy in 1996 20 million people have died of aids with access only to patented grossly overpriced medicines. 95% of people with aids still don’t have access to the affordable generic HIV drugs.


On Monday April 26 between 4 and 5 pm European Continental Time (10-11 am Eastern Seaboard Time) take simple action against WIPO by taking part in a 1-hour “netstrike” (blocking WIPO’s website).


More info here.

The new adventures of DVD-Jon

April 27, 2004
Jon Lech Johansen’s DeDRMS program is able to remove the copy protection from Apple’s iTunes songs. This is a reaction of Apple’s endeavours to stop the distribution of PlayFair.


via “So Sue Me” Jon’s blog

CSS: Slowly getting there

April 27, 2004

The look of the blog is slowly getting closer to the desired look but at the moment it still looks like it’s caught in transition. It reminds me of a song by Talking Heads:

Seen and not seen

He would see faces in movies on t.v. in magazines and in books….
He thought that some of these faces might be right for him….and
Through the years by keeing an ideal facial structure fixed in his
Mind….or somewhere in the back of his mind….that he might by
Force of will cause his face to approach those of his ideal….the
Change would be very subtle….it might take ten years or so….
Gradually his face would change its’ shape….a more hooked nose…
Wider thinner lips….beady eyes….a larger forehead.

He imagined that this was an ability he shared with most other
People….they had also molded their faced according to some
Ideal….maybe they imagined that their new face would better
Suit their personality….or maybe they imagined that their
Personality would be forced to change to fit the new appearance….this is why first impressions are often correct…
Although some people might have made mistakes….they may have
Arrived at an appearance that bears no relationship to them….
They may have picked an ideal appearance based on some childish
Whim or momentary impulse….some may have gotten half-way
There and then changed their minds.

He wonders if he too might have made a similar mistake.

Sound Art at NRK

April 28, 2004
Every first sunday of the month NRK Alltid Klassisk will be broadcasting two hours of sound art. The progam is produced by Tilman Hartenstein.


Asbjørn Flø’s remix of Norway remixed is scheduled for the 5th of September.

Tiger Mountain Reloaded

April 28, 2004
Folk rock vocalist/chanteuse Caroleen Beatty (Bedlam Rovers Waycross Jon Langford) meets up with multi-instrumentalist Doug Hilsinger (Bomb Bill Laswell L.D. Beghtol of Magnetic Fields) for a complete re-interpretation of Brian Eno’s 1974 classic album “Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy.”


Amazon.com is taking preorders on it and has a scan of the cover.

Hilsinger plays all the instruments (using no keyboards synths or samplers) combined with Caroleen’s expressive voice – leads to a very organic and original take on this Eno album.

Eno heard the album and remarked “I was very moved by your versions of my songs…It’s strange and enlightening… I enjoyed your version of my LP.”

Via the Darkshark mail-l.
Item Information
Artists Name: HILSINGER DOUG with CAROLEEN BEATTY
Title: BRIAN ENO’S TAKING TIGER MOUNTAIN BY STRATEGY
Format: CD
Label: DBK WORKS
Catalog Number: 111
UPC Product Code: 646315011128
List Price: 17.98
Musical Category: ROCK/ROCKABILLY/PUNK
Release Date: 5/18/2004

WebDesktop

April 28, 2004
WebDesktop layers a web browser over your Mac OS X desktop. Mac OSX only but I know there’s similar utilities for Win.