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Blog archive for January 2006

Integra

January 1, 2006

Integra is a European-wide collaboration of research centres and professional new music ensembles to create a shared technological environment for the composition and performance of existing repertoire and new works using live electronics technology.

Developing along the three main axes of research creation and dissemination the project aims to increase the mobility of performers in Europe and to expand their repertoire by providing them with standard easy-to-use tools for performing new and existing music with live electronics.

Started in September 2005 Integra is a 3-year cooperation agreement supported by the European Commission through the Culture 2000 initiative and is led by UCE Birmingham Conservatoire UK. More information on the presentation and background pages.

NoTAM and BIT 20 are two of the participating members.

NIME 6 – 2nd Call for Participation

January 1, 2006

6th International Conference on
NEW INTERFACES FOR MUSICAL EXPRESSION

IRCAM – Centre Pompidou Paris France

Conference and Concerts: June 5-7 2006
Workshops: June 4 &amp 8 2006
Special Session: June 8 2006

http://nime06.ircam.fr/
nime06@ircam.fr

We encourage contributions of the following kinds:
* Papers/Reports/Posters (with optional demos)
* Live performances
* Interactive installations

Complete guidelines and the on-line submission interface are now available
on the NIME 6 website at http://nime06.ircam.fr/.

Documenting sound in Norway

January 2, 2006

According to news on NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting Company) radio channel P2 this morning 15 museums will cooperate to document sounds in Norway over the next three years. Field recordings will be carried out in different parts of Norway urban suburban and rural districts. The project will culiminate in an exhibition and also represent a documentation for the future of what Norway sounded like at a certain time in history.

The project will be managed by Internasjonalt Kultursenter og Museum.

Update: Internasjonalt Kultursenter og Museum (IKM) is part of a museum network for contemporary documentation. This network has launched a collaboration to strengthen research in the museums. The research project will run for the three years 2006-08 and is subdivided into 13 subprojects. Sound documentation will be one of these projects but all museums will not contribute to this project.

The sound project titled – . der hører vi vel hjemme – will be carried out by IKM. The purpose is to develop an understanding of the soundscapes surrounding us and investigate the meaning and improtance of sound in creating and communicating identity. Three main targets are:

Documenting and analysing the sound of the city in order to increase our understanding of contemporary life. How do we use sound in order to orient ourselves in the world?

How do we use musical categories to establish environments we feel at home in?

The sound of faith: What categories of sound do exist within the religious sphere and what functions do they have?

IKM will be collaborating with Institutt for Musikkvitenskap and Institutt for Antropologi at the University of Oslo for this research project.

Lager lydmuseum

Lyden av tutende biler hamrende gravmaskiner og subbende skritt skal samles inn og stilles ut på museum.

Av Kaja Figenschou

Gatelys som plipper biler som tuter og føtter som subber lager lyder som vi ikke alltid tenker over og som vi nok ikke alltid setter pris på. Men de kan faktisk fortelle noe om tiden vi lever i forteller informasjonsansvarlig ved Internasjonalt kultursenter og museum Hans Philip Einarsen.

- Vi mener om dette med lyd kan si noe om vår samtid og endringene i samtiden. Bare tenk på hvordan Oslo hørtes ut for 50 eller 100 år siden.

Banebrytende

Snart setter Internasjonalt kultursenter og museum i gang et lydprosjekt der de skal samle og dokumentere lydene. Og Einarsen skal samle lydene i Oslo.

I Oslo er det mange spennende lyder. Einarsen håper å finne lyder som gjør at man kan høre forskjell på bydelene i Oslo.

Lydprosjektet skal i løpet av en tre-års periode ende opp i en utstilling og Einarsen tror lydene vil utfordre den tradisjonelle museumsutstillingen.

- Vi ser på dette som et banebrytende prosjekt og håper lyd kan bli en ny kilde til dokumentasjon også inn i museumsammenheng.

Source: www.nrk.no 2006-01-02

Nimbus DVD Music

January 3, 2006

Nimbus Records has pioneered Surround Sound since 1972.000 All Nimbus recordings have been made using Ambisonics a system we prefer because it can capture the acoustic quality of each hall and recreate it in a domestic environment with great fidelity. Until now users have needed a specific Ambisonic decoder to be able to enjoy Nimbus recordings the way they were intended. As only a handful of manufacturers have made these the full effect of our recordings has only been available to a dedicated minority of listeners.

Now DVD makes it possible to deliver Nimbus Surround Sound recordings to home listeners with standard readily available equipment – all that is required is a DVD Video player connected to a DTS capable Surround Sound system or a DVD Audio player with multi-channel playback. We believe that Surround Sound will enhance your listening experience more dramatically than all other technical innovations combined.

Call for Participation: International Computer Music Conference 2006

January 4, 2006

Tulane University and the Newcomb Department of Music are proud to announce the
open call for submissions to the ICMC 2006.000 The conference will be held on the
Tulane University campus in beautiful New Orleans Louisiana USA from November
6
(Society of Electro Acoustic Music in the US). The nature of the collaboration
is part of a larger theme of the 2006 ICMC conference – ?multidimensionality.?

It is our hope to represent the multidimensional and multi-faceted field of
computer music today through concerts installations paper sessions poster
sessions demonstrations workshops and exhibitions as well as many other
special events and many giveaways and prizes.

We are currently finishing up the official webpage with detailed information
regarding the ICMC 2006 which will be up early January 2006.

Hurricane Katrina and Rita have brought much destruction to New Orleans but we
are eager to move forward and excited about the future of New Orleans and hope
that you will be part of this great conference and great city! Laissez les bon
temps roulez!

Sincerely
Tae Hong Park ICMC 2006 Conference Chair

SUMMARY OF DEADLINE DATES:

- Music video art and installations: March 4 2006
– Papers demonstrations and posters: March 4 2006
– Workshop and roundtables proposals: April 7 2006
– Exhibition proposals: April 7 2006

CALL FOR MUSIC VIDEO ART AND INSTALLATIONS:

ICMC 2006 invites the submission of music video art and installations
reflecting the multidimensional aspect of computer music today. We will have at
least 8 channels for sound projection and a number of instrumental resources
available on site including a select number of traditional Korean instruments.
Please refer to conference webpage for details (webpage will be up early 2006).

Submission Information

For detailed submission information please consult the music submission
instructions page (webpage will be up early January 2006).

Deadlines
Works must be submitted online by March 4 2006.000
Applicants will be notified of results by June 5 2006.

Submission formats
To be announced on webpage.

CALL FOR PAPERS POSTERS AND DEMONSTRATIONS:

ICMC 2006 invites the submission of papers and posters examining aesthetic
compositional educational musicological scientific and technological
aspects of computer music and digital audio. The theme of this year’s
conference is multidimensionality and we especially encourage submissions on
this topic.

Submission Information

For detailed submission information please consult the paper submission
instructions page (webpage will be up early January 2006). We have provided
templates in LaTeX and Word formats. To help ensure consistency in the printed
conference proceedings the technical committee will only review submissions
that use the ICMC 2006 template.

Proposed and final papers must be submitted through the website. We
unfortunately cannot accept printed papers via postal mail.

Deadlines

Papers must be submitted online by March 4th 2006.

Applicants will be notified of acceptance or rejection of papers posters and
demonstration proposals by May 28th 2006.000 For accepted submissions the final
deadline for submission of camera-ready versions is June 23rd 2006.

Submission Types

Short Paper (4 pages maximum in Proceedings 20 min. presentation)
Long Paper (8 pages maximum in Proceedings 30 min. presentation)
Poster (4 pages maximum in Proceedings)
Studio Report (4 pages maximum in Proceedings 20 min. presentation)
Demonstration Notes (1 page in Proceedings 45 min. demonstration)

Authors who submit short or long papers can also suggest demonstrating their
work if appropriate. A separate submission of a demonstration note is not
required in this case.

Submitted papers posters and demonstrations may be accepted in a different
format than originally submitted.

Content Areas include but not limited to:
Digital Audio Signal Processing
Sound Synthesis and Analysis
Music Analysis
Music Information Retrieval
Representation and Models for Computer Music
Artificial Intelligence and Music
Languages for Computer Music
Printing and Optical Recognition of Music
Mathematical Music Theory
Psychoacoustics Music Perception and Cognition
Acoustics of Music
Aesthetics Philosophy and Criticism of Music
History of Electroacoustic Music
Computer Systems in Music Education
Composition Systems and Techniques
Interactive Performance Systems
Software and Hardware Systems
General and Miscellaneous Issues in Computer Music
Studio Reports

CALL FOR ROUNDTABLE PROPOSALS:

ICMC 2006 invites the submission of roundtable proposals to explore current and
emerging issues in computer music today. We are looking for topics including
issues addressing the friction between music and technology culture society
unsolved problems in computer music future directions pedagogy performance
and relevant topics.

Submission Information

Proposal should include title objective extended abstract including a summary
of the topics to be covered names and affiliations of up to a total of 5
panelists (this includes the panel chair) who have made a commitment to
participate short summary of panelists? position statements and proposed
panel duration. Please see website for details (website will be up early
January 2006).

Deadlines

Proposals must be submitted online by April 7 2006

Submission Information

For detailed submission information please consult the roundtable submission
instructions page (webpage will be up early January 2006).

CALL FOR WORKSHOP PROPOSALS:

ICMC 2006 invites the submission of workshop proposals. The workshops should
ideally include a combination of practice and theory.

Submission Information

For detailed submission information please consult the workshop submission
instructions page (webpage will be up early January 2006).

Deadlines

April 7 2006

CALL FOR EXHIBITIONS:

ICMC 2006 invites the submission of exhibition proposals to showcase latest
products relevant to computer and electronic music digital audio and related
fields including software hardware educational tools performance interfaces
and other products of interest.

Submission Information

For detailed submission information please consult the exhibition submission
instructions page (webpage will be up early January 2006).

Deadlines

April 7 2006

CONTACT INFORMATION:

Tae Hong Park Conference Chair park@tulane.edu
Paul Botelho Music Chair pbotelho@princeton.edu
Georg Essl Paper Co-Chair Georg.Essl@telekom.de
Ichiro Fujinaga Paper Co-Chair ich@music.mcgill.ca

retrivr

January 4, 2006

Draw a sketch and search Flickr for similar images.

Via Absent without leave

xray.jit update

January 4, 2006

Wesley Smith has uploaded updates to the xray.jit library of Jitter externals.

New years resolutions

January 6, 2006

I’ve never cared much for new years resolutions. The few times I made any they were lost cases by January 3.000 So last year I found a new approach: I will only consider new year resolutions if they are sufficiently hedonistic and do not require any real efforts on my side. Here is my list for this year:

  • I’m not going to smoke more than 10 cigs a day. (I’m a non-smoker so this one is easy).
  • I’m going to drink more red wine. (I failed at this last year but I’ll try again.)
  • I’m going to spend more time watching the clouds drift by. (This one also failed last year.)
  • I’m going to purchase the Lynch “Mulholland drive” movie on DVD
  • I also want to get the video paintings DVD by Eno.
  • And I’m going to buy a stach of CDs from EMF.

soundasart

January 6, 2006

soundasart is a new Yahoo group on sound art. Recently there has been a lot of recommendations for readings including loads of books I didn’t know of beforehand.

LMW – What Goes Around Comes Around (2006)

January 10, 2006

by Trond Lossius, Jon Arne Mogstad and Jeremy Welsh

A five-day workshop in a project room at the Academy of Fine Art, Bergen. Wall painting, objects, projected images and multi-channel audio combined within a dynamic spatial structure.

WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND

January 11, 2006

Lossius_mogstad_welsh

Work in progress by Lossius Mogstad Welsh

Friday 13 January 1430 – 1630
Project room 6th floor KHIB Art Academy

Wine and serving. Welcome

Generator.x at Tau scene

January 17, 2006

The second leg of the touring exhibition Generator.x opened at Tau scene in Stavanger last Saturday. Having worked like crazy last week for the LMW stunt Friday afternoon the evening was spent packing down and carrying stuff back to my studio. BTW: Some images from the event can be found here.

Saturday morning I was driving to Stavanger for the opening. Depending on the weather that might be a nice 5 hours drive but this Saturday the weather was awful.

I got time to do some adjustments before the opening: Substituting for a better amplifier to get more volume and cleaner sound as well as doing some changes to how the ambisonic decoding happens in order to get more spacial depth and definition.

The curator Marius Watz had also arrived in Stavanger for the opening. He did a presentation of Generator.x in general and afterwards I did a short artist talk. After the opening Marius and Gisle Frøysland teamed up with local electronica musicians for three sets of VJ/electronica.

I’ve never been to Tau before so it was interesting seeing. The buildings used to belong to the local brewery but are currently being turned into one of the major art venues in Norway for all kinds of contemporary expressions.

The exhibition was now split over two spaces with the four art works being exhibited in “ølhaller” very rought spaces that suited the works excellent. The spaces are much darker than the Kunsthall at Tullinløkka was and the three video projects worked a lot better than in Oslo. In particular it became obvious that Chris Reas work has suffered from to much light being reduced to a bleak screen-saver-like projection. In Stavanger it worked a lot better and made much more sense.

Marius has posted several pictures at Flickr. I can’t find the cable for my camera at the moment but as soon as I can I’ll upload some photos from the exhibition.

iCE

January 18, 2006

DSPaudio Inc. announces iCE a new set of necessary externals for Max/MSP.

iCE allows users to build composing frameworks data storage and
processing systems and user interfaces for all manner of sequencing
directly within Max/MSP. iCE is the Swiss army knife of sequencing
and it’s stylish too. Use iCE to quickly build your own fully working
sequencer to your own specifications and never touch Logic Cubase or
Pro Tools again. *Note DSPaudio is addressing multi-tracking in the
future so get ready to work entirely in Max/MSP.

iCE 1.000 externals for Mac OS X are:

ice.key -Reports all keystroke information and provides useful features similar objects do not
ice.pump -Message router for developing UI’s
ice.lattice -Read slowly (2x) “The best data storage and retrieval system we’ve ever seen”
ice.mux/demux -Enhanced pack/unpack keeps lists tidy by preserving relative position of list elements
ice.xxx -Additional objects under development which deal with issues cool people care about

iCE allows composers to sequence entirely in Max/MSP employing both old
and new paradigms. Embedded sequences (sequencers sequencing other
sequencers) are easy to accomplish “a la” OpenMusic or Vision while
tracker based pattern sequencing is inherent. Creating your own timeline
poetry sequencer or hybrid tracker is now possible with a minimum of
effort.

User microtunings charmaps and display modes let you work how you want.

ASCII keyboard control of any composition environment is paramount to
the environments usefulness. Thus we’ve done our best to refine existing
input mechanisms for maximum UI speed. The ICE UI has been under concept
revision and development since 2002 with code diagrams and prototypes
reaching back to 1997.000 Every keystroke has been painfully thought about
several of us now suffer from stigmata.

Impulse Tracker and Fast Tracker 2 fans will find their old keystrokes are
not forgotten and better yet Max’ers who care not about the past can
create their own keyboard maps for all controls.

iCE is being introduced for early adopters at 50% off. Early birds who
purchase now can enjoy this discount and are entitled to a 50%
discount on the next major revision of iCE. We love you.

You can now purchase 3 years of our work in 30 seconds here:

http://order.kagi.com/?GSX

To read more about iCE view help patchers and get specifications:
http://www.dspaudio.com

We designed these tools for our own use and will continue to refine them
both based on our goals and your comments. We hope you’ll join us in
liberating your events.

Best wishes from
Peter Castine Anthony Bisset EPK &amp Jaymz

If you are interested in a windows port email:
ice_windows@dspaudio.com

Aud-X: Surround Sound Encoder

January 18, 2006

Aud-X is the name of a completely new surround sound encoder and decoder created by group of audio enthusiasts and professionals joined with love to the Cinema. For a long time people converted DVDs to Divx/Xvid with mp3 stereo sound. We have all felt that part of the orginal masterpiece was gone forever (the surround sound). The main Aud-X project task was to bring to people an easy technology for encoding Divx/Xvid movies with 5.100 sound the same way they used to do it with the simple mp3 stereo encoders. Since Aud-X 5.100 sounds great at 128 kbps and is compatible with AVI – you can reencode DVDs the same way you are used to but with full surround sound. Test Aud-X! Read our Aud-X DVD to Divx/Xvid conversion guide.

Seems to be Windows only at then time being.

Windows SP2 and Firewire

January 19, 2006

Performance of 1394 devices may decrease after you install Windows XP Service Pack 2.000 Information on how to improve matters can be found here.

Preparing for Tracker in February

January 20, 2006

I’m currently preparing for another tour with Gitte Bastiansen and Frode Thorsen in February. This time we’ll be giving concerts at schools north of Lillehammer in the Oppland region. The line up is:

Frode Thorsen – recorders
Gitte Bastiansen – dance with sensors
myself – live electronic processing

We have been using the DIEM Digital Dance system flex sensors attached to the body with wireless transmition of data to me. The sensors are starting to get worn out after approx. 50 concert + rehearsals and development. I’ve checked the possibilities of getting new sensors. They are more expensive than I expected: DKR 250 – a piece (that’s the equal of NOK 275 -). Add to that 25% for customs when importing. We probably need 20 or so new sensors so this adds up.

I did some searching around today to find information on various other sensors prices etc. in case we could find a cheaper solution but they generally seem to be costly.

I also found an interesting paper online by Lisa K Simone and Derek G Kamper on Design considerations for a wearable monitor to measure finger posture from Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation suggesting that Flexpoint sensors might be both the cheapest and most reliable. They tested a number of different sensors and these were the only ones that provided more or less repeatable values over time. Their general comment on available sensor systems is worth taking into consideration:

Bend sensors are used in a number of university and home projects despite our findings that most are not repeatable for moderate to fine resolution measurements. Instead most are appropriate for binary ON/OFF applications or applications that do not require high resolution or highly repeatable results.

Earlier on we’ve attenpted to use the bend sensors as continuous controllers in various ways with varying results to say the least. The sensors provide MIDI CC messages with a supposed range of 0-127. In real world the range tend to be much more limited with a total range somewhre between 10 and 20 and also drifting over time. I’ve supposed that the drift was caused by variations over time of how the sensors were positioned at the body. But according to Simone and Kamper the electronic properties of the bend sensor itself might change over time and quite rapidly so:

The first sensor evaluated was the Abrams-Gentile Entertainment Inc. (New York NY) sensor patent #5 86 785.000 Attempts to measure repeatable bend resistance versus calibration tube diameter failed because the measured resistance decayed over time. The Abrams-Gentile sensor exhibits the most common behavior that we will refer to as Type A behavior and it appears in Figure 2 as line “AG”. The sensor reached a peak resistance value just as it was wrapped around the calibration tube with an immediate decay in resistance over time. We expected that the sensor values would be constant however the drift in measured resistance prevented an accurate and repeatable measurement of bend. To eliminate other potential sources of error the analysis was repeated on ten other sensors and the problem finally isolated to the sensors by testing each directly using an ohmmeter.

The average decay in resistance while on the tube was computed. After 30 seconds the average error for the Abrams-Gentile sensors was 9.5% of full scale and 24.4% of step function rise resistance (Table 1). The Abrams-Gentile sensor never settled on a final resistance value but over an extended two-day data collection session continued to slowly decay. While these sensors are appropriate for many applications such as position detectors and indicators of gross movement we determined that they are not appropriate for accurate and repeatable measurements of finger flexion.

Considering my own experience with the DIEM system this makes a lot of sense. We were hardly able to use those sensors in a meaningful way at all until I started calculating running means of input values and deviations from those means and used normalised versions of those values to control musical parameters. For this I used the running average abilities of lp.stacey from the Max library Litter Power Package by Peter Castine.

If time permits I’ll try to completely reconsider how to use and interprete the sensors for the upcoming tour.

Please note that this is not meant to be a harsh critiique of the DIEM sensor system in general rather an aknowledgement that expectations towards the quality of the data from the flex sensors have to be lowered quite a bit compared to what we hoped to be able to achieve initially. Apart from that the DIEM system have proved very stable and reliable. We’ve never had any comunication problems of any sort between the sender and the transmitting system. This part seems to work flawless.

I have another major addition to work on as well: I’ve got myself a Coninuum Fingerboard and I’m planning for it to get it’s debut during this tour.

tl.objects v.2.2.0

January 21, 2006

In December François-Eudes Chanfrault was kind to port all of my MaxMSP externals to Windows. I’ve finally had the time to wrap it all up. tl.objects v.2.2.0 is available for download here.

A big big thank you to f.e.!

Sacred Noise

January 23, 2006

The association of Noise and power has never really been broken in the human imagination. It descends from God to the priest to the industrialist and more recently to the broadcaster and the aviator. The important thing to realize is this: tp have the Sacred Noise is not merely to make the biggest noise rather it is a matter of having the authority to make it without censure.

Wherever Noise is granted immunity from human intervention there will be found a seat of power.

R. Murray Schaefer

The idea of North

January 23, 2006

The destruction of the quiet northern winter by the jamming of snowplows and snowmobiles is one of the greatest transmogrifications of the twentieth-century soundscape for such instruments are destroying the “idea of North” that has shaped the temperament of all northern peoples and has germinated a substantial mythology for the world. The idea of North at once austere spacious and lonely could easily throw fear into the heart (had not Dante refrigerated the center of his Hell?) but it could evoke intense awe for it was pure temptationless and silent.

R. Murray Schaefer

romanticism

January 23, 2006

Romanticism starts at twilight – and ends with electricity.

R. Murray Schaefer

Underskog

January 31, 2006

Underskog is the latest fancy for how to avoid doing something useful for the next half hour. At current you have to be invited to become a member. I prefer social networks to be free open and transparent but hopefully it will be turned open as it matures.