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Blog archive for July 2006

Two sound installations

July 5, 2006

I am currently on a kind of tour with Jeremy and Jon Arne doing installations combining video painting and sound. Last Saturday the exhibition “Ta med en venn” (Bring a friend) opened at Seljord kunstforening including an installation by yours truly and yesterday we finalised another installation as part of Quartfestivalen the biggest rock festival of Norway in Kristiansand. Jørgen Larsson is also doing a sound installation here so if you are in Kristiansand for the festival check them out.

I’ll be back with more pictures etc. later. The weather is fantastic and I’m off for a swim.

Convolution external for MaxMSP

July 6, 2006

Thomas Resch has made a convolution external for MaxMSP. The addition of a good CPU-efficient external for convolution of impulse responses would currently be my main feature request for a future version of MaxMSP so I am really looking forward to testing this external out.

OSC network discovery and announcement

July 6, 2006

Remy Muller has released a draft verison of a Max external doing OpenSoundControl service discovery and announcement using Bonjour/ZeroConf. This can be used to automatically set up OSC communication in a network.

LMW – Improsynth / jc 87 (2006)

July 7, 2006

Installation by LMW (Trond Lossius, Jon Arne Mogstad and Jeremy Welsh).

The installation in a container formed part of a sound art program at one of Norway’s biggest rock festivals. Outside the container the logo “LMW” was painted in large letters and rasterised patterns and stripes of colour painted at one of the short walls.

The installation at the Quart festival

July 10, 2006

Q-art installation 1

The information sign for the installation at the Quart festival in Kristiansand last week. It has a kind of circus feeling. The Quart festival is the biggest rock festival in Norway. This year it also featured two sound installations one by Jørgen Larson and the other by Lossius – Mogstad – Welsh combining sound video and painting.

Q-art installation 2

Both sound installations were situated in containers. This is a view from the outside of our container with big container-style corporate LMW painted on to it. The short end of the container has additional painting added to it. The inside of the container was quite dark with a small mainly black and white video presented on a small LCD screen at the far end of it. Along one of the sides of the container 8 loudspeakers were used for sound with various layers of sound moving back and forth. The sound was mainly based on recordings of me going bananas hitting the container in various ways. These recordings were further treated. The idea was to make sure that the sounds used would contain (sic!) a lot of resonating frequencies bringing the container into vibration. Sound volume was fairly loud. It had to be as we had the distant sound from the concerts making a very clear presence.

Walking into the container the perception would be bewildered. One would be unsure how long the container was and how far away the video projection was. The sound would make a strong physical impact and you would feel that the whole of the container was moving and shaking including the floor that you were standing on. On sunny days the container would also get quite hot making it a slightly uncomfortable and bewildering experience.

Pictures by Jeremy Welsh.

Sound as Art: Call for papers

July 12, 2006

SoundAsArt Conference
Aberdeen Scotland
November 24th 25th and 26th

SoundAsArt: Blurring of the BoundariesOver the past several years a growing fascination with the emerging art form Sound Art has become prevalent within arts communities and academia. But what is it how is it defined and what is the impact on current practices of composers artists and those working in related fields (video sculpture architecture etc.)?

The conference will take place over a three day period and will feature papers/talks installations soundwalks and performances. The entire content of the conference will be documented for release and made available online in pdf/mp3 format.The conference is presented by the artist group urbanNovember in partnership with the University of Aberdeen with generous support of the Aberdeen City Council.

Call For Papers (Abstracts)

We welcome papers on the topic of sound art that address questions of origin exploration of boundaries between related practices investigations of current practices and speculation on the future development of sound art. Papers by individuals wishing to present their own work in relation to these issues are also welcome.

Proposals in the form of an abstract (500-1000 words) should be submitted via the conference website at http://soundasart.urbannovember.org (go to “Abstract Submission” and select “Refereed Abstract and Paper Submission” and “Submit a New Abstract or Paper” no later then July 21st. Please do submit early you will be able to revisit and change your submission until that date.

Please note that only papers that can be presented in person will be accepted. Unfortunately we are not able to provide any financial assistance although the conference is free for all to attend.

Key Note Speakers include Professor Jonty Harrison composer/performer Rajesh Mehta and sound artist Christina Kubisch. Guest artists include performers Keith Rowe
Rohan de Saram and Bill Thompson. Installations by Giancarlo Toniutti James Wyness
and soundwalks by Tony Whitehead. Others to be confirmed.

The peer review panel includes:

Dr. John Levack Drever
Lecturer in Composition
Goldsmiths College University of London

Jonty Harrison BA DPhil (York)
Professor of Composition and Electroacoustic Music
University of Birmingham

Rahma Khazam MA
Writer Music journalist

Dr. Fiona Maclaren
Lecturer of Photography
Nottingham Trent University

Rajesh Mehta
Composer Performer

Dr. Ken Neil
Head of the MFA in Critical Social Art Practice at Gray’s School of Art
The Robert Gordon University Aberdeen

Dr. David Reid
Lecturer in Photography
Nottingham Trent University

Dr. Pete Stollery
Composer and Reader in Electroacoustic Music and Composition
University of Aberdeen

Bill Thompson
Performer Sound Artist

If you have any questions please contact us at
soundasart@urbannovember.org

Thank you

Bill Thompson
Peter Troxler

SoundAsArt Conference http://soundasart.urbannovember.org
urbanNovember http://www.urbannovember.org/
University of Aberdeen Music http://www.abdn.ac.uk/music/
Aberdeen City Council http://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/
soundasart list http://groups.yahoo.com/group/soundasart/

Thesis on live cinema

July 24, 2006

Mia Makela aka SOLU has written a master thesis on live cinema a recently coined term for realtime audiovisual performances.

Colorspace study

July 26, 2006

colorswatch

Some studies of projections in RGB color space.

In the RGB color space two points (colors) are chosen and represents the end points of a line segment. This line segment represents the colors that are possible to achieve by mixing the two colors.

Each pixel of the image is then considered a point in RGB space and projected the shortest possible distance onto the line segment. The line segment is restricted at both ends so that projected points falling outside the limits are clipped to the end points.

The process is simular to using a palett of two colors and then projecting the image onto the limited color space offered by mixing the two colors. The colorswatch image above is used for creating the first 6 images.
The images were created using Max/Jitter.

 

colorspace_1

 

colorspace_2

 

colorspace_3

 

colorspace_4

 

colorspace_5

 

colorspace_6

 

 

Some additional images to see how this work with actual images and textures:

 

 

Loudspeaker cable:

colorspace_7

 

We are the robots:

colorspace_8

 

Loudspeaker skyline:

colorspace_9

 

By the lake:

colorspace_10

 

Poème electronique:

colorspace_11

 

Snow texture:

colorspace_12

 

Rock texture I:

colorspace_13

 

Rock texture II:

colorspace_14

 

Picture from an exhibition:

colorspace_15

Handmade Electronic Music

July 26, 2006

Hardware_electronic_music
Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking
Nicolas Collins
Routledge 2006
ISBN 0-415-97592-1

In these days of digital music production – laptop performers GarageBand audio programming environments (Max/ MSP PD supercollider) &amp iPod DJ’s it’s very easy to forget the simple facts of electronic music. We forget the hidden ugly component parts of our pretty iMacs &amp Viaos resistors capacitors chips &amp electrical current which enable us to run our software or download bit torrents were once the direct (analogue) source of sound.

Early electronic music (&amp the recording of music itself) was born of experimenting artists &amp engineers patiently listening to the bleeps swoops and crackles of electricity as it flowed through components loving soldered together by hand. The early pioneers of electronic music had to build their own instruments from scratch finding new sounds as they went inventing entirely new musical languages &amp forms pulling new sounds from the ether.

Reviewed at Furtherfield.

Jamoma 0.3.2

July 30, 2006

Jamoma 0.3.2 has been released. Change log can be found at the Jamoma blog.

Jamoma will also be distributed as a free add-on to Tap.tools.