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Blog archive for September 2006

Flounder

September 5, 2006

Øyvind Brandtsegg has been creating sound to accompany the sculpture Flounder at Straumen in Inderøy Norway. You can also listen to the sound here

The sound installation Flounder is created by the composer musician and programmer Øyvind Brandtsegg. This work of sound has been built over an existing sculpture by the sculptor Nils Aas which carries the same title and which is located at Straumen in Inderøy Norway.
The work was initiated in 2003 while Nils Aas was still alive and he showed great interest in the initiative. He thought that the sound would add a new dimension to the sculpture and said: – I really would like to hear the Flounder sing – .

Ballade had a lengthy interview of Øyvind a few days ago.

Dans til musikken

September 6, 2006

- Jeg har gjort det jeg har hatt lyst til og det har ført til at jeg har vært blakk. Men jeg fikk dama som jeg elsket over alt på jord jeg fikk den fineste ungen man kunne få og jeg har spilt i det tøffeste bandet som kunne tenkes. Så jeg har egentlig klart meg ganske bra.

Lasse Myrvold passed away two days ago. He was one of my teenage heroes a pioners of the nyrock era (Norwegian punk/new wave) showing that it was possible to sing rock music in Norwegian and make it sound intellegent and cool. He passed away the day before a tribute record was released.


Sound art festival in Bergen

September 8, 2006

The Sounnd art gallery in spe in Bergen is presenting a mini festival next week. Press release below (in Norwegian):

 

L Y D G A L L E R I E T PRESENTERER:
HøstL d 2..6 – en minifestival for eksperimentell lyd
12.000

I september går en av landets kanskje mest kuriøse små festivaler av
stabelen i Bergen – nemlig H"stL d 2..6 – en minifestival for
lydkunst. Bak prosjektet stå r det nyetablerte LYDGALLERIET som i
løpet av 2007 vil starte opp som Nord-Europas eneste galleri dedikert
til lydbasert samtidskunst.

H"stL d 2..6 vil i perioden 12.000 – 17.000 september presentere en en
serie happenings og konserter med store navn fra inn-og utland i Østre
Skostredet og på Landmark. I tillegg vil det åpnes en utstilling i det
fremtidige gallerirommet i Østre Skostredet 3 med unge Bergensbaserte
kunstnere som jobber med lydrelaterte prosjekter.

Program:

*Tirsdag 12.000 September – konsert: Charles Curtis spiller Eliane Radigue
Østre Skostredet 3.000 Dørene åpner kl. 20.00. Konsertstart kl. 21.00

*Onsdag 13.000 September – konsert: Charles Curtis spiller Alvin Lucier
Landmark. Dørene åpner kl. 20.00. Konsertstart kl. 21.00

*Torsdag 14.000 September – konsert og performance: Leif Elggren og
Brandon LaBelle Landmark. Dørene åpner kl. 20.00. Konsertstart kl.
21.00

*Fredag 15.000 September – utstillingsåpning: Østre Skostredet 3.000 kl. 20.00.
Utstillingen er også åpen lørdag og søndag fra 12.000 – 17.000
Kunstnere: Sandra Truté Atle Selnes Nilsen og Arne Bakke.
Selnes Nilsen spiller på installasjonen kl. 21.000 fredag og kl. 16.000
lørdag og søndag.

Prosjektet er støttet av Norsk kulturråd Bergen kommune og Kulturnatt 2006.

Vennlig hilsen Å sne Dahl Torp
produsent: 98 62 35 73
asnedahltorp@NOSPAMhotmail.com

www.lydkunst.no

Exhibiting at Høstutstillingen

September 8, 2006

Høstutstillingen opens tomorrow. Contrary to my usual habit of working to the last minute our installation
(Staged bodies in collaboration with Karen Kipphoff) has been completed several days ago as there are press previews reviewing commities etc. needing to see the exhibition prior to the opening.

I have been very pleasently surprised by the working conditions we have got. In advance I expected the exhibition to be over-crowded leaving to little space for everything. Not so. Our installation is inside a separate 8×7 meter room built for the occation. The exhibition spaces at Kunstnernes hus are huge and impressing with very long reverbation. Our room initially had a strong acoustic coupling to the room outside but using molton for the roof and carpets on the floor we have been able to reduce reverbation acoustic coupling and sound/noise disturbance in and out of the room to a satisfying level.

I have completely redone the patches used for audio based on the testing I did at Hordaland kunstsenter in June this year. I am now using 2nd order ambisonic encoding and decoding over 8 speakers fitted along three of the four walls of the space. Encoding/decoding is done using the ambisonic objects developed at ICST as implemented in Jamoma modules. I tested using 1st 2nd and 3rd order encoding. For the number of speakers used 2nd order seemed to perform the best. I suppose that the order used is depending on the number of speakers in a way somewhat similar to how digital sampling works. A horisontal 1st order signal contains 3 encoded channels and requires 6 (twice as many) speakers to function properly. As far as I remember 2nd order horisontal encoding contains 6 channels and might need 12 speakers to function properly. But we are intentionally leaving a hole at the back and for the rest of the space 8 speakers seems to work satisfyingly.

I have not had the time to see all of the exhibition yet but there are quite a few works that has grabbed my attention. Kristoffer Myskja has an intriguing sound installation that was an instant hit during the press conference yesterday the colors in the video installaion by Michel Pavlou are amasing the same goes for the video by Christian Bermudez and I really enjoy the intelligent rythm in the video by Farhad Kalantary. The sculpture by Elin Drougge blends with the architecture in the most amazing way. There are good installations by Inga Søreide and Hedda Leivestad/Lotte Konow Lund not to mention the intervention outside the building by På l Vigeland. There are a lot of paintings pictures prints and photos in the exhibition. So far Esther Marie Bjørneboe Lars Erik Svensson Jan Skomakerstuen Niklas Mulari and Tommy Johansson are among the ones that have been grabbing my attention.

Yesterday I also managed to find time to pass by AVAB-CAD to look at fabrics to be used for the exhibition at Hordaland kunstsenter in November. The magic word of the day turned out to be “skinkelerret”.

In the eveing I attended the Norwegian premier of the dance performance “An unfinished story” coreographed by Per Roar sound by Jørgen Larsson. The performance forms part of his final evaluation for the research fellowship. It was a performance that is not easily forgotten and it will probably take a few days to digest.

Tonight it’s time for party party. But first I have to cure the video projectors of Alzheimer regarding settings…

Bessies award to Verdensteatret

September 19, 2006

Verdensteatret has received the New York Dance and Performance Awards a.k.a. The Bessies in the category Installation &amp New Media for Concert for Greenland at P.S. 122.000 Cool!

For building exquisite links between seemingly incompatible technologies and materials -
robots video piano driftwood and computers for sharing their succinctly visualized yet
beautifully ambivalent relationship to hidden landscapes and for offering a poetically and
emotionally evocative soundscape of a far-off place in – Concert for Greenland – at P.S. 122.

Defining Sound Art

September 19, 2006

Maia has been requesting a brief defenition of sound art among the folks involved with Lydgalleriet (the wannabie sound art gallery in Bergen). Below is my suggestion (in Norwegian). The definition of sound art was discussed at lengths at the Sound As Art list earlier this year starting here.

Lydkunst arbeider med lyd som representasjon fenomen og kunstnerisk materiale. Lydkunst kan forståes som et utvidet felt i forhold til musikk eller som et tverrestetisk felt på virket av musikk billedkunst performance og ny media kunst. Noen viktige historiske referanser er futurisme John Cage elektronisk og eksperimentell musikk fluxus minimalisme The Canadian Soundscape Project installasjonskunst og performance. Sentralt i mye lydkunst står problematisering og utforsking av kontekst lyd som fenomen persepsjon rom tid og tidsopplevelse ikke-narrative strukturer det performative og forholdet mellom lyd og visuelle uttrykk. Lydkunst kan presenteres på mange ulike måter f.eks. som konsert happening performance installasjon soundwalks lydfesting og radio.

Building model

September 20, 2006

HKS model

 

Lately I’ve been building a 1:25 model of the gallery space at Hordaland kunstsenter where the final exhibition for the fellowship will be exhibited November 3-12. I’ve never built this kind of models before but I wanted to do it this time just to see what it would do to the process and how and if I might benefit from it. It has occurred to me that this is a kind of spacial score.

Back when I started doing counterpoint exercises as part of the composition study I was reading a book taking the route from one voice (primordial line) to two part counterpoint (species 1-5 and mixed species) and then three-part counterpoint. For the primordial line exercises it recommended that the voice should be sung rather than played on piano or similar. When moving on to two-part exercises it recommended one voice to be sung the other played and then switching: singing the 2nd part playing the first. Little by little I found that my imagination and inner hearing was trained so that i ended up being able to write two- and three part exercises at least the simpler ones without having to play them just singing one voice and “hear” the others.

Later on when studying orchestration I started approaching it in a similar way making it a point to train my own imagination for how different instruments would sound without necessarily hearing it in real life. Some other students depended on Finale and synths a lot for their exercises but I tried to avoid having to rely on hearing the sounding result (or a simulation of it) all the time. Most of the time composers don’t have access to the instruments and instrumentalists they are writing for so this ability to imagine what it eventually will sound like is crucial.

Moving into electronic sound and work on installations I have tried to extend the capability of my own imagination to the new fields. So for most of the installations done over the past years it has been a balance of making decisions at the spot while building the installation in order to respond to the site physically and acoustically and in parts I’ve made decisions beforehand based on imagination of how the end result would be. But I have hardly ever spent time on sketch books drawings models or similar. The closest I have gotten is a folder or two of abandoned Max patches.

This installation will require a lot of work in a very short time. One of the benefits of the model I have seen so far is when discussing with others and for planning practical details concerning how to do it all.

Today I finally got to take some photos. Bringing the camera close to the model revealed a different look that I find interesting. When getting as close as in the two shots below the feeling of it being a downscaled model starts blurring. The stands for the two speakers look a bit phony though…

HKS model

 

HKS model

 

For comparisment I am adding three shots taken in May this year. I was fortunate to be able to work in the space for several weeks back then doing acoustic tests development for spatialisation and ambisonics and think about the physical layout of the room. That was really useful and a rare occation to spend more than just a few days prior to the opening for tuning into the space. So much for the imaginative ability claimed above…

Hordaland kunstsenter

 

Hordaland kunstsenter

 

The windows have since been sealed off so the lovely daylight in the room is no longer possible to achieve. I am anyway going to make the room into a darker place painting the walls and doing other modifications.

Hordaland kunstsenter

 

Birdsong? – No thanks!

September 20, 2006

eurotrash

 

Speaker at Oslo S.

Nadine Robinson: alles grau

September 21, 2006

Alles_grau
A few days ago David Byrne mentioned an installation by Nadine Robinson at the Studio Museum of Harlem NY. “alles grau” is a sculptural sound-painting measuring over eleven by forty-five feet the sound-painting is installed into a wall and accompanied by dense fog that swirls through the exhibition space. Hundreds of speakers built into the piece play an assortment of popular dramatic soundtracks each derived from a different vernacular for the end of time. Formally the speakers in alles grau in grau malen mirror the figural arrangement of Michelangelo’s fresco The Last Judgment (c 1536-41) painted in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican in Rome. Robinson draws on the fresco’s
central horizontal band of figures to arrange undulating speakers mimicking the saints’twisting contorting
bodies.

Information on quite a few more interesting works of hers can be found here from what seems to have been more or less a kind of retrospective exhibition.

While on Davids web pages make sure to tap into the net radio. One of the best mixes of interesting music I have heard in a long while. And whenever I hear artists complaining about Powerpoint presentations I start thinking of this.

Sound art gallery being established in Bergen

September 27, 2006

Lydgalleriet the sound art gallery that a bunch of people are working on establishing in Bergen was granted NOK 700.000 from The Norwegian Art Council last week. Wow!

A well of algorithms

September 27, 2006

Paul Bourke has a web site with a well of information on technical issues mainly related to computers video and graphics. Here’s some of the information that has caught my attention so far:

  • A few days ago I added a new external to Jamoma based on the algorithm he provides for cubic interpolation.
  • The inside/outside polygon test might be combined with theory of convex hulls to define a convex hull for an array of arbitrarily positioned loudspeakers in two-dimensional space to determine if a virtual source is positioned inside or outside the convex hull. AndrÈ Sier has ported the method for Distance based amplitude panning (DBAP) proposed by me on the Max list some years ago to C as Max externals. One of the challenges remaining to be solved is what to do with the virual source once it moves outside the convex hull defined by the speakers. This test might bring us one step closer to approaching that.
  • In this context it might also be relevant to be able to determine whether a line segment intersects a 3 vertex facet calculate the distance from a point to a line and from a point to a plane not to speak of combining clipping a line segment to a complex polygon in combination with finding the centroid of a polygon.
  • The above can also be applied for another problem that preoccupies me at the moment: If one define a subspace of RGB colorspace defined by a limited number of colors (points in RGB-space) and the convex hull defined by these points how can one map any point in RGB-space onto the nearest point on this convex hull? This will equal a painterly probem of saying that you are to use a limited palett made up of only a few colors and the possible mixes of these colors. How do you best manage to represent the true colors of a photo using this limited palett? I’ve been able to solve the problem using two colors only but once I expand to three colors it grows much more complex and I have to find a different more general approach to the problem.
  • Two-dimensional Fourier transforms als fascinates me and I would like to be able to explore some of the potential for treatment of photos of video this could offer.

77 million Paintings and Derek Jarman on DVD

September 27, 2006

77million_paintings
Brian Enoís í77 Million Paintingsí is now available as a limited edition VD/Art Software Package. í77 Million Paintingsí is a generative project – a “visual music” programme using television and computer screens to create constantly evolving paintings.

Also available are several restored / remastered movies on dvd with Eno music:

Jubilee by Derek Jarman
Sebastine by Derek Jarman
Glitterbug by Derek Jarman as VHS PAL tape
Glitterbug by Derek Jarman (plus more) on dvd