This is a collaboration between Alphonse Izzo and Lief Ellis. Izzo created the audio and Ellis constructed the video. The idea behind the work is based on a feeling of detachment when entering overwhelmingly large and crowded urban environments. There is a sense that one is in another world. The famous crossing in Tokyo was a good example of this kind of environment. [1]
A performance by Palindrome at the 2008 SEAMUS (Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States) conference at the University of Utah. Robert Wechsler, dancer/choreographer, Dan Hosken, sound and interactive sound programming. The video from a camera focused on the dancer is analyzed in realtime by the program EyeCon and that motion data is passed to another computer where it is used to control sound using the program Max/MSP. [1]
Time Sculptures II considers another aspect of the nature of time: the moment, one often not strictly defined section of the present – between the past and the future. Only at the moment – instant – we do exist and there is a past, a present and future. The moment is constantly exposed to a transient, which makes us aware of a time process, whose inner pulse should get significant through Time Sculputures II.
Times Sculptures II mimics the process of time by an artificial, through computer algorithms generated sound basis. The breathing of the time – from future to present to past – a constantly repeating process (… which actually is never repeated…) gets acoustically audible. In the background – sometimes close, sometimes far away, sometimes up, sometimes down – singing and voices are perceived.
The texts consciously cross path of the rather rhythmical character of the electro-acoustic parts. Citations from a comparison of a figure of Buddha from 6th – 7th century, and Rodin’s ‘The Thinker Man’ are used: Both figures represent the time flow from the past to the present into the future – as a process of thinking: ‘Where do I come from?’ and ‘Where do I go to?’, which is for Buddha the search for the nirvana, and for Rodin’s ‘Thinker in front of the Gates of Hell’, in high tension, muscular, and yet internalized ponder over the deeds and destiny of man.
Musically Time Sculptures II explores metallic sounds. The basis are algorithmically generated melodic and colourful artificial sounds. The vocals come in their way of the rather rhythmical electro-acoustic parts. – Depending on what metallic sounds you follow the piece will generate various feelings of time: One sound is chopped up, one goes a very long time, one stops from time to time. [1]
This is a performance for Buchla Lightning and synthesizer from 1998. I am, in 2010, returning to my work with the Lightning, and find that this performance still stands the test of time, despite the fairly low quality of the video. MaxMSP was used to control the Lightning performance. The entire performance is 13 minutes long, so the remaining section is on a second video. [1]
The Melting Sun is an ambient composition in the Bohlen-Pierce scale, whose tonality, timber, volume, and timing are determined algorithmically from a video of the sunset.
The sounds heard can be separated into two groups: the drones, and the melodies. Both groups feature three different Csound instruments that each correspond to various types of Red, Green, or Blue values extracted from the video. These data, combined with the data gathered from the position of the sun, control various parameters of the composition. Some of the data mapping choices are arbitrary, and some are obvious (i.e. the overall brightness controls the cutoff frequency of the global filter for the drones).
The composition is in the Moll II mode of the Bohlen-Pierce scale. The note numbers used for the drones and the melodies are predetermined, but the base frequency of the scale is not. In fact, the base frequency, or the tonality of the composition, shifts continuously throughout the piece with sun’s position, but the process is too slow to be perceptible—just like the movement of the sun itself. The three melodic instruments actually play the same long loop of notes, but at different timings and also in different tritaves. The timing itself changes continuously, and as the sun comes lower in the sky and causes an illusion that it is gaining speed, the notes are played more frequently. The composition currently uses previously recorded video material, but in the future it will allow the use of a visual live feed of the sunset. [1]
[1] http://bohlen-pierce-conference.org/compositions/matsumiya-the-melting-sun
Here’s a 5-minute excerpt of a real-time video piece I presented as part of the Make Over show at OV Gallery in Shanghai, January 23-March 13, 2010.
The show was a response to the dramatic beautification campaign that has overrun Shanghai in anticipation of hosting the World Expo this year. The falling objects in the video are the wares of street vendors who are being forced from the city center during the Expo.
The piece was originally presented as a silent video, but in rendering a linear version to post on-line, I added a soundtrack in which recordings of interviews with Shanghai street vendors are algorithmically chopped up, layered, and delayed, very similar to what’s going on in the video.
The audio and video were both generated in Max/MSP/Jitter, using simple non-linear deployment methods I’ve been using for years in my videogame work, to ensure constant variation. I think the medium of real-time, generative video is well suited to commenting on a city’s continual cycle of reinvention. [1]
Find more of Ben’s work, including an interesting entry about how one of his pieces recently got banned, at his blog Aesthetic Cartography.
a performance by Runabout project.
at Weeky Freaky, Kaliakria, Bulgaria.
Video projection controlled by sound in real time, using PureData.
Improvised performance between two visual artist and one musician.
Performers: Albena Baeva, Petya Boyukova and Sergey Glinkov. [1]
The vocalist Agnes Heginger and the composer Karlheinz Essl have recently been performing a series of interesting improvisatory electroacoustic gigs called Out of the Blue (or some variation thereof).
Vocalist Agnes Heginger and composer Karlheinz Essl playing a free improvisation gig which took place at the atelier of the artists Johann Feilacher and Sylvia Kummer. All pieces were created without any agreement in realtime: out of the blue – into the blue…
Karlheinz was performing on his his self-developed realtime composition environment m@ze°2 written in MaxMSP, whereas Agnes was utilizing poems by Ingeborg Bachmann and Joachim Ringelnatz. For the first time, Karlheinz was playing on a wooden sound sculpture created by Johann Feilacher which he was mauling with a variety of percussion beaters and a custom-made MaxMSP program for controlling the processing of the microphoned sounds in realtime. [1]
Vocalist Agnes Heginger singing a solo performance with herself using a canon generator written by composer Karlheinz Essl in MaxMSP. Her piece is based on a poem by Joachim Ringelnatz (“Gedicht in Bi-Sprache”) and was performed at the atelier of the artists Johann Feilacher and Sylvia Kummer. [2]
Karlheinz Essl performs his composition “non Sequitur” on a sound sculpture created for him by the Austrian artist Johann Feilacher. Karlheinz uses a variety of percussion beaters and a custom-made MaxMSP program for controlling the processing of the microphoned sounds in realtime. [3]
[1] http://www.essl.at/concerts/2010.html#into-the-blue
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5zRC66bY6g
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