“Cannot Connect” is a problem for both computers and for people. When dealing with technology, we receive this message when we try to use something new. For people, this can be a problem in every sort of relationship.

The keyboard is a tool that people use every day to try to connect with other people. Through blogs, tweets, prose and poetry, we try to engage other humans through our work at the keyboard.

In this piece, the performer attempts to connect to both the computer and the audience through the keyboard. The software presents a randomized electronic instrument each time it is started. It selects from a palette of samples, synthesizers and signal processing effects. The performer must feel out the new performance environment and use it to connect to the audience by typing free association verse. [1]

This is my latest work with Processing, Bead and NextText.

Luciano Chessa: Music for 16 Futurist Noise Intoners. Reconstruction project commissioned by Performa 09. European premiere Rovereto sept. 30, 2010. Luciano Chessa: conductor.
T.R.I.O. Trento Risuona Improvisation Orchestra: Intonarumori.
Sylvano Bussotti: piano, voice. Nicholas Isherwood: basso voice, piano. Bussotti’s composition “VARIAZIONE RUSSOLO – slancio d’angoli” [1]

This reminds me of the algorithmic poetry by Nick Montfort. He has a series of programs that generate poetry from a 256 characters of code.

Via CDM

Full-length video documentation of audiovisual live improvisation performance at CAMP Festival for Visual Music, HfG, Karlsruhe, Germany, 24 September 2011. [1]

Over the past year, I’ve had the pleasure of discovering Oliver Bown’s wonderful sound art library, Beads. Beads is a library for creating and analyzing audio in Processing or Java, and it is head-and-shoulders above the other sound libraries that are available for Processing. From the ground up, Beads is made for musicians and sound artists. It takes ideas popularized by CSound, Max and other popular sound art environments, and intuitively wraps them in the comfort of the Processing programming language.

Today I’m proud to announce the release of my free ebook on sound art in Processing, Sonifying Processing: The Beads Tutorial. Also available in print and Kindle editions from Amazon.com.

The book covers all of the standard sound-art topics in straightforward tutorial style. Each chapter addresses a basic topic, then demonstrates it in code. Topics covered include Additive Synthesis, Frequency Modulation, Sampling, Granular Synthesis, Filters, Compression, Input/Output, MIDI, Analysis and everything else an artist may need to bring
their Processing sketches to life.

It’s true that these topics are well-covered by other environments in other places. There are a plethora of sound art platforms these days. I love Pure Data, Max, SuperCollider and even Tassman and Reaktor. But there are a million people out there making visual art in Processing who don’t have a good way of exploring multimedia in the environment in which they’re comfortable. This tutorial is aimed at Processing programmers who think that sound art is a bridge too far.

In fact, Beads makes sound art incredibly easy while staying within the comfortable confines of Processing. So stop reading blog posts. Download the Beads Library. Download the book. Download the source code. And get to it!!

BeatMe is a solo performance with video projection, sound and double bass.
The video/sound/Text is handled with Max/MSP, triggered by a midi-foot switch, giving the control of what is happening while playing the music.

Thinking about the relation of music and moving images gave me the idea of bending the codes of composition for visuals and music a little, changing the rules of narratives to repetition and variation, bringing them closer, making the images dance and give the music a different sense. It is all about perception, thinking and emotions. We have ideas and a feeling about ourselves in the world and all that relations inbetween. All that processes that determine who we think we are and how we feel about that. We live in an optical and sound situation.

Seeing and hearing through the things.
What you see is not what is there. Don’t misunderstand. What you see is what your neuro-circuits are allowing you to see. Waves and particles of molecularities hitting on your sensory system recalling/actualizing knowledge bases built up in the past and you are using them to look into the future, forgetting about the moment. Can this be correct?
The things you see are always representations of yourself. And you are ab/using them to reflect yourself, to tell to yourself what you dis/like about yourself. The world as you see it is nothing more than a mirror, reflecting back your desires and your fears.

The final form of Mouth(es)’ lecture(s) is a video performance inspired by Rumanian poet Ghérasim Luca ‘s poetry. It is based on the development and spatial setup of two visual objects : the DIOPTRIC STUDIO (developed with pure data, gem and Reactivision) and the INKS TABLE, that produce visual forms. This performance first translates visually a choice of poems, then escapes from the writing to focus on images. Patrick Fontana, Pierre-Yves Fave, Emeric Aelters thus exploit the polymorphic aspect of the work of Ghérasim Luca. A performance with the actress Nathalie Nambot. [1]

Max Mathews is the father of computer music who worked at bell labs in the early 50s. The radio drum is a realtime performance instrument developed by him in the last 20 years. Composer, performer, educator Richard Boulanger is the author of the definitive book on Csound. they both are playing the radio drum in concert in bryan recital hall at bowling green state university on march 16, 1992. This video is a complete concert, also featuring Burton Beerman-clarinet, Maureen Chowning-soprano voice, Celesta haraszti-dance. [1]