London UK-based Zelig Sound, creators of music composition and sound design for TV, film, advertising and branding, recently created the sound and music for “The 360 Project”, two dramatic short films by Toronto-based director and photographer Ryan Enn Hughes that capture peak dance moves using 48 simultaneously firing cameras surrounding the performer (designed by The Big Freeze).  The result is a cross between photography, video, and ‘digital sculpture’, where time is frozen but is then unrolled in new three-dimensional sequences.
Sound designer Matthew Wilcock and his team used Kyma, performed on a Wacom tablet, for the whooshes, passes and synth sounds in both 360 pieces, BALLET 360 & KRUMP 360. They used Kyma to create a selection of sounds around the timbre they wanted, and later brought them into a DAW to edit them and layer in the music.
The team used the same process on a Zelig Sound branding project for Black Ocean. Wilcock estimates that 70% of the sound for Black Ocean was created by Kyma controlled by movements and gestures on the Wacom tablet.  The team set up the film to run in a loop while recording multiple performances of custom-designed Kyma Sounds on a Wacom tablet.  They then took the results of that session, and edited, selected, and layered them in their DAW.
Sound Designer Nick Peck has been making extensive use of his new Kyma system for the upcoming Activision/Marvel video game X-Men Destiny. “I hadn’t used Kyma in nearly 20 years, and was just blown away by how far it had come since the early days,” said Peck. Â He went on to describe how he incorporated Kyma into his workflow on the game:
I was a bit intimidated of working it into my system, since I was knee deep in production. So I started slowly, going through Kyma X Revealed for a few minutes each day. As it turns out, you don’t really have to make complex patches in order to harness Kyma’s amazing processing power. I’ve created foley libraries, morphed dialog, and done tons of real-time sample manipulation by making sounds that only use one or two modules. The key for me is the excellent Kyma Control iPad software. The expressive gestural power of the iPad combined with Kyma fits my approach to sound design like a glove – I can explore to my heart’s content, and when I get a sound dialed in, I just re-record it into Pro Tools against the picture.
Can sound define a space? In sound, is there a Point-of-View or culturally-influenced focus of attention? Sound designers, musicians, audio engineers, composers, acousticians and others interested in “sound space” are invited to discuss these and other questions during the third annual Kyma International Sound Symposium (KISS2011), scheduled for 15-18 September 2011 in Porto, Portugal. Inspired by Portugal’s proud history of navigators who set out to explore beyond the known and visible horizon, the theme of this year’s symposium is “Explorando o espaço do som†(“Exploring Sound Spaceâ€) and will celebrate the sound designers, composers, and researchers who are exploring beyond the familiar horizons in sound and music.
A mathematician and co-editor of a new book on the Sonic Spaces of Music (Spazi sonori della musica) will discuss the public space defining and defined by the sounds of the Trevi Fountain in Rome;
Kyma practitioners will have opportunities to attend master classes, participate in interactive workshops and consulting sessions, and most importantly, to make connections with and to learn from fellow Kyma practitioners;
The author of a new text for teaching and learning Kyma (published in both English and Chinese) will describe his search for the SumOfSines disco club;
Plus there will be an abundance of technical talks on a wide range of topics including how to use the spectrum of a sound as a sequencer; techniques for data sonification; using sound to help people confront pain; how to create a dynamic sonic ecology; using context-free-grammars to simultaneously generate dance movements and trajectories through abstract timbre space; techniques for spectral modification & morphing; and more.
Evening performances are to include a screening of the very first science fiction film accompanied by a live-improvised electronic sound track generated by Kyma reconstructions of Luigi Russolo’s intonorumori instruments; a portion of an audio documentary on Holocaust survivor Ksenija Drobac; and a live-generated audio/video film about Galileo that uses Kyma to control VJ software via Open Sound Control (OSC). Other live musical performances will create sound spaces controlled by (among other things) dancers, RFID cards held by the audience, iPads, Wacom tablets, video position trackers, Continuum fingerboards, SoftStep pedal-boards, OSC, acoustic instruments, the acoustics of the room itself, and even a sensor-enhanced Teddy Bear!
For more details on the program, please see the preliminary program and join the mailing list to be kept up to date on future enhancements and additions.
Registration
Registration is open to all. You can register at any time, but there is a discount for those who register prior to 1 August: you can participate in all 4 days (with lunch included) for €120 (€40 for students). Casa da Musica has strictly enforced occupancy limits, so please register as soon as possible in order to reserve your spot: http://kiss2011.symbolicsound.com/registration
Online discussion
You are cordially invited to join in the pre-symposium discussion on the theme of Exploring Sound Space:Â http://www.pphilosophyofsound.org
Porto
Known as A Cidade Invicta (the unvanquished city), in honor of its citizens’ successful resistance of Napoleon’s attempted invasion, Porto’s history can be traced back at least as far as Roman times, with evidence of even earlier habitation by the Celts, Proto-Celts and even Phoenicians.
The ukulele has its origins in Portugal; Portuguese immigrants brought the cavaquinho, braguinha and the rajão, small guitar-like instruments with them to Hawaii where they were re-invented as the ukulele. Portuguese luthiers Cordoba Guitars and Antonio Pinto Carvalho (in Braga about an hour north of Porto) continue the tradition today. In Porto, you can audition a Portuguese 12-string guitar or a cavaquinho at Toni Das Violas, a music shop in the historic center.
Porto is also the official source of Port wine, a special red wine in which the fermentation process is interrupted by the addition of distilled grape spirits known as aguardente (roughly translated as fire water with teeth), leaving a higher sugar and a higher alcohol content. The resulting fortified wine is then aged in wood barrels prior to bottling.
Visiting ConÃmbriga, a well-preserved ancient Roman city and attached museum about an hour south of Porto, is practically like traveling to ancient Rome in the Tardis.
Something about Porto seems to inspire artists who work with space. Not only is it the home of Casa da Musica, it’s also the birthplace of two Pritzker-prize-winning architects: Ãlvaro Siza who designed the central square in Porto, the Faculty of Architecture campus, and the contemporary art museum; and Eduardo Souto Moura whose award-winning work includes Estádio Municipal de Braga, the Burgo Tower in Porto and the Paula Rego Museum in Cascais among others.
Summary
What: The Kyma International Sound Symposium (KISS 2011), an annual conclave of current and potential Kyma practitioners who come together to learn, to share, to meet, to discuss, and to enjoy a lively exchange of ideas, sounds, and music! This year’s theme is “Exploring Sound Space”
Presenters: Experts from the fields of music, sound art, sound design, mathematics, philosophy & audio engineering who use Kyma in their work.
Participants: Sound designers, musicians, audio engineers, composers, acousticians and others interested in “sound space” and the Kyma sound design language
When: 15-18 September 2011
Where: Porto, Portugal
Venue: Casa da Musica / Avenida da Boavista, 604-610 / 4149-071 Porto / Portugal
Cost: € 120, students € 40
Organizers: Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto & Symbolic Sound Corporation with support from Casa da Musica & UT Austin|Portugal International Collaboratory for Emerging Technologies
Deadline: 1 August 2011 for early registration discount; registration open through 15 September 2011
UncategorizedComments Off on John Paul Jones & Helge Sten at Punkt 2011
Sep032011
John Paul Jones and Helge Sten presented a Punkt Seminar on 3 September 2011 where they talked about how they are using Kyma in their new project: The Minibus Pimps. Â Their debut performance was at Punkt and their EU debut will be 16 September 2011 at KISS2011Â in Porto, Portugal.
Sound Designer 
