Deathprod returns!

Helge Sten will be in Paris on 30 March 2012 performing as Deathprod for the first time since 2003 as part of the 8th Présences électronique festival, envisioned by ina GRM, the Centquartre and Radio France.  Deathprod is performing on Friday night at 21h30 in the main hall following acousmatic pieces by composers Arne Nordheim, Francesco Giomi, and Martin Tetrault.

Sten will be performing live, featuring pieces from Morals & Dogma and Nordheim Transformed. All pieces have been ported over to Kyma from various older samplers and updated to quadraphonic presentation.

Présences électronique is free and open to the public!

30 mars à 21h30
au Centquatre (Nef Curial)
104, rue d’Aubervilliers ou 5, rue Curial – Paris, 19e

Einstein’s bicycle

Einstein taught his uncle how to ride a bicycle, and, soon, choreographer Gilles Jobin will be able to return the favor by teaching a group of present-day physicists how to dance in his new role as the first Collide@CERN-Dance and Performance Artist in Residence.  Jobin wonders whether there is a parallel between the scientist’s totally focused thought in pursuit of knowledge and the artist’s total focus in the moment of performance. The wickedly playful Jobin promises to stir things up around the ring with several interventions across campus in unexpected places, all investigating the connection between thinking and moving, all certain to be stimulating and fun as learning to ride a bike for the very first time.

 

Jobin is an internationally acclaimed choreographer based in Geneva and well-known for commissioning new electronic music for his dance scores (several of which have employed Kyma)!

For periodic updates on this playful collision of art and science, follow ArtsAtCERN.

 

Dancing in the foothills of the Swiss Alps

Dance company, la Cie Gilles Jobin, will be performing a double-bill at Théâtre Les Halles in Canton Valais, Switzerland on March 16th and 17th.  The program is especially interesting in that it features choreographer Gilles Jobin’s first work, A+B=X (1997) presented on the same bill with his most recent work Spider Galaxies (2011).  The musical score for Spider Galaxies, composed by Cristian Vogel and Carla Scaletti, will be performed live in Kyma by POL (aka Christophe Polese).

Book your ticket online, by email, or by calling +41 (0)27 452 02 97. There’s a discount if you attend both shows!

Choreographic pianist

Choreographic pianist Eleonor Sandresky is performing music for piano and live Kyma processing at the Greenwich House Music School in New York on Sunday, March 11, 2012. In her performances, Sandresky is interested in how motion translates to emotion; she goes beyond merely composing the music to literally choreographing the entire performance. Recently, this interest has taken on a cyborghian element as she dons a new Perceptual Expansion Space/Suit (designed by Semiotech) to enhance the conversation with light and sound in her performances. Contact Electronic Music Foundation for an invitation.

Buddha on a powder keg

Composer Bruno Liberda sets up complex systems of silent analog feedback loops and communicating between Kyma and analog electronics through voice and an Obi-gong in his new work, Buddha cannot sit quietly anymore, premiered at 21h on 4 March at Elektro Gönner Mariahilfer Straße 101/1060 in Vienna. In analog electronics, exploring resonance phenomena, self-oscillation, over-driven filters can fling us either into the abyss, or into Seventh Heaven, depending on tiny variations in initial conditions and control signals. However, with Kyma in the cockpit, one gains (intuitive) control over this supersonic flight. In Buddha… there are in fact no sound-producing sources in the analog domain, but only a whispering speculation: what happens if some feedback loops are short-circuited through the winding paths and controlled from Kyma?

In the last few days, a rapidly aged circuit diagram illustrates the main issue: a 4-pole resonant filter, whose input is fed by analog delay.  As the latter needs some material to delay, it is fed by the resonant filter itself.   In order to avoid a simple short-circuit, the delay travels through a bit- and sample-shredder, before getting injected back into its own feedbackloop…. So the dance is not simple short-circuits; it is the feedback of the delay, sharpening the edges of the filter cutoff, losing a few bits, changing the sample rate. This in turn has interesting implications for the input of the resonant filter, and a complex dance is set in motion; the dance leads to new vibrations, more or less under the composer’s reins.

In Liberda’s new work, it’s not just that Buddha cannot sit quietly anymore; he is sitting on a powder keg!