Author: SSC

Lu Minjie & Han Yanmin at Sichuan Conservatory of Music

On May 24, 2012, Sichuan Conservatory electronic music professors Lu Minjie, Bai Xiaomo, and Han Yanmin presented the first in what is to be a series of seminars on “intermedia music”.  Hosted by Professor Yao Qi , the lecture was attended by the Electronic Music Department staff and students as well as many Electronic Music representatives in China.

Lu Minjie gave an overview of the development of new media art and described the creative process employed in her four-channel electronic music composition The Watching Tuvas. Bai Xiaomo described some new installation works created by the New Media Art group at the Sichuan Conservatory of Music, the Audio-Visual Interactive Installation at Sichuan Conservatory of Music Gallery. He also presented his intermedia music composition for Symbolic Sound Kyma and Kinect Silent Room. Han Yanmin described his own methods for creating electro-acoustic music and presented his composition Echoes of Qiang Flute as an example. In the second half of the lecture, the three faculty members described their experience at the University of North Texas, College of Music where they had presented an electronic music lecture and concert in February of this year. They also analyzed some of the technical challenges that one might encounter while giving lecture and concert in another city.


An orchestra of bats

Echolocation, Robert Jarvis‘ sound installation for an ‘orchestra’ of bats and accompanying ‘choir’ of bat detectors will be performed at the Wolfslaar nature reserve, outside Breda (The Netherlands) on Saturday 16th June as part of this year’s Interference Festival. The fun begins after sunset, as dusk falls and the bats come out to feed. As they fly around and make use of their biosonar radar capabilities in search of insects, Jarvis uses Kyma to capture the bat signals and extract information from them to control a musical score. The result is an evocative surround sound musical experience as night falls, deepening each listener’s relationship with the environment and creating a magical and memorable experience for all. Some responses to previous performances:

I couldn’t believe that I was listening to real bats – what a variety of noises, and to see them in real time was an absolute knockout. The whole thing was fantastic.

I was enchanted by the bat chatter… what a genius idea, and so beautiful.

This is the kind of music that makes people think and transforms their experience of bats, of humans, of sound, of communication. This kind of transformative experience is the whole reason for art.

Echolocation by Robert Jarvis
16 Jun 2012 — 22:30
Open to the public and Free!
Wolfslaar 4834 Breda Zuid Oost Breda Netherlands

JPJ + Supersilent at Sonar

Prepare for possible disruptions in the Earth’s magnetic field in the vicinity of Barcelona on June 15 2012 when Supersilent joins forces with John Paul Jones at the Sonar festival for a live performance that may feature as many as four Kyma systems on stage!  Be prepared for wormhole effects as the electronic improvisers start spinning their dense clouds of sci-fi jazz and colliding super-massive visceral sound objects into each other.

In the words of reviewer, David Broc at playgroundmag.net: “…those who found a way through the thick jungle of dark drones, schizophrenic bass lines and undefinable structures, found themselves in one of the most intense moments of the day. ”

Photo by David Broc

John Paul Jones, one of the earliest discoverers of Kyma, has been composing, producing, and performing with Kyma and influencing its development for nearly two decades.  Jones has been working with Helge Sten for the past 3 years, and together they’re taking Kyma into dangerously powerful new sonic territories; last year, the Kyma meme infected two more members of the group: StÃ¥le Storløkken (keyboards, synth, electronics) and Arve Henriksen (trumpet, voice, drums, electronics), so at this point it’s on the verge of a pandemic.

John Paul Jones on BBC3

BBC Radio 3 Late Junction host, Fiona Talkington invited John Paul Jones (mandolin, bass, and Kyma) and Erland Dahlen (drums and electronics) into the BBC3 studios at 9 am and, although the two had never met prior to the session, she invited them to improvise 6 tracks together.  Nine hours and 6 tracks later, the two musicians called it a wrap, and you can hear the Kyma-enriched results when BBC3 broadcasts their session on June 21st 2012 at 23:00 UTC.

Independent, complex, collaborative, and fun

Composer Dick Robinson in his studio with Kyma, Pacarana, & Capybara

Composer and unrepentant avant-gardist Dick Robinson is featured in the June 2012 issue of Arts Atlanta.  In an interview with reviewer Mark Gresham, Robinson traces his journey from mechanical engineering student, to professional violinist, to electronic composer (he studied with Bob Moog and Pauline Oliveros) and live computer music improviser (he was the first person in the United States to own a Kyma system), all informed by his passion for the abstract visual arts and a fiercely independent spirit (“I was pretty much, as is my preference, isolated” as he describes his working style, adding “I do my own thing.”).   Despite (or because of?) his independence, Robinson has a long history of collaborating with visual artists, poets, film makers, and other musicians.  When Gresham asks him why, Robinson’s answer captures the joi de vivre underlying all his work: “I’ve always improvised, and have collaborated since the ‘70s without the thought of anything more than having fun”  Luckily for us, audiences always get to share in his fun, most recently on June 10th when Robinson collaborated with fellow composer Pedro Rivadeneira in a live improvisation they called Invasive Species at Sycamore Place Gallery in Atlanta.

Shackle unshackled

Anne La Berge and Robert van Heumen are Shackle: a performance duo featuring Anne on flute processed through Kyma and Robert on Supercollider. In August 2012, they will be releasing The Shackle Stick, a USB stick containing music and video of their live performances (a portion of the cost for which will be covered by their successful Kickstarter project).  Following the release of the Shackle Stick, the duo will be touring New Zealand, Australia and Brazil in September 2012.

Miller and the robots

Composer Scott Miller has been selected to write new music for Kyma and EMMI: a trio of self-playing acoustic robots created by Troy Rogers, Steven Kemper and Scott Barton. (Rogers studied with Scott Miller at St Cloud State University and Jeffrey Stolet at the University of Oregon and is currently pursuing a doctorate at the University of Virginia).

In Détente, Miller will be using Kyma to create an ecosystemic environment for the acoustic robots and exploring the limits of real-time amplitude and frequency modulation by forcing them to perform audio-rate tremolo and trills. The new work is scheduled for performance at the Sound and Music Computing conference on the Music for Robots concert on 14 July 2012.

 

Tomorrow you’re gone

Hamilton Sterling at Helikon Sound has just completed the sound for David Jacobson’s new film, Tomorrow You’re Gone, a story of psychological vengeance and real-world redemption. The film stars Stephen Dorff, Michelle Monaghan, and Willem Dafoe.

As sound designer, supervising sound editor, and re-recording mixer, Hamilton created a sonic world that functions almost as a musical score.  Aside from guitar and drums (used by the composer), almost every scene in the film is inflected by sounds generated in Kyma (appropriately enough, since most of the film may or may not take place from a point of view inside the main character’s head).

Di Scipio in the Age of Cage

Agostino Di Scipio “The Age of Cage”, on Friday May 18, 2012 was the final event in an Homage to Cage series organized by the University of Salerno, culminating in Polvere di suono e altri resti (“sound dust and other remains”) a concert curated by Agostino Di Scipio, featuring new music by Di Scipio as well as new realizations of classic Cage works including: a new version of 4’33” with Di Scipio’s Background Noise Study Kyma patch; several Audible Ecosystemics pieces; and the 6 studi for piano & electronics. The concert, technically managed by Silvia Lanzalone and her electronic music students in Salerno, was a big success.

Di Scipio and Longobardi have several upcoming concert dates that will include a new version of Cage’s Electronic Music for Piano (1964). Imagine Cage’s Music for Piano 4-84 played through a network of self-governing feedback circuits (realized in Kyma), using only piezo discs, getting feedback through the metal and wooden parts of the piano! The Stradivarius label is about to issue a 50-minute long version of the new Cage/Di Scipio work on CD at the end of May 2012.  For dates and times, please visit: Di Scipio Upcoming Events

Post apocalyptic LA hyper-opera

 

Composer/sound designer Phil Curtis is using Kyma to provide electronics and sound design for a new production of composer Anne LeBaron‘s opera, Crescent City, directed by Yuval Sharon and performed from 10-27 May 2012 at The Industry in Los Angeles.  Described by LA Times critic Mark Swed as a “darkly mysterious, troubling yet weirdly exuberant and wonderfully performed new opera,” the production is a meta-collaboration that includes six visual artists who were asked to build installations for the sets (shack, cemetery, junk heap, swamp, hospital and dive bar) in the Industry’s large warehouse-like space.  Variously priced tickets determine where you, the audience member, gets to sit (or roam), and the espresso bar has been deemed outstanding.

Curtis is using Kyma to spatialize sounds in the vast performance space and to create a swamp ambience at the climax of the opera as the Voodoo queen and healer Marie Laveau sings one final invocation and is swallowed up by the sounds of the swamp.

Set in post-Katrina New Orleans, the libretto metaphorically examines the way people deal with disaster and post-apocalyptic scenarios, including nurses, Voodoo, and Loa. As Swed enthusiastically concludes: “We now have something that can genuinely be called L.A. opera.”