The 2024 MOXsonic (Missouri Experimental Sonic Arts Festival) March 14-16, 2024 is an exploration of sonic possibilities and includes several opportunities to hear live Kyma electronic performances:
Mei-ling Lee’s “Summoner” is a mythical narrative that evokes the nocturnal summoning of peacocks and owls.
Mark Zaki’s “Masks” explores identity in the digital age, using violin, Kyma, and live video to delve into themes of self-curation and virtual anonymity.
In Mark Phillips’ “Dream Dance”, dreamy vocoders give way to an algorithmic synth groove, but only partially … and not for long.
Chi Wang will perform AEON on a new instrument she designed — the Yuan, a bamboo round-shaped interactive, data-driven controller and connected the sensors
Experience innovative music and engage with the creative minds shaping the future of sound! Tickets to all events are FREE and OPEN to the general public.
Anne LaBerge (flute & text) joins forces with guitarist and electronic musician Tom Baker (guitar & Theremin) on a concert tour exploring themes of racism and resilience. Their improvised performances, enhanced by Kyma electronics, will take place in Brussels (March 13), Rotterdam (March 17), and Amsterdam (March 18).
LaBerge and Baker draw inspiration from Louise Erdrich’s The Plague of Doves, a novel exploring the enduring impact of a racist act committed against four Ojibwe people in North Dakota in 1896.
Anne La Berge’s passion for the extremes in both composed and improvised music has led her to the fringes of storytelling and sound art as her sources of musical inspiration. Tom Baker is a composer, guitarist, improviser, and electronic musician, active in the Seattle new-music scene.
Audiences will experience Simon Hutchinson‘s music projected from a linear array of 15 giant speakers positioned underneath the 420 ft Boggy Creek overpass in Rosewood park east of Austin Texas on November 19th, 2022 from 6:30-9:30 pm.
Hutchinson is one of six composers commissioned to create works inspired by the past, present and (imagined) future sounds of transportation, utilizing the dramatic sonic movement capabilities of a new sound system designed and built by the Rolling Ryot arts collective to create an immersive audio experience.
“It’s been very interesting to think about what ‘multichannel’ means when channels are spread out across 420 ft, and especially fun problem-solving this in Kyma,” Simon explains, “Using Kyma I’ve set up some sounds to translate across the system very quickly, but in a unified motion. At other times, the panning happens very slowly, so slow that someone walking could outpace the sound as they walk across the space.”
In other sections, Hutchinson treated the individual channels as the individual keys of a giant instrument, and the “melody” traverses the broad, 420-ft space, with each speaker assigned only a single note. More details on this process are revealed in a video on Simon’s youtube channel.
The sound materials for the piece are from field recordings and analog synthesis samples processed through Kyma. Simon “unfolded” ambisonic field recordings across the 15 channel space, worked with mid-side transformations of stereo recordings, and leveraged the multichannel panning of the Kyma Timeline.
The Ghost Line X event is free and open to the public. All ages are welcome, and the audience is encouraged to bring lawn chairs and blankets and to bike or ride-share to Rosewood park.
On November 28 2022 at the Prater in Vienna, the audience will board a Luftwaggon of the Wiener Riesenrad ferris wheel to experience Bruno Liberda’s new composition still-kreisen-drehen-stehn / frieren die glockentöne am eingebildeten eis (still-circling-turning-standing / bell tones freeze on imaginary ice) for double carillon & Kyma.
Two carillons are played live and fed through Kyma — repeating, turning, or standing still through various granulations, feedbacks, ring modulations, pitch deteriorations, moving reverbs and more — creating a frosty new soundscape, while the public has a moving view over Vienna.
The instruments are artworks in themselves: fully functional carillons created by composer, Bruno Liberda
Wiener Riesenrad, Riesenradplatz 1, 1020 Wien, Austria
28.11.2022 Wiener Riesenrad, Riesenradplatz 1, 1020 Wien
1. Vorstellung: 18:00
2. Vorstellung: 19:00
Four ferris wheel wagons as floating, circling, stages for works by:
Bruno Liberda, Masao Ono, Anita Steinwidder, Christine Schörkhuber, Verena Dürr, Sophie Eidenberger, Stefanie Prenn.
Und er lässt es gehen
Alles wie es will
Dreht, und seine Leier
steht ihm nimmer still
(Wilhelm Müller, 1824)
I am Violet the Organ Grinder
And I grind all the live long day
I live for the organ, that I am grinding
I´ll die, but I won´t go away
(Prince, 1991)
Networked collaboration, telematic performances, and online learning have been growing in popularity for several years, but the lockdowns and social-distancing guidelines precipitated by the global COVID-19 pandemic have accelerated the adoption of these modes of interaction. This is a brief (and evolving) report on some of the solutions your fellow Kyma-nauts have found for practicing creative collaborations, live performances, private tutoring, consulting, and teaching large online courses. Thanks for sharing your input, feedback and alternative solutions for distance-collaboration with the Kyma community!
Note: For example configurations showing how to get audio onto your computer and out onto a network, read this first.
Kyma Kata
One of the earliest ongoing examples is Alan Jackson’s Kyma Kata, a regular meeting of peers who practice Kyma programming together, that has been operating online in Google Hangouts for over a year before the crisis and recently celebrated their 100th session! (Did they know something the rest of the world didn’t?) The Kyma Kata currently meets twice a week, on Mondays and Tuesdays. They begin each session with “Prime Minister’s Question Time” (open question-and-answer session on how to do specific tasks in Kyma), followed by an exercise that each person works on independently for 30 minutes, after which they share and discuss their results. Ostensibly the session lasts for 2 hours, but when people really get interested in a problem, some of them stick with it for much longer (though there is no honor lost if someone has to leave after two hours).
Kata participants focus on how to do something together, so screen-sharing is important and audio quality has been less important: they often play over the air, using the computer’s built-in microphone to send the audio.
Andreas, Ben, Jason, Opal, Pete, Domenico, Simon & Charlie
For higher quality audio, Alan uses a small USB mixer plugged in to the Mac as the Hangouts audio source. Using the mixer, he can mix the Paca’s output and a microphone which provides a lot better quality than over-the-air through the laptop’s mic, although it’s still limited by Hangout’s audio quality, delay and bandwidth.
What is the Kata and How do I sign up?
The term, kata, which comes to us by way of karate, has been adopted by software engineers as a way to regularly practice their craft together by picking a problem and finding several different solutions. The point of a kata is not so much arriving at a correct answer as it is to practice the art of programming.
In the Kyma Kata, a group of aspiring Kymanistas come together regularly via teleconferencing and the facilitator (Alan) introduces an exercise that everyone works independently for about half an hour, after which people take turns talking about their solutions. All levels of Kyma ability are welcome, so why not join the fun?
Improvisation with the Unpronounceables
The Unpronounceables are Robert Efroymson in Santa Fe New Mexico, Ilker Isikyakar in Albuquerque New Mexico, and Will Klingenmeier (ordinarily based in Colorado, but due to travel restrictions, on extended lockdown in Yerevan Armenia). To prepare for a live improvisation planned for KISS 2020, Robert proposed setting up some remote sessions using Jamulus.
The Unpronounceables
Collaboration platform
Using the Jamulus software, musicians can engage in real-time improvisation sessions over the Internet. A single server running the Jamulus server software collects audio data from each Jamulus client, mixes the audio data and sends the mix back to each client. Initially, Robert set up a private server for the group, but they now use one of the public Jamulus servers as an alternative. One of the amusing side-effects of using the public server is that they are occasionally joined by uninvited random guests who start jamming with them.
During a session, the Unpronounceables use a Slack channel to communicate with each other by text and Jamulus to time-align and mix the three audio sources and for sending the mix to each of the three locations.
Audio from Kyma
Each Unpronounceable uses a second interface to get audio from Kyma to the host computer. Robert uses a Behringer to come out of Kyma, and an IO/2 to get to his Mac. Ilker sends his MOTU Track 16 audio outputs to a Behringer; then selects the Behringer as an I/O in the Jamulus preference tab. Will uses a ZOOM H4n as his Kyma interface and sends the audio to an M-Audio Fast Track Pro which acts as the interface for Jamulus.
Ecosystemic audio in virtual rooms
Scott Miller and Pat O’Keefe’s HDPHN project has always been an exploration of what it means to be alone together — it’s a live public concert where each member of the audience wears headphones, rather than listening through speakers. When stay-at-home orders made it impossible for Scott in Otsego to meet in person with Pat in St. Paul, Minnesota, they started looking into how to move the live HDPHN performance onto the Internet.
When Earth Day Art Model 2020 shifted from a live to an online festival, Scott and Pat used this as an opportunity to dive in and perform HDPHN along with one of their older pieces Zeitgeist live through the Internet.
Audio from Kyma
Scott describes the audio routing for HDPHN as follows:
Pat’s mic comes over Zoom and out of my desktop headphone audio. It also goes into Kyma input 1 on my Traveller. With Zoom, I can’t get/send stereo from a live source. With two people (did this Friday) I bring the second person in on a separate Skype/Zoom/Facetime session on another device, and into Kyma input 2. With 2 inputs, I then mathematically cross-processing them in a virtual room.
I am sending Kyma’s processed/mixed output (Main 1-2) back into my desktop via Lynx E22 audio card, going into DSP-Quattro for compression and EQ, then to iShowU virtual audio interface 1) —> to Zoom for Pat’s monitoring, and 2) —>OBS and then to YouTube synced with Pat’s Zoom video. YouTube latency very bad and it wrecked chamber music with duo, but was fun for free improv with a different duo.
Live coding at a Virtual Club
On Monday, 11 May 2020, beginning at 20.30 CET Time, Lucretio will be live-coding in Kyma using a new Tool of his own design at The Circle UXR Zone. The Circle is a virtual club that is a UXR.zone — a decentralized social VR communication platform offering secure communication, free from user-tracking and ads. A spinoff project of the #30daysinVR transhumanist performance by Enea Le Fons, a UXR.zone allows participants to share virtual rooms and communicate via avatars across a range of devices: from VR headsets (main platform) to desktop and mobile phone browsers.
The avatars of people attending the UXR events are either anonymous (robots) or follow a strict dress code based on the CVdazzle research to stress the importance of cyber camouflage via aesthetics against dystopian surveillance measures happening in the real world. Click to enter the club
The belly of the BEAST
Simon Smith (who is actually quite a slender chap at the BEAST of Birmingham) has recently been tasked with researching online collaboration platforms for the BEAST, so we asked him for some tips from the front lines. He just completed a Sound and Music Workshop with Ximena Alarcon (earlier he helped Alarcon on a telematic performance using the Jacktrip software from Stanford).
In the workshop, she also mentioned:
Artsmesh A network music and performance management tool. Content creators run the Artsmesh client which streams live media point-to-point; audiences run a light Artsmesh client to watch the shows.
SoundJack is a realtime communication system with adjustable quality and latency parameters. Depending on the physical distance, network capacities, network conditions and routing, some degree of musical interaction is possible.
How have you been collaborating, teaching, consulting, creating during the lockdown? We’re interested in hearing your stories, solutions and experiences.
Have you used YouTube or Vimeo for live streaming with Kyma?
What’s your preferred video conferencing software for sending computer audio (Zoom, BigBlueButton, Meet)?
Have you been using remote desktop software (like Chrome Remote Desktop, Jump) to access your studio computer from home?
We welcome hearing about alternate solutions for this ongoing report.
Sound designers, electronic/computer musicians and researchers are invited to join us in Busan South Korea 29 August through 1 September 2019 for the 11th annual Kyma International Sound Symposium (KISS2019) — four days and nights of hands-on workshops, live electronic music performances, and research presentations on the theme: Resonance (공명).
“Resonanceâ€, from the Latin words resonare (re-sound) and resonantia (echo), can be the result of an actual physical reflection, of an electronic feedback loop (as in an analog filter), or even the result of “bouncing†ideas off each other during a collaboration. When we say that an idea “resonatesâ€, it suggests that we may even think of our minds as physical systems that can vibrate in sympathy to familiar concepts or ideas.
Photo by Belinda J Carr
At KISS2019, the concept of resonance will be explored through an opening concert dedicated to “ecosystemic†electronics (live performances in which all sounds are derived from the natural resonances of the concert hall interacting with the electronic resonances of speaker-microphone loops), through paper sessions dedicated to modal synthesis and the implementation of virtual analog filters in Kyma, through live music performances based on gravity waves, sympathetic brain waves, the resonances of found objects, the resonance of the Earth excited by an earthquake, and in a final rooftop concert for massive corrugaphone orchestra processed through Kyma, where the entire audience will get to perform together by swinging resonant tubes around their heads to experience collective resonance. Sounds of Busan — two hands-on workshops open to all participants — focus on the sounds and datasets of the host city: Busan, South Korea. In part one, participants will take time series data from Busan Metropolitan City (for example, barometric pressure and sea level changes) and map those data into sound in order to answer the question: can we use our ears (as well as our eyes) to help discover patterns in data? In part two, participants will learn how to record, process, and manipulate 3d audio field recordings of Busan for virtual and augmented reality applications.
Several live performances also focus on the host city: a piece celebrating the impact of shipping containers on the international economy and on the port city of Busan; a piece inspired by Samul nori, traditional Korean folk music, in which four performers will play a large gong fitted with contact mics to create feedback loops; and a live performance of variations on the Korean folk song: Milyang Arirang, using hidden Markov models.
Hands-on Practice-based Workshops
In addition to a daily program of technical presentations and nightly concerts (https://kiss2019.symbolicsound.com/program-overview/), afternoons at KISS2019 are devoted to palindromic concerts (where composer/performers share technical tips immediately following the performance) and hands-on workshops open to all participants, including:
• Sounds of Busan I: DATA SONIFICATION
What do the past 10 years of meteorological data sound like? In this hands-on session, we will take time series data related to the city of Busan and map the data to sound. Can we hear patterns in data that we might not otherwise detect?
Photo by Belinda J Carr
• The Shape Atlas: MATHS FOR CONTROLLING SOUND
How can you control the way sound parameters evolve over time? Participants will work together to compile a dictionary associating control signal shapes with mathematical functions of time for controlling sound parameters.
• Sounds of Busan II: 3D SOUND TECHNIQUES
Starting with a collection of 3D ambisonic recordings from various locations in and around Busan, we will learn how to process, spatialize, mix down for interactive binaural presentation for games and VR.
Photo by Belinda J Carr
Networking Opportunities
Participants can engage with presenters and fellow symposiasts during informal discussions after presentations, workshops, and concerts over coffee, tea, lunches and dinners (all included with registration). After the symposium, participants can join their new-found professional contacts and friends on a tour of Busan (as a special benefit for people who register before July 1).
Sponsors and Organizers
Daedong College Department of New Music (http://eng.daedong.ac.kr/main.do)
Dankook University Department of New Music (http://www.dankook.ac.kr/en/web/international)
Symbolic Sound Corporation (https://kyma.symbolicsound.com/)
Busan Metropolitan City (http://english.busan.go.kr/index)
Composer/saxophonist Andrew Raffo Dewar will be at Mills College Center for Contemporary Music on Monday, February 4th, 2019 to perform his work, Ghosts in the Uncanny Valley II — a 35-minute composition for acoustic quartet improvising with live electronics programmed in the Kyma sound design environment. Kyma analyzes, manipulates, and expands upon the sounds of the acoustic instruments in real time, creating an electronically “extended†(and altered) quartet. The quartet features the composer on sax, Gino Robair (prepared piano), Kyle Bruckmann (oboe/English horn), and John Shiurba (acoustic guitar).
On January 31st 2019, Dewar will be at the Santa Monica Library to perform the premiere of his new piece for soprano sax and Kyma as part of their Sound Waves series. This performance starts at 7:30 pm and is free and open to the public.
Madison Heying shows us the view from the Music Center at UC Santa Cruz
Madison Heying is a PhD candidate in cultural musicology at the University of California Santa Cruz where she focuses on experimental, electronic, and computer music. On any given day, you’re as likely to find Madison on a stage performing DYI analog electronic circuits with her partner David Kant as you are to find her holed up in the experimental music archives at the UCSC library. In between publishing scholarly articles and presenting papers at international musicology conferences, she also hosts a podcast and curates experimental music events around the Monterey Bay area as a member of Indexical, a composer-run artist collective that focuses on new chamber and experimental music, and especially music that lies outside of the aesthetic boundaries of major musical institutions.
Somehow Madison has also found time in her schedule to co-organize the Kyma International Sound Symposium this year in Santa Cruz on the themes: Altered States and Ecosystems. She sat down with us recently to talk a little about Santa Cruz, experimental music, and banana slugs…
Experimental, electronic, and computer music
Hi Madison. Could you please tell us what a cultural musicologist is (as distinct from historical musicology, etc)? What do you study and how?
A cultural musicologist is a music historian that pays particular attention to the people groups behind a given musical phenomenon. I think the attention given to cultural context has been a trend in musicology for a while now, but my PhD program makes it a priority. Many of us study living or recent composers and music-making communities and borrow a lot of our methodology and theory from ethnomusicology. My work broadly focuses on experimental, electronic, and computer music.
At UC Santa Cruz, it appears that experimental music is still very much ongoing and supported. Can you talk a little bit about what “Experimental Music†is and why UC Santa Cruz was and continues to be a strong center for this aesthetic or this mindset?
There is a really strong history of musical experimentation in the Bay Area in general, dating back to composers like Henry Cowell and Lou Harrison to the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the 1960s, and later programs at Mills College, CCRMA, and UCSC. James Tenney taught at UCSC for a year in the 70s. Gordon Mumma started the Electronic Music studio here, David Cope ran the Algorithmic Composition program for years. Along with the Cabrillo Music Festival (which used to be VERY experimental), Santa Cruz was something of a hub for weird music in the 70s and 80s. There’s a really strong tradition here of incorporating elements of non-Western music into a more experimental compositional practice, of developing hand-made electronics, and also big developments in DSP and computer music.
At UCSC there are currently some really exciting people on the faculty including composers Larry Polansky, David Dunn, and musicologist Amy C. Beal in the Music Department, sound artist Anna Friz and Yolande Harris in the Arts Division, and Kristin Erickson Galvin, who is also co-organising KISS2018, on the staff of the Digital Arts and New Media Program.
You’ve been learning Kyma and building analog circuits as part of your research. Does having hands-on experience with the tools change the way you view, understand, and report on the cultural implications and impact of technology?
Absolutely! Taking a hands on approach has given me significant insight not only into how a given technology works, but how it might have been used historically, and some of the reasons why a composer or musician employed the technology in a particular way.
The thing with Kyma in particular is that it’s such a rich, deep language, so I think even if I spent 20 years using it, I’d still learn new things. Having the hands-on experience has been a total necessity to just scratching the surface of understanding of how Kyma works and why it’s so unique. It’s also made a big difference to collaborate or work with people that know a lot more about electronics or programming; I’m able to learn so much by seeing how they tackle/think through problems and find solutions.
Kyma International Sound Symposium (KISS)
Kristin Erickson Galvin and Madison Heying at UCSC talking about their implementation of cellular automata in Kyma
What motivated you to co-host KISS2018 in Santa Cruz? What would you like to show people about Santa Cruz, your university, your home state? What are you hoping people will come away with after participating in this conference?
My first impulse was that co-hosting KISS2018 would be a very tangible way to give back to the Kyma community, who have given me so much! I also thought UCSC would be the perfect place to host KISS and I knew that this would be my last year here, so I figured, why not do it now?!
I think the first KISS you attended was KISS2015 in Bozeman Montana. What struck you about KISS that made it different from other conferences that you regularly attend?
I was particularly struck by how nice everyone is. At academic conferences people can be really cruel during the Q & A after a presentation or in down time. A good number of people are jockeying to make a good impression on senior scholars or prove their intelligence by making someone else look bad, there is definitely more of a hostile competitive atmosphere. It just takes time to find your people and to be comfortable being yourself in that kind of environment.
But at KISS, it’s different. Everyone is there to learn and share their work, so there is a much greater sense of camaraderie. If there is competition, it seems like it’s mostly self-imposed, that people just want to get better at using Kyma or their compositional or performative practice.
Madison in front of the Music Center Recital Hall at UCSC
Was KISS2016 in Leicester UK different from the experience you had in Montana? How was it different and how was it similar in terms of the people, the atmosphere, the content, the music? Has your picture of the Kyma community evolved over time and with more experience?
Yes, I think each KISS has its own flavor based on the host institution and the people that end up coming. On a personal level they were also different because in Bozeman I didn’t really know anyone except the people I came with. So I felt a bit more like a newbie outsider. But in Leicester, I felt like I was already part of the group and it was great to see so many familiar faces and reconnect with people I met in Bozeman (and of course to meet new people as well).
Are there some things that you’re particularly looking forward to for KISS2018?
For me it’s been really fascinating to see how people interpret the theme. I love the variety of approaches Kyma users take to composition and performance, it makes for really dynamic concerts. Each time I attend KISS there’s usually a few pieces that totally shock me and blow me away and leave me wondering how they did it or just in awe of someone’s prowess as a performer/composer. I’m looking forward to seeing the thing that’s just under everyone’s radar, but that’s going to be the really memorable piece.
Santa Cruz and the spirit of place
Do you believe there is such a thing as “spirit of place� If so, then how does the natural, cultural, political environment of Santa Cruz affect you and your colleagues?
Yes, I do. I think the biggest thing I notice is that life moves at a slower pace in Santa Cruz than other places, people are rarely in a rush to do things. As an impatient person this is probably the best and most frustrating aspect of living here, it’s difficult to get other people to feel the same sense of urgency about something, but at the same time it also helps me slow down and “stop and smell the roses†as they say.
Madison at Seabright Beach
How is the atmosphere influenced by, yet distinct from, the culture of “The Valley� Since it’s so close by, does Silicon Valley ever act as a magnet, draining people and activities away from Santa Cruz? Do people ever “escape†from the Valley and seek refuge in Santa Cruz?
Yes, it’s becoming more and more common for techies from “over the hill†to live in Santa Cruz and commute into Silicon Valley. They realized that the commute is the same as it is from San Francisco, with slightly cheaper rents and better beach access! In general I love being so close to Silicon Valley. Many of my close friends work for tech companies like Google, Facebook, or Uber. Some of the excitement and energy of their fast-paced lifestyles oozes into Santa Cruz and sends a jolt of fresh possibilities into this sleepy beach town. I also love to think about the history of the place, how since the 60s there’s a real convergence of counter-cultural values with the most cutting-edge, high-tech and commercial innovations. It makes for some interesting paradoxes, like the wealthy aging-hippy beach bum software developer 🙂
For those of us who are planning to come to KISS2018, what’s the one thing that every visitor to Santa Cruz absolutely, unequivocally, cannot miss seeing or experiencing on their first visit there?
Well, the best thing about Santa Cruz is that it has the beach and redwood forests, so I’d say they have to visit both things. To go for a hike in the redwoods, maybe on Pogonip trail near campus, or Nisene Marks, about 5 miles south. And then visit the beach. Seabright beach, near where I live, is great, because the tourists don’t know about it, so it’s not usually too crowded. If you don’t want to go in the water, a walk along West Cliff Drive will also blow you away, I think it’s probably one of the most beautiful beach walks in California! And of course you should probably take a ride on the Giant Dipper at the boardwalk!
Madison enjoys a Penny ice cream at the beach
Guilty pleasures?
Penny ice cream at the beach! (Sadly it does cost more than a penny but is worth it — some of the best ice cream I’ve ever had!) Also my favorite bakery/coffee shop is Companion Bakers. Both Companion and Penny have vegan/gf options, and REALLY good regular stuff too!
Should people bring their Zoom recorders to Santa Cruz? What is the must-record sound they have to capture while they are there?
Yes! The seals of the wharf are really fun to record. If you have a hydrophone there are also a lot of interesting sounds under the water, including snapping shrimp!
Banana slugs. Why or why not?
I am very pro-banana slugs! You really have to see one in person to appreciate them and what a ridiculous creature they are. I can’t imagine a better mascot to capture the spirit of this place.
How hearing can change the world
Thanks for taking time out to talk with us, Madison! To conclude, if there were one thing you could change that you think would be of most help to other people or to society as a whole, what would it be?
To be able to listen to someone that is different than you and have understanding and compassion, and to let that act of hearing change how you operate in the world. For everyone to have more empathy, to really understand that everyone has a singular view of the world, based on so many factors like where and how they were raised, race, gender, etc. and that everyone else’s experience is valid.
A global community of sound designers & musicians meet to explore ways in which sound, music, and technology can alter state…
Sound designers, musicians, and sound-afficionados are invited to participate in the tenth annual Kyma International Sound Symposium (KISS2018) in Santa Cruz California from 6-9 September 2018 when Kyma practitioners at every level of experience — ranging from beginners to experts who make their living teaching, performing, and designing sounds with Kyma — will convene to present their most recent creative and technical work related to the conference theme, “Altered States†and sub-theme, “Ecosystems”.
Whether they interpret “Altered States†in terms of state machines for cryptography, shamanic trance states, stable/unstable states in a dynamical system, states of consciousness along the path to enlightenment, hidden states of a Markov model, or the ways in which active-listening can inspire changes to the state of the ecosystem, there is one point on which all the symposiasts agree: Sound and music can alter states.
KISS2018 Program Highlights
KISS2018 will feature over 25 hours of technical sessions, discussions, and live electronic music performances showcasing some of the most thought-provoking work created with the Kyma sound design environment this year. The full KISS2018 schedule is available online.
Here are a few highlights:
Gabriel Montufar (DJ Monti) is collaborating with the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) Fencing Club to present En Garde, a unique live performance in which the movements and breath of fencers engaged in a live duel are transformed into intricate sounds intended to alter the state of the fencers and the outcome of the match.
The Tower of Voices is a ninety-three foot tall musical instrument containing forty wind chimes to represent the forty passengers and crew members of United Flight 93. Artist Ben Salzman (Hamilton College) and composer Jon Bellona (University of Oregon) will reflect on the states of existence between life and death as they reconstruct the compositional processes of their late friend and mentor Sam Pellman who composed the music for this installation. The formal dedication of the Tower of Voices will be held on 9 September, 2018 in Pennsylvania as part of this year’s 9/11 observances.
Kristin Erickson (aka Kevin Blechdom), Technical Coordinator for Digital Arts and New Media at UCSC, will present the premiere of her new operetta The Dolphinarium in collaboration with film and television producer, Matthew Galvin. Based on the groundbreaking research of physician, neuroscientist, psychoanalyst, psychonaut, philosopher, writer and inventor John C. Lilly, the operetta explores aspects of Lilly’s 1965 Dolphin Cohabitation experiments and his lifelong research into altered states.
Carla Scaletti, president of Symbolic Sound Corporation and co-creator of the Kyma language for sound design, will welcome symposium delegates with a keynote lecture on the conference theme of Altered States in relation to sound, programming languages, memory, and learning.
Italian DJ/producer Domenico Cipriani (Lucretio) is performing Predator/Prey, a living sonic ecosystem in which sounds are born, move, hunt, reproduce, and die within a quadraphonic listening space, inspired by John Holland’s Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems and Daniel Shiffman’s The Nature of Code. Cipriani, whose degree is in linguistics from the University of Padua, studies the relationship between functionalism and social semiotics. Inspired by Cristian Vogel´s 2016 performance at the Decipher Language party in Berlin, Cipriani’s recent focus has been digital audio programming and performing with the Symbolic Sound Kyma system.
Korean composer Kiyoung Lee and pianist/improviser Ha-Young Park from Dankook University will present Turritopsis dohrnii, a live performance based on the process of transdifferentiation performed by the “immortal jellyfish”, a biologically immortal species that can literally alter the state of its own cells.
Franz Danksagmüller, professor at the Musikhochschule Lübeck and the Royal Academy of Music in London and creator/performer of live electronics and sound design for John Malkovich’s “Just Call Me Godâ€, will be performing emotional states — Lieder one Worte, a song cycle based on the utterances people make when they can’t find the right word or expression during a conversation.
Robert Efroymson, software developer and CEO of the high-speed optical communications firm Dynamic Photonics, will describe and demonstrate his new Cryptographic Music Sequencer modeled after the M-209 — a WWII era mechanical encryption device.
Garth Paine, Senior Sustainability Scientist and composer at Arizona State University, will present a keynote lecture on the Listen(n) project with a focus on the ways in which active-listening can inspire meaningful action toward changing the state of the environment.
For anyone who is obsessed with sound — whether a novice seeking to kickstart their career, an expert looking to take their mastery to the next level, or someone who’s simply curious about how sound and music can alter states — KISS2018 is an opportunity to be immersed in sound and ideas and surrounded by fellow sound enthusiasts for four days and nights of intensive discussion, learning, music, and forging new professional connections and lifelong friendships.
Registration for KISS2018 is open to all and includes access to the lectures, hands-on labs, lunches, dinners, coffee breaks and an opening reception and seven live performances at the UCSC Recital Hall, Digital Arts Research Center (DARC), including a special, outdoor concert among the redwoods at the Stanley Sinsheimer Glen.
Organizers
KISS2018 is being co-organized by the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) Arts Division, the Digital Arts and New Media Research Center, and Symbolic Sound Corporation.
Contact information and details
For information on registration, travel/lodging information, and programming, please visit: http://kiss2018.symbolicsound.com
Composer/sonologist Roland Kuit encountered the paintings of Tomas Rajlich in 1992. ‘Fundamental Painting’, a minimalist strategy that explores the post-existential nature of the painting itself – its color, structure and surface — it is simply the painting as a painting. Tomas opened Kuit’s eyes to a kind of minimalism that Kuit recognized in his music at that time when he was working with semi-predictable chaotic systems. Kuit began creating works for Tomas Rajlich in 1993 and last year, Kuit released a new piece for Kyma-extended string quartet: Tactile Utterance – for Tomas Rajlich.
The world premiere of Tactile Utterance took place on 23 June 2017 in the Kampa Museum – The Jan and Meda Mládek Foundation in Prague (CZ) for the opening of a special Tomas Rajlich retrospective: Zcela abstraktnà retrospektiva. Composed especially for the occasion, Kuit’s three part work Tactile Utterance, expresses 50 years of painting by Tomas Rajlich.
Kuit’s recent research into new compositional methods, algorithms, and spectral music came together in this work. His aim was to capture the process of painting: how can we relate acrylate polymers on canvas to sound? Using bowing without ‘tone’ as a metaphor for brushing a tangible thickness of color; pointing out the secants with very short percussive sounds on the string instruments as grid; dense multiphonics as palet knifes — broadened textures smeared out and dissolving into light.
The premiere, performed by the FAMA Quartet with Roland Kuit on Kyma, was very well received.
The Prague recordings
For the recording, made during 15-20 February 2018, Roland decided to record the string quartet alone and unprocessed so he could do post-processing and balancing in the studio. Recording engineer Milan Cimfe of the SONO Recording Studios in Prague used 3 sets of microphones: one to create a very ‘close to the skin’ recording of all string instruments; the second set overhead; and the third set as ‘room’ recording. Kuit took the recordings to Sweden to finish the mix and Kyma processing.
Tactile Utterance – Roland Emile Kuit
For Tomas Rajlich
1/ BRUSH 00:14:42
From a pianissimo-bowed wood sounds to noise, to an elaborated crescendo ending in a broad fortissimo textural cluster: Kyma extends the string sounds with spectral holds.
Multiphonics morphing to airy flageolets and the Kyma system processing the string quartet in algorithmic multiplexed resynthesized sounds, dissolving them into a muffled softness.
Roland Emile Kuit – Kyma
FAMA Quartet:
David Danel, – violin
Roman HraniÄka – violin,
Ondřej Martinovský – viola
Balázs Adorján – violoncello
Recorded by Milan Cimfe at the Sono Recording Studios Prague
