KISS2012: Sound in reel time and real time

Sound designers to converge on St Cloud Minnesota for over 24 hours of lectures & demonstrations, 9 hours of hands-on workshops, and 3 nights of live music, cinema and improvisation

The fourth annual Kyma International Sound Symposium (KISS2012) — to take place September 13-16 at St Cloud State University School of the Arts in St Cloud, Minnesota — will include over 24 hours of technical sessions presented by Kyma experts, 9 hours of hands-on labs, and evenings filled with live music and live cinema showcasing some of the most outstanding work created in Kyma this year.

Since the inaugural symposium in Barcelona in 2009, KISS attendees around the world have benefited from the extensive technical training, aesthetic inspiration, and opportunities for collaboration that KISS is known to deliver. This year, more than 100 sound designers, composers, performers, filmmakers, game designers, authors, audio engineers, educators, and students are expected to participate in KISS2012.

The dual nature of this year’s theme — reel time || real time — has attracted an incredibly diverse group of people! It’s just a great learning opportunity for everyone involved.

— Scott Miller, professor of music composition at St Cloud State University School of the Arts and host of this year’s KISS.

Throughout the four-day event, sound designers will be able to explore the latest innovations, features, and capabilities of the Kyma Sound Design Language and learn how to optimize their work flow so they can create amazing new sounds for film, games, music and more. Kyma practitioners are invited to bring their own Sounds to the labs where they can work with Kyma developers and fellow Kyma practitioners to enhance their results.

One of our passions is to partner with Kyma users to help bring their creations to life. There is no better way to maximize your Kyma skills and discover new collaborative opportunities than by participating in the Kyma International Sound Symposium.

— Carla Scaletti, president of Symbolic Sound Corporation, co-host of KISS2012.

If you are obsessed with sound — whether a novice seeking to kickstart your career, an expert looking to take your mastery to the next level, or someone who’s simply curious about sound design and Kyma — KISS2012 is your chance to immerse yourself in sound and ideas for four intense and inspiring days and nights.

The deadline for discounted registration is August 10, 2012.

St. Cloud, Minnesota: Photo courtesy of Adam Studer (http://www.Flickr.com/people/adamstuder)

Keynote speakers, expert presenters, and topics

Symbolic Sound President Carla Scaletti will start things off with an introduction to sound design in Kyma and an overview of this year’s theme: ‘reel time || real time’. On the last day, she’ll give attendees a tour of what’s new in Kyma.

 

 

Joel Chadabe, President of Electronic Music Foundation, author of Electric Sound: The Past and Promise of Electronic Music, Adjunct Professor in Music Technology at NYU, has been teaching and composing with Kyma since 1992. In his keynote address, he’ll discuss composition and sound design with Kyma as a learning and discovery experience. In his words:

Kyma is a kit from which you can connect specific components to make an instrument. It’s your instrument. And it does what you want it to do. I’ll talk about designing an instrument and how the design and the nature of interdependent variables, fly-by-wire and dynamic control hierarchies, and interaction affect what you do (and, by the way, what do we mean by ‘interaction’?).

British composer and sound engineer Greg Hunter is perhaps best known for his production work with The Orb and Youth and as a composer of electronic world music and contributor to the scores for Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions. Currently writing a book on audio engineering, Greg will share some of the secrets he has learned during his career as remixer and producer:

In the 21st century, the distinction between composer and sound engineer has become very blurred. Most modern composers do not have the time or inclination to become professional sound engineers, yet an understanding of these skills is very important for creating music and designing sound.

More than 30 expert presenters from eight countries will be on hand, among them London-based sound designer and master of morphing Pete Johnston; Mike Johnson, senior sound designer at Blizzard (World of Warcraft-Cataclysm, Diablo III, and others); Rudi Giot, director of the Belgian ISB EEG Brain Computer Interface project; Edmund Eagan, Canadian film composer and Continuum fingerboard virtuoso; Jeffrey Stolet, author of Kyma and the Sum of Sines Disco Club (currently being translated into Mandarin for publication early next year); and many more!

Among the topics to be addressed are:

  • Sound design for games, film, advertising, and music;
  • Live cinema with real time sound tracks;
  • New approaches to improvisation and interaction;
  • New musical instruments and new approaches to performance, including continuous touch-sensitive keyboards, musical soccer balls, game controllers, treadmills, tablets, and a direct-brain interface!
  • Exploring the differences between working in real time vs working in reel time (and the relative benefits of each);
  • Plus an in-depth look at what’s new in Kyma and an exclusive peek at where Kyma is headed.

For a more complete list of expert presenters, performers, and composers, please see the preliminary program.

 

Kyma International Sound Symposium 2012

The Kyma International Sound Symposium is  four inspiring days and nights filled with sound design, ideas, discussions, and music, and it offers a wide range of opportunities to increase your Kyma mastery: from introductory master classes, to hands-on question-and-answer sessions; from thought-provoking presentations, to inspiring concerts and after-hours discussions with new-found friends and colleagues.

This year’s symposium KISS2012 will be on banks of the mighty Mississippi River, September 13-16, organized by St. Cloud State University School of the Arts and Symbolic Sound. The KISS2012 theme, reel time || real time, puts the spotlight on reel time (sound for picture), real time (live performance), and all timescales between, including sound design for games, live cinema, live improvisation ensembles, live performances from a score, sound design for live theatre, live signal generation for speech and hearing research, interactive data sonification, interactive sound art, and more!

Musicacoustica Beijing

University of Oregon director of interactive music technology, Jeffrey Stolet, premiered his new piece Hendrix de Aguadilla for Kyma and iPad (Kyma Control app) on the opening concert for Musicacoustica in Beijing on October 24, 2011. Earlier in the day, Stolet gave a presentation on Kyma and the SumOfSines Disco Club (his new book about the Kyma system), describing how Kyma is being used and taught in higher education.  The next performance of Hendrix de Aguadilla will be in Chengdu, China on November 1 2011.

KISS2011: Exploring Sound Space

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 Space”) and will celebrate the sound designers, composers, and researchers who are exploring beyond the familiar horizons in sound and music.

 

Set in the nautically-inspired Casa Da Musica, architect Rem Koolhaas’ dramatic new music venue in Porto, the symposium promises four intensive days of workshops, keynotes, technical talks, films and live performances.

To cite just a few highlights:

  • 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: 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 Conímbriga, 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.

There are several historic cathedrals and monasteries in Porto which is also home to a vibrant Marranos community, the so-called crypto- or Sephardic Jews who continued to practice their religion even in the face of the forced-conversions during the Inquisition (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/priests-hunch-finally-uncovers-portos-hidden-holy-scrolls-520387.html)

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: Álvaro 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

More info: http://kiss2011.symbolicsound.com

Minibus Pimps’ Debut

John Paul Jones and Helge Sten (Deathprod) are the Minibus Pimps, a newly formed experimental electronic duo scheduled to debut at the Punkt Festival in Norway on 3 September, closely followed by an EU debut in Porto Portugal on 16 September at KISS2011.

Inspired by their recent collaboration in Supersilent, Jones and Sten employ electronics, samplers, processors, instruments, iPads and two Kyma systems to create instrumental improvisations ranging from the intricate to the ferocious!

This July, JPJ joined forces with Supersilent for an experimental electronics set at the Moldejazz Festival:

Minibus Pimps’ premiere performance is on 3 September Saturday evening at 22:00 at Punkt preceded by a lecture/demonstration seminar on how they are utilizing Kyma at noon at the University of Agder.

Scot Solida Live @ KC.EM.FEST

 

Scot Solida is scheduled to be performing Kyma live with Christus and the Cosmonaughts as part of he 3rd Annual Kansas City Electro-music Festival 2011, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday July 22, 23, & 24, 2011. Streaming live at http://radio.electro-music.com, KC.EM.FEST will feature live performances, DIY workshops, improvisational collaborations, and more.

In addition to his live performance on Saturday night (July 23), Scot is going to be presenting a Kyma demo at 1 pm, Friday July 22.

The KC.EM.FEST is intended to promote experimental electronic music and musicians in the region and throughout the country and create a stronger network between these artists and the public and the entire event is free!

Dialog: Sound and Movement in Geneva

Cristian Vogel @ Electron GVA Session. Photo by Onneca Guelbenzu

GVA Sessions is an interdisciplinary research and international exchange platform organized by the Gilles Jobin Company, geared to respond to the ever-changing artistic environment of the performing arts, primarily contemporary dance, music and related creative technologies.

In 2011, the GVA sessions have been focusing on one of the longest established collaborative partnerships in the performing arts: that between choreographer and composer, choreography and music. This year, GVA Sessions is offering a mixed format providing a collaborative space for different types and levels of knowledge, artists research and production.

In April, as part of the Electron Festival, Cristian Vogel and Gilles Jobin discussed their collaboration on Spider Galaxies, and Vogel presented an introduction to Kyma and the Pacarana.  The next installment in the series will be “Dialog: Sound and Movement“, a collaborative workshop for composers and choreographers that will take play in 16-23 July 2011 (the deadline for registration is 30 May 2011).

Since 2007, the GVA Sessions have led knowledge exchange gatherings inviting international creative arts practitioners to Geneva (Switzerland) with the goal of sharing in artistic inquiry, thinking  and creating together, all in an informal, collaborative yet rigorous setting. 

KISS2011

The third annual Kyma International Sound Symposium (KISS2011) is scheduled to take place from 16-18 September 2011 at Casa Da Musica, architect Rem Koolhaas’ dramatic new music venue 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 Space”) in honor of those who are exploring new methods, concepts, and ideas, beyond the familiar horizons in sound and music.

Universidade do Porto and Symbolic Sound invite you to join us to share ideas, experiences and results related to this year’s theme, ranging from the most literal to the most abstract definitions of sound, space, and exploration. You are invited to learn, to share, to meet, and to enjoy!

For more information, please visit the KISS2011 web site: http://kiss2011.symbolicsound.com/

 

Longing for a KISS?

Ben Phenix has posted an online survey to gauge the preferred location for future (after 2012) Kyma International Sound Symposium events.

Have you ever been curious about attending a Kyma International Sound Symposium?  Ben Phenix has posted a survey to gauge interest in various cities as potential future KISS locations.  If you’d like to attend a symposium, now is your chance to register your preferences as to the location!  The survey will be active through the end of February 2011.