Sounds of transportation past, present, and imagined future

 Concert, Event, Installation, Sound Design  Comments Off on Sounds of transportation past, present, and imagined future
Nov 142022
 

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.

Bell tones freeze on imaginary ice

 Concert, Controllers & Instruments, Event, Installation  Comments Off on Bell tones freeze on imaginary ice
Nov 112022
 

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

It’s all part of the AIAIA project Milky Way im Luftwaggon — Wiener Riesenrad

28.11.2022
1. Vorstellung: 18:00 2. Vorstellung: 19:00

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)

Tactile Utterances

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Jun 182018
 

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 abstraktní 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.

Album art © Tomas Rajlich, Acrylic on Linen, 1990-1991 c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2018

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.

2/ MAZE 00:12:06

When walking by a grid, we see it first condensed – then open – then condensed again in both horizontal and vertical directions. The string quartet interprets ‘intersections’ by means of percussive sounds like pizzicato, spiccato, martelé, col legno etc. These sounds are treated as particles copied 100 times with the Kyma system, resulting in a noise wall. A ritardando to the center of the piece allows these particles to be distinguished as single sounds. With these single sounds, Roland made “spectral pictures” that could be smeared to complement the grid lines, followed by an accelerando back to prestissimo particles again.

3/ SURFACE 00:14:59

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 Hranička – violin,
Ondřej Martinovský – viola
Balázs Adorján – violoncello

Recorded by Milan Cimfe at the Sono Recording Studios Prague

DONEMUS
Composers Voice: CV 229

Youtube:

Live percussion and electronics in Coimbra market square

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Jun 112018
 

Carlos Alberto Augusto‘s new piece — ECOS (Coimbra version) for 6 percussionists and 6 electronic tracks — will be performed for the first time on 23 June 2018 in the old market square in the city of Coimbra Portugal.

Commissioned by Sons da Cidade, a festival that annually celebrates the city of Coimbra (Portugal) as a UNESCO heritage site, Augusto’s ECO will have musicians and loudspeakers distributed in circles along the full length of the 106m square. The electronic tracks were produced entirely in Kyma and are based on processed recordings of melting ice and an old fog horn’s rotating mechanism. Percussion, performed by the Portuguese percussion group Simantra, and electronic sounds will be further processed by the large square’s own natural distinctive resonances and reflections.

Call for Proposals: KISS 2018 — Altered States

 Concert, Conference, Event, Festival, Installation, Learning, Seminar  Comments Off on Call for Proposals: KISS 2018 — Altered States
Feb 132018
 

The Arts Division at the University of California Santa Cruz and Symbolic Sound invite proposals for talks, live performances and workshops for the 6-9 September 2018 Kyma International Sound Symposium — KISS2018: Altered States (and Ecosystems).

Altered States

State spaces, state of mind, state of the art, deep state, state machines, state of the nation, state variable filters, topological state, head of state, solid state physics, state of grace, state transitions, spin states, state of the union — whatever your definition of state, one thing is for certain: Sound and music can alter states.

Join us in the state of California as we explore the multifaceted concept of Altered States through talks, workshops, and live musical performances at KISS2018, 6-9 September 2018 on the campus of the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Ecosystems

Atop a forested hill overlooking the Pacific ocean and Monterey Bay, on the tectonic boundary between the Pacific and North American plates (aka the San Andreas Fault), accessible from the San Jose or San Francisco Airports, Santa Cruz is shaped by the economic/technology ecosystems of Silicon Valley, the biological ecosystems of the Pacific ocean and the Santa Cruz mountains, and a continuation of the counterculture lifestyle and political protest movements of the 1960s — hence the sub-theme of the conference: Ecosystems. Whether “Ecosystems” inspires ideas for environmental music & field recording, ecosystemic feedback control systems, the human microbiota, or more abstract political/economic/social ecosystems, we welcome proposals involving “complex networks or interconnected systems” of sound and music.

Important Dates

26 March: Deadline for submissions
15 April: Notification of acceptance & start of early registration

For more information and to make a proposal, visit: https://kiss2018.symbolicsound.com/call-for-proposals/

Oct 022017
 


Gilles Jobin’s VR_I — an immersive virtual reality contemporary dance experience with a 3D sound track created entirely in Kyma.7 — has its world premiere from 6 to 10 October 2017 at the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma in Montreal. Unfolding on multiple, parallel space and time scales, VR_I immerses you in a wordless experience of the continuum from infinite to infinitesimal, leaving you with a new sense of perspective on your place in the universe.

In partnership with Artanim Foundation and utilizing their motion-capture and VR technology, VR_I is a pioneering work in social, free-roaming virtual reality. As many as five people can enter the experience together and see their own and each other’s bodies as avatars sharing the same virtual world as the characters (the dancers).

In VR_I, music emerges from the environment: wind in the desert transitions to a humming chorus sung by giants; wind chimes in the art-filled loft organize themselves into 5/8 rhythms as columns rise up from the floor, only to dissolve back into wind chimes again as the columns recede; in the city park, bird songs are echoed in flute melodies, and cicadas transform themselves into rhythmic patterns over tambura-like drones.

Each spectator hears an individualized soundscape, and there is no way to really know what everyone else is experiencing (just like in real life). Sounds and musical elements are positioned in space and attached to objects, giving each spectator a unique mix as they move through the space, culminating in upwardly spiraling Shepard-tones that swirl around and lift up the listeners as they contemplate their own place in the continuum from infinite to infinitesimal.

In beauty I walk
With beauty before me I walk
With beauty behind me I walk
With beauty above me I walk
With beauty around me I walk

— from the Native American Diné Blessing Way

Choreography: Gilles Jobin
Dancers: Susana Panadés Díaz, Victoria Chiu, Tidiani N’Diaye, Diya Naidu, Gilles Jobin
3D Music & Sound Design: Carla Scaletti
Costumes: Jean-Paul Lespagnard
3d modeling: Tristan Siodlak
Animation: Camilo de Martino
3D Scans & Motion Capture: Artanim
VR Platform: Artanim

For tour dates and booking information, visit: vr-i.space

Architecture of Sound

 Album, Event, Installation, Release  Comments Off on Architecture of Sound
Jul 242017
 

RIETVELD PAVILION — Roland Emile Kuit’s new album published by Donemus — is now available on iTunes. The album was released in conjunction with the 9 July 2017 World Premiere at the sculpture park of the Kröller-Möller Museum in Otterlo in The Netherlands. With this work, Kuit makes a connection between sound and De STIJL’s ideas and architecture, using pure tones as spectral building blocks, stacking energies to build harmonic sound planes and placing them in space by dividing the spectrum and displaying it on a maze of speakers.

Photography: Henk Porck

Sonologist-composer Roland Emile Kuit balances on the interface between research, music and sound art, at a point he called “the new listening”. Using Kyma, Kuit warps time — influencing the present with events that will happen in the future and vice versa. He uses real-time analysis of the sound of acoustical instruments to create spectral compositions.

Experiencing the near-universe as sound

 Data-driven sound, Event, Installation  Comments Off on Experiencing the near-universe as sound
Oct 232016
 

Robert Jarvis‘ sound art installation aroundNorth allows listeners to experience the near
universe as they have never heard it before. As the Earth spins on its axis, and day becomes night becomes day, our view of the near universe changes in terms of the changing positions of the stars in the sky. One star appears to stay stationary (the North Star); and the rest take about 23 hours 56 minutes and 4 seconds to complete a full revolution.
‘aroundNorth’ offers listeners an opportunity to hear this phenomenon in real time. As each star crosses equally spaced virtual lines emanating from Celestial North Pole, a corresponding sound is heard that maps the star’s position in the sky, size, distance from Earth, brightness and temperature, creating a mesmerising sound map of the universe as viewed by our turning planet.

‘aroundNorth’ humanizes the astronomical, giving us an emotional key to help us relate the unfathomable heavens to our own experiences of time and space. With echoes of a Neolithic monument of ancient myth, the installation introduces us to a universe full of interest, encouraging us to think differently about the cosmos and our place within it.

Jarvis presented his installation on 15 October 2016 in a rather neolithic setting — the Beaghmore Stones Circle complex, preceded by an installation performance at Antrim Castle Gardens.

For more information, future showings, or to invite Robert Jarvis to create an aroundNorth experience in your city, see the aroundNorth web site.

NeverEngine on the Holodeck

 Concert, Event, Installation  Comments Off on NeverEngine on the Holodeck
Feb 092016
 

Cristian Vogel is currently engaged in a four week artist residency dedicated to exploring the possibilities of Kyma and the 4DSOUND system at the ZKM Institute in Karlsruhe, Germany.

The residency will culminate in a concert on 5 March 2016 featuring new work from Cristian along with Alyssa Moxley, an Athens-based artist specializing in experimental microphone techniques for field recordings. There will also be a presentation of Iannis Xenakis’ Orient-Occident, presented in 4DSOUND by system founder Paul Oomen.

Algebra as metaphor for Poetry

 Concert, Event, Installation  Comments Off on Algebra as metaphor for Poetry
Feb 052016
 

The Central Library of The Hague will be filled with mathematical functions for the ear and textures for the eye when Roland Kuit creates poetic quadraphonic formulas for Kyma and Karin Schomaker synthesizes images of abstract beauty. Visuals and sounds together create a flow of spatial and textural experience.

Sunday 07 February 2016, 14:00 – 14:50
Spui 68, The Hague, The Netherlands

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