Category: Event

Kyma meets Buchla

Composer/synthesis-researcher Roland Kuit will be demonstrating his work with Kyma and the Buchla 200 interacting with each other in EMS Studio 4 in a live stereo broadcast from EMS in Stockholm for the Dutch Concertzender Radio on 25 February 2015…

Roland_Kuit_Buchla_200_EMS_Stockholm_7On February 25, composer/synthesis-researcher Roland Kuit will be broadcasting live and in stereo from EMS in Stockholm for the Dutch Concertzender Radio, demonstrating his work with Kyma and the Buchla 200 interacting with each other in EMS Studio 4.

At the heart of these compositions are the Kyma algorithms that Kuit uses to frequency-modulate the Buchla Complex Waveform Generator Model 259 which, in turn, is used as trigger function for the Sequential Voltage Source Model 243, thus exploring the intriguing area that lies between note triggers and wavetables. This sequential control voltage is controlling a second Complex Waveform Generator Model 259. And the audio of this Waveform Generator is used as the carrier for the 285e Frequency Shifter / Balanced Modulator. The 266e Source of Uncertainty modulates a third Complex Waveform Generator Model 259 and is used as modulation signal for the Balanced Modulator which is fed through 296e Spectral Processor for filtering. Finally the loop is closed by routing these algorithmic audio ‘sentences’ back to Kyma for Ring Modulation and quadraphonic placement.

Kuit is a frequent guest on the Concertzender where he’s often called in as a modular synthesis expert to explain various synthesis algorithms or to discuss music by some of the pioneers of electronic music.

EMS#1 will stream live on 25 February after which it will be available as a podcast from the Concertzender archive.

Gualtieri’s BTF-3 performed in Naples

Vincenzo Gualtieri’s new work—(BTF-3), for Bass recorder, larsen-tones and Kyma—was performed for the first time with Tommaso Rossi playing bass recorder on November 16th 2014 in Naples as part of a concert at the MADRE Museum (Museo d’Arte contemporanea Donna Regina -> Donna REgina contemporary Art Museum), where it was performed in a room containing the site-specific work Spirits by Rebecca Horn.

Gualtieri BTF-3 side view

An adaptive/site-specific digital system with an ecological approach, (BTF-3) stands for BackToForward-3rd and is based on an array of granulators arranged in series with a feedback loop frame. The work was performed again in Padua at the Pollini Conservatory.  Although there is no recording of BTF-3 yet, in BTF-4 you can hear a similar system, also implemented in Kyma, performed in this case with tenor sax.
Gaultieri BTF3

Di Scipio’s work featured in Forms of Sound Festival

Agostino Di Scipio is the featured composer/scholar/sound artist at the Forms of Sound Festival in Calgary 29-31 January 2015.  Featured works include:

  • Modes of Interference n.3 (2007) by Agostino Di Scipio
    • Autonomous feedback system for electric guitars & Kyma
    • open daily in the CIBC Hub Room (Rozsa Centre)
  • Two Pieces of Listening and Surveillance (2009-2010) by Agostino Di Scipio
    • Autonomous sound-generating system with flute and live Kyma electronics
    • August Murphy, flute
  • Agostino Di Scipio 2 sound pieces with repertoire string music and live Kyma electronics

 

QUANTUM World Tour

You’ll soon have a chance to experience Gilles Jobin’s QUANTUM for yourself when the Swiss choreographer and his dance company begin a world tour beginning with three performances at BAM in New York October 2-4 2014.

From a review of QUANTUM in Le Monde:

The perspectives opened to Gilles Jobin by particle physics have given a new texture to his dance. Tight but flexible, light but consistent, it propels an unceasing stream redistributed in layers of forms in constant motion. On a stunning score by Carla Scaletti, the circumvolutions are made fresh and compelling.

Dancers: Catarina Barbosa, Ruth Childs, Susana Panadés Díaz, Stanislas Charré, Bruno Cezario, Denis Terrasse
Music: Carla Scaletti
Kinetic light sculpture design: Julius von Bismarck
Costume design: Jean-Paul Lespagnard

Marie Predour, the company’s technical director, will be running the musical cues live from a Kyma Timeline each night.

Check the schedule for the latest information on when and where you can see a live performance.

Organic sound, Bach, Lübeck, Kyma, and KISS2014

IMG_3339

Everyone knows J.S. Bach as a composer, but it turns out he was also a music-technology enthusiast and a sound designer, having spent many hours of his childhood hanging out at the local organ workshop, fascinated with what was the state of the art in sound synthesis technology. Throughout his life, Bach continued to support experimental musical instrument development (like the forte-piano and the bassono grosso) and his experience with the organ (aka additive synthesis), led him to experiment with creating new timbres in his instrumental music through unusual voicings and instrument combinations. In fact it was his technical expertise, as much as his mastery of organ performance, that landed him his first post at the New Church in Arnstadt, where, at age 18, he was hired to both play and maintain the organ there.

Kungsleden_trailIn October 1705, the then 20 year-old Bach requested a one-month leave of absence from his post in Arnstadt so he could visit the famed organist/composer Dieterich Buxtehude in Lübeck Germany. Obviously, Bach didn’t have a car, so he ended up walking the 250 miles to Lübeck, where he was so intrigued by what he heard, he stayed for an extra two months. We don’t know exactly what happened to Bach in Lübeck, but we do know the experience had a deep influence on both his music and his ideas for new instrument designs throughout the rest of his career.

On 25-28 September 2014, we invite you to undertake your own music-technology and sound-design pilgrimage to Lübeck for KISS2014. At KISS2014, you can immerse yourself in sound and ideas, surrounded by an international community of sound-technology enthusiasts who share your passion for sound, music, and the future of musical instruments. And, like Bach, you’ll return home refreshed, renewed, and with enough new ideas, contacts, and friendships to keep you motivated and inspired for your entire career.

Whether you’re a Kyma expert, new to Kyma, or are simply curious about what Kyma might be and why it inspires so much enthusiasm among composers, live performers, sound designers for film and games, researchers, and educators, KISS2014 is your opportunity to experience an inspiring four days of ideas, music, and interaction with your fellow music/technology/sound enthusiasts.

Registration open until 25 September 2014

Registration includes access to paper sessions, demonstrations, workshops, the Kyma open lab, opening reception and all evening concerts, plus a free lunch with your fellow symposiasts each day: http://kiss2014.symbolicsound.com/kiss2014-registration

For travel and lodging information, please visit: http://kiss2014.symbolicsound.com/travel-and-lodging

More information

Get the latest KISS2014 news and updates:

KISS2014 Site: http://kiss2014.symbolicsound.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kyma-International-Sound-Symposium/241910735840451
Twitter: http://twitter.com/KymaSymposium

Contact the organizers: mailto:info.kiss2014@gmail.com

 

Roland Kuit in Stockholm, New York, Edinburgh

Composer/researcher/sound designer Roland Kuit is currently composer-in-residence at the EMS in Stockholm working on a project that combines their Buchla 400 with Kuit’s Kyma/Pacarana system.

He is also at work creating new pieces for Pacarana and Chicago based composer/conductor Renee Baker‘s Chicago Symfonietta to be premiered in New York this fall, and you can hear him lecture on modular sound design for TV and games the Napier University in Edinburgh in February 2015.  Check out his full calendar here.

Kyma Spectum Editor in Tesseract Portal Device

Sound designer François Blaignan had an opportunity to apply Kyma in an unusual way in his work on the interactive multimedia exhibition Marvel’s Avengers STATION (Science Training and Tactical Intelligence Operative Network) now on display in Time Square in NYC and featured in this month’s Mix magazine. The 10,000-square-foot installation is a space where Avengers fans can immerse themselves in characters and artifacts associated with the Avengers.

 For the Tesseract Portal Device, the installation designers were having a hard time matching the look of the spectrograms of X-rays, infrared, and gamma rays provided to them by NASA.  So Blaignan created an animation using stills from Kyma’s spectrum editor and synched it to the Tessaract sound from the movie for a perfect match.

Kyma wasn’t a totally silent partner on the project; it also played a role in creating the sounds of the particle accelerator in Banner’s lab.

Making people

In Garth Paine‘s new interactive Kyma work, CrossTalk, created in collaboration with Simon Biggs and Sue Hawksley, the text is automatically transcribed from the dancers’ speech as they describe inner body sensations and their relationship to the system. Later, the dancers collide with the sentences and the system generates a new language which they then dance, and so on. Watch as the printed sentences take the form of dancing stick figures projected on the back walls:

The creators describe it as an auto poetic system for making behaviors based on the anthropological idea of “making people” as described in their paper published in MOCO the Proceedings of International Workshop on Movement and Computing at IRCAM.

In July Garth presented an entire evening of his music (all composed and performed with Kyma) at the Skopja Summer Festival in Macedonia.

Moved by magnets

SGR^CAV is a collaboration between composers Cristian Vogel and SØS Gunver Ryberg, exploring a phase space of possible musics, where phantasmagorical sound objects emerge from transient combinations of multi-dimensional parameters.

In January 2014 the duo SGR^CAV released their debut recording MOVED BY MAGNETS on the cassette label Tapeworm.

These works for cassette were composed from the precise arrangement of a number of elements—such as field recordings of coal  mining machinery in the arctic mountains, and the creaking of ancient trees in Denmark—combined with digital processing—such as self-similar additive synthesis and granulations—all developed in Kyma. Many of the other characteristic timbres were created using vintage studio technology. An awareness of the sonic qualities of the compact cassette medium was also an important factor in the composition.

Listening to the album feels like exploring a mysterious world with its own, alien yet self-consistent, laws of physics with faint echoes from the Columbia-Princeton Music Center of the 1960s.