Category: Event

KISS2013: INTER faces

At this year’s Kyma International Sound Symposium —12-15 September 2013 in Brussels, Belgium — composers, sound designers, and performers will be focusing on interfaces for interactive sound design and live performance.

Allison Pickett @ KISS2012
Actor Allison Goodman, shown here controlling Kyma with an Emotiv EPOC neural headset, is one of the performers scheduled to appear at KISS2013 in Brussels September 12-15 2013

Some of the special activities in store for this year include hands-on demonstrations of interfaces for interactive sound and performance, a public dialog on spatialization featuring electronic music pioneers Annette Vande Gorne and Joel Chadabe, a competition pitting teams of sound designers and engineers against the clock to create new performance interfaces, an exclusive preview of new developments in the Kyma sound design language, concerts of new music inspired by the Belgian painter René Magritte, live Kyma electronics spatialized through a 70+ speaker Acousmonium in the Espace Senghor, and an installation in the ISIB foyer where visitors (tracked by a Kinect camera) will create a continuous, collaborative soundscape.

KISS2013: INTER faces will also feature technical sessions on topics ranging from signal processing to interfaces, an ‘Open lab’ where Kyma experts will be available to answer questions, hands-on demos and workshops focusing on innovative user interfaces and controllers, and evenings filled with live musical performances showcasing some of the best work created in Kyma this year, including music controlled by brain interfaces, game controllers, iPads, Continuum fingerboards and drawing tablets; audio signals used as controllers; Foley artists as live performers; live cinema; motion-tracked dancers, and more!

Kyma developers Carla Scaletti and Kurt J. Hebel will be joined by over 30 audio and music professionals from ten countries in presenting the seminars, music, and hands-on demonstrations.

The full KISS2013 schedule is available on-line.

Program highlights

Institut Supérieur Industriel de Bruxelles

KISS2013 organizers Rudi Giot and Jacques Tichon, along with their students at the Institut Supérieur Industriel de Bruxelles (ISIB), have several special activities planned for KISS2013, including:

Hands-on interfacing sessions

Get up close and personal with hardware and software interfacing tools including Open Interface and Skemmi (the universal Open Sound Control interface builder), Soft Kinetic Cameras, Interface-Z sensor kits, Tobii eye trackers, Reactable on a Microsoft Surface, Raspberry Pi, Dynamixel, Microsoft Kinect, and more!

InterFaceOff

Modeled on a reality-TV-style creative competition, InterFaceOff pits teams of composers and engineers against the clock, challenging them to create new performance interfaces in just four days!

A Spatial Dialog

KISS2013 attendees will have a unique opportunity to learn about live spatialization performance from Belgian composer Annette Vande Gorne who, in a public dialog with Electric Sound author and composer, Joel Chadabe, will discuss and demonstrate musical spatialization using a 70+ loudspeaker Acousmonium installed in the Espace Senghor.

The Listening Room

Inspired by René Magritte’s painting of the same name, Christian Frisson’s interactive LoopJam composition The Listening Room blurs the line between the individual and the group. Based on collections of sound clips generated in Kyma, LoopJam creates a two-dimensional sound map using timbral similarity as distance. Throughout the conference, visitors (tracked by a Kinect camera) will be interacting with the space in a fluid and playful way, creating a continuous collaborative composition in the foyer of the ISIB.

 

Concerts

Concerts featuring performances of live interactive Kyma pieces will be spatialized in real-time by experts from Musique et Recherches utilizing their 70+ speaker Acousmonium.

Who should attend

Anyone who is obsessed with sound – whether a novice looking to kickstart his or her career, an expert seeking fresh inspiration, or someone who’s simply curious about sound, interfaces, or Kyma – will find in KISS2013 a chance to immerse themselves in sound and ideas for four intense and inspiring days and nights.

Here’s how Chicago-based sound designer and re-recording mixer, Dustin Camilleri describes his experience at last year’s KISS:

“…The unique thing about Kyma, I find, is that it appeals to such a wide spectrum of people doing such an amazingly diverse set of things, but sharing a common language. The conversations I had were so incredibly inspiring; the performances I saw were just over the top, and the community at large was just some of the nicest most genuine people I’ve ever had the pleasure of spending some time with. For a conference it was truly amazing.”

Registration and travel

Registration is now open. An early registration discount is in effect until August 1, 2013. Student discounts are also available.

Looking for a place to stay that is near the action? Here is some travel and lodging information.

Links

KISS2013 Site
Facebook
Twitter

Questions? Please contact the organizers.

 

Yasuski goes wireless

Yasuski is performing a series of completely wireless gigs, opening for Crome Molybdan at Akasaka Red Theater in Tokyo and later in Osaka at Umeda HEP Hall.  He’s using AKG wireless audio, WiFi/MIDI by XBee modules, and the iPad. Concerned that all his wireless audio might interfere with each other around 2.4GHz, he discovered that his laptop PC can change its WiFi frequency to ~5GHz to avoid mutual interference.

Check out Yasuski’s blog for videos from the live performances.

Scott Miller performing live Kyma with O’Keefe & Nakatani

On Friday, March 15 at Studio Z, Pat O’Keefe will present the premiere performance of Contents May Differ, a new work for clarinet and Kyma composed (and co-performed) by Scott Miller.  Also on the program are new works for clarinet by Ann Millikan, Brett Warchow, Jeff Lambert, Paul Cantrell and Pat O’Keefe himself. Wine, cheese and a selection of sweets can only add to the evening’s sensual delights.

Pat O’Keefe in Concert at Studio Z
Friday, March 15 at 7:30 pm
Studio Z
275 East 4th Street, Suite 200, St. Paul, Minnesota USA
Admission: $10

 


Then on Tuesday, March 19, in St. Cloud, Scott Miller is performing a live Kyma set with Tatsuya Nakatani, who’s been described as “the Jimi Hendrix of the percussion world“:

Tatsuya Nakatani, percussion & Scott Miller, Kyma
Tuesday, March 19, 8:00 pm
Gant Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center
St. Cloud State University
FREE and open to the public

Concert of Di Scipio works at Sonorities Festival

A full concert of works by Agostino Di Scipio is to be featured as part of the Sonorities Festival in Belfast on 26 April 2013.

  • AUDIBLE ECOSYSTEMICS n.1 live electronics
  • PAYSAGE HISTORIQUE n.4 (New York. Background Media Noise), taped sounds and electronics
  • MODES OF INTERFERENCE n.1, audio feedback system with trumpet and electronics
  • 2 PEZZI DI ASCOLTO E SORVEGLIANZA, live electronics
  • Luigi Nono POST-PRE-LUDIUM PER DONAU, tuba and electronics Giacinto Scelsi PEZZI PER TROMBA SOLA

Jonathan Impett is performing trumpet and tuba and Agostino Di Scipio is performing the Kyma electronics.

Free range trombone in the Veg Box

Composer/trombonist Robert Jarvis. Photo by Andy Newcombe.

Find out why Sam Bailey, pianist and organizer of the Free Range experimental music and poetry series at the Veg Box in Canterbury, introduces this performance as “Robert Jarvis, improvising trombone, and the most intelligent & unpredictable computer software that improvises that I’ve ever heard!”

 

If you close your eyes, you’d swear Jarvis is performing with a large ensemble of acoustic and electronic performers; rest assured there’s no one on stage but Robert, his trombone, and Kyma, “fueled,” as Bailey puts it, “by this crazy supercomputer called the Pacarana.”

Opening with orchestral-sounding atmospherics, travelling through rainforests of birds and squealing mammals, proceeding through monochromatic regions of percussive air bursts and the rhythmic tolling of bell-like noises, through rhythmic loops, reflective self-examination, and interludes of music worthy of a TV action drama sound track, evolving into dance-like counterpoint with bubbly sine waves, and building to a dramatic high point at around 28 minutes, Jarvis is a master of pacing, variety, and narrative structure.  That first climax dissolves into growling timbres that morph into wailing whale-song, building to another percussive high point at around 31 minutes, followed by elephantine, broadband timbres that relentlessly build back up only to sublimate into an ethereal sustained section with mandolin-like multipluck synthetic doubling. Centering on D, building tension around a B-flat-E tritone, he launches into a solo cadenza around 42 minutes.  After the frenetic energy and drama, the piece ends slowly and reflectively, followed by seemingly endless applause and clinking of glasses and, last but not least, a lively post-concert discussion.

Your next chance to catch a live performance by Robert Jarvis is later in March when he’ll appear as a special guest of Burning Wood on Saturday 23rd at Creek Creative, Faversham.

IN SICH(T) emerging

On composer Bruno Liberda’s blog, you can actually witness the evolution of a new composition. “IN SICH(T)”, Liberda’s new site-specific piece, in the process of being written for Max Hegele’s memorial chapel in Vienna, includes performers who, in addition to playing their instruments, will be “playing the space”, exploring and transforming the many-seconds long natural reverberation and other acoustic characteristics of the highly reflective dome.

Follow along as Liberda adapts and expands the piece and develops his own notation specific to the space, and be sure to save the date of the premiere performance: April 20 2013.

SAE Milan offers free Kyma workshop

Award-winning sound designer Matteo Milani will lead a 2 hour introductory workshop on the Kyma sound design language in the great hall of SAE Milan on Thursday, 21 February at 18:30.  According to the workshop description:

Kyma is an open, real-time-controllable environment for the creation, modification, and combination of new sounds in ways that are totally different from a sequencer or digital audio workstation.  Matteo Milani will conduct you on an exploration of the innumerable possibilities offered by the system with which it’s possible to create your own patches or Sounds.  A Sound can be a simple audio file playback or reverb, but it can also be a complex combination of audio generators and modifiers, synthesis, re-synthesis, sampling recombined in infinite variety, modulating their parameters and entering into a dialog with one another.  By means of the Timeline it’s possible to compose the sound, assembling individual Sounds into larger structures, drawing functions to control the way parameters evolve over time.

Kyma is therefore a language for the generation and transformation of complex sounds with which it is possible to create your own plug-in, virtual synth, performance environment, interactive sound sculptures, each one with its own virtual control surface for the management of parameters in real time by means of the MIDI or OSC protocol.

Workshop instructor Matteo Milani is both a sound designer and an advocate for the sound design profession as a whole.  An active sound designer and recordist for film, advertising and mastering, he also writes for several popular audio magazines, and his blog Unidentified Sound Object has generated an international following.  Milani also composes music and experimental soundscapes for multimedia installations and live events as well as producing and distributing his own sound effects libraries. The workshop will be presented in Italian (Milani can also answer questions afterward in English).

The workshop is free, but spaces are limited.  Please register in advance to reserve your place by sending email to SAE with “Seminario Kyma” in the subject line.  SAE urges you to register as soon as possible as space is limited!

Voice as Controller: Music of Andrea Young

Andrea Young will be performing her newest compositions for voice and Kyma at CalArts California Institute of the Arts, 8 pm, February 13, 2013, as part of a presentation of her research into vocal feature extraction and its application to controlling live electronics in Kyma. The concert begins with a work for solo voice that exemplifies the parametic counterpoint singing techniques used to feed the unruly algorithms presented in the following works. Noise and oscillators are controlled by the voice, while contact mics and miniature mics make use of the differentiation between signals as yet another source of sound and musical data control.

The concert will also be streamed live via the ROD Webcast.

New Year’s Day with JPJ

On 1 January 2013, Fiona Talkington celebrates the New Year on BBC Radio 3 with special guest, multi-instrumentalist and Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones performing live in the BBC’s Maida Vale studios. On this special New Year’s installment of Talkington’s Late Junction, Jones plays acoustic piano, lap steel ukulele, and Kyma-processed electric mandolin and lap steel guitar.  The show will air Tuesday, 1 January 2013 at 23:00 on BBC Radio 3 (after which it will be archived on the website for one week).  Happy New Year!