Event Archives - Page 2 of 24

Wittgraf & Belet at EMM festival

Mike Wittgraf’s Turning for flute and live Kyma processing was performed at the Electronic Music Midwest festival in Kansas City on 4-5 April 2025 by featured composer/performer Lisa Bost-Sandberg.

Wittgraf’s Turning is a play on words inspired by the mechanism of Bost-Sandberg’s Kingma System® flute with Glissando Headjoint® and, according to Wittgraf, Bost-Sandberg “thrilled audience members every time she played” at EMM.

Bost-Sandberg also performed Wittgraf’s A Vox Novus short for flute and fixed media (produced with Kyma).

Mike Wittgraf’s Pacamara is apparently capable of drawing power from the air during the dress rehearsal for his fixed media piece.

Sharing a concert with Wittgraf, Brian Belet‘s fixed media composition My Last Tape Piece was performed at the conference as an 8.4.1 sound structure (8 surround sound speakers on the floor, plus 4 elevated quad speakers).

EMM features a 12-channel immersive system, Yamaha powered speakers and subwoofers, and a Digico S21 mixer (named “EMMilia”)

Phillips & Cannon at MOXsonic

Two Kyma artists were featured in this year’s MOXsonic (Missouri Experimental Sonic Arts) Festival — three days of concerts, research presentations, workshops, installations, and conversations, 19-21 March 2025.

Wyatt Cannon presented “7”, a multichannel fixed media piece with sounds generated in Kyma. Wyatt, currently pursuing a Master of Music in Computer Music Composition at Indiana University with Chi Wang and John Gibson, uses sound manipulations inspired by evolution and astronomy to create long-form narratives that express the human urge to understand our place in the universe.

Mark Phillips performed his composition Waiting, for EWI and Kyma, featuring semi-autonomous algorithms guided and conducted using audio signals and MIDI data from the EWI while the performer responds to and interacts with the Kyma algorithms. No prerecorded audio or MIDI files were used in the live performance.

Here’s a 2018 lecture Mark presented on his use of the EWI with Kyma in another piece:

Generative sound design in Kyma

By augmenting traditional sample-based sound design with generative models, you gain additional parameters that you can perform to picture or control with a data stream from a model world — like a game engine. Once you have a parameterized model, you can generate completely imaginary spaces populated by hallucinatory sound-generating objects and creatures.

Thanks to Mark Ali and Matt Jefferies for capturing and editing the lecture on Generative Sound Design in Kyma presented last November by Carla Scaletti for Charlie Norton’s students at the University of West London.

Sons of Chipotle at Saariaho Festival

Anssi Kartunnen & John Paul Jones posing in front of a prickly pear cactus in New Mexico — Sons of Chipotle: Anssi Kartunnen & John Paul Jones

John Paul Jones and Anssi Karttunen are the Sons of Chipotle, described as “what happens when two free spirits join forces for an unbridled sonic expedition…” Known for their curiosity and a willingness to learn and explore, when Sons of Chipotle improvise, boundaries and preconceptions disappear.

Jones and Karttunen were both friends of Kaija Saariaho, and the admiration was mutual. Karttunen had been involved with all of Saariaho’s cello works since they had both moved to Paris in the 1980s.

In memory of Kaija, the Sons of Chipotle will perform with piano, cello, a wide variety of controllers, and live Kyma processing on Saturday 15 March 2025 at the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam as part of the first Saariaho Festival (13-16 March 2025).

Metropolis in Geneva

Laurel and Harder climbing an organ pipe — Poster for the 11th edition of The Organ Makes its Cinema festival in Geneva

Organist/composer Franz Danksagmüller will perform a live Ciné-concert combining Kyma electronics with a 1937 Wurlitzer organ to accompany Fritz Lang’s classic silent film Metropolis at Collége Claparède in Geneva on 27 March at 8 pm.

The day before the concert, Danksagmüller is presenting a masterclass on organ and electronics improvisation for live cinema: 26 March 2025 at 2 pm.

The Ciné-concert and masterclass are part of the eleventh edition of “L’orgue fait son cinéma” festival which promises a rich and varied program — great films, great organists, regional roots, international influences, a program for young people and families, original combinations, great repertoire and contemporary creation — there’s something for everyone at this festival centered on the 1937 Wurlitzer organ of the Collège Claparède (a middle-school named for 19th century Swiss neurologist Édouard Claparède).

L’orgue fait son cinéma’s fusion of tradition and innovation is perfectly reflected by the school’s motto,

Intelligence is the ability to solve new problems

At Collége Claparède, chemin de Fossard 61, 1231 Conches, Genève

Public Art Biennial in Abu Dhabi

Kyma artist Hasan Hujairi was invited to join an event at Christopher Joshua Benton’s installation for the inaugural Public Art Biennial in Abu Dhabi: Where Lies My Carpet Is Thy Home (2024). Participating artists included Safeya Alblooshi, Hasan Hujairi, Manic Mundane, and Espervene.

Installed on land gifted to the carpet sellers of Abu Dhabi by city founder, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, Benton’s gigantic astroturf kilim is so large that it is best viewed from the air. It doubles as a public park and is surrounded by the carpet sellers’ shops and upstairs residences.

Photo from Architectural Digest article, courtesy of Abu Dhabi Culture and Tourism

Sound Unbound by Halo Halo Experiment on 11 January 2025 was described as four, 30-minute sonic explorations that transcend the boundaries of sound and redefine the concept of “home” at Christopher Joshua Benton’s installation.

Hasan Hajairi’s setup for ‘Sound Unbound’ at Christopher Joshua Benton’s public art installation in Abu Dhabi: Where Lies My Carpet Is Thy Home (2024)

Hujairi writes,

“I wanted to challenge myself by making this the first time I performed live with Kyma. I created a very simple Kyma Multigrid, and since I love the possibilities of the TimeIndex, I had one sound object cycling through a folder of about 150 short sound samples from analog electronic equipment controlled from the Wacom tablet. I loved how sometimes it would sound like granular synthesis, sometimes it would sound like short loops. I could change the playback rate, giving many options to play with sound on the fly and make decisions while performing. I was assigned 30 minutes to perform and by using the Multigrid, I was able to perform at different tempos and with different tools.”

To begin the performance, Hajairi used the macOS text-to-speech function to invite the audience to come closer and to listen closely.

Umano Post Umano

On 19 December 2024, composer Agostino Di Scipio utilized live Kyma signal processing in his ambitious intermedia work premiered at the Nuova Consonanza festival.

Umano Post Umano is, in some sense, a review of Di Scipio’s artistic work, exposing the full range of performance practices he has explored over the last 25 years (since he first introduced Audible Ecosystemics). Umano Post Umano features music, electroacoustic environments and digital audio processing by Agostino Di Scipio, video projections and stage design by Matias Guerra, texts collected from job advertisements, legal and financial advertising and from Hesiod’s Theogony, as well as multiple performers on acoustic instruments, each of whom also operates a live camera.
Continue reading “Umano Post Umano”

Kyma and the space of computable sound @ ADC24

“…each instrument, each tool… implies an imaginable and explorable universe” — Jacques Attali

To Symbolic Sound co-founder, Carla Scaletti, every tool — from a user interface to a programming language, to an LLM — is a “map” to some underlying functionality. How do the design choices we make affect what people can imagine creating with those maps? How can we begin to navigate an abstract, completely unknown (and potentially infinite) space — like the space of all computable sound? How (and why) is the Kyma Sound graph radically different from other “visual” programming languages for sound and music?

Find out by watching her keynote address, presented at the 2024 Audio Developer Conference (ADC 24).

Violins abducted by aliens

They come in peace!

Anssi Laiho’s Teknofobia Ensemble is a live-electronics piece that combines installation and concert forms: an installation, because its sound is generated by machines; a concert piece, because it has a time-dependent structure and musical directions for performers. The premiere was 13 November 2024 at Valvesali in Oulu, Finland.

Laiho views technophobia, the fear of new technological advancements, as a subcategory of xenophobia, the fear of the unknown or of outsiders. His goal was to present both of these phobias in an absurd setting.

The composer writes that “the basic concept of technophobia — that ‘machines will replace us and make us irrelevant’— is particularly relevant today, as programs using artificial intelligence are becoming mainstream and are widely used across many industries.”

Teknofobia Ensemble poses the question: What if there were a planet inhabited by a mechanical species, and these machines came to Earth and tried to communicate with us via music? What would the music sound like, and would they first try to learn and imitate our culture in order to communicate with us?

Laiho’s aim was to reproduce the live-electronics environment he would normally work in, but to replace the human musicians with robots — not androids or simulants but “mechanical musicians”.

He asked himself, “What would it mean for my music and creative process if this basic assumption were to become true? As a composer living in the 2020s, do I still need musicians to perform my compositions? Wouldn’t it be easier to work with machines that always fulfill my requests? Can a mechanical musician interpret a musical piece on an emotional level, as a human being does, or does it simply apply virtuosity to the technical execution of the task?”

He then set out to prove himself wrong!

Teknofobia Ensemble consists of five prepared violins, each equipped with a Raspberry Pi that controls various types of electronic motors (solenoids, DC motors, stepper motors, and servos) through a Python program. This program converts OSC commands received from Kyma into PWM signals on the Raspberry Pi pins, which are connected to motor drivers.

In live performances, Kyma acts as the conductor for the ensemble, while Laiho views his role as primarily that of a “mixer for the band”.

The piece is structured as a 26-minute-long Kyma timeline, consisting of OSC instructions (the musical notation of the piece) for the mechanical violins. The live sound produced by the violins is routed back to Kyma via custom-made contact microphones for live electronic processing.

Toe and Shell (IRL)

Remember the lockdowns? Throughout those bleak days when musicians couldn’t perform in public, a small group of Kyma artists managed to find a way to continue meeting and making music together via Zoom in two virtual concerts they called Toe and Shell. In early November 2024 they decided to meet in person at Splendor, a former bathhouse that Anne La Berge has converted into a musical mecca in the center of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Setting up for a multi-system jam session

The first order of business was for the participants to collectively agree on a schedule of presentations, discussions, and public concerts. Then, over the course of the three day meetup, everyone had a chance to ask questions, experiment, share expertise, and improvise together.

Pete Johnston, Anne La Berge, Charlie Norton sharing expertise

As part of the Toe and Shell, Anne La Berge hosted three public concerts at Splendor.