Official organ of the Symbolic Sound Corporation
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? Â Ben Phenix has posted a survey to gauge interest in various cities as potential future KISS locations. Â If you’d like to attend a symposium, now is your chance to register your preferences as to the location! Â The survey will be active through the end of February 2011.
The SEAMUS2011 conference in Miami Florida January 20-22, 2011 will include several performances and paper presentations by Kyma users: http://www.seamus2011.org/
Film maker Theo Lipfert’s Beneath the Surface (premiered in Vienna at KISS2010) has been selected for performance at SEAMUS in January 20-22 2011 in Miami. The film, featuring processed video taken from a camera that was thrown out into the ocean and gradually washed ashore by the waves, has a live Kyma-generated sound track consisting of crisply processed watery sounds recorded by the camera and randomly-selected, processed phrases of 13 year-olds recounting their vivid and sometimes disturbing dreams (beneath the surface in more ways than one!), mixed and spatialized live using Kyma Control on an Apple iPad.
Engines of…, Scott Miller‘s composition for string orchestra and Kyma-generated fixed-media, will also be performed at the SEAMUS conference. Â Engines of… was commissioned and premiered by the Maplegrove High School orchestra in 2006.
Sharing a paper session are two composers who will be re-presenting their contributions from KISS2010 on the theme ‘symbolic sound’: “Constructing Realities: Nelson Goodman’s Theory of Symbol Systems and Electroacoustic Music†by Scott Miller and Steve Everett’s, “Auditory Roughness and Ecological Listening in Electro-Acoustic Musicâ€.
Last year’s SEAMUS2010 also featured several Kyma pieces as well as a pre-conference day-long Kyma Seminar, described in the Allegro Newsletter.
John Littig’s Audio Grafitti opens Tuesday January 18, 2011 at SOB’s in New York. He described how he used Kyma for the intro to Inside Reprise in a December 27 2010 interview with Lynne Rosen on WBAI in New York.
While studying at NYU and working as a research assistant in the brain imaging department at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, John Littig was simultaneously hard at work developing his craft as a jazz drummer in clubs from Greenwich Village to Harlem.  In a December 27th interview on Lynne Rosen‘s “In Pursuit of Happiness” radio show on WBAI in New York, John gave a shout-out to Symbolic Sound and played the Kyma-generated intro to Inside Reprise, one of the songs from Audio Grafitti,  his new show opening at Tuesday January 18 2011 at SOB’s in New York.
Listen to John Littig interview on WBAI; the Kyma shout-out occurs at  around 39 minutes, and the larger discussion on the importance of surrounding yourself with positive, affirming influences is important advice for all artists to reflect upon at the beginning of this new year.  As Littig points out, “No one can do this alone.”
A team of mechanical engineers at the University of Illinois has developed an ‘acoustic cloak‘ that can bend sound waves. Â Designed for frequencies in the 40 to 80 kHz range, the device is intended for cloaking objects from ultrasound or sonar detectors which begs the question: Could a larger-scale version of the device be used for reducing noise in a studio?
More at: http://www.news.illinois.edu/news/11/0105sound_fang.html#
Computer music by Jonty Harrison and Silvia Matheus will be featured on The San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2011, Friday-Sunday, January 7-9, 2011, 8pm at the Southside Theater, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco: http://www.sfsound.org/tape.html
Surround yourself with 16+ speakers at the San Francisco Tape Music Festival, during three concerts of new and classic fixed-media compositions by 20 composers. This year’s event features Jonty Harrison, the British composer and pioneer of surround-sound diffusion and a performance of Crossings by composer/videographer Silvia Matheus.
For more details and advance ticket sales, visit http://www.sfsound.org/tape.html/
The San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2011Scott Miller is one of thirty Minnesota composers featured on a new double-CD from Innova entitled Here and Now, a recording in honor of St Paul-based new music ensemble Zeitgeist’s 30th anniversary. Produced, mixed and edited by Scott Miller and Pat O’Keefe, Here and Now will be celebrated by a three-day CD-Release Party at Studio Z at 7:30 pm, January 6-8 2011.
Scott Miller is one of thirty Minnesota composers featured on a new double-CD from Innova entitled Here and Now, a recording in honor of St Paul-based new music ensemble Zeitgeist‘s 30th anniversary. Produced, mixed and edited by Scott Miller and Pat O’Keefe, Here and Now will be celebrated by a three-day CD-Release Party at Studio Z at  7:30 pm, January 6-8 2011.
Join the EMF Kyma Creative Group in Manhattan to achieve expertise in generating and processing sounds with Kyma, an understanding of sound and the quality of sound, and for exercise in solving problems in sound design, composition, and other applications: http://www.emfstudios.org/kyma.html
Joel Chadabe is posing a challenge to all Kyma sound designers: How many ways can you come up with to make this recording striking, beautiful and memorable?
http://www.emfstudios.org/mp3s/110108_03subway.mp3
EMF Studios, a program of Electronic Music Foundation, is a creative resource center in midtown Manhattan where composers, performers, sound designers, and recording engineers at any stage of their careers can meet in collaborative problem-solving Creative Groups to acquire new skills and form new contacts. Â The goals for the EMF Kyma Creative Group are:
…to cultivate boundless musical creativity and apply it to professional problem solving in composition, sound design, post production, film scoring, game development, sound installations, live performance, research, and other creative musical applications.
and
…the achievement of expertise in generating and processing sounds with Kyma, an understanding of sound and the quality of sound, and the exercise of solving problems in sound design, composition, and other applications.
For more information visit http://www.emfstudios.org/kyma.html
Sound adventurer Mikkel Nielsen posted a video on his blog demonstrating his Kyma-processed sounds for a multi-touch device. Mikkel starts with bird whistles and chirps ends up with R2D2 phoning home on his iPhone!
The music from Cristian Vogel and Gilles Jobin’s collaborative work, Black Swan was released in December 2010 by Sub Rosa (SR303): http://subrosa.itcmedia.net/en/catalogue/electronics/cristian-vogel-black-swan.html
Long before Natalie Portman donned the sequined black bird’s eye makeup, composer Cristian Vogel and choreographer Gilles Jobin were collaborating on their own Black Swan, the music for which was released in December under the Sub Rosa label (SR303).
Boomcat reviewed the recording on the Global Noises forum:
Those who follow Vogel’s movements will already know he is deeply involved with the legendary Kyma digital synthesis/sequencing system, and ‘Black Swan’ feels like the perfect extension of those interests.
Composer Julien Bilodeau’s Kroniks_01, for flute and live Kyma processing was performed by Geneviève Déraspe at the Cirmmt Center, McGill University on Thursday, the 9th of December 2010.
Composer Julien Bilodeau‘s Kroniks_01, for flute and live Kyma processing was performed by Geneviève Déraspe at the Cirmmt Center, McGill University on  Thursday, the 9th of December 2010.
The work, composed in 2005 was influenced by Karlheinz Stockhausen in its use of a single kernel of material to generate intervallic and durational relationships on multiple timescales, from the microstructure to the entire piece and even over multiple pieces of music in a larger cycle. This consistency is audible in the overall coherence of the piece and Déraspe brings an intensity and energy to the piece that makes it sizzle. Bilodeau used 84 flute samples reconstructed in sparkling granulations.
In keeping with its multi-scale structure, Â Kroniks_01 depicts the relationship between individual and the masses.
