Satellite Sounding – data and language
December 20th, 2008Research Presentation, Orpheus Institute, Ghent
December 20th, 2008I gave a 90 minute presentation of this research so far to the research group at the Orpheus Institute. Here is the pdf of the slides: YoPresent19dec08
The Composer uses Sound to Articulate Relationship with Environment.
December 10th, 2008Composers engaging with the mental, physical, collaborative and environmental processes of music making, embody concerns that are recurring in music and sound art today. The use of technologies to generate, simulate and sonify sounds in the environment is also pointing beyond issues of performance practice and instrument design. The environment? Humans are part of complex interconnected ecosystems in constant flux. The composer? Organising sound and making audible the inaudible, can help articulate these relationships through music rather than human language. Read the rest of this entry »
David Zicarelli – on women and Max/MSP
December 9th, 2008David Zicarelli, founder and CEO of Cycling 74, company behind Max/MSP, introducing the design decisions behind the very different Max 5. The design improvements really reflect an attempt to incorporate creative users needs, aiming for fluency in programming so that the creative process is allowed to take the foreground.
STEIM Jamboree 8-11 December 2008
December 9th, 2008A series of presentations and concerts on issues related to electronic music performance, interface design, and instrument technology, taking place at STEIM and the Smart Project Space in Amsterdam. STEIM Jamboree blog
Landscape with Alvin Lucier
November 25th, 2008Landscape with Alvin Lucier “With and without purpose” : excerpts from the interview by Robert Ashley in his Music with Roots in the Aether (first text edition 2000 MusikTexte Cologne, but made for television 1975?)
I’ve selected these comments on the following topics from the interview:
- technology and feeling – emotions in music
- functionality and musical choice
- distilling ideas, like pure alcohol
- two-dimensional notation, three-dimensional sound in space
- technology as a landscape
- physicality of fly-fishing and sound
- in and out of balance, with and without purpose Read the rest of this entry »
Notes on Walled Garden, Flwr Pwr
November 24th, 2008Flwr Pwr: Tending the Walled Garden, moderated by Matt Ratto. Ideas from the building and discussion of emergent behaviors and communications in networked environments. Workshop during the Walled Garden working conference held at the Lloyd Hotel, Amsterdam 20 – 21 November 2008 Read the rest of this entry »
Walled Garden: working conference on networks
November 19th, 2008Walled Garden is an international working conference that approaches the development and future challenges of the current Web 2.0 through exploration, experimentation and exchange of knowledge. It will address issues of identity, mobile communities and networks by focussing on the tendency towards online gated and closed communities.
20 & 21 November 2008, Lloyd Hotel, Amsterdam, Organised by Virtueel Platform
Gregory Bateson on Cetacean Communication
November 19th, 2008Gregory Bateson Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972 Ballantine Books, New York)
Notes on “Problems in Cetacean and other Mammalian Communication” (first published 1966, written while working for John Lilly and his dolphin centre in the Virgin Islands. pp 364 – 378)
In the problem of understanding Cetacean communication, mammals such as Dolphins and their sound production, is the difficulty of us as humans approaching communication that may have completely different goals and importance. Bateson describes the predominance of communication of relationship (love, hate, dependency etc) in non-human / non-linguisitc mammals, where there is no need for a language of data (humans have hands and manipulate objects and language is built out of this ability and necessity). The communication of relationship in humans is less explicit in language but can be found in gesture – proto-linguisitc communication – common to all mammals. Read the rest of this entry »
A Jackdaw In-Between (sound)
November 19th, 2008MP3 file: jackdaw in-between
A jackdaw (bird) has flown onto my roof and is making a series of complex sounds that appear to articulate something I can only try to understand. Its inflections of tone and timbre that irresistibly seem like language have drawn my attention and I have begun recording the sound. In doing so the jackdaw’s voice has made me shift my focus and listen to the environmental sounds outside my room in Amsterdam. My internal space – my concentration on the thoughts – is located in my physical room that is remarkably quiet, the only sound being my computer keyboard whilst I type this. The voice of the Jackdaw comes from just outside my space, I can’t see it, only hear as it sits and sounds the in-between space, so close as to be almost in the room. The sounds of Amsterdam then become clearer and present, although distant. The sound of the jackdaw is articulating an in-between, the intermedial, a moving back and forth between the internal, inside, to outside.