Thanks to STEIM (and an exquisite crew of supporting artists) I was able to produce Orpheus2010 during an intense five day residency at the end of June 2010.

In July I spent two weeks at STEIM developing some early concepts for a new sound-theatre work called BOTCH.  The work will premiere in New York City in 2013 so there’s a lot of time to experiment with different ideas.  Basically I’m interested in finding interesting relationships between people and machines that highlight our contemporary co-dependence while finding what is is distinct about the human half of the equation.  It seemed to me that working with STEIM technology would be a good way to experiment with this since the institution is so involved with interface.

New York singer / performer Christina Campanella joined me for the second week and we explored a number of ways to use LiSA with JunXion.  We used Wii remotes as the main interface and experimented with the built in video tracking in JunXion.  Generally speaking we were not trying to do anything fancy.  In fact, we were trying to find the simplest ways to demonstrate a theatrical relationship between voice and machine.  For example, we spent a few days building a basic sampler that would record Christina’s voice and allow her, using the remote, to scan forward and backwards through the recording, and then punch in a new recording at various points.  I was interested in what happens when the sound recorded is verbal information, and the manipulations that follow are aimed at the semantics of altering sequence etc…  I was thinking mostly of Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape” in this regard.  Creating a solipsistic world where a single performer on stage is accompanied by her recordings.  The recorded voice was output to a small speaker, which made it almost come alive.  Like a weird little pet droid…

In BOTCH each vignette or section operates as a self contained module, and the directions for what the performers do is notated as an algorithm, rather than a conventional score or script.  And so the performance directions for this work are written in a kind of pseudo computer code with if/then statements, loops, and random numbers generated by coin tosses.  By having the humans on stage operating according to the logic of a computer brings out a nice tension between what is human and what is machinic.

Another experiment we tried involved Christina and myself on opposite ends of the room, listening to a small speaker.  The speaker would play back the voice of the other performer on a time delay, and each of us had to try to mimic what we heard in real-time.  This quickly devolved as it’s an impossible task, though an abstract musicality emerged.  After the actual verbal information is lost, the melodic and rhythmic aspects of the voice become the focus.  Though this is quite a simple idea, it would be really difficult to pull off using Ableton Live or sequencing software.  Also, being able to easily integrate the Wii remotes made it possible for the performers to control everything rather than a sound operator, which in a piece like this is essential.

I’d used Max/MSP in the past to create theatre performance systems, but since my main interest is capturing live recordings and immediately manipulating them, LiSA offered all the possibilities I needed, and after an initial learning curve I was able to quickly prototype ideas. We also worked with more advanced ideas, such as using the 3-D axis control afforded by the remotes, resampling techniques, and video tracking to effect a range of parameters, and I’m not sure where that will lead.

On the last day of the residency we had an open studio presentation, where we showed about 20 minutes to an audience.  These were really just the initial sketches for four different sections – each one investigating a different relation between voice and the electronics.  Afterwards we had a good question / answer session.  One thing that really stands out is how engaged the audience was in responding to the work.  I find QA sessions in the U.S. to be mostly perfunctory, but here both the STEIM staff and the other audience members really dug in and gave us constructive feedback and a good discussion came out of it.

Overall this was an excellent experience at STEIM, and I feel that the work we did here will be important for the future of our piece.  I’m grateful to everyone at STEIM who offered technical help, artistic advice, and a conducive atmosphere for making this work.  Thanks also to the Netherland-America Foundation for funding our travel to Amsterdam.

My name is Freeka Tet and I am currently active in different projects aka Sgure, Gazormass, Chlorgeschlecht, and MAxibacon.
First I want to say thanks to all the Steim gang, especially Jun, Frank, and Taku.
Second I want to apology for my english ( yes i am french )

Ok so basically I was resident at STEIM begining of April 2010 for 2 things, hacking the Sixaxis, and build a glove with different sensors on it to replace the Wiimote I am currently using during my performance.

Sixaxis Hack ///////////

I am using Max/MSP on OS X and I finally found a way to get the Sixaxis/PS3 gamepad working thru bluetooth on my machine, I found a high interest on it, as this gamepad have accelerometers and built-in battery and the more important every buttons are pressure sensitive giving me a value between 0 and 255 and all this for less than 50 euro …
What I wanted to do is to change the ergonomy of this device to something I could use more easily for my own show but has we had a lack of time and that everybody was really busy, we worked on my second project instead.
(the sixaxis hack will happen for sure I am working on it on my side..)

Glove ///////

So here is what we worked on with Jun.
A glove with
- 1 accelerometer
- 2 pressures sensors
- 9 reed switchs ( you activate them with a magnet and don’t need to push any buttons )
- everything is a plug to an arduino/funnel board and communicate thru 2 wireless xbee modules.
Then I use Junxion to send all these data to Max/MSP via OSC.

We had only 4 days to do it, but we finally did it! and its working like a charm… but for some reasons, I don’t use it yet in my performances. Kind of weird but this residency made me learn so much about my artistic direction and now I know that I feel better by hacking some popular already existing devices than building a controller from the scratch. This glove is surprising me by his sensivity and precision but its actually too much! And I feel way more comfortable with my Wiimote (we actually had the time to change the wiimote as well, so I have now 2 extras buttons that are just perfect !)

During the residency, I had the time to work a bit on my toothbrush project, I did work on an arduino board, and use the capacitive sensing idea to trig different sampler and effects, thanks a lot Jun for helping me on this !!

This is just a quick resume of what happened, I probably will write more details about it later.

http://www.halftheory.com/sgure
http://www.myspace.com/sgure
http://www.myspace.com/gazormass
http://www.myspace.com/chlorgeschlecht
http://www.myspace.com/maxibacon

My name is Russell Michael Harmon. I am currently completing my MA by Independent Study in Music, Technology and Innovation at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK.

My research revolves quite tightly around my two major interests, guitars and DIY electronic musical instruments. Naturally, as both a guitarist and an electronic musician, I do not want to separate or isolate either element; I wish to marry the two together physically and audibly for both performance and composition.

My MA thesis reflects this desire:

The Integration of Guitar Performance and Live Electronics: the Circuit Bent Guitar [more...]

The work to date on my project is documented here: http://cec.concordia.ca/econtact/12_3/scott_wigi.html

As usual I am very grateful to everyone at STEIM for this continuing residency. It makes things possible in days which would take months and other things which would never happen at all without STEIM’s support and influence.

On this visit we replaced one of the Wiimotes was using with a replacement handset and an arduino board: it has more and better sensors, a more reliable , tiny rechargeable batteries, it is more ergonomic. It took a couple of days to convert/recreate the programming. We ran out of time on this before thinking creatively about what new possibilities having two of these instead. But yet again I have the feeling it is again opening up the scope of what is possible. Next time we will replace the second handset reprogram JunXion.

Unanswered questions arising:

Could the XY (and potentially Z) sensors from the Lightning be replaced? Hack the existing transmitter/receivers or replace them. I would like a more compact system.

Visual feedback? It would be nice to have the current LiSa buffer represented in text form on an LCD. I also wonder if some of the controllers could be represented. As the system gets more complex I sometimes need to check the status of 4 different continuous controllers – I’m not sure how this could be done – perhaps a camera and screen could be combined in some way?

Related point: Ideally it would be nice to have LiSa/junXion running in an independent box, like an i-phone which could also function as infra-red camera and display- and get rid of the laptop completely – I guess the technology is not there for that yet but it is an interesting long term goal.

Vibration feedback to give an indication of when the edges of spatial regions are close.

Onwards and upwards!

We have released  our CD with the work we did at STEIM is out (for sale here), mixing and mastering took longer than anticipated along with a couple of unforeseen technical problems. We are extremely happy with how it all turned out. It is perfect for my photos, but is also an amazing soundtrack for the Salton Sea. I listened to it while driving through the area recently and it felt like a religious experience.

Here is our newly designed sound Box, much inspired by the legendary Crackle Synthesizer, introducing: The Sonas Inflecto.

For more info on our project go to www.saltonsink.com.

STEIM has been collaborating for a while now with artist Richard Scott on the development of his electronic instrument, the WiGi. Richard wrote an interesting article on the instrument.

The author and WiGi at the Next Festival Bratislava 2009. Photo © Judith Goodman.

Getting WiGi with It:

Performing and Programming with an Infrared Gestural Instrument: A Case Study

by Richard Scott

Abstract

I offer an account of working with the Buchla Lightning MIDI controller and of the expansion of the instrument into the “WiGi” system, using Nintendo Wii-motes, JunXion and LiSa software, and made with the support and collaboration of STEIM (Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music). I will emphasise my background as an instrumentalist and consider some of its practical consequences for the project. I outline the various stages of development which have led to an expanded, fully functional performing instrument, and highlight some of the questions and decisions which occurred over a period of five years. I consider some æsthetic and other questions which arise from the process, some limitations of the system and my plans for its future development. Finally, I outline the various functions of the current instrument, the issues of mapping, scaling, buffers and illustrate my use of it.

You can read the whole story here.

RETINAn is a 15 minute performance that includes piano in a setting that immerse it with live video and electronics and putting the classical idiom into modern context.

It is an artistic study in the kinetic relationships between sound, image, motion and space. It takes its inspiration from the early cinematic practices of Étienne-Jules Marey, whose work in studying and photographing movement revolutionized the way we visualize time and motion, and puts them in the contemporary perspective.

The main question of this project is the ontology of the cinematic praxis: what is contained on the audiovisual material that allows the cinematic experience to be constructed? How is the narrative material developing? Is modern human differs in attention? How to present the material to the modern audience?

The soundscape of sober electronics promotes the image and brings the sound and time dimension to the visual aspect. The nostalgic and familiar sounds of piano bridge the modern and old sounds from the early cinematic world into the modern world.

Our goal is to explore the audiovisual phenomena form the perspective of emergence much like the image emerges onto the eye’s retina. The spectator is provided with an audio-visual objects that are observed by the virtual camera’s eye. This observation gives a dynamic perspective in time and space and allows the creation of narrative of sound, image, motion and space as an individual experience.

The inspirations of the project are the early cinematic practices of Étienne-Jules Marey and the Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov. The deep technical limitations they faced and the creative solutions they came up with are a start point for the creative techniques that are used in this project.

We wanted to work in a supportive and stimulating environment, and STEIM was a perfect place for that. The best aspect was the support from Nico and his attentiveness to our needs.

The project was presented at STEIM, as well as during ‘SPOR’ festival in Aarhus (Denmark).

The subsequent performances are going to happen during Gaudeamus festival this year on September 10th and during Musica Electronica Nova Festival in Poland in May 2011.

Here are some pictures from the Antwerp show of Disco Debris. Unlike the Amiens installation which was up for 3 months, and had to be self-maintaining, i.e I couldn’t use wireless headphones because they would have required too much caretaking, the Antwerp show was just one day as part of Champ d’Action’s Time Canvas event. For this one I had the chance to expirement with how the piece worked with headphones, with an LED on the headphones (thanks Jun !).

While the tracking was more sensitive in the dark gallery space in Antwerp, because the light source was more focused (as opposed to the 4 theatre lights in Amiens ). The visual impact of the space was less impressive and therefore in some way there was less dialogue between the space and the sound.

In both cases one thing I’ve realised from the installation is to keep things very simple. In the art world as opposed to the music world, an audience is not used to sound abstraction, and need as much help as possible in terms of representational material. One also does not have a captive audience, and what that means for the interactivity is that  one has to look for the most transparent cause and effects of the movement while maintaining some kind of narrativite engagement to keep the audience in the space.

this was a real eye-opener for me about translating ideas from the concert hall to the gallery..

Disco Debris – an interactive sound installation

The public enters one person at a time into a dark neutral space in which they experience the sensation of literally walking through debris of frozen sound. One stumbles on a landscape of frozen voices, barely recognizable shards of 1970’s pop music, static bird song, broken pulses of disco music reduced to an almost Geiger like clicking, resonances of invisible spaces. These imaginary spaces are mapped onto a topography of intersecting voices and sounds, which slowly transform over time.

Technically this is achieved by using a video camera which tracks the movements of the audience so that the XY position is mapped directly onto the frozen moment of the sound heard back in the space or in the headphones. The sound is granulated and the position of the person in the space determines which moment of time is heard. [more...]