While modern citizens are busy keeping up with communications technology, they are missing out on many human elements in communication like presence and authenticity. While some say we will get used to life mediated by screens and some prefer to wait for technology to get fast enough so we can recreate some of those human elements, there is value for artists in exploring the expressive potential of liveness as a unique dimension in a performance. Aesthetic concepts are established to show what is lost when a performance Continue reading
Tag Archives: improvisation
Collaborating with Machines: Hybrid Performances Allow a Different Perspective on Generative Art
Generative Art International Conference Continue reading
Structure in the Dimension of Liveness and Mediation
Leonardo Music Journal, vol. 18. While technological developments can replace some aspects of live performance, they have also opened a new dimension of musical structure: that of liveness and mediation, which requires live performance in order to be meaningful. Liveness itself can be used and manipulated as a distinct musical element. The author describes these concepts at work in his compositions that explore mediatization as a device of intermedial imitative counterpoint and formal structure.
Live Sampling with Jazz Saxophone
At this year’s TAMU Music Faculty Recital, I performed a live sampling improvisation with tenor saxophonist Jayson Beaster-Jones using the Motet and Elektrodynamik environments.
A Treatise on the Æsthetic of Efforte
This composition was invited for a compilation CD on the theme of steampunk, an art movement celebrating the ingenuity, effort, and danger of technology of the industrial revolution. In “A Treatise on the Æsthetic of Efforte,” I perform what is called live coding, creating music by Continue reading
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Using the structure of today’s screen-mediated communications, these performers contribute their parts one at a time, responding to what was played before, and together they build “born digital” performances that expose the delays and glitches of network communications and make something genuinely *human* with it. As the audience, we witness performances that only exist in our web browsers, in the moments we’re viewing it. There is no “definitive version” of the performance!
This isn’t “pop music.”
It’s not likely to be danceable or singable, so if that’s the only way you define music, then you can call this “sound art” or“performance art.” It’s free improvisation in the avant garde tradition: adventurous and skilled improvisers building a performance together spontaneously, without any pre-written melodies or chord charts. They’re simply having a conversationtogether in music, sound, visuals, and performance!
Tappatappatappa
This performance was created by the composer improvising with custom software and by tapping on a microphone.
It uses a generative performance environment I named after Einstein’s paper introducing the special theory of relativity Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper (On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies). Normally, the software performs with an acoustic performer by capturing and transforming sounds from the soloist.
In contrast, in Tappatappatappa, I feed the audio output to its own input. In a sense, the sound emerges from no source, as if from nothing. The audio output, you see, is never perfectly silent: ambient noise in the room, small irregularities, or electrical interference introduced by the analog electronics create the material from which rich and varied material can bloom, like a pearl forms around a grain of sand. In this way, the feedback performance, which I call Tappatappatappa (its musical result is a distinct work deserving a different name), erodes the human element in performance and allows the technology to find its own voice, which I only coax in one direction or another by tapping, scraping, or moving the microphone within the performance space. In performances of Tappatappatappa, certain resonances emerge that are unique to the room and the moment, some physical positions in space produce certain sonic responses so reliably that the space is almost tangibly marked by its sonic response to my moving the microphone through the space.
ZenMan Improvisations v2 at TAMU with Ulrich Maiss
Guest artist Ulrich Maiss performing technology-based compositions created by TAMU students in TAMU’s Rudder Theatre in 2010.
Live sampling improvisation trio
Improvised trio with Eric km Clark on violin, Andy McWain on keyboards, and Jeff Morris doing live sampling of the other two using Gamepad Sampler.
Folding: Imitative Counterpoint in Improvisation through Live Sampling
Folding is a study in using live sampling as an extension of the classic technique of imitative counterpoint. The title refers to the molecular folding of proteins and other molecules: atoms link together at angles and fold over themselves as they form the molecule, and the resulting shape affects the function of the chemical. Similarly, the voice of an improvising soloist is folded onto itself live to build a musical form.
The work is a hybrid between composition and instrument. The software is equipped to make decisions at a small level on its own, in order to maintain interest without requiring constant intervention by the performer, but it relies on the performer to initiate changes from one state to another. The software uses delay lines and pitch shifters to turn the soloist into a quintet.
The six states of the software’s behavior dictate the approximate delay settings for each voice:
- Now (acting as a harmonizer, or in homophony),
- Near (within the last few seconds, an echo or stretto ),
- Then (recalling a previous timepoint specified during the performance),
- Same (recalling a randomly-chosen timepoint from earlier in the performance),
- Different (each of the four delay lines go to different points in the delay line, exploring and recombining moments from the past, which may be used as a developmental or transitional section), and
- Early (recalling the first material played in the performance, or a recapitulation).
The solo instrumental performer is able to choose the behavior of the software (as one of these states) and how to play in relation to them, for example he or she may play the same material, so all recapitulate the opening material or may play a new countermelody to it. In some performances, performers have enjoyed having me or another computer attendant direct the software as they respond to their past selves, recontextualized in performance through the software.
Performance with Jayson Beaster-Jones, tenor saxophone (MP3)
Performance with Eric km Clark, violin
This work also has a distinct voice when used in a feedback system, when it hears only its own output. Compare this with “Tappatappatappa.” “Folding” with feedback:
To run the software:
- Download and install the free Max runtime for your operating system (Mac OS or Windows): click here
- Download the performance software (ZIP), unzip it, and open it with the Max runtime.
For solo performance, I can adapt the controls to your MIDI or USB controller. Contact me to let me know what device you’d like to use in performance!