In a twist on generating music from dance, artist and coder João Pais sends us Pd-generated scores, transformed into twinkling sounds by music boxes. As it happens, the music boxes are the same featured in Friday’s story on Ritornell.

The piece is RISS, a “performative installation/concert” produced outdoors in Berlin, with a 30-meter score generated by Pd from movement.

João describes his work: “The patch was simple, it analysed the sounds, and made a score using data structures. then I printed the score, and spent lots of hours puncturing all the holes.”

The video documents those sounds, in a project produced by the collaboration of composer and artist Christian Graupner, dancer/choreographer Phuong Nguyen, and João Pais. (For his part, João has been utterly invaluable in helping me with some Pd patches – I need to post some abstractions based on that work soon for everyone.)

More info:
http://www.humatic.net/art/p/riss/index.html

And I know this is just the tip of the … music box iceberg. Sorry, that’s a really horrible mixed metaphor. There are lots of people using music boxes, yes.

Link love, chip love, software love, music love – Create Digital Music is celebrating five years, and it’s time to spread some of the love back to you here in New York City. Wednesday night, we’ll be celebrating five years made possible by our incredible readers with a big party at Love Nightclub in Manhattan.

We’ve got one of the best sound systems in the city. We have eclectic, handmade, heavy beats from the likes of David Last, King Britt, Ganucheau, and IJ Catling (and me, opening up the sets). And because the Honorary Official Language of CDM is Portuguese, we have the baile funk princess Zuzuka Poderosa on vocals. (pictured below)

Zuzuka is singing. Prepare to dance – yes, even us computer nerds, really.

There’s an open bar (beer + house), 7p – while it lasts (get there early).

We’re supported by HP and Intel, featuring the HP Envy 15 Beats Limited Edition laptop, which I’ve programmed to take advantage of its low-light/no-light nightvision webcam. I don’t get to keep mine, though – I’m giving it to you. Limber up and compete in our Twitter Twister contest – enter for a chance to hit the mats and out-twist your friends as we emcee and DJ behind you. Whoever wins takes home the Envy and loads of bragging rights.

Wednesday, December 2
7-11pm
Cover: FREE.

Love Nightclub, 179 MacDougal St in Manhattan [Map], near Washington Square (BDFV-ACE to West 4, RW to 8th St)

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Do you have what it takes to win yourself a new Core i7-powered HP Envy 15 Beats Limited Edition laptop (and enormous pride and bragging rights)? Start limbering up. Photo (CC) Mad African.

ZUZUKA PODEROSA

Zuzuka Poderosa drops Brazilian bred, Brooklyn based swagger like no other. A stylistic blend of Funk Carioca and NYC rumble add a breath of fresh air to today’s international music scene. She’s hard to miss with her unapologetic sultry Portuguese lyrics. This, coupled with booty bumping basslines, she packs New York nightclubs like sardines. The early 90′s NYC Drum n’ Bass scene inspired her to master the wheels of steel. Now, under the alias of "DJ Babyfresh" she spins rare vinyl and Brazilian gems alongside DJ partner Joel Stones ( Tropicalia in Furs Records ). It was a natural progression for her to grab the mic – her passion for writing and poetry could no longer be ignored.

Expect an extremely SWEATY extremely SEXY crowd shortly after this woman hits the mic!

Zuzuka Poderosa (Vigarista Collective)  music, facebook, myspace.

http://twitter.com/ZuzukaPoderosa
www.myspace.com/zuzukapoderosa
www.facebook.com/people/Zuzuka-Poderosa/585267690

Video:

http://www.vimeo.com/5388139
http://vimeo.com/4363268
http://www.vimeo.com/3974321
http://www.vimeo.com/3968169

DAVID LAST

Brooklyn NY resident David Last makes tracks which combine dancefloor energy with the deeper-leaning funk of dancehall, dub, latin music and hip hop. David has become known for his instantly recognizable soundcraft and deeply funky rhythmic sense. His full length CDs for The Agriculture (NYC) and Staubgold (Berlin) have gained critical acclaim and a sizable cult following in the USA, Europe and Japan. He has contributed EPs and remixes for prominent indies worldwide, including Francois K’s WaveTec (NYC) and The Social Registry (NYC).  In 2008 he began the dance music and experimental sounds label KONQUE with Sasha Kaline of Alka Rex.

http://www.myspace.com/davidlast

http://www.davidlast.net

http://percussionlab.com/sets/david_last/live_from_jet_lag

KING BRITT

Well, bios are funny because they tell the story of the past of who you are in the present. I try to only live in the present and the future (as I said, try). Even though beginning my career in 1990 on the now legendary house label Strictly Rhythm as E- Culture, being Silkworm in the groundbreaking, Grammy winning Digable Planets, starting Ovum Recordings with Josh Wink, producing platinum remixes for Macy Gray, Solange, Donna Lewis and hundreds of others, winning the highest grant in the country as the first dj/producer, The Pew Fellowship or starting my empire, FiveSixMedia, I still try to live in the NOW and not the then.

So of course, now, I am a father, fiance’, musicologist of sorts and media revolutionary. My label and company FiveSixMedia, set the example of an individual who is able to live outside the box and show what freedom truly is. Last but not least, co-founder of the amazing Saturn Never Sleeps with my fiance, Rucyl Mills, pushing the boundries of sight and sound.

Doing my own thing on my own time and assisting other to move into that space as well.

The future is bright because I say it is. Stop and smell the flowers

Through the power of skin-safe conductive ink, Scottish electronic artist Calvin Harris has collaborated with a team to make a synthesizer out of himself and a group of models in bikinis. That’s just fine, Calvin – now what are you going to use for your remaining two wishes?

The project is the creation of Calvin, Steve Milbourne and Phil Clandillon at Sony Music Entertainment, and four masters students at the Royal College of Art Industrial Design program who created the conductive ink: Bibi Nelson, Becky Pilditch, Isabel Lizardi and Matt Johnson. Johnson programmed the interface and music: two Arduinos provide the analog-to-digital connection between the ink-human circuitry and a computer. Patching environment Max/MSP then deals with the data and translates to MIDI, and musical materials are sequenced live and “performed” into Ableton Live. As seen on Engadget and sent in by a number of readers (thanks!) as well as the creative team that did it.

Team member Steve Milbourne writes us with full details and extra behind-the-scenes shots. I wanted to know how they put this together and if there were any false starts or experiments necessary to get it right. He responds:

We read about the conductive ink ‘Bare’ that the students at the RCA (Royal College of Art) had invented and we thought it was pretty cool. We wondered if we could make some kind of musical instrument from it, so we spoke to Calvin and asked him if he’d be up for collaborating.

After quite a bit of mulling over various methods of doing it, we decided to try and create a choreographed routine where people touching hands would close the circuits and trigger sounds somehow.

With the help of the guys from the RCA we began to draw a schematic for the synth, and conceptualize how it would operate, we eventually decided on a layout and that we’d control it using MIDI, by connecting the paint ‘electrodes’ to an Arduino which connects to Max/MSP. This then controls individual tracks in Ableton, and in the live mode automatically quantized them on the fly as the performance took place.

Behind the scenes it was two days of setting up, testing, and working out the routines before the day we filmed it. On the day we spent the morning letting the dancers rehearse and get the timing more or less right (so the notes were quantized into the right places at the BPM running in Ableton, a bit slower than the original track, but dancing at 140bpm was a little difficult for them!) and then we filmed several takes before we got one we were happy with.

False starts, well it took a while to get it all together. At times it seemed like it might not be completely possible. The conductive ink worked better on some people than others (due to a lot of scientific variables such as… how much salt they have in their body, how sweaty they were etc), but the RCA students went through a number of different variants of the paint to get it exactly right.

We messed around with painted pitch bends as well as ribbon controllers on peoples arms – which actually worked too, but we couldn’t fit them into the performance as they weren’t ‘quite’ reliable enough. Cool though.

As to Calvin’s other wishes.. I’m not sure what more you can ask for than a human synthesizer made up of 16 attractive girls in bikinis!

Fair enough!

In the interest of gender balance, I can think of a few female electronic artists who certainly deserve to turn the tables on the roles here, however.

The ink itself is fascinating, and winks and nods about models aside, it’s terrific to see electronics getting closer to the human body and physical movement. For more on the ink and how it’s used:

http://www.bareconductive.com/index.html

More on Calvin Harris:
http://www.calvinharris.co.uk

Photos courtesy Sony; used by permission.

From John Cage to Radiohead, there are few people in any medium so closely tied to the explorations of experimental music’s frontiers than Cunningham. To understand why music was so important to him – and electronic music in particular – we can listen to Merce himself. He explains that part of this shift in thinking about time came from the eradication of bars and beats in electronic music:

http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/aspen/mp3/cunningham1.mp3

From an interview on UbuWeb.

(Thanks to Benjamin Dauer for the tip.)

That’s just one example, though; there’s quite a lot more we could talk about. I’d like to do a timeline of Merce’s significant sound collaborations and review some of the moments in electronic music history with which he was involved. On Create Digital Motion, we’ll look back at his LifeForms software and the work he did with motion. But I need your help: please send along resources you think may be helpful, any of your own experiences of the artist and his work, and other tips and questions.

On Create Digital Motion:
Remembering Merce Cunningham, Digital Motion, and Digital Portraits

Merce Cunningham Dies [New York Times ArtBeat]
Merce Cunningham Foundation

MCF and MCD will be receiving visitors today. (See site above.)

A light glows from a crowded tent. Bodies move in unison as a DJ’s head bounces up and down with the beat. And you hear – nothing?

Such is the Silent Disco, most recently staged at Tennessee’s Bonnaroo 2008 Music Festival, as seen on CDM’s events.noisepages.com. See Jason’s blog post, photos, and look at the whole festival in photos.

The trick was to provide wireless headphones, thus making a dance party for the iPod age. The result is certainly surreal, as you can see in video (watch about halfway in).

But I think the event doesn’t go far enough. How about a truly silent disco – no headphones, no sound whatsoever. Naturally, there should still be a DJ. (What are those guys really doing, anyway?) Dancers would have to synchronize on their own beat, a la the creepy hypnotic power of the “IT” in A Wrinkle in Time. (Google it.) Of course, this would be even more fantastic if you could do it at a festival, get a whole bunch of people in on the joke, and then confuse the hell out of everyone else.

Any takers? (Or maybe it’s been done before?)

Photo: Jason O’Grady.