LA, Live, Lasers: Ableton Sessions, and a CDM Party Sunday Night in Hollywood

Daedelus joins me for a discussion on performance controllers, as part of an artist lineup ranging from dub pioneer Scientist to beatbox legend Kid Beyond and… a lot of other folks, too. Photo (CC) musiclikedirt.

It’s music production. It’s … lasers. If you’re in the LA area, you’ll want to be there. If not, let us know in comments what you most want to see covered / interviewed / videoed for CDM.

DubSpot’s Live 8 Sessions Tour heads to Los Angeles this weekend, for a set of workshops, performances, and demos on Hollywood Boulevard. I’ll be out with the crew, and hosting with DubSpot a special interactive performance lounge Sunday night.

Sunday night will feature generative audiovisual art made on iPhones, and laser-powered, open-source gestural controllers and a laser installation that responds to motion and sound, plus Christopher Willits, Kid Beyond, Irwin, myself, and a lot more.

The weekend workshops: The artist lineup includes legends from a number of genres, including Scientist, Kid Beyond, Daedelus, Justin Boreta (Glitch Mob), Thavius Beck, and Christopher Willits. Other names you may not know have their own resume in sound design and performance (Irwin), producing and education (Steve Nalepa), mastering technique (Daniel Wyatt), and business (Barry Cole). Sunday, monome virtuoso Daedelus and I will talk about controllers, performance, and sampling technique, I hope going well beyond Live to design and playing technique in general. Passes are $110 for one day, or $195 for the weekend. Watch for a similar series in Austin, Texas this month, and other cities TBD, or for everyone else, stay tuned to CDM and DubSpot.

read more

If You’re in LA, Clear Your Weekend Schedule

There are always more events than we can post for a site with global readership. We’re working on an interactive CDM event calendar – suggestions welcome. But in the meantime, here are a couple of events that I hope some CDMers can attend and document for the site, because I wish I could be there.

Saturday night, there’s a huge convergence of wonderful people in Los Angeles. The lineup looks terrific (music: Speakers, Sahy-Uhns feat. Bucc Rogerz, Eli Walks, Owen Vallis, Counters, D-Funk), and there will be a new iteration of the Brick multi-touch table which we’ll be seeing here on CDM soon. Flyer below; watch MySpace for address details.

Sunday, there’s a free design workshop/demo by the creator of Where’s the Party At, the open source sampler, at Machine Project.

Rest up and enjoy.

read more

DIY Circuits of the Bent Festival Kick Off in LA, Then NYC, Minneapolis

image3

Shining, happy people bending toys. Photo by Beatrix*Jar — see our interview.

Despite the name, the Bent Festival this year promises to be about not only circuit bending, but DIY sound in general. (Circuit shaping? Circuit straightening? General circuitration?) Our friend and CDM regular Mike Una has put together fantastic art installations for Minneapolis. Workshops in NYC and LA dig into the mysteries of sensors and tubes, the potential of video bending, and giant, battery-powered noise to drown out the rest of the world. And there are gobs and gobs of performers.

Like the North American air currents, Bent begins in the West, moves across the Heartland, and into New York City. (Okay, actually, when I first reported on this year’s Bent, the dates were different, so pay attention!)

LA – April 17 – 19

New York – April 24 – 26

Minneapolis – May 1 – 3

And lest you think Bent isn’t as Bent this year, there’s still a Furby Orchestra to cap it all off.

Bent Festival site has the whole scoop, plus Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, and whatever else you crazy kids use today. (Hey! Where’s the AOL keyword?)

If you make it to any of the festivals and document — or if you’re playing/presenting — do share.

Refresh: Asides

Felt Sound Circuits in Los Angeles: Openings Available

I still love the idea of soft circuits: electronics packaged in soft form factors instead of hard. It’s a big challenge — for one, you need some soft fabrication skills along with electronics skills, and then you have to contend with keeping your electronics happy in a soft (warm) place, which is the opposite of what they tend to like. But when you make a huggable calculator synth, it’s all worth it.

Our friends Brian Crabtree and Kelli Cain of Monome fame write to let us know they’ve got spots in their felt circuits class at the awesome Machine Project in LA. Brian sez: "this year we’re making small contact mic amplifiers with a bent freakout capacitive touch point. it’ll be great fun." (East coasters, we’ll have to have them do the same over here, huh?) If you’re in LA and have the time, have a good time and take some project photos!

Felt + Circuits Workshop

Previously:

Felt + Circuits, for Sound and Enjoyment, From Happy Sheep

For more plush circuits, here’s a show in Nova Scotia featuring stiched sonic works, including a radio — but it looks like they don’t work. Functional electronics, even better, I say.

And for fans of the Monome, head over to Create Digital Motion today:

Monome as Visual Controller

NAMM: Unofficial CDM Afterparty, Live in LA, Friday Night

namm_afterparty

Friday we’re pleased to co-host a party with trash_audio and vjkungfu.tv in Mid-City Los Angeles. If you’re in LA or visiting NAMM in Anaheim, you won’t want to miss this – Richard Devine headlining, terrific music and live visuals, and workshops.

If you don’t know the other two sites, by the way, trash_audio (featuring Richard, Justin, and Deep Element) is a fantastic blog that regularly profiles creative workspaces for music. vjkungfu.tv, helmed by VJ momo the monster, has in-depth video tutorials for live visualists; we hope to feature it more on createdigitalmotion.com in the near future.

Here’s the lineup:

1. MAKE + MINGLE. 8:00pm.

  • Bring your own DIY music or motion creations and other hardware toys and geek out with an international crowd of hipster-nerdsters! All projects welcome (space first come, first served — think small, bring portable speakers if you can
  • Put together free kits to make your own ribbon controllers without soldering
  • Learn how Bryant Davis Place (future-tense-cpu) built his own DIY VJ sequencer for M8 using the Lemur multi-touch controller.
  • Learn about the wonders of wireless MIDI sync in AV Performance with Acid&Bass&Momo producing a live remix of Karate Kid.

2. MIX + MASH. 9:30pm.

RICHARD DEVINE
The Deep Element
Justin McGrath
Liz Revision (Quantazelle)
Moldover
dj halon (Fake Science, False Profit)

Visuals:
Image8nineteen (Mat Hale)
Momo the Monster
Peter Kirn

read more