If you think culture has become too disconnected from the Earth, “Harvest” and the Terrafon instrument surely count as a shock to the system. A traditional ensemble picks up an enormous tone arm and transducer and, through back-breaking labor, drag it across arable fields. It’s part sound art and performance, part agriculture. But it certainly counts as a gramophone – it’s just a really big one that reads the grooves of the earth.

Beat juggling with two of these I’m guessing is largely out of the question.

One half of the artistic creative team, Olle Cornéer, writes with a description:

Harvest (2009) is a new art piece for the new instrument terrafon, traditional ensemble and cropland – by Olle Cornéer and Martin Lübcke.

In this performance Alunda Church Choir, conducted by Cantor Jan Hällgren, plays the soil of northern Uppland (in Sweden) on terrafon. Harvest by Alunda Kyrkokör was exhibited at the Volt Festival in Uppsala the 6th of June 2009. Terrafon is a large agricultural version of the horn gramophone, amplifying the sounds in the track it ploughs.

There is more to come. There are still many croplands still untouched by terrafon. The only thing needed is a powerful local musical ensemble that can sweat it out. This is indeed a demanding piece.

Video illustrates what this all means in practice:

Harvest by Alunda Kyrkokör (2009) from Olle Corneer on Vimeo.

The artistic duo behind the work is a fascinating collaboration. Olle is a producer and musician, while partner-in-crime Martin Lübcke has a PhD in theoretical physics, specializing in superstring theory. That has been the grounds on which their other work, Bacterial Orchestra, explores ideas both of biological epidemics and multi-celled organisms and neural networks. Of course, to make it truly multi-celled, they’ve made the piece an iPhone creation. (I think some folks have found the iPhone phenomenon to be viral as is, so this seems somewhat appropriate.)

Public Epidemic No 1 from Olle Corneer on Vimeo.

Every cell listens to its surroundings and picks up sounds, trying to play together in a musical way. The musical material comes from the background noise, people talking or sounds played by other cells.

Every cell has a unique DNA. Only the ones that are musical fit enough survives. If
the surroundings doesn’t meet up to its conditions – too noisy, too quiet or no distinct
pulse – the cell dies and is reborn with a new, hopefully better, set of DNA.

The result is a musical organism adapting to and changing its environment, growing and evolving with other cells and spectators.

More on that piece:
http://www.bacterialorchestra.com

It’s nice to me that, while these works are both conceptual, you might not guess they came from the same team. I wonder what will come next.

Digital technology has transformed the listening experience. But there’s little in the way of physical artifacts of that act, and a diminished sense of humanized relationships to an individual being at the other end. From modern radio to Internet-streamed playlists, our listening world is DJed by automated robots in streams that flow through generic, mass-market speakers. The object and the content lack the design intention that imbued, for instance, the gorgeous radio sets of the early 20th Century and the personalities that narrated the programming.

Armed with a lasercutter, designer Matt Brown has a novel concept for how to redesign the act of listening. From the creator’s blog Real Tomato:

For this system, you would have a speaker with an rfid reader, and laser-cut paper radios with rfid chips inside. The radios themselves are designed by musicians, charities, brands, and designers. When the paper radio is placed over the speaker it changes the radio station to what the artist has chosen. Other noises and interactions can be programmed in too. Alec Baldwin’s radio for example could politely ask everyone to turn their lights off from time to time. People could have the paper radios around their house in different rooms. The supremes radio might be a better living room station. This system tries to add a little bit of fun to internet radio, and give people a connection with the artists they choose. The radios themselves would hopefully be cheap and collectible little sculptures, each one accessing unique stations.

The artist, D.A.R.Y.L., is a recent alumnus of Sweden’s Umea institute of Design.

I think we need a new, specialized Creative Commons license that describes “Great Concepts I Probably Won’t Get to Developer Further so Please Go Run with It With Some Credit to Me.” (Okay, maybe with a shorter name.) I love the possibilities this project suggests, if for no other reason than the beautiful sculptures created with the lasercutter.

The works themselves are printed out a single sheet and assembled. THat demonstrates some of the power lasercutters can provide, and the promise they hold for localized production of objects. (Use eco-friendly recycled paper and inks, and this is a consumer product that doesn’t deliver a dropkick to the planet.)

I just interviewed Owen Pallett aka Final Fantasy, and he told me saw a survey that showed some 80% of music journalists listen through music via the built-in speakers in their laptops. That would be terrifying if true – I’m not certain that it is – but regardless, I think there is a clear need to rethink listening processes and objects.

Check out the post and the blog for more inspiring images. Via the wonderful Saturn Never Sleeps blog by Rucyl Mills and King Britt.

Performance with Cubie from sadmb on Vimeo.

Music sequencing as a Rubik’s Cube-style game, or hypnotic, kinetic rotating wheels – your piano roll won’t know what hit it. New musical art is set to be performed in Argentina, but you can download both tools, free.

Computer interfaces for music date back decades now, but with ingrained notions of hardware sound sequencers, linear media like tape, and hundreds of years of notation in staves and bars, old habits can be hard to kick. Yet it seems that suddenly, a younger generation of audiovisual composers is exploding notions of how musical interface and sequence could work, fully embracing a virtual space in which they themselves have come of age.

Next month’s spectacular-looking 404 Festival could make anyone want to book a flight to Argentina. Two highlighted artists from this festival for me really embody the possibilities of new sequencing metaphors. Both are built in Java.

At top, Cubie by Sadam Fujioka of Japan is free, downloadable software that combines audiovisual performance and game in a rotating cube.

Cubie is a software instrument which provides innovative idea of musical performance, differs from existing musical performance system such as musical notation, DJ systems, DAW systems, etc… It has a novel concept incorporating a new interactive technique based on puzzle games. Music is represented from highly saturated colored letters on a 3D cube. Almost unlimited number of melodies and rhythms can be created from a combination of those letters, and it can be changed on real-time by operations based on puzzle game. Those playful operations push a performer to play repeatedly and get the skill of performing with Cubie. Cubie is free software and you can play just like sadmb do.

More information in both Japanese and English at sadmb site (with lots of other software, as well). Built in Java with the use of JSyn for synthesis.

http://sadmb.com/

If these cubes feel overly rigid to you, though, and you don’t like the mechanical repetition of these lines, enter the crazy, spinning world of Hiroshi Matoba.

Hiroshi Matoba: OVERBUG from antjeverena on Vimeo.

Overbug is a music-performance tool designed to compose Minimal and Dance Music.

Through looping and newly arranging sound patterns, called ‘Bugsounds’, the program creates complex, polyrhythmic sounds. Overbug differs from conventional linear controlled music sequencers, which arrange the sound into a linear timeline from left to right. In Overbug the sound arrangement of the repeating music loops is equal to the visual abstraction of circular actions which built the interface through circles.

I showed a very early sketch I was working on last year of a circle-based sequencer, also built in Processing, though (cough) my chops are nowhere near Hiroshi’s. I was more interested in using the circles to subdivide cycles, as in Indonesian music. Seeing this piece is a major kick in my pants to try to work on my project a bit more and go a different direction.

Here’s a demo video explaining how this works:

More information + free download (just updated this month):
http://www.dominofactory.net/Overbug/

If You’re in Argentina

Don’t miss a terrific-looking exhibition of Japanese works and the rest of the
http://www.404festival.com/
(info in Spanish + English)

These two works clearly belonged together, but I feel bad for not featuring any Latin American (or Argentinian, specifically) work — those of you associated with 404, if you’ve got hot tips, send them in.

Sonoridades Líquidas [Liquid Sounds] from Rui Penha on Vimeo.

Wonderful work in sculpting sound into beautiful handmade electronic-acoustical instruments is pouring out of Portugal. Now we get to see more of that work – and if you are in Portugal, you can share in person at a new event.

The Handmade Music project and community has found its second home – Porto, Portugal, at the massive Casa da Música! The first event will be held Tuesday, July 21. (Full announcement, English/Português).

De hardware a software feito em casa até circuit bending, kits personalizados ou instrumentos acústicos originais, todos estão convidados a aparecer na Casa da Música pelas 21h30 para montagem de instrumentos. Pelas 22h abrimos o evento ao público geral – a entrada é livre e recomenda-se -, ocupando a Digitópia e a zona do bar do Foyer Sul. Contamos convosco!

To celebrate the new party, organizer Rui Penha sends over a survey of some of the instruments and sculpture that are being homegrown in Porto. And yes, even first-time-creator high school students can make fantastic work (see after the jump). At top:

An interactive installation made for Casa da Música – Porto, Portugal – with João Ricardo de Barros Oliveira and Luís Girão. Shown here is the algorithmic composition and synthesis patch I made in Max/MSP and the Arduino-based sensor system, co-developed with Luís Girão.

Lula · robotic Hang player from Rui Penha on Vimeo.

This robotic Hang player is called Lula (Squid).
It was, designed, built and its algorithm was created with a group of teenagers participating in a four-day workshop called OrCA – Orquestra de Computadores e Autómatos (OrCA – Orchestra of Computers and Robots), at Casa da Música – Porto.
It was made with picaxe, servos and ultrasonic sensors.

Correntes Sonoras from Serv. Educativo Casa da Música on Vimeo.

João Ricardo constrói instrumentos-esculturas a partir de materiais das mais diversas origens: pedaços de metal, bocados de madeira corroídos pelo tempo, objectos usados e danificados, provenientes de contentores do lixo, da rua, da natureza. As esculturas têm sons complexos, poéticos, muito diferentes do habitual e são um desafio à imaginação, aos sentidos e às convenções daquilo que é um instrumento ou daquilo que é música.

A ExposiSom [Correntes Sonoras] explora diversos espaços da Casa da Música e é concebida como um percurso de descoberta da arquitectura e da relação do som com o espaço que ele habita.

Sonoridades Líquidas from Serv. Educativo Casa da Música on Vimeo.

A ExposiSom [Sonoridades Líquidas] estabelece uma ponte entre a escultura sonora, a música e a arte digital e permite a descoberta do edifício da Casa da Música através de um percurso onde o público interage com o conteúdo sonoro, transformando assim a Casa num mega-instrumento. A ExposiSom [Sonoridades Líquidas] usa um conjunto de cerca de 50 objectos idênticos [esculturas sonoras] que servem de «interface» com um computador. Explora-se a ideia de elicitar sons ou algoritmos que geram som, a partir de um estímulo muito simples: a vibração causada por uma gota de água que cai sobre uma pele de um instrumento de percussão.

We hope to send out some resources for folks working to plan Handmade Music in other places, too. Here’s the running list of locales we know have expressed interest – and yes, I’ll be following up with you folks later today!

• Machester, UK
• (city TBD) North Carolina, USA
• Toronto, Canada
• Argentina
• Chicago, USA
• Berlin, Germany
• San Francisco, USA
• Joinville, Brazil
• Greece
• Los Angeles, USA
• Washington, DC, USA
• Austin, TX, USA
• Detroit, USA
• Boulder, CO, USA

Not on the list and interested in organizing an event? Fill out the form on Google Docs.

Stay tuned for coverage of the upcoming NYC and Portugal events here.

Inside a computer, digital music is entirely unseen. But translate it into the tangible world, and it can be anything you imagine – not limited by acoustic reality or practicality, music can become three-dimensional sculpture.

For artist Christopher Bauder and composer Robert Henke, ATOM’s light and sound sculpture found a three-dimensional matrix of balloons as its medium. Flashing in hypnotic patterns and moving into different configurations, accompanied by live laptop music from Henke (aka Monolake), music and visuals become an inseparable fusion.

ATOM received its North American premiere at Montreal’s MUTEK in May. That turned out to be perfect programming, as it placed ATOM in a week that featured complementary work from artists Artificiel. Henke says some of his matrix manipulations – and even the specific Max/MSP patches from ATOM – came from collaboration with Artificiel and their light bulbs. For their part, at MUTEK they unveiled a new audiovisual etude called POWEr Play involving a live-sampled Tesla Coil. The science fair ethos of ATOM and POWEr Play could have been gimmicky or overly fixated on spectacle, but in these pieces, it was anything but. Both works contemplated their subject matter so thoughtfully that balloons and electrical coils seemed perfectly natural media for the audiovisual imagination, and audiences were left marveling at phenomena in a way too rare in 2009.

Video episode at Blip.tv [includes mobile/desktop video downloads]
YouTube Part 1 and Part 2 (if you prefer YouTube for viewing)

It’s worth downloading the video above and really getting to soak up some of this piece when you have time. I also have an audio interview of a conversation with Robert and Christopher immediately following one of the performances.

You’ll hear Christopher’s voice first, followed by the unmistakable percussive enthusiasm of Robert. For me, the best part of the interview was hearing them discuss whether you should notice some of the unintentional randomness of drifting balloons or technical hiccups, and how they structured the work formally with a palette of possible balloon patterns.

Download the audio interview

For more on POWEr Play, see my Montreal flat mate Greg Smith writing for Rhizome – and stay tuned for the CDM audio interview, coming next week:
power play – artificiel at mutek [Serial Consign Blog]
Variable Frame Rate: Multimedia Performance at MUTEK 2009 [Rhizome]

More information:
Atom project Information at monolake.de
Text interview by Bertram Niessen for Digimag magazine, October 2007, also at monolake.de

Artists Gijs Gieskes’ sequencers are almost like physical, mechanical software, an expression of musical structure in object form. As such, even as they make strange sounds, they become musical sculpture. His latest Servo Sequencer combines optical and mechanical process, as frequency circles spin on a turntable and tone arms float above them.

The Servo Sequencer is built for exhibition use – meaning, yes, he’s brave enough to let you play with this contraption. Sequence the arms using buttons, then adjust the volume mix and placement of each arm using the joystick.

Serv Seq from Gijs on Vimeo.

This project is unusually well-documented. Gijs provides complete specs, the script that controls the arms, and even a little web app that generates those lovely patterns.

http://gieskes.nl/instruments/?file=serv-seq

But for those of you near the Netherlands, you should go check this out in person. Updated: The piece will be part of an exhibition in Breda through August 23, with multiple opening events featuring local artists from Eindhoven and Breda, plus live performances and concerts including Gijs and his talented brethren and neighbors.

Here & There Exhibition, mu.nl [Info in English]

The events:
Opening Part 1:
KOP, Breda
Thursday 25/06 08.00 pm

MU, Eindhoven
Friday 26/06 08.00 pm

(It’s a bit confusing as the events swap between Breda and Eindhoven — there’s a second opening Saturday July 25. Gijs explains “the first [opening] is in breda (thursday), then a day later (friday) in eindhoven, where my machine will be. and then a month later its the other way around.”)

You know, Breda. Like, right … here. We’ve got a number of readers in the area (whom I suspect know more or less exactly where this is); let us know if you make it!

Digital technology has the power to transmit information more efficiently, to make the invisible visible, and to express new things. It can also be pushed so far to the limits of actually transmitting information to be meaningless. It can push well beyond what we can even perceive in a useful way. What’s bizarre and wonderful about Johannes Kreidler’s work is that he’s not afraid of pushing toward that boundary. The results may have only a shred of remaining meaning, or be intentionally, comically meaningless. But he’s nothing if not inventive.

Compression Sound Art (2009) [“Comments on Music – Musical Zip-Files … Time is relative!”

The video above, politically speaking, is Not Safe For Anything – where else can you bring up Hitler and Britney Spears and condoms? But the only visually tantalizing information is the brief view of a condom speaker membrane and a chest with pasties.

The creations range from:

An oven pipe imported in 1972 from Alaska to New Zealand, vibrated at 574 cycles per second using a gasoline motor. Then, in 2003, this recording was manipulated and filtered on an old atari computer using hacked software.

…to:

Immanuel Kant: Critique of Pure Reason, played 22,000 times in one second (audible only to bats).

The controversial nods and humor aside, I think this really does say something about time and data. I could tell you, but I’d need a microsecond. Let’s just avoid any mention of datamosh.

Johannes Kreidler does know how to encode information in useful, accessible ways, too, however. He’s done just that with a terrific book on Pd (Pure Data), the open source, visual programming environment in which he created works like the one above. Can’t dance to it? You can do other things with Pd, too. You can dance to it? Then, by all means, go for it:

Be a Music Geek Ninja with Electronic Music Programming in Pd: New Book

Previous Kreidler sightings:

A song made from 70,2000 samples

The stock market declines, as a song

Eno had Music for Airports. It’s fitting that Monolake would do Music for Jet Lag. Robert Henke writes about this month’s free download:

Since I also have been flying a lot recently, I named it after one of the most annoying side effects of modern transportation and mixed it in a way that reflects that dizzy feeling of being hyper active and totally asleep at the same time. ( "Last call for mister Robert Henke, flying to Berlin, please come to gate B 154 IMMEDIATELY or we will unload your luggage !!!!!!!!!" )

I am myself recovering from jetlag on the way to Portugal, so the timing is perfect. In a way, I have to say I sometimes oddly enjoy the disorienting feeling. I don’t think it’d be terribly addictive, but it’s a physical, profound reminder of traveling a great distance, something you could otherwise ignore in the age of absurdly-fast jet travel.

Grab the download here:

Free Downloads of the Month [yetlag, May 2009 – should be archived if you’re catching this late]

Installation details:

http://monolake.de/installations/lufthansa.html

The installation is fascinating in itself: a Max/MSP-powered, interactive sound score for a giant flight simulator, a model of the presence of jets, travel, and air traffic control. Robert did the sound; Christopher Bauder of white void was the concept and very elegant visual design. (See also Aaron Koblin’s striking Processing-based visual piece Flight Patterns, which seems to have embedded itself on a certain airborne digital zeitgeist. The United States becomes a feathery web of connections and flying traffic. You can imagine how this might continue to be mined in sound.)

As we work to keep our creative process flowing, I especially love the idea of focusing on a feeling to get a production started, as Monolake did here. So often, it’s too easy to get caught up in something technical or some very particular idea, then lose that in the process. By focusing on a feeling or deeper sentiment, it’s possible to remain connected to the ethos of what the track really means to us.

Of course, travel too much, and that may just wind up being … well, jet lag.

Meanwhile, as I listen to more music piped through airport terminals and even Metro stations, I wish Eno’s original idea had caught on.

As an addendum to the last story, Ivica Ico Bukvic sends along an example of the [myu] Max/MSP + Unity game engine combination in action. Here’s the surprise: Unity isn’t generating visuals. Instead, Unity simulates ripples created by movement in the space, and builds physical models that are sonified and spatialized by Max/MSP.

Speaking of work involving art museums and the combination of Max and Unity, VJ Anomolee notes in comments his own work with the pairing. Lightbent Synth is an in-progress piece with alternative controllers and sensors that produces sound with a novel visual representation (sound’s very quiet in this preview — more hopefully once it progresses):

Lightbent Synth from VJ Anomolee on Vimeo.

Ivica explains the top work:

This past fall [myu] had seen its first real-world implementation in an exhibit that was a part of the grand opening of the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, VA (http://www.taubmanmuseum.org/). The exhibit utilized [myu] as part of an interactive aural installation titled "elemental." An online tech
demo video of the installation, including written synopsis is available also via Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA-9BOgc1gk. Below is a brief synopsis of the installation:

"elemental" interactive communal soundscape premiered in November 2008 as part of the Revo:oveR collection commissioned for the grand opening of the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, VA. The Youtube video focuses primarily on the technical aspects of the installation. Using Max/MSP/Jitter, a homebrew IR webcam with fish eye lens and a LED-based IR spotlights, entire 24×36-foot exhibit space is converted into an aural sandbox giving visitors an opportunity to generate and shape the
ensuing soundscape. Positional data of up to 20 visitors is forwarded to Unity3d using [myu] Max-Unity interoperability toolkit developed at DISIS (http://disis.music.vt.edu). Unity is used for physical simulation of ensuing ripples and the resulting data is sent back to Max for spatialization across a 12-channel (4×3) ceiling-mounted speaker array. Driven by communal interaction, virtual ripples refract from each other spawning an algorithmically generated aural fireworks. The exhibit ran non-stop for approximately 5 months until March 2009.

Bonus video below: an early prototype that did include visuals. After days of looking at emulated knobs and faders, it certainly does speak to some of the possibilities for musical interface and expression.

Surveying toys at a previous Handmade Music night.

Handmade Music, the monthly celebration of DIY musical instruments, electronics, and software hits its new home at East Williamsburg’s 3rd Ward tomorrow night, Thursday 12/11 7:30-10:30p. [Directions] Here’s a glimpse of a couple of the projects expected tomorrow night.

If you’re not in the NYC area, you can come visit us online at 8:30p Eastern time and hang with the crafty community denizens of Etsy.com:

Etsy Virtual Labs [not updated as I write this, but check in tomorrow]

If you are in the NYC area:

1. Workshop: We have more workshop spaces available in Michael Una’s workshop. For the cost of parts, and even if you have zero electronics experience, you’ll leave with a finished Beep-It optical Theremin! Walk-ups are okay if we have room, but to be safe, pre-register today:

http://beepit.eventbrite.com/

And it’s got a new form factor, as seen at right.

2. Projects to bring: If you’ve got a project you’d like to bring, just bring it! If you want to give us some warning, fill this out today:

Call for Works Form [Google Docs]

3. Facebook us: You can also RSVP on our Facebook page

4. Snacks/drinks! We’ll have pizza and (for a nominal fee, if you’re of age) PBR’s, and if the weather’s nasty, hot chocolates

Project previews

Handmade Music is a pot luck supper for everything from Max patches to strange acoustic instruments, so we never really know what will show up. Here are a couple of projects that are coming, though:

Electronic Glockenspiel, Michael Sperone

Glockenspiel with microphone pickups which go through a max patch which expands the range of the little 2.5 octave instrument to a full 5.5 octaves, as well as adds other features not present on a glockenspiel.  It almost sounds like a glockenspiel/marimba/vibraphone hybrid.  The project is also starting to experiment with interfacing with max/msp in new ways.

Plink Jet, Andy Doro + Lesley Flanagan

Plink Jet is a robotic musical instrument made from scavenged ink jet printers. The mechanical parts of four printers are diverted from their original function, re-contextualizing the relatively high-tech mechanisms of this typically banal appliance into a ludic musical performance. Motorized, sliding ink cartridges and plucking mechanisms play four guitar strings by manipulating both pitch and strumming patterns like human hands fingering, fretting, and strumming a guitar. Plink Jet is designed to play itself, be played, or both.  The result is an optionally collaborative performance between both the user and Plink Jet, with the user choosing varying levels of manual control over the different cartridges (fretting) and string plucking speeds (strumming).

http://www.andydoro.com/plinkjet/
http://www.seseyann.com/plinkjet/

Updated: Andy decided the Plinkjet was a bit too bulky to bring – though it’s worth watching the video to check this thing out. Instead, we get other surprise wonders – a networked sound device and a cube whose sounds shift as you pick it up and move it around:

http://www.andydoro.com/sonicube/
http://www.andydoro.com/nbo/

And while I don’t have any documentation of it yet, Ted Hayes is bringing this:

A floatometer is a simple wireless (XBee) accelerometer in a watertight plastic ball that floats on water and controls synths…

More expected! Stay tuned!