Turning music and sound into three-dimensional worlds often yields something that fields like a trip through space. But this feels like a real trip. Through pulsing, glowing starfields, “Versum”‘s audiovisual movements are brain-bendingly transformative. Artist Tarik Barri has created an integrated world of sound and image that makes the interface and the compositional realms seamless. It seems as though this really is a musical universe, through whose harmonies of the spheres you can fly like. Boldly going, indeed.

Ingredients: Max/MSP/Jitter, Processing, Java, SuperCollider, GLSL [the 3D shading language], and … some serious skill and time, I imagine.

The work has been in development for some years (not surprisingly, given the results). But it surfaced again as we brought up the 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator hardware as a practical controller for 3D. See Create Digital Motion:
Look at Me, I’m Flying: SpaceNavigator Hardware + Blender

Tarik’s work resurfaced after a presentation in the UK. Reader janklug writes:

I’m just back from the M4_u Max/MSP/Jitter conference in Leicester (was great, btw), where Tarik Barri presented his project ‘Versum’, both as an installation and as a performance.
The user (and in case of the performance, Tarik) navigates through this incredible 3D-space-sequencer-universum with the help of a SpaceNavigator; glowing objects floating in this space produce sound, and as you approach them, they even give this nice doppler effect…
It was totally amazing to be able to float between pulsing rhythm-planet-objects and shiny drone-beams; navigation was easy and natural. Tarik uses a combination of Processing and Max/MSP; don’t know which one the SpaceNavigator is connected to.
Having tried this, I immediately ordered one; I think it also could be a great interface for M4L…

More information:
http://tarikbarri.nl/projects/versum
PDF documentation [2009]

Significantly, it’s really the act of flying that controls the music. That remains interactive, but it’s the movement through the three-dimensional space that determines what you hear. As the artist explains:

This virtual world is seen and heard from the viewpoint of a moving virtual camera with virtual microphones attached. This camera, controlled in realtime by means of a joystick (or any other kind of controller) moves through space, similar to how first person shooter games work. Within this space, I place objects that can be both seen and heard, and like in reality, the closer the camera is to them, the louder you hear them. So when the camera moves past several visual objects, you simultaneously hear several sounds fading in and out. Consequently, the way the camera travels past them actually causes melodies and compositional structures to be seen and heard.

The visual position of each object coincides with the panning of its sound: objects to the right of the camera will also be heard on the right, and those behind the camera will be heard from behind in case a surround speaker setup is used. This principle also applies to the Z-axis, meaning that sounds can be heard coming from above and below if the speaker setup supports it.

That’s the essential question, to me, when looking at 3D environments for music. What about the dimensionality will interact with the music? Is it something spatial, or will there be other sorts of interactions? (New Zealander-turned-Berliner Julian Oliver worked extensively with game engines, for instance. One solution for him was modifying the “gun” in those games to be an implement for doing things in the space, turning swords into plowshares after a fact by making the gun produce music rather than kill virtual entities.)

So, now you’ve seen some of the technical demonstration. But Tarik uses his work as an environment in which to make audiovisual performances. Here’s what some actual live playing looks like, in a beautiful, meditative piece called “Eleven”:

In fact, the biggest challenge to me of a piece this awesome is that you want an immersive environment, not just the small, rectangular screens that are often all festivals and venues can afford.

Holodeck, anyone?

More:

In the latest take on sonifying data in musical form, iPhone app Astro Cantus plots star data from the universe as musical notes. It turns the the sphere of heavens above the Earth into a massive piano roll.

Co-founding developer Rocky Alvey, according to the creators, dismantled a music box as a kid, and that music box notion (yet again) is a big part of the concept here. What’s notable is that the app’s sonification does indeed represent not only the stars themselves but some of the data – spectra of the stars are translated into pitch. And there are a lot of stars in there.

The musical representation itself is a bit limited: you get either chimes or a piano playing a pentatonic mode, and some control over spectrum and magnitude. Speaking as a composer who has occasionally played with it, that’s the challenge with this sort of work: making musical paradigms represent the data is no small obstacle. But the developers also say this is just a (very pleasing) first step, with more interactive features and live modes and additional sounds and scales to come.

http://astrocantus.com/
US$1.99 on the App Store

Amusingly, I’m writing this as my KCRW music stream is playing Bill Frisell’s cover of The Beatles’ “Across the Universe.” Which is more compelling as a commentary on the world? I’m not sure.

Nothing’s gonna to change my world.

Thanks to West Latta for the link; via TreeHugger’s Jaymi Heimbuch:
iPhone App Creates Music from Stars and Galaxies

If your music and sound collections seem like outwardly-expanding universes, two new tools promise to bring order by representing media as virtual planets and stars. One works on albums and tracks on the iPad; the other uses computer-aided analysis of loops and samples (not just music) on Windows. One will make your eyeballs pop; one might help you manage gigs of samples for a game design project.

Built in the open-source framework Cinder by an all-star team of media artist-designers (Ben Cerveny, Tom Carden, Jesper Sparre Andersen and Robert Hodgin), Planetary should satisfy space nuts and eye candy lovers. The metaphor is pretty direct: artists are stars, albums are planets around the artists, tracks are moons around the planets, and you can filter “constellations” by letter. That means the actual structure is heavily hierarchical, actually, in the tradition of iTunes (and, before it, its predecessor SoundJam). I’m not sure what happens with, say, compilations. But let’s face it: the real draw is that it’s incredibly beautiful to look at. I’d be just as entertained looking at a visualization of my system folder if it looked this pretty.

For now, Planetary is some fascinating eye candy with at least basic playback capabilities, iPad-only. That brings some good news – Airplay wireless works, and since it makes use of standard media code, even features like Last.fm scrobbles function. It also brings some bad — while Apple added support for libraries to third-party apps, Home Sharing isn’t included, so you’re limited to what’s on your iPad. Playlists aren’t supported, either. But hook this up to a projector or large screen TV with some of your favorite music, and I don’t think you’ll be complaining. And as a free tool, it’s incredible.

Planetary is available now; free for the iPad. As seen on creativeapplications.
http://planetary.bloom.io/
iTunes link

Less pretty, but with greater facilities on the utility side, is the Windows-only Soundtorch. (Thanks to Kristian Gohlke for the tip!) Visually, it offers a similar metaphor: media assets live on a continuous plane. Functionally, though, it’s more algorithmic than hierarchic, using something called the Computer Aided Sound Exploration engine (C.A.S.E.). The set of algorithms, which the creators say were based on evaluation of human listening, performs a sophisticated set of extractions of some 600 features from each sound file.

Rather than limit itself to albums and tracks, C.A.S.E. is tuned for audio files and loops. It’s fast enough that it can plow quickly through gigs of material. So, if you’re on Windows and have amassed an enormous collection of loops, samples, field recordings, sound effects, and the like, Soundtorch will use C.A.S.E. to first map all those relationship, then visualize them. You can use the mouse to produce new collections of assets, map relationships visually, export those relationship to XML, copy sounds to the clipboard, export to WAV, or open them in Windows Explorer. That is, all that eye candy is a genuine interface, not a barrier between you and what you might do (as so often happens with these sorts of experimental interfaces).

In fact, you might argue that, despite outward appearances, Soundtorch is entirely different from Planetary, but they share one common conceptual assumption. Related media “orbit” or attract to common materials. The difference is that Soundtorch is relational. In Soundtorch, if you “magnetize” a file, it – and any similar files – become attracted to attractors called “magnets.”

As is appropriate searching for media, the “torchlight” metaphor shines a light through files. Everything under the light plays back simultaneously, so you don’t have to audition sounds one at a time. (That sounds slightly terrifying to me, but I have to spend more time with it in an actual library.)

The creators describe the magic thusly:

Have you ever listened to a sound and felt that there was a similar one somewhere on your hard disk? And the sound you can’t find would just work so much better right now? Well, Soundtorch also remembers all sounds that you ever listened to. Just select any sound on Soundtorch, and let the system suggest the most similar ones from your whole collection.

In other words, SoundTorch is as much about what you can’t see as what you can – the intelligence to determine similarity behind the scenes. Check out the tech talk in the video above for more information on how “aurally and visually-enhanced audio search” could also apply this technology. More research at:
http://www.accessive-tools.com/

Soundtorch 2.0 entered a free public beta last week. It was developed in Microsoft’s C#-based XNA framework.

Grab the download:
http://soundtorch.com

Finally, if you want to hear the “Optimist” track by Zoe Keating without that voiceover and just enjoy Planetary’s gorgeous visuals, here you go:

From innovation in the visual interface to the intelligence underneath that changes how the computer interprets relationships between files, finally, there’s hope. Music and sound might not forever be trapped in views borrowed from spreadsheets, tables modeled on the needs of accountants 30 years ago.

Musicians and artists now have the power to fuse visuals, sound, and interaction, to make a spectacle, an album, and a game all at once. But with the blank canvas of three different media before you, what form should that fusion take?

Space shooters with pounding electronic beats behind them have cleared some of the way. Now it’s ambient music’s turn. In the game Osmos, you become a mysterious particle, floating amongst gravity wells in various fields of material. By carefully navigating, applying just the right vector force to move through the shifting landscape, you merge with other particles and escape to safety.

http://www.hemispheregames.com/osmos/

The move from “shoot stuff” to “move” or “eat” seems to be rising in popularity, with games like fl0w and Spore’s initial “cell stage” encouraging nonviolent navigation. To me, there’s something happening to the zeitgeist, perhaps a renewed awareness of cosmic (micro- or macroscopic) being, and of movement that draws on free-floating physics.

Even amongst a wave of games in this mode,when you actually play Osmos, you realize that it is something different and special. The design makes ingenious use of different kinds of movement and pacing through its different modes, at one point calling upon you to hurtle around a black hole, then move at nearly imperceptible speeds through a seemingly impossible-to-traverse petri dish of massive particles. No less than a shooter, it connects to the id and survival instinct. Pac-Man, the most successful arcarde game of all time, and one of the few that sucked in men and women in equal measure, was noted for its emphasis on eating as the mechanic. Consuming stuff appeals to everyone.

Of course, this is on a music site, and with good reason: what makes Osmos work is that Osmos is musical. It’s immediately beautiful and delicate, a perfect aesthetic union of the texture of the music and the on-screen arrangements of particles. More importantly, the music is woven directly into game play, providing subtle cues for dangers, and underscoring the pace of gameplay. You can only solve a level by managing speed and motion, and the music helps provide both the literal indications of speed and help your head get into the right zone to lose yourself in the world. If blips in early arcade games helped create a zone of play trance, now we have spectacular ambient soundtrack of music by Loscil, Gas/High Skies [Microscopics], Julien Neto, and Biosphere.

The music isn’t simply a beautiful soundtrack to the game. The game really feels like an extension of the world of the music. Put it all together, and something magical happens in this $10 game: you hear the music in a new way.

I spoke to the lead designer behind the game, programmer/animator Eddy Boxerman, along with musical-sonic collaborator Mat Jarvis aka Gas aka High Skies.

Peter: I found it amusing that some of the game press have stumbled around looking for a name for a new genre here, the "eat other stuff" category. To me, the basic game controls could be traced back to early titles like Asteroids. What are the games that have inspired you, either specifically or generally?

Eddy: Some people are dubbing the gameplay type as "eat ‘em up", as opposed to the classic "shoot ‘em up". But it’s true, the physics/controls have more in common with classic games such as Asteroids and Gravitar. The only "modern" game that otherwise influenced me was Katamari Damacy. It’s funny: when I sent out the first prototype to friends, I was concerned they would think the game was too similar to Katamari. That’s when I heard about flOw, which I’ve tried to steer stylistically clear of ever since. I guess it’s an archetype though, and the comparisons have been inevitable. As for Spore, Osmos was about one year into development when I saw the first preview footage of its "cell stage". On top of that, I learned that Will Wright had hired Brian Eno to do the music! I definitely had a "why should I bother?" moment at that point. But here we are, a couple years later, and I think we’ve managed to put out a unique game with a great mix of gameplay, sound, and visuals.

Peter: Ha – well, I’m glad you “bothered”! One thing that I think is really unique about Osmos is the gravitational mechanic. How did this come about?

Eddy: I was (and probably still am) a sci-fi kid. And when I read about real phenomena like colliding galaxies, retrograde planets, and the like, my mind goes to stange and wonderful places. That said, the Spacecraft Dynamics course I took during my engineering degree definitely played a large part in putting those mechanics and levels together. Thanks, Professor Misra!

Peter: How are the physical mechanics of the game constructed? This is essentially two-dimensional vector math, yes? Were there refinements you needed to make in order to keep performance up, or to keep the levels playable?

Eddy: That’s a big question! But yes, essentially it’s 2D vector math, though we make use of some 3D math (including quaternions) on the particle systems. The majority of the physics is quite simple though — first year bachelor’s stuff: F = ma, conservation of mass and momentum, gravitational laws, basic time integration, etc. We follow the spirit of the laws, but not always the letter. For instance, if you look at the Earth’s solar system in its entirety, you wouldn’t even see most of the planets; that doesn’t make for a very playable game though. As such, we took many liberties when it comes to scale, constants and exponents in the equations. The majority of the work was in the tweaking of those values to make the game /feel /good.

Peter: How did you prototype the game? What was the process of evolution like? Were there any failed attempts along the way?

Eddy: I put together the first prototype starting from a NeHe OpenGL tutorial. I added some basic physics, mouse controls, some highly unoptimised collision detection code, and voila, I had something to play with. After that, I immediately integrated [cross-platform 3D audio API] OpenAL, as the game was just begging for sound and music. I then hunted for some good sounds (discovering freesound.org in the process), put together a simple looping song (my first rough and humbling attempt to create digital music), and sent it out to a few friends. I’ll make that version available for free someday… when I’m feeling brave.

As for failed attempts, there were tons of shelved experiments and features that were cut. One interesting problem was the difficulty curve of the gravitational levels. In fact, the first gravity levels looked a great deal like the "Warped Chaos" levels do today: several free-floating Attractors in a sea of regular motes. I found it incredibly difficult, however, to make a "beginner" version of those levels. If the gravity was too weak, the Attractors had little apparent effect; too strong, and the level became incredibly difficult. I stuggled with this for a long time, until I hit on the idea of putting one, immobile Attractor in the center, with everything else orbiting around it. This allowed for the creation of systems with strong gravity effects, but long-term stability. It seems so obvious now, especially given the example of our solar system, but it wasn’t back then. In the end, these are some of the coolest levels in Osmos — practically its "signature" level type. Moral of the story: necessity really is the mother of invention.

Peter: What is the visual engine like? The sound engine?

Eddy: As I mentioned, I bootstrapped from a NeHe tutorial, but that’s all been replaced at this point. It’s now a homegrown engine using OpenGL. It doesn’t make any use of pixel/vertex shaders, so it runs on a wide variety of hardware. The majority of our texture work is done in Photoshop.

[The sound engine is] a wrapper we’ve built around OpenAL. At a basic level, all we ever do is mix and adjust the gain and pitch of our sounds and music. This allows us to run on generic sound hardware. But we do make extensive use of those "effects", and it’s possible to get a great deal of variety and feedback with them. In the end, it’s all about the quality of our sound sources, and the algorithms that adjust and smooth the gain and pitch of each.

Peter: For pitch shifting, were you able to do that natively in OpenAL?

Eddy: Yes, OpenAL supports pitch shifting at the software level. I ported our sound engine to use DirectSound at one point, and found that it’s pitch shift range is rather limited. We reverted back to OpenAL.

Peter: One thing that really strikes me about the game that is its use of pacing. Even without the obvious technique of allowing the user to control speed, there’s this extraordinary contrast between levels that require you to move quickly, that require you to anticipate the rate of movement along a vector of other objects, or that require you to move almost imperceptibly slowly. Was this an early goal, or something that evolved out of developing the game concepts?

Eddy: It evolved from the game concepts themselves. We tried to fully explore the fundamental controls and game space of Osmos, and converged on a number of interesting regions and structures that were fun to play with/in. Some people actually "complain" that the pacing of the game isn’t consistent across levels — some are fast, some slow — but that wasn’t our goal. In a sense, we’re merely presenting the results of a great deal of research and exploration into the space, with our sole requirement being that the levels are fun and interesting. We wanted it to be a game of concepts and understanding, not speed. The addition of time-warping allowed us to break free from that, expand our scope, and include a much larger variety of levels, as some have both fast and slow moments in them; we wanted the player to be able to control the pace and difficulty to their level of comfort.

Peter: Connecting the action to music, how important is the use of music in conveying time?

Eddy: I think pitch-shifting the music and sound effects helps players track time-warping in an inutitive way. Without these aural cues, the mental connection would be incomplete. That said, I sometimes test the game without sound, and it’s totally playable — just much less immersive.

Peter: At what stage did you involve the musical element? How was that relationship established?

Mat: Eddy first contacted me two or three years ago about using one of my tracks on Osmos (“Gas – Discovery”). He sent me a basic alpha version where the game was literally flat circles on a plain background, but even back then with the simple graphics and no sound it was compelling. I think it was at this early stage that I sent him a copy of another High Skies track, “The Shape of Things to Come,” which he also used a section from. It wasn’t too long later that he sent me a version of Osmos with most of the music that made it to the release version and it all just complimented each other beautifully.

Eddy has done a great job choosing music that compliments the game and graphics, and they also compliment the music. I think he’s done a great job overall as well, keeping his vision consistent for the look and feel of the Osmos world. Even though some of the levels are quite varied; some are quite chilled, others fast paced, nothing seems out of place. He has created a new world that’s both microscopic and macroscopic.

Peter: The musical and sound effect elements really do blend effortlessly. Mat, I know you made substitute sounds – how did this help blend the aesthetic?

Mat: I made the rebound noise when you bounce off the walls/ boundary. The original sound was quite hard and metallic with a lot of reverb, and I suggested a softer echoey sound. There was nothing wrong with the original, but it made the boundary feel quite hard and cold like being in a metal tank. I sent Eddy some analogue samples, using a [vintage Roland keyboard] Jupiter 6 with varying delays/ echoes. Because the tones are so pure and tuned, Eddy pitched them slightly to fit with the various keys of the different music.

Eddy: In general, it was a matter of searching and experimentation for the "right" set of sounds that fit well together — which can be a lengthy but rewarding process. Once integrated, minor gain and pitch adjustments helped fit it all together.

Mat provided the bounce sound, as well as the continuous absorb/being-absorbed sounds. The other sounds were created/shared on freesound by the users Elektrocell, fran_ky and Jovica. (Check out the Osmos credits in the readme.html for details.)

Peter: I recently spoke to Crystal Method, and while they’ve done some notable game scores, they actually said they wouldn’t want their music to be placed in a game context at which the speed changed, that it’d lose something. This seems like the opposite of that. Now, maybe it’s easy to take for granted with ambient music as opposed to something beat-driven like Crystal Method, but do you think there’s something special that allows this music to be adaptive in that way?

Mat: I think that in the right circumstances music with drums could work well and may even highlight the time-shifting more. Of course with the wrong game and wrong music it could sound terrible too.

Eddy: It’s a delicate issue. Out of the context of the game, I think it would seem wrong. There were also some pieces of music I tried which didn’t lend themselves well to this kind of manipulation, and which didn’t get included as a result. But with these songs, and everything working together in-game, I feel the whole experience is stronger as a result. I’m just glad Mat and the other artists agreed — or at least… didn’t object.

Peter: Hey, I think if you can write music that sounds good played at a different speed, that’s nice.

Osmos seems to me a musical experience, in that the sense of the music is transformed by the visuals and the interaction with them. Do you think it’s possible that audiovisual interfaces could go even further in terms of their impact on the music?

Mat: Yes, it almost seems as though Osmos creates a world for the music to exist.

I’ve always liked music visualisers like the Processing and Cymatics stuff, they’re quite compelling to watch how they react to the music, so it would be interesting to go the other way; by manipulating/ sculpting abstract shapes which then modify or even create sounds and music, especially using the new controllers like the Wii, [Microsoft’s] Project Natal and Sony’s Motion Controller instead of the mouse.

Eddy: I totally agree with Mat. Yes, please! More feedback between music, visuals and interactivity — in all directions. I’d love to experiment more on all of these fronts. In general, I think games such as Audiosurf and Auditorium, while great, have only begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible. Interactive musical "toys" such as [Nintendo/Toshio Iwai’s ]ElectroPlankton or Dub Selector are another great direction; and Rock Band Network is about to expand the market in a huge way. It’s exciting!

Peter: Along those lines, this is obviously a new take on music distribution in a way that goes well beyond what titles like Rock Band have done. Are there other cases in game history that to you have done that? Is there potential in these new outlets, outlets that are more accessible to independent developers (Steam, Direct2Drive, Xbox Live Arcade, iTunes App Store), to really change game development?

Eddy: Wow, that’s another big question. Really, I just felt the music was such an important part of the experience in Osmos that we should show the artist and track names during the game. But now that you mention it, I can’t think of another game that has done this, besides games like Rock Band where the song /is/ the game/level. That said, one way I’d love to push this evolution is to "augment" music videos with interactivity: ie. into music video-games. (The term "game" could be used rather loosely here.) Everyday Shooter does this, though Jon Mak actually created the music /for/ the game in that case — which rocks — but collaborations could lead to some really amazing things in this direction.

Peter: Eddy, Mat, thank you. Whether it’s in the form of a game or an audiovisual performance, we’ll certainly continue to explore these areas. And – hint, hint – Osmos 2, with multiplayer? Just a thought.

Osmos Trailer from hemisphere games on Vimeo.

True, it’s the 40th Anniversary of the moon landing. But it’s also the 40th Anniversary of David Bowie’s space trip Space Oddity. What better way to celebrate than with access to stems like the “little mouse fart” sound effect? (Seriously. Maybe it was a space mouse?)

EMI is re-releasing Space Oddity on a special EP with all the versions — mono and stereo, US and original, and the 1979 re-record. Buy that for US$5.99 on iTunes, and you get the stems, too, including the lovely Mellotron line, the vocals, guitar, instrumentals — heck, there’s even a nice Stylophone stem. For people who don’t have their own remix software, EMI is offering the free PC/Mac iKlax Creator Standard, though I expect you’ll be happier with your tool of choice.

For an additional US$1.99, though, you can get an interactive remix app for the iPhone with still more stems. Interestingly, you can also use this as an on-the-go interactive player for Space Oddity, so you can trip out and get stoned with your iPhon um, yes, erm, relax on your sofa with a special mix of Space Oddity. Shake it, and the accelerometer sensor tells the app to make a random mix for you.

News on the Bowie Website
David Bowie Remix Page

iPhone apps are groovy, but — sorry to say it, folks, the 1969 video is way, way, way groovier. Huge missed opportunity, EMI: you could have created an iPhone camera app that would have simulated the reflective tube effect in the classic Bowie video. Any takers?

The EP itself, though, is better news. There was a 1999 “digital remaster,” but this release comes closer to the original goodness.

Space Oddity has a special place in the hearts of CDM since “oddities” is the catch-all category for everything out of the ordinary in a special way.

So, yes, it’s yet another remix-iPhone app-record promotion, but, come on … it’s Bowie. It’s Space Oddity. It’s the 40th Anniversary of the Moon Landing. (You want trippy? Humans walking on the moon can blow even a 2009 mind.) And it’s also an excuse to embed this video:

Exclusive Free Mix: Amon Tobin, Back from Space

Exclusive Free Mix: Deru

And here are the direct links to listen / download:

Download the Amon Tobin Yuri’s Night mix [contains NSFW audio samples]

Download Deru’s Free Mix

Updated! If you were having problems with the links, it’s because I made a mistake generating URLs with Amazon S3, and some browsers (IE and Safari but evidently not Firefox) get picky. It should be fixed now.

For more on Amon Tobin, our friends at Current TV have this interview on the Foley Room album — not exactly news, but inspiring stuff, nonetheless. Anyone who’s a found sound sound design fan (as I know many of you are in your own work) should get a kick out of it:

Let us know what you think of the music in comments. (Truly — thoughtful criticism is welcome as well as praise.)

Hello from Ground Control: this week, I’ll be coming to you live from CDM’s micro-blog for Yuri’s Night Bay Area, ground zero for the global space rave celebrating human exploration of the cosmos. CDM’s challenge: to bring all the goodness up close and personal to you, from California to wherever you are on Planet Earth.

Watch the minisite now, during the event, and in the couple of weeks following at:

http://yuricdm.com

or subscribe to the yuricdm.com RSS feed.

Yuri’s Night needs special nerdster love for a number of key reasons — a huge lineup of music, art, and science, plus a special CDM event and booth:

• Music: The likes of Amon Tobin, Tycho, Christopher Willits, and many others … and our friend Ganucheau, too
• Motion: Interactive installations and visualists everywhere, including our man Joshua with his incredible Wii-powered SuperDraw, built with Processing
• Space and Science and Games: Here’s where I get especially excited — it’s an event on the airfield at Ames Research Center, not typically a place non-NASA employees can go, and we actually get to play there and listen some of the world’s top scientists. And Will Wright (creator of SimCity, Sims, and the upcoming Spore with its generative music) will be there, too, just in case your geek circuits weren’t overloaded yet.
• CDM @ the Hangar: We’re running a special Futuristic Music Design Challenge competition, and we’ll have the CDM booth for much of the evening where various musical / visual makers will be showing off their inventions (with more of our friends elsewhere at the event). So stop by and say hi.

Fortunately, we’re not alone — the good peoples of Current TV will also be covering the event, and if your blog / Flickr stream / Vimeo account gets involved, let us know. We’ll put it all up on yuricdm.com — our first time trying a minisite for a special event, so we welcome your feedback.

Are you going to San Francisco? We’re still looking for someone to video the competition — please email me immediately if interested. My name is "Peter", I’m at "createdigitalmusic.com" — see if you can work out my email address. Alternatively, use the contact form. We’re also looking for informal Flickr photographers, writers, and other coverage, so give us a holler if you’re going.

And remember:

Event schedule

Tickets information

Directions

I have to say, it’s really a pleasure to do this — not only for us, and for the artists and thinkers involved in the event, but for NASA and the space exploration community. Aside from music, space exploration (human and artificial) was always a major passion and inspiration for me growing up. I personally can’t think of a better reason to throw a party, especially as we think about the significance of technology on Earth.

How nerdster-chic is this: a global convergence of the exploration of space exploration, ecological savvy, technological innovation, and musical-motional performance, in honor of Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin launching the first-ever human flight into space? Described as “Cinco de Mayo” for space, Yuri’s Night is a 35-nation cosmorave. It was big last year. It’s going to be much bigger this year.

What’s all this space stuff got to do with music and motion? Everything: music and visual performance are a big part of this party, as Sun Ra-loving, space-inspired, Space Age technologist artists push creative tech. (Amon Tobin is headlining, Will Wright is keynote speaker.) Winter Music what? I want my space fiesta.

Attention, Cosmonauts

CDM is involved, and you can be, too, wherever you are in the world:

California, here we come: If you’re anywhere near greater San Francisco, you’re going to want to clear your calendar on April 12 for Yuri’s Night Bay Area at NASA Ames Research Center. It’s the main party, right in NASA’s Earth-bound back yard. There’s a massive musical lineup and various live visuals and interactive installations, plus space geekery galore, and Will Wright (he wowed NASA’s real-life space scientists with his procedural virtual cosmos in his upcoming game Spore). Buy those tickets while they’re still available.

We need help, Californians! Photographers and videographers, we can use your help covering the event. Like much of this event, it’s volunteer-only, but if you send me a link to some of your past work, I can help secure an official press pass for CDM; if you’re a pro, I’m happy to help promote your work. Drop me a line. I can’t get press passes for everybody, so definitely send some samples — and everyone else, we’ll have a group on Vimeo and Flickr.

Online coverage: Stay tuned to CDM for the latest on how visual and sonic technology and artists are connecting to outer space. We’ve got a new, dedicated site in collaboration with the folks running the flagship Yuri’s Night Bay Area — yuricdm.com — so we can talk to the artists and cover all the projects.

In your part of the world: Wherever you are, you can launch your own Yuri’s Night party. Host a party and register it with the global network (see how to party info). It’s a bit late, theoretically, but we’ve thrown together some cool CDM events in short order and we’ll help you promote your event here on CDM. Judging by Google Analytics, I know we have a lot of CDM readers in London, Sydney, Paris, Chicago, Berlin, Melbourne, and Seattle. (No, really — in that order. Go figure. Moscow’s there, too — #42, getting beat by Atlanta, Georgia, so I think we need some Cosmonauts getting involved.)

Hello, Ames Research Center!

Yuri’s Night will be happening worldwide, but the lineup for the Bay Area flagship event is looking terrific. Amon Tobin joins Tipper, John Tejada, Lusine, Scuba, Digitonal vs. Posthuman, [a]pendics.shuffle, Deru, Tycho, Mr. Projectile, Dr. Toast and our friend Ganucheau — and that’s just electronics. Live vocal/instrumental music includes Freezepop (as made infamous by various Harmonix games), avant-garde cello and guitar, and the 17-member marching Gamelan X, among others. Game maker Will Wright joins NASA astrobiologist Jonathan Green and eco-friendly scientists.

We’ll be posting updates to the lineup at yuricdm.com — you’ll hear about it there before anywhere else. Check out the lineup so far, but I know of some interesting installation and art pieces that aren’t there yet.

Keyboard Magazine, I have a challenge for you:

I think this solo desperately wants a Keyboard transcription. You know, “Play like Sun Ra.” It may require a larger insert, but maybe it could be sponsored by Yamaha or something.

Okay, granted, Earthlings might argue that this sounds chaotic, but on Sun Ra’s native planet Jupiter, this actually borders on the pedestrian. It’s pretty conventional 83-fingered hyperlocramixydixylycradidian mode, transposed here to what is apparently a Yamaha YC-30. Sun Ra even makes a nod to the fact that the Jupiterians’ torso typically rotates at increasing speed during live performances, as an especially “grupicosmilogical” solo causes their arms to detach.

What?

You want me to do the transcription?

Due when?

SUN RA – Live – Keyboard Solo (1980) [Matrixsynth]

In all seriousness, this just happened to coincide with listening to some Sun Ra records this weekend … if you don’t know his music, take some time to listen to it. YouTube excerpts with bad sound could easily give you the wrong idea. The ability to order a certain amount of entropy into larger forms that really are connected with the jazz tradition is amazing. And for those of you running boring, equal-measured loops in Ableton, spend some time with the polyrhythms. Sun Ra does have good stuff to teach. And it makes me look forward to Yuri’s Night in April all the more — Sun Ra is the artist who really went to space, and brought us back some music. Who needs Virgin Galactic?

Synths and space: they go together like chocolate and your mouth, like Sun Ra and aliens. So, it was with a heavy heart that I had to report the electronic awesomeness of Yuri’s Night, the party in celebration of space exploration at NASA’s Ames Research Center. Telefon Tel Aviv, Plaid, and circuit-bent Touch & Tells and keytars were there, but I was not. And maybe neither were you.

 NASA Yuri’s Night Rave: Space is the Place

Enough of that, though. Organized Matt Ganucheau writes to say this year will be bigger, better, “twice the art and twice the music.” 2008 will make 2007 look like a side party at Burning Man. So, in the interest of making sure your calendar is marked and your project is submitted, here’s a call for works — and hope to see you there.

What is Yuri’s Night?

Yuri’s Night World Space Parties celebrate humankind’s first venture into space by Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on
April 12, 1961, and the launch of the first Space Shuttle on April 12, 1981. The event is a unique convergence of artists,
scientists, astronauts, performers, technologists, and musicians to pay tribute to our shared global heritage in space
exploration. Through simultaneous celebrations worldwide, Yuri’s Night is a collaboration of creative thinkers from all
fields to ignite excitement about what is new on the horizon in space exploration and to remind us of the inspiring
possibilities that humanity can achieve. In 2008, NASA’s 50th Anniversary, the NASA Ames Research Center will host the
largest Yuri’s Night event ever held.

We invite artists and scientists to investigate and demonstrate our culture’s radical new technology, art and
vision for sustaining our future.

We’re looking for visionaries of the sciences and arts to join our celebration: artists who love science, scientists who love
art, and those who blur the line between all disciplines. Exhibit or demonstrate your works in the spacious NASA hangars
or adjoining tarmac and structures.

Yuri’s Night Bay Area 2008 will be held in two large hangars, totaling 80,000 square feet and extending over 400,000
square feet on the adjoining open tarmac. The rare access to expansive combined indoor and outdoor spaces
encourages large-scale installations and the potential for unusual works and performances showcased on the adjoining
tarmac. The main music stage will be at the far end of the tarmac, leaving the largest hangar exclusively for installations,
performances and demonstrations.

This is an exciting opportunity for unique collaboration between the science world and the art world. We encourage
partnerships between scientific and artistic minds and may be able to assist in partnering.

What we are looking for:

New installations of all sizes and types, interactive works, sound works, light works, large-scale sculpture, live
demonstrations, working models, table top demonstrations, prototypes, new technology, presentations, impromptu
lectures, and unique performances from international and local artists. We are also seeking new video works
documenting arts, humanities, performances, installations and microgravity works.

We encourage all applicants to think of ways to make their projects more ecologically friendly and sustainable. This may
include the use of recycled or reused materials, the incorporation of renewable power sources, demonstrations of green
technology, or just a plan for transporting the project that reduces gasoline use. Please let us know in your application if
your project has been planned or will be presented with any such features.

Full submission guidelines and details here:

2008 Call for Artists [PDF]