Thursday, March 27, 2008

Mimmo Paladino | Brian Eno: a work for the Ara Pacis


11 March - 11 May 2008

The Ara Pacis Museum, the first piece of contemporary architecture to appear in the historic centre of Rome since the 1940s, is hosting this contemporary arts event between Brian Eno and Mimmo Paladino.

Brian Eno – "a non-musician kind of musician” as he likes to describe himself, is the man behind “Generative Music”, the precursor to New Age music, as well as a video-artist, sculptor, artist, and music philosopher who is also a more than capable player of a variety of musical instruments.
The two men have put their heads and combined talents together and come up with a unique work designed to fits the spaces inside the Ara Pacis Museum.
For his part, Brian Eno wanted to create a musical background that has no words, no melody, no rhythm and never plays over in exactly the same way twice. The music and sounds he produces are a long way from being a mere soundtrack that runs behind Paladino’s sculptures and artwork but are rather something that is completely separate from them and yet somehow also strongly connected to them. Unlike classical music, where the sounds are organised in a precise pattern, Eno works with musical values that waft through the air independently of each other.

The starting point for both Eno and Paladino is the concept of deconstructing their work and repeating modules that typify their creative inspiration. By stretching and flattening single sounds or themes and putting all the pieces together the two artists manage to obtain a harmonious whole.

[Eno. The music of the mind]

[Paladino/Eno at Ara Pacis]

[a conversation with Paladino]

Monday, March 24, 2008

XS [n.o.s.a.] DOVES DAY

XS [n.o.s.a.] n o t _ o n l y _ s o n i c _ a c t s
DOVES DAY
Day Off Venues for the Experimental Scene
Music, sounds and experimental electronic arts, Third edition
XS [n.o.s.a.] DOVES DAY starts again thanks to the neverending work of ANTITESI and, for this year, also to the collaboration of Malaussène (cultural association).
XS [n.o.s.a.] DOVES DAY is a “moment” completely dedicated to the new contemporary arts and to the creative use of technologies applied to them.
It has been conceived as a moment of cultural interchange among artists, audience, students and organizers, and for all those interested in those arts that today, more than ever, are the mirror of a contemporary culture in continuos movement and evolution.
XS [n.o.s.a.] DOVES DAY explores the artistic answer to the information and communication technology era, focusing the attention on research of innovative and experimental languages with a great communicative potential. From DIGITAL ART to SOUND ART, the sound events, the visuals the installations and the live performances in XS [n.o.s.a.] – Doves Day explore sound and its relationship with the other arts.
Once again, this year, XS [n.o.s.a.] DOVES DAY becomes a place where international synergies, coming from USA passing through Europe and stopping in Palermo (Sicily), socially and artistically merge.The aim of ANTITESI is to give the audience the opportunity to enter an underground reality that goes beyond every imaginable idea and shape of music.
From March to July 2008, XS [n.o.s.a.] DOVES DAY hosts the live performances and installations of 5 artists and groups of the most independent new music scene.

PROGRAM
29th March – h 10 p.m.
GENE COLEMAN (USA)
LIVE PERFORMANCE - Bass clarinet
11th April – h 10 p.m.
ROBIN HAYWARD (UK-DE)
LIVE PERFORMANCE – Tuba
30th May – h 10 p.m.
ILLACHIME QUARTET (ITA)
LIVE PERFORMANCE – Various instruments
20th June – h 10 p.m.
KIM CASCONE (USA)
LIVE PERFORMANCE - Laptop
11th July – h 10 p.m.
URSULA SCHERRER (USA) & DOMENICO SCIAJNO (ITA)
LIVE PERFORMANCE – Laptops – Live audio and video
7th - 13th July
URSULA SCHERRER (USA)
“GLADES” - Installation
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All live performances start at 10 p.m. - Venue: Malaussène - Address: Piazzetta di Resuttano, 4 - Palermo - Ticket € 3,00
You can visit “Glades”, Ursula Scherrer’s installation , from 7th to 13th of July. Free entrance
XS [n.o.s.a.] DOVES DAY is an ANTITESI’s project in collaboration with Malaussène
Info: ANTITESI - c.moriniello "at" antitesi.org
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iXem [italian eXperimental electronic musix] - www.ixem.it - info "at" ixem.it

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Music of the Spheres

Stockhausen performing at Expo ’70, West German Pavilion, Osaka, Japan, 1970.

When Stockhausen died on December 5, 2007, at his home in Kürten, Germany, his fame as a composer of startlingly original and uncompromising music—whether groundbreaking experiments in electronic sound, innovative manipulations of traditional instrumentation, or unorthodox approaches to the human voice—had long since peaked, and his work was perhaps spoken of more eagerly than it was performed.

[read the article - via artforum.com]

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

MESSE08: New Eobody2 SensorBox



Eowave have long been working on body sensor systems, allowing performers to interact with their synthesizers and sequencing setups. Now Eowave have introduce the USB8 Sensor Box, which has USB interface and can accommodate up to 8 sensor inputs.

[via Sonic State]

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Sonic Acts XII - Amsterdam

The twelfth edition of the Sonic Acts festival is devoted to The Cinematic Experience and incorporates an international conference, a wide range of concerts and performances, an exhibition and a diverse programme of films. The central topic will be how the medium of cinema can be used as a means to make us conscious of our own physical experiences and realities. The programme focuses on the rich history of the cinematic experience, from magic lanterns, colour organs and zoetropes to experience machines and immersive environments. Sonic Acts will also peer into the future. Will cinema distance itself from narrative in the near future? What is the prospect for celluloid? And what role will sensory deprivation play in future cinema?

[Concert | Cluster]


[Concert | Leafcutter John]


[Concert |Kasper Toeplitz]


[Concert | Diego Losa, Francois Bayle, Daniel Teruggi]


[Concert |Acousmonium IV]
Appearing in this part of Acousmonium: Christian Zanesi, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Christian Fennesz.

[sonicacts.com]
[more excerpts here: pablosanz's Channel]

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Noise: a Hole in the Silence

Silence. Noise. And, in the middle, between the two poles, every possible variation and gradation. Noise: a Hole in the Silence brings together works by twenty-one artists. Each work helps to outline a particular fragment within the complex panorama of sounds, noises, hums and silences that make up the exhibition, which takes its inspiration from Een lek in het zwijgen: noise, an event conceived and organized by Gwy Mandelinck (poetry) and Giacinto Di Pietrantonio (visual arts) at Watou (Belgium) during the summer of 2007 and judged the best exhibition of the year in Belgium.

Visitors are free to wander around the exhibition, and to accept the invitation to -listen to me- that is repeated on their encounter with each work. The material of sound, at times strongly present, at others mysterious, is articulated and modulated through different languages: the sound fragments, multiplies, vanishes for a moment to reappear in a laugh or in the sculptural and material presence of a piano, or simply in the gust of wind that makes a rod attached to the branch of a tree vibrate.

The protagonists of this exhibition: Joseph Beuys (Germany), Marcel Broodthaers (Belgium), John Cage (USA), Mircea Cantor (Romania), Giuseppe Chiari (Italy), Jimmie Durham (USA), Jan Fabre (Belgium), Lara Favaretto (Italy), William Kentridge (South Africa), La Monte Young (USA), Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (Italy), Kris Martin (Belgium), Shirin Neshat (Iran), Melik Ohanian (France), Yoko Ono (Japan), Adrian Paci (Albania), Diego Perrone (Italy), Miguel Angel Rios (Argentina), Luigi Russolo (Italia), Mungo Thomson (USA), Bill Viola (USA), Jordan Wolfson (USA).

The works are accompanied by poetry intersecting with art and offering the visitor a listening experience that continually creates new impressions and new meanings.
In the exhibition there are the poems of: Hugo Claus, Charles Ducal, Gerrit Komrij, Rutger Kopland, Anton Korteweg, Erik Lindner, Lucebert, Gwy Mandelinck, Eugenio Montale, Erwin Mortier, Fernando Pessoa, Juan Manuel Roca, Camillo Sbarbaro, Geert van Istendael, Peter Verhelst.

Spazio Oberdan, Viale Vittorio Veneto 2, Milan opening times: every day 10 am - 7:30 pm, Tuesday and Thursday until 10 pm, closed on Monday ticket: full -6.20, reduced -4.10; school parties -2.70 entrance free of charge on the first Tuesday of every month.

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

An Overview of the Open Sound Control Protocol

Date & Time:
Thu Mar 6th, 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm

Free entrance

Since its introduction in 1997 by CNMAT researchers Matt Wright and Adrian Freed, the Open Sound Control (OSC) protocol has been successfully integrated into dozens of hardware and software products, and used in thousands of performances and installations. OSC goes beyond MIDI by addressing needs specific to musical performance with new electronic instruments such as high-bandwidth connectivity, precise temporal semantics and temporal regularization, extensibility and rich type support, human readability and state-free operation. The OSC protocol itself has a simple structure making it easy to integrate into new applications, but an appreciation for the underlying design principles is necessary to leverage its full capabilities.

This talk will cover the basics of using and programming OSC with demonstrations of hardware and software implementations. We will then dive into the details and discuss best-practices for creating OSC implementations that relate to issues in musical control, with an emphasis on temporal semantics and related algorithms. The conclusion will include an overview of recent research and anticipated future developments.

Location: Songbird, 585 Howard Street Second Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105

Maps: Yahoo!, Google

The Art of Sound

While most people associate “soundtrack” with a recorded film score, the term actually describes a motion picture’s total sound content, from music and dialogue to a wide range of sound effects.

Talented professionals can make the precise and even delicate process of assembling a soundtrack appear to be a simple, straightforward task. Yet in almost any film sequence, sound editors and mixers must select and manipulate dozens of sound elements for realism, coherence and emotional impact while steering clear of the sort of cacophony that may be true-to-life, but does little to support a story.

The Art of Sound” will feature clips from each of the motion pictures nominated for a 2007 Academy Award® in the Sound Mixing and Sound Editing categories. Academy Sound Branch governor and 20-time nominee Kevin O’Connell will moderate an onstage discussion with the mixers and editors who took home Oscars® for their work.

[via oscars.org]

The Lightsaber Sound Cookbook

Thanks to Synthtopia, we discovered an interesting tutorial on how to make Lightsaber Sound using hardware and software tools.
Here's an excerpt:

The folks at Unidentified Sound Object have invented an elaborate system for creating lightsaber sounds with a Nintendo Wii remote, OpenSoundControl and Symbolic Sound Kyma. Check out the video on YouTube.

We appreciate the acknowledgment. Let the battle begin!

Matteo, Federico