Focus on Kyma International Sound Symposium - KISS09

These have been busy days here at NIU, especially for the speakers who showed to all the symposiast each method of working with Kyma.
A lot of participants came from different sides of the world, it was great to be immersed in this colourful community! Carla Scaletti and Kurt Hebel (the creators of Kyma) introduced their new hardware Paca(rana) - you can find a lot of information here @ SSC - and the latest features implemented in Kyma X.70 (where 'X' stands for the last letter in 'six' - 6.70).

Carla and Kurt did a wonderful job to develop a state-of-the-art "recombinant" workstation, which gives any user the freedom to explore unknown sonic territories without hitting the DSPs (there's plenty of headroom in processing power).
During the morning of the first day, Carla showed us how to control Kyma with external devices like the Wacom Tablet and the Continuum Fingerboard, then with Nintendo Wiimote+Nunchuck and SpaceNavigator (via OSCulator by Camille Troillard).
The AC Toolbox presentation by Hector Bravo-Benard, revealed to us an algorithmic approach to sound composition with Kyma. By using the LISP language, it is possible to structure an entire composition and have Kyma play it. It is possible to make use of strict algorithmic procedures like probability distributions, Markov chains, tendency masks, and many other techniques used by composers of the likes of Paul Berg, Gottfried Michael Koenig.
A special mention should be made for Bruno Liberda's lecture, where he explores subtle connections between his wonderful graphical scores and different kinds of ancient neumatic notation, making symbolic notation and symbolic sound computation converge.
Cristian Vogel explained his latest creation called Black Swan for swiss choreographer Gilles Jobin. The 50 minutes original Kyma score was composed in Geneva and at the electroacoustic studio of the Musique Inventives d'Annecy. Here's a Swiss TV documentary about the creation of Black Swan.

What is Kyma?

Kyma is a sound design language that permits to manipulate, transform and warp any kind of sound source in realtime, but we already know all of this.
During these days in Barcelona - at the first Kyma International Sound Symposium - we have learnt something more specific and, maybe, unexpected.
As Carla Scaletti said during the opening lecture of KISS09, "Recombinance Makes Us Human". So, what does this mean? Actually each of the participants brought their own experience, point of view, modus operandi and creative talent to the symposium. This multiform epiphany allowed everyone involved to share the same time and space for 2 days, exchanging their ideas like sharing bits of code in a recombinant manner.
The symposiasts all came from different fields where Kyma plays a fundamental role in each of their activities (sound designers, composers, DJs, etc.). Each of them knows and likes different specific aspects of Kyma.

The lectures performed during these 2 days taught us something: regardless of their own personal skills, and of their own degree of Kyma knowledge, observing things from other users' point of view reveals unexpected surprises and creates new connections, on a mental and operational level, which were never considered before.
Even sounds commonly used in our everyday activity, if put in a different context (artistically or technologically), appear to us as new and unexpected, bringing back to our memory John Cage's famous concept: "(You have) to look at a Coca-Cola bottle without the feeling that you've ever seen one before, as though you were looking at it for the very first time. That's what I'd like to find with sounds -- to play them and hear them as if you've never heard them before."

The musical performances have contributed themselves to recombine new pieces of code, bearing different morphologies, sintax and structures.
With her liveset "SlipStick for Continuum and Kyma", Carla Scaletti explores the sound phase-space, in order to find new timber paths moving from materic aggregation to resonant chimes and back, without forgoing a "virtuoso gestuality" given by the nature of the instrument itself.
We have experienced the possibility of creating vibrating soundtracks for silent movies in real time, thanks to the contribution of Franz Danksagmüller's work, with the help of Berit Barfred Jensen's voice.
Concrete sounds produced by the friction of a Cello bow on different-shaped polystyrene objects, saturate the listening space thanks to the work of Hector Bravo-Benard, reminding us of some textures of Xenakis' work "La legende d'Eer".
Marin Vrbica's "Tiger in the Jungle" immerses us into an exotic and rich spatial dimension made of revolving sound-surfaces and sliding glissando-like multiple trajectories.

In the end, we are surprised that the paradigma presented in the beginning by Carla Scaletti (Recombinance Makes Us Human), has actually acted as an invisible force guiding, transforming, rearranging our thoughts, knowledge and purposes.
So, after the symposium we observe ourselves in a different way. We have changed into new intellectual human beings, and this gave everyone of us a fresh new start, in order to discover new possible configurations and interactions between ourselves and the others, between what we are and what we will be until #KISS10.

We really enjoyed our first attempt to follow a live event via Twitter, we hope you appreciated our efforts to make you feel like you were in Barcellona with us, as part of the symposium.
You can track all of our tweets via search.twitter.com.

Here's a selection of related tweets of interests:

• Now live #KISS09: Carla Scaletti - "Recombinance Makes Us Human" - Philosophy of Kyma #
• a Question: Infinity makes us HUMANS? #
• Infinity+ self-awareness of finitude #
• Open-ended possibilities= open-ended amount of time, but the learning is fun! #
• Kyma sounds are recombinant...like us..! #
• Pen Morph Gandalf to Saruman "You are tracking the footsteps of two young Hobbits" #
• Writing in time and space..... #
• I became operational ath the C.E.R.L. lab in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of November, 1986. -- Kyma #
• Kyma was inspired by three ideas: cutting & splicing audio tape, voltage control, symbolic logic & computer programming #
• An interview with Carla Scaletti @symbolicsound usoproject.com/C... #
• and now...linear interpolation of presets - smooth transition in the phase space... #
• music is something like a side effect of explorating timbre and sound configurations... #
• Presets as aural Keyframes #
• ...the problem of finding graphic symbols for the transposition of the composer's thought into sound." Edgard Varèse #
• ...without friction [...] there would be no music!"- Carla Scaletti #
  

For anyone interested in the Kyma sound design language, the book "Kyma X Revealed" is available here @ SSC. This document gives you an overview of the environment, gives you a strategy for approaching this deep system one layer at a time and then walks you step-by-step through each level of Kyma like your own personal tour guide. At the back of this guide, you’ll find several summaries and quick references that you can keep handy for refreshing your memory while working. This book covers the mechanics of how to use Kyma — not the art and science of sound design. However, if you love sound and are hungry for more knowledge on the subject, achieving fluency with Kyma is an excellent first step!

A great thanks to Cristian Vogel (Station 55 Productions) and Symbolic Sound Corporation for their greeting and organization.

UPDATE: Slides from Recombinance Makes Us Human (.pdf), the welcoming address for the First International Kyma Symposium in Barcelona, October 2009.

JoAnn Kuchera-Morin: Tour the AlloSphere

JoAnn Kuchera-Morin demos the AlloSphere, a new way to see, hear and interpret scientific data. Dive into the brain, feel electron spin, hear the music of the elements ... and detect previously unseen patterns that could lead to new discoveries.

Composer JoAnn Kuchera-Morin works on the Allosphere, one of the largest scientific and artistic instruments in the world. Based at UCSB, the Allosphere and its 3D immersive theater maps complex data in time and space. Kuchera-Morin founded the Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology (CREATE) and has been the director since its birth in 1986. In 2000 she began work on a Digital Media Center within the California NanoSystems Institute at Santa Barbara. Her fascinations include gestural interfaces for performance and the expression of complex data in nontraditional forms.

[Mapping terrain in space and time: Exclusive interview with JoAnn Kuchera-Morin of the AlloSphere]

[allosphere.ucsb.edu]

Sound Design workshop: report

Our friends Gianpaolo D'Amico and Sara Lenzi had published the report (with sound excerpts, Italian only) of the Sound Design: new forms of creative communications workshop, that took place the 26th October 2008 at the Festival of Creativity in Florence.

[leggi l'articolo - read the article]

[more photos here]

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]

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

[via cnmat.berkeley.edu]

Flow 5.0

Flow 5.0 is an interactive art installation consisting of hundreds of ventilators, each being controlled individually by various sensors.

Microphones and other sensors control the direction and speed of the fans as visitors pass through a corridor. The fans form the walls of the corridor, and they remain off until a visitor moves in front of them.

Daan Roosegaarde, the creator of Flow 5.0, describes it as “…an interactive landscape made out of hundreds of ventilators which reacts on your sound and motion. By walking and interacting the visitors creates an illusive landscape of transparencies and artificial wind.”

Further reading on Studio Roosegaarde’s website.

Also check out the video of the installation.

[via digitalexperience.dk]

The Sound of Touch @ Siggraph Emerging Technologies 2007

Hybrid Percussion: Extending Physical Instruments Using Sampled Acoustics

Roberto M. Aimi has developed an array of digital/acoustic percussion instruments that convolve the audio output of damped semi-acoustic physical objects with recorded impulses of real and synthetic instrument sounds to create highly expressive hybrid instruments.

Enhanced Life
The Sound of Touch enables people to manipulate sound samples in a way that is much more immediate and intuitive than current digital tools. The system's technology and interface designs adopt characteristics of acoustic instruments, making samples that are recorded on-the-spot malleable and flexible through continuous gestural interaction with physical textures and resonant objects.

Goals
To demonstrate a system that gives children and adults a truly new way to interact with sound.

Innovations
The Sound of Touch builds on a technique for continuous digital convolution developed by Roberto Aimi for creation of semi-acoustic musical instruments. A stand-alone wand incorporates both a microphone for recording samples and a piezoelectric sensor for stimulating the samples. A "texture kit" enables sonic experimentation with a wide range of physical textures and resonant objects.

Vision
Because it makes sonic exploration so intuitive, a generation of musicians could adopt this system as their preferred synthesis technique in the next 10 years. Ultimately, the system could become a commercial product that would enable people to paint with sound wherever and whenever they want, either for professional sound-design projects or just for play.

[siggraph.org]
[Thesis pdf - 13 MB]
[Videos and demonstrations]

JazzMutant @ Siggraph Emerging Technologies 2007

Digital innovations that change the way we work, live, and play.

Emerging Technologies presents creative, innovative technologies and applications in many fields, including but not limited to: displays, robotics, input devices, interaction techniques, computer vision, sensors, audio, speech, biometrics, wearable computing, information, data and scientific visualization, biotechnology, graphics, collaborative environments, and design.

And in several domains, including but not limited to: medicine, music, entertainment, education, home, business, aerospace, communication, transportation, security, military, and technologies for the aging and/or disabled.

[Emerging Technologies Video Preview - Windows Media, 10.2 MB]

Jazzmutant is proud to have been selected by the Siggraph Emerging Technologies Committee in San Diego to demo a new prototype device for digital imaging involving multi-touch control. This solution will go beyond mere finger-drawing and clearly illustrate a new way to interact and improve productivity with drawing and video editing software. Furthermore, the solution presented will be the very first multi-touch enabled Tablet PC shown to the public.

New Multi-Touch Interaction Techniques for Visual Content Creation

The latest development of JazzMutant's multi-touch technology with a particular focus on visual and graphic arts, and some new advanced interaction techniques involving a multi-touch display in combination with other input devices.

Enhanced Life
Because of their versatility, multi-touch displays are appropriate for both productive and entertaining computing. By providing ergonomic design with optimized workflow, they improve user experience and make interaction with computers much more intuitive, playful, and efficient.

Goals
JazzMutant delivers advanced control solutions for musicians and sound engineers, but video and graphic artists have requested similar systems for their applications. This system demonstrates early attempts to fulfill those requests.

Innovations
The JazzMutant resistive technologysystem differs from optical systems in its form factor. Because it is both scalable and portable, it can be integrated in a wide variety of devices. It is exceptionally reliable, even in harsh environments. And it can be used in conjunction with other pointing devices such as stylus. This enables richer interaction techniques that can not be achieved with touch input alone.

Vision
In the past two years, many good multi-touch interaction techniques have been introduced, but most of them are merely focused on zoomable user interfaces. This approach is only the tip of the iceberg. The key to success for future multi-touch systems is multi-modality: appropriate integration of several input devices.

[via createdigitalmusic.com]
[siggraph.org]

Wii Balance Board

A new Open-Sound-Controlled device?

Nintendo announced Wii Fit, a fitness game for the Nintendo Wii.
Surprisingly, Wii Fit centres on not Wiimote, but an entirely new controller, the Wii Balance Board (name not final). The WBB is a flat surface you lay on the floor that wirelessly connects to the Wii, just like the Wiimote.
Coming in the first half of 2008.

A lightsaber game for Nintendo's Wii

Rumours of a Star Wars game that uses the Nintendo Wii controller as a lightsaber have been fuelled by comments made by Jim Ward, president of LucasArts and a senior vice president at Lucasfilm.
"We’re all over that, and internally we have already played a lightsaber game on the Wii. It’s a lot of fun, and we’ll get there."

[read more - via gamasutra.com]
[view Playing Kyma, first-ever Jedi performance with the Wiimote]

Monome - 40h/special edition

• internal accelerometer detects motion and tilt which can be dynamically mapped to different parameters
• white powdercoated top plate
• bright orange leds
• custom grey or white base enclosure
• hand-felted wool case

[read more - via monome.org]

Musical Robots

LEMUR: League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots is a Brooklyn-based group of artists and technologists who create robotic musical instruments. Founded in 2000 by musician and engineer Eric Singer, LEMUR creates exotic, sculptural musical instruments which integrate robotic technology. LEMUR's philosophy is to build robots that are new types of musical instruments, as opposed to animatronic robots that play existing instruments.

[LEMUR website]
[Arts Electric interviews Eric Singer]

Sound Modulated Light

A project designed by Edwin Van Der Heide (Netherlands)

Sound Modulated Light #1 is an environment of light and sound wherein sound is not present acoustically, but is radiated by light. Normal lamps connected to the electricity network flicker at an (almost) invisible frequency of 50 Hz. The latter can be seen as a carrier for a (rectified) 50 Hz sound. For the installation this signal is being replaced by different composed signals. Hence the lights function as sound carriers. The space consists of a multiple-light design where every light source has a double role: it is part of the light design and part of the sound design. The sound is modulated on top of the light by means of intensity modulation.

[read more @ evdh.net]

Maker Faire 2007: On the Floor

OpenSoundControl wizard Adrian Freed had this roundup of fun interfaces for music and motion plugged into Max/MSP/Jitter. More coverage of alternative controllers for music from Make and elsewhere at Create Digital Music.