Understanding Visual Music - List of Presenters

Hexagram / Music Department

Concordia University

Biographies and Abstracts

9:15 Jean Gagnon (keynote speaker) - Visual Music and Instrumental Playing

Abstract:

This paper will survey the intersection of visual music and cinema. On the one hand, visual music in its many definitions encompasses many manifestations from inventions of light or color organs, abstract paintings with its many derivatives such as synchromism, etc., experimental and animation cinema with figure such as Oskar Fishinger, Norman McLaren, Len Lye and the Whitney brothers. But on the other hand, music, sound and cinema have been studied, practiced and theorised for decades now, without references to visual music from Eisenstein to Michael Snow, passing by Theodore Adorno and Hanns Eisler to Michel Chion who brings with him the teachings of musique concrete and Pierre Schaeffer. This paper argues that the problem with visual music resides in its acceptance of visual vocabularies that are abstract in their principles and that this focus on formal correspondence between sound and visuals results in the evacuation of the live performance in favour of the recordings, films as final form. Video art and recent advances in real-time video processing have shown instrumentation play a vital role for renewing visual music. This more performative approach to producing audiovisual works places the dynamics of an embodied subject, the instrumentalist, the artist or the interactor, and the technical object or artefact, the instrument, at the center field of mediations between them and the broader context of the playing of the piece. This paper presentation will be a navigation between excerpts of Snow’s films or sound pieces, Steina’s, Fschinger, Pierre Hébert and Others

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10:15 Papers - session #1

Luigi Allemano - Silent and Still: Origins of 'Visual Music

Abstract:

The paper is a brief genealogy of the term 'visual music', tracing its usage from a review of Kandinsky's paintings in 1913, through the development of abstract animation films and color organs, to the contemporary video art, electronic music and VJ scenes. The questions are posed as to whether a common aesthetic can be described as Moritz suggested in his essay 'Towards an Aesthetic of Visual Music' and whether these disparate forms of visual, auditory and cinematic art, fixed and performative, can be contained within the term 'visual music'.

Randolph Jordan - Visual Music Cinema and the Ideologies of Sound/Image Synchronization

Abstract:

The subgenre of experimental cinema known as Visual Music is most often discussed in relation to the wider sphere of abstract visual art that, one way or another, seeks to evoke or engage with the concept of “music.” The goal of much of this Visual Music work is to explore how sound and image can be understood as one and the same thing. However, it is important to recognize that film experiments that hope to blur the line between sound and image nevertheless must, like any sound film, confront the technical reality that sound and image are fundamentally separate entities. As such, Visual Music cinema is equally engaged with conventions of synchronization that try to erase our awareness of the cinema’s dual nature as narrative/representational cinema grounded in naturalist approaches to sound/image relationships. Thus the choices made by Visual Music practitioners are necessarily entrenched within larger questions about audiovisual synchronization in all film, questions about redundancy and realism that have been hotly debated since the coming of sound to moving pictures. This paper will address a variety of Visual Music works and situate their audiovisual strategies within the history of debates about synchronization in the cinema. While I hope to demonstrate how theories of synchronization can help us understand Visual Music practices better, I will also argue that Visual Music can help us understand the concept of synchronization in the cinema anew, allowing us to rethink the potential for cinema’s audiovisuality in the 21st Century.

Biography:

I am a Montreal-based film scholar, sound artist and filmmaker. I recently completed my Ph.D. in the interdisciplinary Humanities program at Concordia University where I wrote my dissertation on the intersections between acoustic ecology and film sound design. My chapter on Jacques Tati’s film Play Time placed second in the 2011 SCMS Student Writing Award competition. My post-doctoral research extends the interdisciplinary methodology I established in the dissertation to a consideration of how the study of film soundtracks can both inform and be informed by soundscape research on specific geographical locales. I have presented my research at conferences in Canada, the US, the UK, Germany, Brazil, Mexico, and Japan. My writing has been published in several anthologies including Music, Sound, and Multimedia (University of Edinburgh Press, 2007) and has recently appeared in the journals Music, Sound, and the Moving Image and Cinephile with new work forthcoming in Organised Sound. My creative work has appeared in festivals internationally, including the New Forms Festival (Vancouver, 2004), The Anti-Matter Film Festival (Victoria, 2009), the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (Mexico City, 2009), and the Videoex International Film Festival (Switzerland, 2010). My latest film, Keelia Takes Manhattan, was presented at the Cinesonika festival in Vancouver this past November. I am currently teaching in the cinema department at Concordia University, and in May of 2012 I will begin a two-year FQRSC post-doctoral fellowship at Simon Fraser University for my research project “The Vancouver Soundscape on Film.” For more information, please visit: www.randolphjordan.com

Jan Thoben - Image Audification - Visual Music in Black and White

Abstract:

"The artistic appropriation of emerging media-technologies seems to be regarded as a natural fact. It has been reflected only rarely and often remained behind the scenes of the artwork. Hence, when it comes to understanding visual music, we generally encounter the logic of formal and/or synaesthetic correspondances between sounds and images, not their medial conditions. But alongside the ubiquitus genealogy of audiovisual form from abstract film to contemporary VJing, there has also been an artistic consciousness of the media employed. This points to the properties of the technical apparatus and our perceptual reactions to it.

The practise of technical image audification in the arts reaches back as far as Rainer Maria Rilkes notion of the ""Primal Sound"" from 1919. Contemplating on the phonographic line, Rilke speculates about the sound of visual curves in nature picked up by the needle. It is the same year in which Raoul Hausmann presented his ""Optophonetic Poems"" which later led to the concept of the ""Optophone"", an audiovisual device conceived to transgress the borders of music and visual art. Rilke's and Hausmann's sensibility for the technology of audification can be seen as a development of their poetological reflections. This significant relationship between the aesthetic properties of audiovisual technology and language reappears in Moholy-Nagy's concept of the ""Optophonic ABC"" as well as in Guy Sherwin's optical soundfilm ""Newsprint"" from 1972. Comparing these works, this paper argues that the modernistic search for a generative grammar of visual music becomes subject to the contingency of noise."

Biography:

"Jan Thoben studied musicology and art history at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany.

He finished his studies with a master's thesis on intermediality with regard to electroacoustic and experimental music. Today his research focusses more specifically on the relations between sounds and images in different aesthetic contexts.

In 2009 Thoben was a research fellow at the Ludwig-Boltzmann-Institute in Linz, Austria, and is co-editor of the print and online compendium “See This Sound”, an interdisciplinary survey of audiovisual culture (www.see-this-sound.at). In 2011 he worked as guest curator for the media arts festival Club Transmediale in Berlin and is co-organiser of the ""Oscillation-Series – Sonic Theories and Practises"" (www.sonictheory.com).

Thoben receives a scholarship from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Germany for his PhD research on audiovisual transformation as aesthetic strategy."

Xárene Eskandar (CVM) - Where to Draw a Line: From ____ to VJing

Abstract:

The history of visual music is often traced in a linear manner, leading to incorrect or neglected lineages for many of the current audio-visual genres, specifically VJing. VJing is the live mixing of video in synchronization to music and is often incorrectly pedigreed as, and bundled with "live cinema". This paper will propose a number of routes that we can take to better understand and delineate the history of VJing and live audio-visual culture from the 1980s onward. Taking an historical approach I look at the fragmenting of visual music culture into various other visual cultures and how a combination of those cultures lead into VJing and other recent modes of live audio-visual performance. The history, as I demonstrate, is not as linear as mistakenly understood.

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13:30 VISUAL MUSIC show #1 @ DB Clarke Theatre (curated by The iota Center)

Jules Engel - Shapes And Gestures

Chris Casady - Puddle Jumper

Kino Gil - Geometrio

Neil Ira Needleman - Respect for Red and Green

David McCutchen - Pachelbel's Canon

Bill Alves - Celestial Dance

Sylvia Pengilly - Impossible Spaces

Sara Petty - Furies

Jeremy Speed Schwartz - Ornament #3

Audri Phillips - I Never Met a Dweeble I Didn't Like

Ramona Behravan - Genesis and VooDoo

Adam Beckett - Kitch in Sync

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15:30 Papers - session #2

Insook Choi & Robin Bargar - A visual strategy for cultivating attentive listeners in the context of playable media

Abstract:

"A new millennium audience presents challenges and opportunities in how to bring about their auditory perception into musical listening skills. Challenges are the constant exposure to massive visual stimuli, short attention span, and dominant use case of sounds in film and game media where the sounds provide a secondary function to visuals. This cultural context calls for a pedagogical provision for an alternative orientation to sounds and to visuals. What can be offered to help an audience to unlearn the typical relationship between sounds and visuals in order to learn sounds as primary drive for assimilating their sensorial experiences? Opportunities abound in the young generation’s profile of fun seeking agility, and in their native talents with interactive devices and installations. Here, the visual strategy is presented by applying a simulation-based graphic interface to tone generation. The interface is configured so that it serves both installation and concert. The application has been developed as part of creative and technical work with playable media, investigating methodologies for composing and generating dynamic notation for interactive performance as well as for playing with sounds.

The visual media used in this research are interactive graphics associated with an evolutionary algorithm. A large format capacitive sensing panel provides a surface to project visualizations of swarm simulations as well as the sensing mechanism for introducing human players’ actions to the simulation. The evolutionary algorithm is adapted and integrated for interface functionality. A methodology for using swarms agents’ information and emergent properties to model sound synthesis is presented. “

Biography:

"Insook Choi is a composer and computational media researcher whose body of work has grown from instrumental, electro-acoustic and computer music to include sensors, robotics, and interactive real-time performance with video, computer graphics and virtual reality. Her compositions integrate technology research and development results into expressive media. Her research areas encompass human gesture studies and human computer interaction, semantic computing, interactive narrative structures, interactive signal processing, computational architecture for creative media applications, and complex dynamics applied to algorithmic design.

Insook currently is Director of the Emerging Media Technologies Program at City Tech, CUNY, a highly interdisciplinary program for next generation creative minds She received the doctor of musical arts from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in 1995. Since then she has been teaching and creating numerous interdisciplinary projects in various institutes. These include the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and Intelligent HCI group in Beckman Institute at UIUC; the EEC department at UC Berkeley; the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and Polytechnic Institute of NYU.

Her work has been frequently performed and broadcast at international venues such as Ars Electronica, IRCAM, ISEA, and SIGGRAPH. Her research publications can be found in ICMC, NIME, IRCAM, the Journal of the Franklin Institute, AAAI, ACM, IEEE, and Entertainment Computing. She is recorded on the Neuma and Centaur labels. “

Laurie Radford - 'I am sitting on a fence' - Negotiating Sound and Image in Audiovisual Composition

Abstract:

Tremendous effort has been exerted since the inception of musique concrète to avoid, repress or stave off the influences and workings of the visual and to privilege the purely aural in the perception, conception, production and reception of the art form generally referred to as electroacoustic music. Electroacoustic music, in moving from its birthplace of the radio to the conventions of the concert space, has in the broadest sense cultivated a vital if somewhat ambivalent relationship with the visual domain. The integration of common technical procedures in the tools and operations of composing with sound and image, the maturing practice of live performance of sound and image, and the evolving concept of aurality shaped by the increasingly mobile mediation of audiovisual experience, redefine artistic practice and cultural engagement with the intertwined relationship of the aural and the visual. Practitioners have begun to employ strategies and concepts that are unique to audiovisual composition and have developed an art form that departs from hybridity and the formative ‘audiovisual contract’ and instead proposes a singular artistic practice that dismantles the perceptual fence between aural and visual experience. A theoretical foundation is proposed that considers the negotiation of perceptual, technological, linguistic, historical and social issues characteristic of the practice of contemporary audiovisual composition. Current activities, issues and practices arising from the growing inclination of composers employing mediating technologies to integrate sound and image in studio-based and live performance work are discussed in the context of recent sound, image, media and cultural studies.

Biography:

"Laurie Radford composes music for diverse combinations of instruments, electroacoustic media, and performers in interaction with computer-controlled signal processing of sound and image. His music has been performed and broadcast throughout North and South America, Europe and Asia at events including Futura, Biennale Musique en scène, Miami New Music Festival, Music Viva, Rien à voir, MusiMars, San Francisco Tape Music Festival, Festival Encuentros, Nornadas de Música Elektroakustika, Semaine Internationale de Cuenca, Discoveries Series, Cutting Edge Series, and SAN Expo.

He has received commissions and performances from ensembles and soloists including Le Novel Ensemble Modern, L'Ensemble contemporain de Montréal, Esprit Orchestra, Ensemble Résonance, code d'accès, GroundSwell, Pro Coro Canada, New Music Concerts, Trio Fibonacci, Trio Phoenix, Earplay, Duo Kovalis, the Penderecki, Bozzini and Molinari String Quartets, and the Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Montréal Symphony Orchestras.

Radford’s music is available on empreintes DIGITALes, McGill Records, PeP Recordings, Clef Records, Eclectra Records, Centrediscs and Fidelio Audiophile Recordings. He is an associate of the CMC and a member of the CLC, CEC, and SAM UK.

Radford has taught music technology, electroacoustic music and instrumental composition and media arts at McGill University, Concordia University, Bishop’s University, the University of Alberta, City University (London, UK), and is presently a Lefebvre Scholar in Music at the Department of Music, University of Calgary."

Joseph Hyde - Visual Disassociation and Audiovisual Acousmatics: Noise and Silence in Visual Music

Abstract:

"to see is to forget the name of the thing one sees – Paul Valery

This paper explores the application of acousmatic thinking to (audio)visual media. In particular it takes the idea of reduced listening as a starting point, and proposes a related subcurrent through 19th/20th/21st visual culture in which creative expression is divorced from the depiction of something seen. This endeavour can be traced back to the theories (if not necessarily the practice) of the cubist movement, but lies in particular at the core of the great 20th century project of abstraction in fine art and (to a lesser extent) cinema. Of particular interest to this conference, and this writer, it is central to the early evolution of visual music through the works of Klee, Kandinsky, Richter, Eggeling and Fischinger.

The paper outlines focused examples of purposeful visual disassociation in 20th century abstract art/cinema and visual music, before discussing key 21st century visual music works; principally those made by artists whose background can be broadly cited as within acousmatic music. The paper concludes with a discussion of the challenges of achieving the state of visual disassociation proposed in the context of a highly visual culture. Visual 'noise' and ‘silence’ are discussed as powerful devices in achieving visual disassociation. These phenoma are discussed in the context of works by artists such as Jackson Pollack, Stan Brakhage and Thomas Wilfred, and of the author’s own works, Zoetrope, End Transmission and Vanishing Point.”

Biography:

"Joseph Hyde’s background is as a musician and composer, working in various areas but in the late 90s - and a period working with BEAST in Birmingham (UK) - settling on electroacoustic music; either purely acousmatic, or with live instruments.

Since then, his work has diversified: whilst music and sound remain at the core of his practice, collaboration has become a key concern, particularly in the field of dance. Here he works both as a composer and in a broader capacity working with video, interactive systems and telepresence. His solo work has also broadened in scope to incorporate these elements: He has made a series of audiovisual ‘visual music’ works, and is currently engaged in a long term study of Oscar Fischinger’s creative process, supported by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. He recently won the 2011 MADE (Mobility for Digital Arts in Europe) with a large-scale project involving a network of installations across Europe allowing realtime, immersive telepresence interaction through the use of the radical 3D motion capture technology at the heard of the Microsoft Kinect sensor.

Hyde also works as a lecturer/academic, at Bath Spa University in the UK – as well as teaching on the BA Creative Music Technology, he runs the MMus in Creative Sound and Media Technology and supervises a number of PhD students. Since 2009 he has run a symposium on Visual Music at the university, Seeing Sound – the next event is in November 2011."

Brian Evans - Sound and Meaning in Visual Music

Abstract:

"Sound is embodied in things. Something in our environment vibrates, perhaps a violin string or the rustling of leaves in the wind. That vibration travels through the air as waves of changing air pressure. Our eardrum responds and we hear the sound that emanates from the thing. Sound is an index of something in our reality. Over a century ago recording devices disembodied sound. Sound through a loudspeaker is an abstraction. What we hear is rarely related to what is actually making the sound. The “thing” making the sound is not physical but purely cognitive, literally in our heads.

In the subset of animation known as visual music (usually an abstract, non-objective animation) nothing seen is recognized as something in the real world. These abstract objects do not make sounds. If combined with audio the relationship between what we see and what we hear is constructed and artificial. Because of this, often only music is heard with the animated visuals, extending a musical expression into cinematic space in a trans-sensory counterpoint. The visuals are part of a musical utterance rather than the music functioning as accompaniment or emotional underpinning to what is seen (the more traditional cinematic approach). Non-diagetic (disembodied) sound and abstract animation combine to challenge how we experience music and cinema and how we experience the world. Conceptually each becomes a metaphor for the other. Making this process meaningful (to artist and audience) is one of the challenges and opportunities that engages today’s visual artist and music composer.”

Biography:

"Brian Evans is a digital artist and composer. For twenty-five years he has been experimenting with the integration of image and sound. His artwork and music animations are exhibited and screened internationally, including recent performances at the Visual Music Marathon in New York, CINESONIKA in Vancouver, BC, Canada and an upcoming performance at Sounding Images 2011, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

Evans publishes and presents extensively on his research, including the articles “Mechanisms of the Data Map” in the International Journal of Creative Interfaces and Computer Graphics, “Foundations of a Visual Music” in the Computer Music Journal, published by the MIT Press and “Animating Sound: Sounding Animation,” forthcoming in Blackwell’s Companion to Animation. He was recently awarded a research grant from the CreativeIT program of the National Science Foundation for his work in creativity and emergent learning.

Evans holds a DMA in music composition from the University of Illinois and an MFA from CalArts. He studied music composition with Earle Brown, Morton Subotnick, Mel Powell and Paul Martin Zonn. He directs the program in digital media in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Alabama in the United States.”

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19:30 VISUAL MUSIC show #2 @ DB Clarke Theatre (curated by the UVM team)

Jean Piché - Australes/Boréales (21:00)

Biography:

"Jean Piché (1951) is a composer and video artist who has helped define some of the leading technologically-driven art forms common today. In his beginnings as an electroacoustic composer in the early1970s, he was one of the earliest composers to employ emerging digital audio technologies in a cycle of fixed media works that have been touted as seminal to the form. He has produced works in every genre of electroacoustics but now centers his practice on videomusic in which electronic visuals become an extention of musical discourse. His work aims for poetic expression beyond any avowed formalism. The work has alternately been described as confounding, colorful and virtuosistic.

As a music and video software designer he is the creator of many novel applications, amongst them Cecilia, a popular front end to the audio language Csound. Under contract from the MIT Media Lab, he authored and designed the TamTam musical software suite running on the « One Laptop per Child » XO computer.

Since 2006 he directs the institut Arts, Cultures et Technologies (iACT), a major new media research collective at the Université de Montréal sponsoring hi-end research on, among others, hyper-definition imagery, immersive audiovisuals and gestural control.”

Alison Loader – Folding (2:40)

Abstract:

Folding is a non-narrative short film featuring origami in action. Originally created as a stereoscopic installation, it is a collaborative effort of animator Alison Reiko Loader and composer Luigi Allemano. Neither image nor sound took precedence in its making. Rather, the artists worked together to create a structure that mimics the modularity of Japanese paper folding through the synchronization of movement and music. Folding was developed at the National Film Board of Canada and completed at Concordia University.

Biography:

"Filmmaker and 3d digital animation specialist, Alison Reiko Loader has been making short films independently and with the National Film Board of Canada since completing her award-winning first film Showa Shinzan in 2002. Her passions for research and pedagogy engendered a return to school and led to her involvement in the Hexagram Institute for Research/Creation where she has worked with faculty researchers from the Concordia University departments of Cinema, Design and Computation Arts, and Communication Studies. Alison has taught as a member of Concordia’s part-time faculty since 2001, and recently joined Dawson College’s new 3D Animation and CGI program. Her research interests include the creation of old/new media hybrids using animated installations, feminist theory and scientific visual culture. A recent project involved the highly mediated production of greenhouse squash force-grown into fetal shapes with molds made from rapid-prototyped digital models and documented with time-lapse photography, and microscopic animation. Past work with the Possible Movements Lab had her leading the creation of an animated, multi-projector, stereoscopic installation of the Grey Nuns Chapel, while her current collaboration with researchers from Biology has her imaging forest tent caterpillars and moths. She will complete an MA in Media Studies before commencing doctoral studies this September 2011.

Please see UVM site for Luigi's bio."

Emilie LeBel – Devotion (11:35)

Abstract:

Devotion is a new work for tape and video, that is part of a larger project entitled On faith, work, leisure & sleep. This project is a collaboration with pianist Luciane Cardassi arising from our recent project, Metropolis for piano, playback, video, and text. As a completed project On faith, work, leisure & sleep will be a 90 minute show that incorporates a performer on piano, electronics, text, and video. In this project I am exploring how visuals can reflect and enhance the auditory experience for the audience. With this project I am interested in engaging the audience on a variety of levels by integrating visual elements with traditional western art music performance scenarios. I work with combining several elements to create an immersive experience, including acoustic and amplified sounds, alongside the visuals of a performer with video.

Devotion is the only piece in this project that does not incorporate a live performer. The video and photographic material for Devotion was collected during my residency at The Banff Centre in February 2011. The music was composed and the video created during spring 2011. The completed project will be recorded for DVD release in spring 2012, and will be premiered in fall 2012."

Biography:

"Emilie Cecilia LeBel is a Canadian composer, and arts-educator. She composes both acoustic and electroacoustic works for concerts, film, and stage. Her compositions have been performed across Canada, and have also travelled to the USA, Brazil, the UK, and Europe. She is presently based in Toronto.

Her recent projects have focused on collaborations with performers, and she has also begun creating multi-disciplinary works that combine both visual art and music. Her current project On faith, work, leisure & sleep is pursuing these interests. A collaboration with pianist Luciane Cardassi, this cycle of pieces involves a live performer on piano, electronics, text, and video. In collaborative projects Emilie enjoys the process of interacting with performers, receiving feedback, and finding new ways into composition that represent both the composer's and the performers' interests.

Emilie presently maintains a teaching studio from her home in Toronto, and she is completing doctoral studies at The University of Toronto. She holds an Honours Diploma in audio engineering, an Spec. Hons BFA in music composition with a minor in visual art, and an MA in composition and ethnomusicology. Emilie has participated in a variety of workshops and residencies including: Le Centre d’arts Orford Sound Art Workshop, The Scotia Festival of Music, New Adventures in Sound Art Sound Travels Festival, Deep Wireless Festival of Radio and Transmission Art, The Banff Centre, Soundstreams Canada, The Canadian Contemporary Music Workshop, Quatuor Bozzini Composers' Kitchen, Arraymusic Young Composers’ Workshop, and The Leighton Artist Colony at The Banff Centre. www.ceceproductions.ca"

Jean Detheux – Rupture (4:00)

Abstract:

Screening of two "abstract" films, both mine, one based on contemporary music ("Liaisons" [9 min 22 s] or "Rupture" [3 min 17 s], productions of the National Film Board of Canada, a collaboration with Montréal composer Jean Derome) and the other, "Pavana glosada" (3 min 57 s), with music by the Spanish Renaissance composer António de Cabezón, performed by the Italian harpsichordist Paola Erdas (both films being on fixed media).

This screening would also contribute to the examination of the questions raised during my lecture.

Biography:

"Belgian-born, Jean Detheux is a graduate of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts de Liège.

He has been living, teaching and practicing Art in Canada and the U.S since 1971.

He has exhibited works in Europe, the Middle-East and the Americas (private and public venues).

Numerous lectures on “The Phenomenology of Vision and the Process of Creation,"" “Animating in a different key,"" (in French and English).

Masterclasses, articles (French/English), published by AWN, Sage Publications, IJART, etc.

Sudden allergies to painting materials forced him to give up painting for digital technology (1997). which brought him to “time-art.”

His films are appearing at film, animation, and music festivals around the globe.

He also explores the world of live performances, creating and mixing images and video sequences to the sound of music, improvised or not."

Samuel Pellman - NGC 6357 (7:37)

Abstract:

NGC 6357

music by Samuel Pellman

video by Miranda Raimondi

This work was inspired by a Hubble telescope image of the nebula NGC 6357 and is a piece of visual music in which the processes for synthesizing the sound and the video footage are closely linked. An algorithm for generating cellular automata has shaped the voicing of the repeated chords in the opening passage (and in subsequent recurrences of this texture) and has determined the selection of pitches in the more pointillistic passages that provide contrasting textures. The pitches are tuned in a 5-limit just intonation and are sounded by physical modeling instruments developed for the Symbolic Sound Kyma system by Harm Visser."

Biography:

"Samuel Pellman studied composition with David Cope, Karel Husa, and Robert Palmer. His works may be heard on recordings by the Musical Heritage Society, Move Records, and innova, and much of his music is published by the Continental Music Press. His music has been presented at recent events in Paris, Melbourne, Basel, Vienna, and Beijing. He the author of <i>An Introduction to the Creation of Electroacoustic Music,</i> a widely-adopted textbook published by Cengage. Presently he is a Professor of Music at Hamilton College, in Clinton, New York, where he teaches theory and composition and is director of the Studio for Digital Music.

Miranda Raimondi is a video artist presently living in Maine. She has recently presented her work in New York, Basel, and Key West.”

Dennis Miller - White Noise (9:40)

Abstract:

"White Noise is a fast-paced work in which the flow of events is constantly disrupted. The title stems both from the use of noise as a means to generate the visual and musical elements, as well as to highlight the color palette in the central section of the piece. White Noise is characterized by constantly shifting perspectives and abrupt juxtaposition of elements.

The overall continuity of the work is governed by the formal design of the music, which was composed in its entirety before the images were created. The abrupt, shifting phrasing in the music guides the flow of events.

White Noise was created with Maxon’s Cinema 4D 3D modeling software using a variety of custom processes developed by this author. Among these is the use of parameters drawn from sequences of preexisting bitmap images to deform the geometry of basic primitive objects.

The musical score relies on waveshaping, often extreme, as the principal sound generating and processing method. Several custom Ensembles were created for this purpose using Native Instruments Reaktor software.

Biography:

"Dennis Miller received his Doctorate in Music Composition from Columbia University and is currently on the Music faculty of Northeastern University in Boston where he teaches courses in electronic music and mixed-media composition. Miller is the founder and artistic director of the Visual Music Marathon (www.2009vmm.neu.edu), an ongoing program that includes screenings of works by filmmakers from around the world.

His mixed media works have been presented at numerous venues throughout the world, most recently the DeCordova Museum, the New York Digital Salon Traveling Exhibit, the 2010 International Computer Music Conference, Images du Nouveau Monde, CynetArts, Sonic Circuits, the Cuban International Festival of Music, and the 2004 New England Film and Video Festival. His work was also presented at the gala opening of the new Disney Hall in Los Angeles and at SIGGRAPH 2006 in the both the Animation Theatre and the Art Gallery. Recent exhibits of his 3D still images include the Boston Computer Museum and the Biannual Conference on Art and Technology, as well as publication in Sonic Graphics: Seeing Sound (Rizzoli Books) and Art in the Digital Age (Thames and Hudson). Miller’s music and artworks are available at www.dennismiller.neu.edu.

Maura McDonnell - Silk Chroma (11:20)

Abstract:

Silk Chroma is an ambient visual music piece that is inspired by the novella Silk by Alessandro Baricco as a conceptual framework for the creation of a Visual Music colour presentation, with an accompanying electroacoustic musical composition using synthesized timbres. The focus of the piece is to create an aesthetic experience of colour and timbre. Key texts from silk were used as inspiration for the visuals and music. Visuals are by Maura McDonnell and Music Composition by Linda Buckley. The work is divided into three movements. Section 1: Water Flow Over His Body. Section 2: Silk threads stopped time. Section 3: Birds in Flight. As well as exploring aesthetic issues, the piece also used a technoscience approach to the perceptual aspect of colour and timbre phenomena to provide a basis for aesthetic design. The work was created as a collaborative effort between teaching staff on the the M.Phil in Music and Media Technologies programme, Trinity College, Dublin – Maura McDonnell (visuals) Linda Buckley (Music), Dermot Furlong (Concept), Gavin Kearney (technical sound).

Biography:

Maura McDonnell is a visual music artist, visual music researcher and lecturer based in Ireland. She studied music and mathematics at The National University of Ireland, Maynooth and completed her M.Phil in music and media technology at Trinity College, Dublin in 1998. She currently lectures part-time on the M.Phil. in Music and Media Technologies programme at Trinity College, Dublin (a joint initiative from the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering and the School of Drama, Film and Music, Trinity College Dublin) teaching modules on the music and image strand of the course. In 2010, Maura designed and taught a new module on Visual Music Aesthetics.

After discovering the power of sound and image by completing a number of experimental audio-visual works, Maura has since and continues to embark on an inquiry into the origins and existing practice in visual music and creates visual music works in collaboration with music composers. For this purpose, she keeps a blog and website at http://visualmusic.blogspot.com and http://www.soundingvisual.com.

In 2007 and 2009, Maura was commissioned by Dr Dennis Miller, artistic director of the Visual Music Marathon, held in Boston in 2007 and New York in 2009, to write an introductory essay on Visual Music for the programme catalogue. The incredible visual music marathons were held at North Eastern University, Boston in 2007 and at the School of Visual Arts, New York in 2009.

Linda Buckley - Composer

Linda Buckley is a composer currently based in Dublin, who writes for both electronic and acoustic forces. Her work has been described as ""strange and beautiful"" (Richard Dyer on Amhrain Amergin in The Boston Globe, July 2004) and as a ""fascinating interaction between live sound and electronics"" (Martin Adams on Stratus in The Irish Times, Nov 2006). The diverse instrumentations of her work include Javanese Gamelan, choir, multi-channel tape, prepared piano and orchestra.

Linda is a member of the Spatial Music Collective, dedicated to the composition and performance of spatial music."

Insook Choi - Wayfaring Swarms (8:00)

Abstract:

"Wayfaring Swarms is a composition in three movements for Playable Media in a performance setting. The composition applies simulations of social agents as playable agents to generate graphics and sounds in parallel. The swarm simulation model is applied in relation to biological research for understanding social behaviors of the kind known as flocking behavior; one of the simplest behaviors seen in nature revealing social and collective dynamics. It is described as self-organizing because the collective behavior is governed by a set of simple rules applied to each agent and there is no centralized control agent. It is also observed as exhibiting emergent behavior as its evolving patterns are unknown to each agent and there is no high level prescription dictating the resulting complexity.

The agent simulation is embedded in a media display environment designed for playability. A large format capacitive panel is used for touch-free, multi-player, multi-point control. Visualizations are projected on this surface so performers can observe the social formations of swarms and interact with them by hand movements. The capacitive panel senses multiple hands as conductive objects on the surface area.

Sound synthesis is controlled by swarm state information. Control strategies for sound models are adapted to use data of features extracted from emergent behaviors in swarm simulations. The composition associates selected states of a sound model to selected states of a swarm. Data selection is based on salient feature analysis. Thereafter other patterns that emerge in the swarm will generate corresponding sound patterns.

Biography:

Joseph Hyde - Vanishing Point (11:45)

Abstract:

"Vanishing Point explores the essence and phenomenology of noise; visual and sonic, natural and artificial. I am interested in the way in which the human mind tirelessly attempts to read order into chaos, and in the precise threshold where the coherent becomes incoherent. This particular boundary seems to me to have a kind of universality to it - as signal approaches noise all things somehow become the same, regardless of source.

With this in mind I’ve used a deliberately wide range of visual materials, with nothing in common beyond their ‘noisiness’. My aim is to achieve extend the idea of ‘reduced listening’ (taken from acousmatic music) - where one attempts to treat sound as a tactile plastic entity divorced from its point of origin - to the visual domain.

The sound, in contrast, was produced using deliberately limited resources, designed to yield a distinctive and consistent sonic language (and to use this coherent sound world as a way to – perceptually speaking – make the disparate visual material ‘fuse’). The only sound source is an antique valve radio with no aerial - this produces noise of a particularly dirty and warm variety, with occasional, almost inaudible, fragments of music and speech deeply embedded in the static. This single sound source is passed through a single process - a plug-in developed in Max for Live. This consists of a massively parallel array of (125) comb filters which can be arranged in various complex geometric ratios to produce harmonic or inharmonic spectra, and can be assigned various temporal ‘behaviours’ to produce a wide variety of gestures and textures, as heard here."

Biography:

Jane Cassidy - The Night After I Kicked It (9:38)

Abstract:

"The Night After I Kicked It is a visual music work. The music and animation were composed simultaneously to create a cohesive, tightly synchronised piece. Each element is of equal importance yet the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. It is an abstract piece - there is no narrative, rather both elements of the composition influence each other to create the structure and movement of the work. Within the animation the use of colour, image placement on screen and the matching of images to sounds is used to create a type of associative synaesthesia.

The piece was originally composed with 11 channels of audio for 10.1 surround sound. The 11 channels mimic the space created within the visuals, therefore creating an immersive atmosphere which ultimately creates a more engaging and visceral work for the audience. "

Biography:

"In 2002 Jane Cassidy completed a degree in Music and later a Masters in Music and Media Technologies from Trinity College Dublin. In 2009 Jane moved to New York to work with National Geographic Television before working as a painter in a children's animation studio. Jane has recently relocated to Dublin. Her main interests lie in the field of visual music, electro-acoustic works, live VJing and multi-channel work.

Performances include Darklight Film Festival, Seeing Sound Symposium, Sensorium Dublin, National Concert Hall Dublin, SARC Belfast, Electric Picnic and the York Spring Festival."

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DAY TWO – Saturday, August 27th)

9:00 Papers - session #3

Mark Franz - Composition and Improvisation in Time-Based Visual Performance

Abstract:

Custom and complex systems have become common in audiovisual performance. In the area of computer music these systems are often compared to musical instruments. Richard Dudas in his article entitled, “’Comprovisation’: The Various Facets of Composed Improvisation within Interactive Performance Systems”, claims that these systems “should not be designed to perform one lone task, as with a tool, but should be designed to evolve or metapmorphose in the hands of a competent performer, in the way that a performer of an acoustic instrument can coax a multitude of seemingly different sounds out of their instrument.” While this provides a practical and coherent definition from a historical perspective, the image of hardware and software designed for virtuosic and wide-ranging performances by trained artists may not be the most accurate portrayal of many of these devices. Often, in regard to audiovisual performance, hardware and software are designed for the performance of a single work and may not be suitable or desirable for entirely new composition and improvisation. It could even be stated that the amount to which a system can be utilized,’ like a traditional acoustic instrument, can be determined by its bias toward either composition or improvisation. This intention becomes particularly important in regard to interactive time-based visual art, with its unique goals of exhibition and representation.

Biography:

Mark Franz’s video and sound work explores contrasts between technology and nature. His work has been exhibited worldwide at venues including International 18!, Hollyshorts Film Festival, Bagasbas Beach International Eco Arts Festival, and Pixelerations. As an assistant professor in the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies at Florida Atlantic University, Franz teaches courses in animation, interactivity, and history and theory of electronic media.

Adrian Freed - Diverse Roles of Objets Trouvés in Live Solo Visual Music Practice

Abstract:

"Analysis of three examples of live solo visual music practice will be presented: Cenzontle by Roberto Morales; SoundPainter by Diane Douglas and Arduino Video Installation by Sabine Gruffat. Although materially and structurally quite different these pieces have some interesting features in common - the visual and sonic matieral is controlled concurrently by a single performer and certain objets trouvés (Found Art) are a key organizing element.

All three pieces were well received (e.g., Cenzontle won a Bourges Prize) and the performers have generously shared the techincal details of their realization and their writings and musings about them.

In Conzontle the objets trouvés are a 3D graphic model of feathery spatial textures and short video loops of personal relevance to the performer. The visual component of the performance results from modulations and contextualiations of these elements including scaling, compositing and viewpoint shifts. These modulations are derived from gestures and live sound material from flute, voice, maracas and digital synthesis.

For the ""Arduino Video"" the objet trouvé is an artifact well known to TV repair technicians as ""Sound on Vision Interference."" achieved by modulating the red, green and blue color channels of a video monitor with audio signals controlled by an arcade joystick.

In ""Sound Painter"" the computer trackpad is recontextualized (in size and number) as a controller for synesthetic finger painting and sound synthesis.

I will conclude my presentation with a discussion of methodoligical considerations when studying visual music without a score and when diverse technical means for sound and visual material are employed."

Biography:

"Adrian is working in the Concordia University SIP program on a Ph. D. on the cultural resonance of instruments of interaction.

He has worked with Pierre Boulez, Max Mathews, David Wessel, Bill Buxton and other pioneers of contemporary and electronic music and instrument interface design.

He has pioneered many new applications of mathematics, electronics and computer science to audio, music and media production tools including the earliest Graphical User Interfaces (GUI's) for digital sound editing, mixing and processing and the first audio plug-ins.

He is recognized for his inspiring, accessible teaching which in the last years has focussed on integrating sensors into new controllers and art installations. Recent workshops have centered around sharing new techniques that employ electrotextiles and other emerging materials."

Jaroslaw Kapuscinski - Oli's Dream: Music of Common Sensibles

Abstract:

"‘Common sensible’ is a term coined by Aristotle to describe notions equally perceivable by different senses. He enumerated them in De Anima Book III as: movement, rest, number, shape, size and time. Visual music as a multisensory genre often uses these same percepts as its material. What distinguishes visual music from other multimedia forms is its unique narrative structure and expression, which is led by processes and sensibilities shared with music. How can ‘music’ be made with common sensibles is the topic of this paper.

Oli’s Dream is a piece for piano and computer projection, which uses three kinds of media: music/sound, visual animation and text. One of my creative goals was to compose a piece that achieves contrapuntal interlocking of all media. Music defines counterpoint as a relationship between two or more parts that are independent in contour and rhythm but are harmonically interdependent. There are three kinds of contrapuntal motion: oblique, parallel/similar and contrary. Their interplay results in polyphony characterized by moments of agreement/consonance and independence/dissonance. Using these definitions as premise the paper traces the use of common sensibles and similar notions as they are woven into the contrapuntal fabric of Oli’s Dream.

Biography:

Jaroslaw Kapuscinski is an intermedia composer and pianist whose work has been presented at New York's MoMA; ZKM in Karlsruhe; the Museum of Modern Art, Palais de Tokyo, and Centre Pompidou in Paris; and Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, among others. He has received numerous awards, including at the UNESCO Film sur l'Art festival in Paris, VideoArt Festival Locarno, and the Festival of New Cinema and New Media in Montréal. He was first trained as a classical pianist and composer at the Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw and expanded into multimedia during a residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada (1988) and through doctoral studies at the University of California, San Diego (1992-1997). Kapuscinski is actively involved in intermedia education. Currently, he is assistant professor of composition and director of the Intermedia Performance Lab at Stanford University.

11:15 Jean Piché (keynote speaker) - This is not Cinema. Notes for an Emerging Art Form

Biography:

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13:30 VISUAL MUSIC show #3 @ DB Clarke Theatre (curated by Dennis Miller - VM Marathon)

All selections are from the Northeastern University Visual Music Special Collection.

Time Streams (2003) Stephanie Maxwell, images Allan Schindler, music

Time Streams is a collaborative work by the animator and the composer, from concept through realization. The spiral-like structure and unbroken momentum of this film/music composition are somewhat suggestive to the artists of intersecting streams (or ‘ribbons’) of time. The concept is not simply the familiar (although perhaps illusory) forward, linear, march of clock time, but rather a nexus in which backwards time (e.g., dreams, recollections and deja vu), parallel temporalities, and the non-continuous splicing together of segments of time are equally prominent.

Seek Assistance (2005) Vishal Shah, images Adam Stansbie, music

Seek Assistance is an aesthetically dark myth projected as noise and interference which intensifies with intrigue and mystery. The delicate investigation of micro materials is echoed by intricate lighting effects that appear to print the subject upon one’s eye. This micro interplay between sight and sound firstly illuminates the subject, yet hints at macro forms that exist past the light, beyond any sound, and ultimately transcend the physical frame. Seek Assistance takes us to the starting point of a tube journey when our valid ticket is rejected. The system refuses to allow our passage.

Whisper (1997) Jim Ellis, images Aksak Maboul, music

search bright blinding try to speak apologies thanks ashamed proud one word of many to loved ones to strangers this whisper

Memory of the Tape (2007) Damir Cucic, images Erich Maria Strom, music

Memory of the Tape is a trip through the micro world of the digital recording. During the years spent in the editing room, the author has collected a certain amount of digital garbage from different tapes. Another author has, in the course of his work, collected a large amount of audio garbage. The two dumpsites are the audio essence of an abstract visual attraction.

Rain (2005) Rebecca Ruige Xu, images YanJun Hua, music

In Rain, I intend to reveal the tension underneath the seemingly peaceful and harmonic surface of rain, a common phenomenon everyone is familiar with. The music I chose is called Da Lang Tao Sha (Great Waves Washing Away the Sand), a Chinese classic composed by YanJun Hua (1893-1950) who was a legendary blind musician. The instrument is Pipa, a fretted lute with four strings, known for its frenetic and dramatic style and often used to depict battles in history vividly. The visual style of rain is inspired by Chinese watercolors; computer programming (C + OpenGL) generated animation is used to interpret the motion of falling rain. Raindrops are reduced to simple geometric forms, in the hope of forcing the viewers to pay attention to the building up and releasing of the immense tension within the raining process.

Night Fishing with Comorants (2009) Betsy Kopmar, images The Headroom Project (Andreas Ecker), music

I wanted something very simple with the feeling of the compressed energy that can be found in some classical ink drawings, so I intentionally limited myself in Cinema 4D to five simple 3D cubes and created the entire animation with the restricted palette of shapes. I choreographed many small interactions between the basic shapes, always looking for a balance of stillness, space, movement, coming together, exploding together.

Sinus Aestum (2009) Bret Battey, images/music

Sinus Aestum (Bay of Billows) is a smooth, dark lunar plain articulated by threads of white dust, like the tips of flowing waves. Drawing from this image, the sound and image composition Sinus Aestum presents one sound-synthesis process and nearly 12,000 individual points, which are continually transformed and warped, restrained and released, without cuts, to form compound, multi-dimensional waves of activity moving through unstable states between plateaus of pitch and noise. Mathematical processes are transformed into a contemplation of the continual ebb and flow of human experience.

UGOKU (excerpt) (2007) Kasumi, images James Lauer, music

A bizarre legion of ever-evolving characters culled from hundreds of found footage sources move with heart-pounding, eye-popping precision to intense beats while kaleidoscopic arrays of colors explode like digital mescaline. This Warhol meets Escher hybrid film+animation unfolds in a surrealistic, multidimensional vortex that gives “rock the body” a new meaning. Every element of each image: movement, gesture, color, tempo, etc., is reanimated and

synchronized to specific sounds in the music, creating layered and hypnotic psychotropic rhythms which in a normal state of consciousness would go otherwise unnoticed. Objects and characters are placed in unexpected contexts and tiers revealing entirely new structural formations, penetrating meanings and subliminal interpretations. “Like a Tool video on acid.”

Pipilo (2007) Brian Evans

Everything reduces to data mapping and information design. The only hard question is why we do either. I never got past a fascination with numbers, a desire to write songs, a desire to make pictures. All is number in the computer. I take numeric models and see what songs and pictures they will make. How can I map numbers to the senses—turn numbers into a tangible experience? Then I wonder how the senses map to each other. I map the maps. Sound to image—a visualization. Image to sound—a sonification. In mapping numbers into sensory experience, aesthetic decisions are made. What palette of colors to use? What set of pitches? How long? How big? The artist chooses. In a digital world the mapping itself is a choice. Beyond arithmetic there are no rules. I make simple rules. You have to start somewhere. One loop (now it’s a narrative). Two minutes (don’t blink). The sound should be seen, the image audible. Other than that, make music. It’s jazz in 4D. Hear the colors. Listen with your eyes.

200 Nanowebbers (2005) Semiconductor (Ruth Jarman & Joseph Gerhardt) images/music

Composed of sonically driven visuals, 200 Nanowebbers is loosely narrative. Essentially the work documents the organic lifecycle of an abstract form in space as it blooms, develops, then shorts out and “dies.” Because the imagery is so closely associated with the sound, visually mimicking as it does, the pulsing, irregular rhythms and beeps, the story of the imagery becomes the form of the music.

Sports and Diversions (2005/6) Bum Lee, images Erik Satie, music

Sports and Diversions is a series of black and white animations inspired by Sports et divertissements, a collection of piano compositions written by Erik Satie in 1914. These animations take the themes of Satie’s compositions as points of entry, and then leap into their own varied interpretations of the music.

Chronomops (2005) Tina Frank, images General Magic, music

Tina Frank’s Chronomops opens doors to truly different dimensions: different than digital art’s reductionist studies so common today, different than the serially laid out minimalist images, and different than the omnipresent filtering and layering experiments.

Chronomops opens up a shimmering, colorful space that is simultaneously an excess of color, frenzy of perception, and pop carousel. An abstract architecture of vertical color bars is set in endless rotation, whereby the modules and building blocks fly around themselves—and the entire system likewise rotates. The forced movement forms a digital maelstrom whose suction pulls the observer deep into it. (Christian Höller for sixpackfilm. Translation: Lisa Rosenblatt)

Sensorium ( 2007) Karen Aqua, images Ken Field, music

A hand-drawn experimental animation exploring the relationship between music and image. The film presents a vocabulary of abstract visual gestures, each tied to a specific musical motif, arranged in increasingly complex combinations to create a visual “score.” Inspired by dance gestures and movements found in nature (water, tide pools), the film is a study of sound/motion synthesis.

Nanomorphosis (2003) Brian O’Reilly, images Curtis Roads, music

Nanomorphosis explores the changes of state in a stream of electronic sound particles. This stream is in evanescence–always renewing itself. By manipulation of various sonic processes, I was able to make the particles sound at times like a scattering of hard pellets, a flowing or bubbling liquid, or an evaporating cloud of steam. I would sometimes mark transitions by inserting a “barrier particle” (a kind of punctuation mark) into the flow. At these transition points one can hear particles ricochet off a barrier, while at the same time the ongo-

ing stream changes character. This ricochet technique, which is nothing more than the replication of a particle, appears throughout Nanomorphosis. Another characteristic of the piece is the emergence of drones and melodic fragments, the artifacts of resonant filtering. The composition ends in a submerged state.

add.value 5 more (2006) Gerhard Daurer, images/music

add.value is a performance instrument that allows the creation of dynamic imagery and sound in real time. The sonification and visualisation are triggered by a physical model that is manipulated by the performer. Consequently, every single change in the visual domain is also reflected in the aural domain, and vice versa. The visualization is no simple illustration of the sounds – the visual and the aural are entwined from the outset as they originate from the same source. The aim is to present a system that generates audiovisual output that

appears somehow ‘alive’ in its very own abstract world.

Machinalement (v.31) 2010 Jean Detheux, images Jean Derome, music

The film attempts to make visible what the director sees when "listening with his eyes." The focus is on that sensitive and elusive space that can exist between the music and the images, not trying at all to mirror the music, but not ignoring it either

Lajka’s Memory (2004) Eva M. Toth, images Gyorgy Kurtag Sr. & Gyorgy Kurtag

Jr., music

Animation improvization inspired by the music of Gyorgy Kurtag Sr. and Gyorgy Kurtag Jr.

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15:30 Papers - session #4

Eleni Michaelidi - Music to be seen: The Diatope (1978) by Iannis Xenakis as an early example of a digital audiovisual aesthetic

Abstract:

"Artistic practices based on new technologies are often misconstrued as a comparatively recent phenomenon, with early examples being largely ignored by the canonical histories of art. Revisiting the Diatope (1978), an automated light and sound installation by composer and architect Iannis Xenakis (1922‐2001), we argue that it constitutes an early attempt to create an immersive audiovisual experience, based on computer technology. A close study of this now obsolete work reveals that the artistic vision behind it is highly original and coherent, proposing an idiosyncratic audiovisual aesthetic that resides in the digital.

With his rigid engineer’s logic, Xenakis adopted a trans-disciplinary approach, transposing the same abstract paradigm, such as models from physics, in architecture, music and visual art. Profoundly influenced by Le Corbusier and Edgar Varèse’s Poème électronique (1958), Xenakis created a series of large scale audiovisual installations known as the Polytopes. Arguably the most ambitious project among them, the Diatope oscillated between abstraction and figuration, a clear articulation of Xenakis’ vision for a “music to be seen”. According to Xenakis’ Weltanschauung, abstraction and representation, artistic expression and natural phenomena, can both be described and informed by the same universal laws of mathematics and physics. This quasi-metaphysical relationship is imprinted on the structure of the constituent parts of the work and their synthesis - through their quantification and digitization it becomes inherent in the work’s ontology and defines its aesthetic. The result is “an art like music itself, without any anthropomorphic or realistic references. This is the meaning of my polytopian adventures… It is the search for a pan-musical expression.” (Xenakis, 1982).

Biography:

Eleni Michaelidi (b. 1983, Athens) studied art history in Athens, Greece and Berlin, Germany. She recently completed her MA thesis on Iannis Xenakis’ Diatope, in the frame of the Media Art Histories program in Krems, Austria, and works as a researcher for the DESTE Foundation – Centre for Contemporary Art, based in Athens.

Ewa Trebacz - Depth modulation: visual music in immersive media environment

Abstract:

"The emergence and growing ubiquity of immersive audiovisual technologies and the ability to compose individual perceptual cues independently enable artists to pose fundamental questions regarding spatial inter-sensory perception and its boundaries.

In my artistic work and research I have combined computer-animated stereoscopic video, computer-controlled animated lighting and ambisonic audio, exploring their application to experimental art. One of the biggest challenges faced is the need for a new unique language, capable of fully expressing the nature of an immersive audiovisual medium.

For example the term ""depth modulation"" has been coined to describe a dynamic process of continuous change of perceived depth of image over time, which can only be created using stereoscopic video. This and similar phenomena not available through direct experience in the real world could potentially transform the way we understand visual music in the context of immersive environments.

What can be achieved through the separation and manipulation of visual and sonic spatial cues? What can we learn about the way we perceive space if the basic components building our understanding of the surrounding environment are artificially split and re-arranged? In such an artificial environment, how would we perceive the relationship between various media and how would we interpret the information perceived by various senses? Would we be able to seamlessly switch between concurrent lines of movement?

A new, transformed understanding of visual music should emerge as a delicate, ever-changing balance between all previously separated and altered components of an audiovisual immersive environment."

Biography:

"EWA TREBACZ is a Polish composer and media artist, living in Seattle, USA. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington, Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS), where she studied computer music with Richard Karpen and Juan Pampin, and experimental video with Shawn Brixey, and where she has taught courses on stereoscopic video and audiovisual immersive media.

She also holds Master's degrees in Composition‚ from the Academy of Music and in Computer Science from the Academy of Economics in Krakow, Poland. She has been collaborating with animation artists from the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts since 1998, creating music and sound design for short films.

Ewa Trebacz's works range from purely instrumental solo, chamber, and symphonic compositions, to compositions with computer realized sound with live performance, to sound tracks for animated films, to experimental stereoscopic video. Her works have been performed, recorded and broadcast internationally, including commissions from the ""Warsaw Autumn"" festival in Poland, the Klangspuren Festival in Austria and a prestigious recommendation of the 56th UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers in Paris (2009).

Her current research is oriented towards experimental media, focusing on spatial aspects of the experience of a work of art, with a special focus on the two immersive techniques: ambisonics and stereoscopy. Her recent projects are based on the idea of the separation and manipulation of spatial cues, both visual and sonic, in order to design a game of illusions and to challenge the borders of perceptual limitations.

Website:

http://ewatrebacz.com"

Adam Tindale - Designing Audio Reactive Visual Software

Abstract:

"The practice of visual music is largely driven from either the visuals or audio. In the case of audio driven composition, a solution for integrating visuals is to create audio reactive visual software. This paper outlines conceptual and technical techniques explored and utilized when designing the Vector Rails visuals (Adam Tindale and Clinker).

Vector Rails utilize the spectrum between ambient and rhythmic structures. The visual material of the performance is used to illustrate to the audience the minute differences in sounds as they evolve and to visualize memory across long musical structures. This is achieved by using spectral flux for event detection and arrays visual objects that retain behaviours for long periods of time, commensurate with the aural motion.

Processing, an open source Java-based programming language from MIT, is used to implement the visual software. Being Java-based it is relatively simple to implement digital signal processing algorithms to run in real-time to generate behaviour parameters for the visual engine.

Designing software in this fashion allows for the potential for the audience easily decode the interaction between the audio and the visuals. The interaction mapping between the audio and visuals needs to be carefully designed in order to not become too didactic. Techniques for clarity in interaction will be discussed."

Biography:

Adam Tindale is an electronic drummer and digital instrument designer. He is a Permanent Instructor of Interaction Design in the Media Arts and Digital Technologies department at the Alberta College of Art and Design. Adam performs on his EDrumset: a new electronic instrument that utilizes physical modeling and machine learning with an intuitive physical interface. He completed a Bachelor of Music at Queen's University, a Masters of Music Technology at McGill University, and an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Music, Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Victoria.

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19:30 ALL LIVE - VISUAL MUSIC show #4 @ DB Clarke Theatre (curated by the UVM team)

Julien-Robert Legault Salvail - Fit into the crowd (10:00)

Abstract:

"Piece for bass clarinet, computer and reactive video

in two movements

performed by Krista Martynes

music and image by Julien-Robert Legault Salvail

21 min.

Fit into the crowd: Finding a musical juxtaposition between trying to create security and finding one’s place, Fit into the crowd is based on a visual image of a character trying to musically find that place while keeping the urban security around them, with a tape part of different phrases commonly said for the sake of security like: I shouldn’t step too far out of place; It’s better to not take risks; Art beware, everything has been done.

Biography:

"After having composed instrumental and electroacoustic pieces, Julien-Robert Legault Salvail composes mixed music. To create accessible contemporary music, he uses the technology's possibilities to integrate video to his mixed music. His pieces of music have been performed in England, France, Argentina, Kosovo, United States and Canada in various festivals like Sonoimagenes, Spark festival, SOUNDplay festival, Remusica festival or Opensound. His projects have been funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des Arts et Lettres du Québec and the SOCAN. He won a third price in the 2011 Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award Competition. He also composed music for dance and short films which have been screened in various festivals like the Short Film Corner Festival of Cannes.

In 2009, he completes a master in mixed music at the Université de Montréal with Denis Gougeon and Jean Piché on a project of mixed music with video funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. In 2007, he completes a BAC in mixed music at the Université de Montréal with Denis Gougeon and Jean Piché along with Bret Battey and Peter Batchelor at De Monfort University (UK)."

Jaroslaw Kapuscinski - Oli’s Dream (6:00)

Abstract:

Oli’s Dream (poetry: Camille Norton) is a playful collaboration between music and writing, between a piano keyboard and a typewriter keyboard, and, above all, between an audiovisual composer and a poet. It is an experiment in synaesthesia, an attempt to fuse the temporal modes of music with the spatial and temporal domains of words. In the process, the audience finds itself in the presence of a perceptive, purely aware being, Oli, who creates himself through his encounter with words. Words here make and unmake themselves from the outside in or the inside out, transforming themselves as they discover their own direction in time.

Biography:

Jaroslaw Kapuscinski is an intermedia composer and pianist whose work has been presented at New York's MoMA; ZKM in Karlsruhe; the Museum of Modern Art, Palais de Tokyo, and Centre Pompidou in Paris; and Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, among others. He has received numerous awards, including at the UNESCO Film sur l'Art festival in Paris, VideoArt Festival Locarno, and the Festival of New Cinema and New Media in Montréal. He was first trained as a classical pianist and composer at the Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw and expanded into multimedia during a residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada (1988) and through doctoral studies at the University of California, San Diego (1992-1997). Kapuscinski is actively involved in intermedia education. Currently, he is an assistant professor of composition and director of the Intermedia Performance Lab at Stanford University.

Bruno Degazio - Fractal Shiva (7:00)

Abstract:

"Fractal Shiva is a music-driven motion graphic incorporating Julia set fractals and other image processing techniques. Most of the animation comes from manipulating the real & imaginary co-ordinates that generate the Julia set. Particularly fascinating is the wonderful sense of motion, growth & evolution that emerge as these co-ordinates change. The piece is structured (loosely) as an exploration of these various motions. The Julia Set is implemented as an OpenGL shader. The other images were processed and composited in Quartz Composer. The image processing was controlled algorithmically from iForth via Open Sound Control and MIDI.

The music itself is in a North Indian Classical style - Bhairava raga and Jhapta Tal, and was composed “semi-algorithmically” using the author’s transformation Engine software. Versions of the music exist for various ensembles of one to three players (tabla, cello, and Ondes Martenot), plus four-channel tape.

Biography:

"Bruno Degazio

Professor, Animation Sound Design

School of Animation, Arts & Design

Sheridan College, Oakville, Ontario, Canada

Mr. Degazio's film work includes the special-effects sound design for the Oscar nominated documentary film, The Fires of Kuwait and music for the all-digital, six-channel sound tracks of the IMAX films Titanica, Flight of the Aquanaut and CyberWorld 3D.

His many concert works for traditional, electronic and mixed media have been performed through out North America and Europe.

As a researcher in the field of algorithmic composition he has presented papers and musical works at leading international conferences, including festivals in Toronto, New York City, London, The Hague, Koln, Tokyo and Hong Kong. He was a founding member of the Toronto new music ensemble SOUND PRESSURE and of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community. He has written on his research into automated composition using fractals and genetic algorithms.

Bruno Degazio is the designer of MIDIForth and The Transformation Engine, a software musical composition system with application to algorithmic composition and sonification.

Donna Hewitt – Idol (8:30)

Abstract:

"Idol - Idol is a collaborative performance work for vocal performer and dancers. The work explores movement and sound relative to a vocal interface called the eMic (Extended Microphone Interface Controller). The eMic is a gestural controller designed by the composer for live vocal performance an real-time processing. The design was derived from the visual gestures commonly used by singers who use microphone stands in performance.

The collaboration explored the use of choreographed gestures to drive the compositional elements of a musical work. This choreographic/compositional process was inverted from the norm by focusing on movement and the visual aspects of the performance as the starting point for the generation of musical materials rather than having the choreographer compose movements to finished music.

The process for generating the work involves the choreographer being provided an opportunity to experiment with gestures and movement relative to the eMic interface. The choreographer explored the interface as an object,a prop, an instrument and as an extension of the body. the movement was then videoed and the data coming from the sensors simultaneously recorded. The data and the video were then used as part of the compositional process, allowing the composer to SEE what the performance looks like and to experiment with mapping strategies using the captured sensor data. This approach represents a new compositional direction for working with the eMic, in that previously the compositional process commenced at the computer, building processing patches and assigning parameters to eMic sensors. In order to play the composition, the body needed to adapt to 'playing' the instrument. This approach treats the eMic like a traditional instrument that requires the human body to develop a command over the instrument. Working with the movement as a starting point inverts the process using choreographic gestures as the basis for musical structures. The visual experience of the performance is the primary focus of the generation of the work."

Biography:

Dr. Donna Hewitt is a vocalist, electronic music composer and instrument designer. Her primary interest in recent years has been exploring gesture mediated music performance and investigating new ways of interfacing the voice with electronic media. She is the inventor of the eMic, a sensor enhanced microphone stand for electronic music performance which she has been developing and performing works with both locally and internationally for the past 8 years. Recent performances include NIME2010, ICMC2008 Belfast, The Great Escape Festival,1/4 Inch, Wollongong, Australia. Most recently she has collaborated with dance artist Avril Huddy on an Australia Council funded project for emic and dancers in addition to undertaking a residency with Julian Knowles at STEIM in Holland. She is currently a lecturer at QUT (Queensland University of Technology), Australia.

Patrick Saint-Denis – Trombe (7:00)

Abstract:

Trombe is part of a suite of pieces for solo instrument and automated objects. These works are about developing a relationship between an object from the real world (a bird feather, a signal lamp, etc.) and a solo instrument using different technological tools ranging from live video and audio processing to simple robotics. The interactions between the objects and the instruments are oriented in order to have the multiple significations of the objects “transfer” themselves on the music. In this work, a special attention is given to the spatial qualities of the video projection by integrating the performer inside of it. Finally, a trombe in French is a very active storm carrying large amount of water.

Biography:

Patrick Saint-Denis a étudié la composition aux conservatoires de musique de Québec, Montréal et La Haye. Il est présentement candidat au doctorat en composition à l’Université de Montréal sous la direction de Jean Piché.

Terry Gambarotto – Kardionic (13:00)

Abstract:

Kardionic takes as its subject the human heart in its organic, energetic and spiritual dimensions. During the performance 3d models of the heart, it's structures and blood cells are animated and morphed in real time, alternating between naturalistic depictions and total abstraction. Three musicians provide both the soundtrack and the control data that drives the animation. The entire system runs on two networked computers and was written for the Max/MSP/Jitter multimedia platform.

Biography:

Terry Gambarotto is a digital programmer and artist living in Toronto.His recent works include the audiovisual performance Kardionic (2010) and the Variations CD cycle (2008-2010). He has released five full length albums on Fool Skool Records (foolskool.com).

Mark & Laura Cetilia – Aphrosia (13:00)

Abstract:

Aphrosia is an audiovisual work comprised of an electroacoustic improvisation by our group Mem1, and is accompanied by abstracted imagery based on footage gathered from our newly adopted home of Rhode Island, the Ocean State. During our time here, we have spent countless hours exploring deserted beaches in the dead cold of winter and examining strange sea foam washing up on the shore. The score for this piece is inspired by these experiences, and employs a reactive video system created by Mark Cetilia for use in live performances that combines spectral analysis with real-time video processing. This system affords direct and intuitive control of the manipulation of prerecorded video in real time through musical gestures, such as changes in dynamics, pitch and timbral content. The video presented here was captured in real time, with no postproduction, and is an extension of our collaborative musicmaking practice. This piece is not only a means of coming to terms with our new surroundings, but an attempt to form a symbiotic relationship between sound and image, where each reinforces the other. The score is an exploration of the vastness of the sea and the palpable augur of wind-swept ocean waves; the video, in turn, breathes and churns in synchronicity with our sonic gestures, trapped forever in time.

Biography:

"Mem1 seamlessly blends the sounds of cello and electronics to create a limitless palette of sonic possibilities. In their improvisation-based performances, Mark and Laura Cetilia's use of custom hardware and software, in conjunction with a uniquely subtle approach to extended cello technique and realtime modular synthesis patching, results in the creation of a single voice rather than a duet between two individuals. Their music moves beyond melody, lyricism and traditional structural confines, revealing an organic evolution of sound that has been called ""a perfect blend of harmony and cacophony"" (Forced Exposure).

Founded in Los Angeles in 2003, Mem1 has traveled extensively, performing at Roulette, REDCAT / Disney Hall, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Issue Project Room, Electronic Church (Berlin), the Laptopia Festival (Tel-Aviv), the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, and the Borealis Festival (Bergen). They have taken part in residencies at Harvestworks (New York), STEIM and Kunstenaarslogies (the Netherlands) and USF Verftet (Norway). In 2009, they created a site-specific installation for the Museums of Bat Yam (Israel); their collaborative works with media artists Kadet Kuhne and Liora Belford have been screened and installed at the Sundance Film Festival, Fringe Exhibitions (Los Angeles), and the Hordaland Kunstsenter (Bergen). They have collaborated with artists including the Penderecki String Quartet, Steve Roden, Jan Jelinek, Frank Bretschneider, and Stephen Vitiello. Age of Insects, a full-length album with Vitiello, is available through Dragon's Eye Recordings. Together, Mem1 curates the experimental music series Ctrl+Alt+Repeat and the record label Estuary Ltd."

Lumínico (from Mexico, guest artists: Rodrigo Sigal, Alejandro Escuer and José Luis García Nava) - Live performance (30:00)

Biography:

LUMINICO is a Mexican group performing with electronic music and instruments, using cutting edge audio and video technologies and innovative artistry, with the purpose of promoting appreciation of the world's cultural diversity through the integration of different styles and new musical forms. It was founded by Alejandro Escuer, Rodrigo Sigal, and José Luis García Nava as a Mexican Centre for Music and Sonic Art (CMMAS) project, an organization that encourages spreading, investigating, and developing contemporary musical arts in Mexico. Their web site is: http://www.luminico.org