Performance 1

 

Bryan Dunphy – Ventriloquy

ventriloquy_stills copySound and visuals move in a continuous manner, at times coming together in unison, at times moving independently. A continuum of fluctuating modal equilibrium is experienced creating tension and release as it swings in and out of balance. When audio and visuals temporally align, their movement is shared in a form of cross-modal ventriloquism. This binding of audio and visual elements takes place in the audience’s mind. An audiovisual soliloquy experienced across the senses.

Ventriloquy is a Generative AV composition exploring the perceptual binding and separation of abstract audio and visual elements. The grinding and sometimes coarse audio is combined with continuously undulating textured 3D primitive shapes, with the colour aesthetic intended as a nod to the bold colours the 20th century Visual Music pioneers. The system used to perform this piece was built using interactive machine learning technology that allows for the fast and intuitive mapping of many audio and visual parameters to the performer’s input. The audio and visual elements are created simultaneously, bound together by the machine learning algorithm. The performer trains the machine learning model according to their own perception and artistic intuition, choosing examples that exhibit strong cross-modal correspondences. The trained model then outputs continuous audio and visual parameters according to the three dimensional movement of the performer in real-time.

Biography

profile_picbwBryan Dunphy is an Irish audiovisual artist based in London. His work has been performed and screened at venues across the UK and Ireland such as Seeing Sound (Bath), The National Concert Hall (Dublin), the Samuel Beckett Theatre (Dublin) and the Darklight Film Festival (Dublin). Recently, his digital artwork was used in the BBC documentary Weapons of Mass Surveillance (2017). He holds a B.Mus from NUI Maynooth and an M.Phil from Trinity College Dublin. He has been a recipient of An Chomhairle Ealaíon’s (The Arts Council of Ireland) Travel and Training Award for 2016 and 2017, which has allowed him to pursue a PhD in Audiovisual Composition at Goldsmiths, University of London.

 

Liz K Miller and Kim Macari – Circular Score: Round Two

Visual Score: Liz K Miller. Performer: Kim Macari

CS#5-300dpi-20x20Circular Score is a musical notation system that explores the seductiveness of cycles and repetitive patterns to the human condition. Through this work, visual artist Liz K Miller investigates how repetition is ingrained in our psyche, how it seeps into our being and is made manifest in our behaviour and our creations.

The score is performed and re-interpreted in collaborative events with musicians – recasting the role of the artist as not only the visualiser of the musical piece but also as the facilitator of new music. This has ranged from modernist piano improvisations to electronic sound-art compositions and Brazilian percussion performances.

For Seeing Sound 2018, Circular Score will be performed and re-interpreted by Kim Macari. The instructions that Kim received for reading the score for the performance are:

1. Radius denotes pitch, circumference is time, and colour controls key signature.

2. Disks both within and outside of the etched score depict the volume dynamics.

3. Each time a musical motif repeats the score forms a new circle.

Kim is drawn to Liz’s work as it relates to her fascination with ekphrasis and artistic intent. These works function as both the representation of another piece of art as well as the catalyst for new art, while also being art objects themselves. Although Kim will work with the pieces beforehand, she will enter the performance space without any planned material: the music she plays will be both the process and result.

Biographies

Liz K Miller has worked with sound visualization since 2008: re-inventing and deconstructing musical score in order to visualize the complexity of sound within time and space. These visual representations encompass sound layering, texture, tone, repetition and rhythm. This work is presented to audiences through live events in collaboration with musicians re-interpreting and performing the score. Exhibitions and performances include the London Design Festival (2017), the International Print Biennale, Newcastle (2016), the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London (2014 and 2017) and the Golden Centaur Lithography Exhibition, Munich (2009). Liz is currently studying for her PhD at the Royal College of Art, London.

DSC08400Originally from Fife, Scotland and now based in London, Kim Macari is a musician and composer immersed in the jazz and improvised music scene. Whether as a performer, teacher or producer, her passion lies in the strength of improvised music as a means of expression and a form of empowerment and freedom. Her most recent commission was by EFG London Jazz Festival to develop graphic scores in response the work of Jasper Johns as part of his retrospective the Royal Academy of Art in November 2017.

Announced as one of 8 recipients of the globally recognised Take Five initiative run by Serious in 2017, she is known for her work both as a performer and as an industry professional. She is currently Chair of Jazz from Scotland, on the teaching faculty of the National Youth Jazz Collective and on the board of directors of the Jazz Promotion Network.

 

Shawn Pinchbeck – Pathways

Pathways is a live visual music performance that evokes a theme of pathways, travel, to and from, choices, the journey, imagination, transition and destination with no limitations other than that of one’s ability to dream. Pathways will explore where the sonic imagination can go when unencumbered and willing. The performance features the live manipulation of sound samples and video clips collected on Pinchbeck’s travels. He works in the Max environment, making use of hand controlled accelerometers and elements of the audio manipulating the image to create an abstract travelogue.

Biography

SPinchbeck-Silhouette-300 copyShawn Pinchbeck is an Edmonton, Alberta, Canada based electroacoustic music composer, performer, installation artist, lecturer and curator. Shawn’s performance works and installations have been presented widely at numerous festivals across Canada and Europe. He collaborates extensively; creating interdisciplinary works that focus on music and interactive systems for contemporary dance and visual music performances. Pinchbeck has a PhD from the University of Birmingham. He currently teaches at the Art Research Lab at the Liepaja University (Latvia), RISEBA University of Business, Arts and Technology (Latvia) and is Recording Studio Manager at the Grande Prairie Regional College (Alberta, Canada). Shawn is the Artistic Director of the 2018 Sea of Sound Festival, and is a current board member of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC) and the Boreal Electroacoustic Music Society (BEAMS).

 

Laura Kriefman / Hellion Trace – Kicking the Mic

DSC04857c
Image: Drew Cox

performed by Laura Kriefman, created by Hellion Trace

Fusing live tap dance, looping and a fully sound reactive LED dress Kicking the Mic creates a multi-sensory show that is breaking all the rules.

The percussive sounds of tap dance are turned into samples of different instruments from flutes to cellos to tablas. The dancer loops and layers these sounds, creating danced compositions. It is combined with an LED dress that lights up and changes colour to the live sounds, creating a visual score to the music and dance. 

Kicking the Mic is performed by Laura Kriefman, and has been created through her company Hellion Trace. www.helliontrace.com  

Biography

Laura_KriefmanLaura Kriefman is a 2017 Keychange.eu Fellow,  a 2016 INK Fellow, 2015 WIRED Magazine/The Space Creative Fellow and a 2011-2012 Fellow of the Clore Cultural Leadership Programme.

Her company Hellion Trace (formerly Guerilla Dance Project) have won multiple awards for digital innovation and specialise in Augmented Dance: the fusion between movement and technology. Resident at the Pervasive Media Studio, Bristol, they create interactive installations and spectacles that have been commissioned worldwide including USA, Brazil, Ireland, Croatia, Europe, India, and Indonesia. Recent work includes Kicking The Mic, a performance piece fusing live tap dance, looping and a fully sound reactive LED dress, and Mass Crane Dance which was launched as part of her Creative Fellowship with WIRED Magazine. Mass Crane Dance is a spectacular meeting of music, light, and synchronised construction cranes dancing across the skylight at night: The inaugural Crane Dance Bristol event was seen by 10,000 people and reached 4 million people online. Hellion Trace won the Smart Oxford Playable City Commission for their project Star Light Star Bright. 

Laura has been a guest speaker at INK, WIRED, ReMIX, SxSW Interactive, World Science Fair (New York), IRCAM Paris, the Southbank Centre, and TEDxRoma, TEDxDanubia and TEDxLondon. She has been an expert reviewer for MoCo for the last 4 years, and for SIGGraph.

 

Miss Ter Spoon and Triple Geek – Trains of Thought

trainofthoughtCompletely unplanned and improvised performance. A creative feedback loop between two performers of modular audio synthesis by Miss Ter Spoon and modular video synthesis by Stefan Goodchild (aka Triple Geek).

Biographies

Miss Ter Spoon (aka Julia) has spent a lifetime working with chaos theory and how it relates to mind and self. She has spent the last 4 years exploring these ideas in the form of focused electron control via musical hardware and modular systems; to see how this relates to Trains of Thought and neurogenesis.

Stefan has toured the world making real-time interactive and reactive video art, primarily for large scale concerts. His impressive client list includes LCD Soundsystem, Peter Gabriel, Glass Animals, Pulp, Pet Shop Boys, Queen and others.

 

Performance 2

 

Myriam Boucher and Pierre Luc Lecours – ELEMENTS

ELEMENTS_Picture_1ELEMENTS is an audiovisual performance that addresses the theme of nature. This project presents air, water, fire and earth in a videomusical discourse that is both concrete and abstract, inspired by the movements and organic behaviors of these natural elements. Both composers and performers draw on our kinetic relationship to the world to deploy a poetic interpretation of this universal and fundamental theme to the human experience.

MyriamBoucher_PhotoBiographies 

 

Myriam Boucher is a video and sound artist based in Montreal (Canada). Her sensitive and polymorphic work concerns the intimate dialogue between music, sound and image, through videomusic, immersive projects and audiovisual performance. Her work was won many prizes, such as the 2015 and 2016 (first prize) JTTP awards, the LUFF 2017 (experimental short-movie award), the 2015 JIM Electroacoustic Compositions Competition and the Bourse Euterke 2015, and has been presented at many international events including Mutek (CA), Igloofest (CA) and Kontakte (DE). Boucher’s work departs from a free gesture and tends towards nature, passing from the material to the immaterial. She explores the desire for freedom and questions our intrinsic relationship to life.

http://myriamboucher.com/

PierreLucLecours_PhotoPierre-Luc Lecours is a composer and sound/video artist based in Montreal. His musical practice covers several mediums and aesthetics. His music is characterized by a search for emotional expressiveness in works exploring the hybridization of acoustic and digital sources, drawing as much on the currents of contemporary music, instrumental and electroacoustic as on experimental electronic styles. He is part of the QUADr and ILEA projects. His works were honored by the Composition Contest of the 2014 Destellos Foundation, the SOCAN 2014 Young Composers Contest, and the CEC 2014-2017 Times play contest, Exhibitonic 2017 and were presented at several international events including MUTEK (CA), Elektra ( CA), BIAN (CA), Akousma (CA), Currents (US), Muslab (MEX), Resonances Électriques (FR) and Hot docs (CA).

http://pierreluclecours.com/

 

Derek Holzer – The Vector Synthesis Project

Derek-09The VECTOR SYNTHESIS project is an audiovisual, computational art project using sound synthesis and vector graphics display techniques to investigate the direct relationship between sound+image on an analog vector monitor display. As opposed to conventional video monitors, which rasterize an image into a series of pixels along a succession of scan lines, vector monitors (like their close cousin the oscilloscope) employ the unconstrained vertical and horizontal movement of a single beam of light to trace shapes, points and curves with near-infinite resolution. When driven by the waveforms of an analog synthesizer, this shifting, realtime sonic light sculpture opens a hypnotic window into the process by which the performed sound is created.  

Vector monitors represent an early phase of the development of video technology, and were initially used to visualize the calculations of analog computers. As Cathode Ray Tube monitors are rapidly replaced by more efficient flatscreens, the look of the CRT becomes an icon at the same time as the object itself becomes e-waste.  Informed by the discourse of media archaeology, my own personal interest in analog vector graphics isn’t merely retro-for-retro’s-sake. Rather, it is an exploration of a once-current and now discarded technology linked with specific utopias and dystopias from another era.

Biography

Derek Holzer (1972) is an American instrument builder and sound artist based in Helsinki FI & Berlin DE, whose current interests include DIY analog electronics, the relationship between sound + space, media archaeology and the meeting points of electroacoustic, noise, improv and extreme music. He has performed live, taught workshops and created scores of unique instruments and installations since 2002 across Europe, North and South America, and New Zealand.

http://macumbista.net

 

Yati Durant and Jules Rawlinson – Pixidust 2

The Pixidust performance involves an improvisation based on the Saundaryalahari Project (2016 – 2018) using techniques that experiment with implementation of PixiVisor audio/video translation software to create a visual feed-forward link to supplement ex-musical communication in the improvisational process. The outputs of the synthesisers are audio signals mixed with “re-translated” visuals as audio carriers produced by the PixiVisor software, with the resulting combined outputs being visualised used in the performance to further stimulate and steer the improvisation.

Biographies

DSC_2074Yati Durant is a US born composer of concert and film music, lecturer, trumpeter and conductor living in Edinburgh, UK. He has studied with Krzysztof Meyer and Hans Ulrich Humpert at the Hochschule für Musik Köln, as well as with George Crumb, Philip Lasser, Narcis Bonet, Lee Konitz and conducting with Jonathan Brett. He is a multi-instrumentalist and active performer and producer of jazz and improvisatory music, contemporary acoustic and electronic music and music for film and media. His compositions and film scores have received many prizes from International festivals, and he has received commissions and premieres from many well-known artists and ensembles from around the world. He has written for The Edinburgh Quartet, Cellist David Watkin, Festival Musica Nova Gilberto Mendez, and many others. Since 2010, Yati is a Lecturer of Music, Sound and Moving Image at the Reid School of Music, University of Edinburgh.

Web: www.yatidurant.com

jr_biopicJules Rawlinson designs sounds, visuals and interactions, and performs with live electronics. Jules’ output includes ‘A Requiem for Edward Snowden’, a collaboration with Matthew Collings which blends live electronics with a chamber trio and realtime visuals. This work was selected for Creative Scotland’s Made In Scotland showcase at Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2015, and has played at Glasgow’s CCA as part of Cryptic Nights, Aberdeen’s Sound Festival and Utrecht’s Gaudeamus Muziekweek. Jules regularly presents and performs work exploring symbolic notations for live electronics at festivals, conferences and symposia including Sonorities, ICLI, Sines and Squares, Art and Sound, Seeing Sound and INTER/actions. Jules is a founding member of the LLEAPP network which has fostered an ongoing series of events at UK institutions.  Jules has a PhD in Composition from Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh, where he is a Lecturer in Digital Design. For more information visit http://www.pixelmechanics.com

 

Chris Kiefer – 10K video

screenshot10000 neural oscillators conspire to make a bad approximation of a one second video loop, while their internal networks are stretched and twisted by their own sound and their neighbours.

This is an improvised performance, where a video is resynthesised by an ensemble of neural conceptor networks, each of which has learnt (with varying degrees of success) to approximate the behaviour of an individual pixel in the original.  The ghostly result is manipulated live, to send this mass of miniature feedback systems into collective overdrive.

Biography

ck_cello_photoChris Kiefer is a computer-musician, musical instrument designer and Lecturer in Music Technology at the University of Sussex, where he is a member of the Experimental Music Technologies Lab. He performs with custom-made instruments including malleable foam interfaces and hacked acoustic instruments. As a live-coder he performs under the name ‘Luuma’. Most recently he has been playing an augmented self-resonating cello as half of improv-duo Feedback Cell, and with the newly formed feedback-drone-quartet ‘Brain Dead Ensemble’.  His research specialises in musician-computer interaction, physical computing, machine learning and complex systems,  and nonlinear and dynamical systems.

 

Maxime Corbeil-Perron – Imaginary Optics

MUTEK_2017_BRUNODESTOMBES_IMAGINARY-OPTICS_2

Stereoscopic audiovisual performance

With hints of many different aesthetics, such as minimalism, constructivism and various analog video and sound processing techniques; this piece aims to explore the possibilities of optics and three-dimensionality in abstract audiovisual composition. Immersion, space, texture and movement can all be augmented with the optical apparatus. Here we go through the looking glass.

Biography

Maxime Corbeil-Perron - Portrait bw copyMaxime Corbeil-Perron is a composer and moving image artist whose work has been noticed by many international competitions and events. His work has been qualified as “pushing the boundaries of abstraction” (Silence and Sound, FR, 2015) and “defying any explication or labelling” (La Folia, UK, 2015). A polymorphous creative with more than a decade of experience in music and digital arts, he now focuses on the possibilities of composition and audiovisual performance using optical technologies.

His work has been shown in over a hundred international events such as MUTEK (CA), Sound / Image (UK), ICMC/EMW (CN), Akousma (CA), Futura (FR), AVAF (GR), AIVA (SE), Contemporanea (IT), MUTEK_IMG (CA), Noisefloor Festival (UK), Diffrazione (IT), San Francisco Tape Music Festival (USA), ECHOFLUXX (CZ), Usurp zone5 film festival (UK, IN), VIZUÁLIS AKUSZTIKA (HU), Les Percéïdes (CA), NYEMF (USA), HEFF (USA), Sight Unseen (USA), Cairo Video Festival (EG), Computer Arts Festival (IT) et TIES (CA). His works have also aired on Radio ORF (AU) and The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation CBC (CA). He was an artist-in-residence for the creation of an interactive work at the Cluster Festival (CA) in 2015, and at Signal Culture (NY, USA) during the summer of 2017. His works have been distributed by Kohlenstoff Records (CA), Vidéographe (CA), Taukay Musicali (IT), Hardcore Jewellery (UK), Ambiances Magnétiques (CA) and Mikroclimat (CA).

As a composer, his music was recognized by the Destellos Foundation (AR, 2012), by Musicworks Magazine (CA, 2012, 2013), by the Jeux de Temps / Times Play competition (CA, 2011). His works were honoured with the medal of the Italian senate, and as a finalist at the biennal composition competition Città di Udine (2012, 2016). In 2017, he was the winner of the Euterke video Grant, awarded by the Société des Arts technologiques (CA), Elektra (CA) and Igloofest (CA). His work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts,  the Conseil des Arts de Montréal (CAM), the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec (CALQ), the Socan Foundation and the Fonds de Recherche Québécois en Société et Culture (FRQSC). He is also a member of Vidéographe, Main Film, the CIRMMT (McGill), the Canadian League of Composers and the Canadian Electroacoustic Community.

Maxime Corbeil-Perron graduated (MA) with highest honours from Montreal’s Music Conservatory, where he studied electroacoustic composition with Martin Bédard and Louis Dufort. He is currently a PhD candidate in sonic arts at the University of Montreal (CA) under the direction of Nicolas Bernier.