Sunday Synth Jam: Voltage Controlled Passacaglia, Pages 1 & 2, by Paul Hembree (Premiere)

Performed on the CRuNCh lab 1972 Moog Modular synthesizer, with video projection of an attached oscilloscope.

Executed from a score with parametric envelopes assigned to different performers. Rough synchronization is achieved with stop-watches, and four short sections in the piece (each about a minute long) allow for some controlled improvisation.

Paul Hembree, Chris Rippey, Steve Snowden, and Curtis Peel, performers.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Voltage Controlled Passacaglia, Pages 3 & 4, by Paul Hembree

via PHIntermedia:

Can anyone figure out what the ground-bass theme is?

Also thanks to Brandon Vaccaro and Sean Brady for help with the MAX panning patch (the only digital aspect of the work… sadly we didn’t have enough voltage controlled amplifiers, nor enough mixer channels on the Moog to produce 4 channel spatizalization).

This has been on MySpace video for a while because they do not have a ten minute time limit. However, I figured I should expose this work to YouTube, so I cut the piece in half and I’m posting both chunks.

Sorry synth fans, but this Saturday Synth Porn entry is a little less synthy than usual and a little more porn-y.

The image above is from a performance of Technosexual, from Micha Cardenas and Elle Mehrmand’s Mixed Relations.

Mixed Relations consists of a series of performances and workshops that explore the relations between bodies and technology within mixed realities.

If you can handle avant garde lesbian erotic multi-reality performance art, with motion sensors & a Nintendo Wii, see the details below.

Otherwise, here are the kitties and synthesizers.

The project involves two people performing in actual and virtual space. Live audio synthesis is achieved using Puredata to respond to body movements. These movements are detected through various technologies including marker based motion capture, flex sensors, pressure sensors, light sensors, accelerometers and the Nintendo Wii.

The performers’ movements are mirrored into Second Life, which is projected into the physical performance space. Live realtime video is also streamed into the virtual performance space, from cameras that are attached to the performers’ bodies. Scaled projections, scale models in virtual space and the projection of virtual instruments onto actual objects are used to create a mixing of the actual and virtual, blurring the lines between the two.

Technesexual consists of the performers engaging in playful erotic acts in physical and virtual space, while using handmade electronic stethoscopes to play the sound of their heartbeats in both spaces, blurring the lines between the two. The stethoscopes consisted of analog stethoscopes connected to piezo sensors wired to 1/8″ audio jacks.

The perfomance captured above was part of the Trasnocheo performance space curated by Susana Cook as part of the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics 7th Encuentro at Mapa Teatro in Bogota, Colombia.

Saturday Synth Porn: Sound of Life (SoL) is a very unusual audio-visual performance by noise performer 23N! that explores the idea of generating noise music from the movements of spermatozoa:

SoL consists in generating sounds and visual dynamically through the tracking of the movement of individual spermatozoa of the semen of the performer observed under a digital microscope. The obtaining of the semen is an intrinsic part of the performance.

Details on the work below.

According to 23N!:

Artist Statement

When spermatozoa are the ones generating sounds, who is the performer ? Are the spermatozoa the performer or are they already a distinct autonomous living entity ?

Sound of Life is trying to address these questions by limiting the interaction between the performer-creator, as the one who gave birth to the spermatozoa, and the spermatozoa to a minimum. Spermatozoa that enter the field of vision of the microscope are all potential performers and the sounds they generate depends mostly on their movements that are not controlled.

While the act of selecting the candidate spermatozoa can be seen as an action of the performer that limits the freedom of the spermatozoa, it is meant to be done in the case of a staged performance. In the case of an installation, random selection or selection of all moving spermatozoa can be easily implemented instead.

By making the act of obtaining the necessary fresh semen a part of the performance, the artistic creation is voluntary confused with the creation of life. The created life, the spermatozoa, becomes an artistic creator, blurring the border between life and art.

The software behind the performance is put together with the usual experimental electronic music culprits, including OSC, PureData, & Wiimote.

Interesting experimental concept or intellectual wankery? Leave a comment with your thoughts!

Wired talks with Avant-garde cellist Zoe Keating who demonstrates her intricately layered loop-based compositions.

Keating has been described as a one woman string quartet. Keating uses live electronic sampling and looping to layer the sound of her cello, creating rhythmically dense musical structures.

Jeki Zaborov in Zimmer Tel Aviv peforms Blow Job V, by Wojciech Kosma, a performance art piece that explores microphone feedback, modulated by the proximity of the performer’s mouth.

via thejobblow

Experimental musicians and instrument inventors John Berndt and Neil Feather have developed their own musical language since 1992 as THUS.

Here they perform Helecopter Soufflé in Baltimore, 2008. Neil Feather plays his Vibro Wheels and Melocipede instruments and John Berndt also plays Vibro Wheels.

via highzerofoundation

Blippoo Box Solo Concert – Slow Movements Excerpt

Hans Tammen – Hordijk Blippoo Box.

Hans Tammen is a composer/guitarist whose music has been described as an alien world of bizarre textures and a journey through the land of unending sonic operations.

He discovers hidden sound properties through means of his modified ENDANGERED GUITAR, interactive software programming, stereo and multichannel sound systems, and by working with the room itself.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Blippoo Box Solo Concert – Fast Movements Excerpt

via hansteg:

• NSFW: Controversial Avant Garde Electronic Music: Blow Job 4
  Posted on Friday, December 19th, 2008 in Music Videos – Comments: (10)

  Click here to view the embedded video.

  
  This is a new version of Wojciech Kosma’s Blow Job, which explores the audio feedback effects of fellatio on a microphone.
• The Top Electronic/Dance Albums Of 2008
  Posted on Monday, December 15th, 2008 in Music News – Comments: (5)
  Amazon has announced its picks for the Best Dance & DJ Albums of 2008.
• Amazing Robotic DJs Spin The Vinyl
  Posted on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 in DJ – Comments: (4)
  

  Click here to view the embedded video.

  
  These guys aren’t laying down the turntable science yet, but the RobotLab Juke Bots are still pretty impressive.
• Shure Microphone Survives Insane, Sadistic Torture Tests
  Posted on Friday, December 19th, 2008 in Gear Reviews – Comments: (4)
  

  Click here to view the embedded video.

  
  Shure SM58 & SM57 mics have a reputation for being reliable to the point of being indestructible. Mats Stålbröst, editor of the Stockholm-based Studio, took that as a challenge…..
• Stevie Wonder On The Arp 2600, Talkbox
  Posted on Monday, December 15th, 2008 in Electronic Musicians – Comments: (3)
  

  Click here to view the embedded video.

  
  These videos are of poor quality – but the offer some interesting historical perspective from Stevie Wonder’s 70’s electronic peak.

If you enjoy the content on this site, please make sure to subscribe to the RSS feed.

This is a new version of Wojciech Kosma’s Blow Job, which explores the audio feedback effects of fellatio on a microphone.

From a performance at Image Music Text Gallery in London.

Is this art, music or just an attempt to scandalize people that kind of liked the heterosexual Blow Job with a gay version? It certainly pushes the boundaries of music and challenges your preconceptions of what music is.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

• How To Make A Crappy Electronic Music Video For $0.00
  Posted on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 in Music Videos – Comments: (11)
  

  Click here to view the embedded video.

  
  All right you Freaxxx. If you’ve been waiting to make an electronic music video, but you don’t have any money, it’s time to get your video on.
• What’s Wrong With This Picture?
  Posted on Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 in Strange – Comments: (10)
• Kraftwerk Gets Copyright Smackdown
  Posted on Friday, November 21st, 2008 in Electronic Music & Recording Gear – Comments: (6)
  Die Mensch Maschine got rebuffed by a court in Germany, which told electronica pioneers Kraftwerk that Moses Pelham did not violate their copyrights by using an unauthorized sample of one of their songs, Metal on Metal, in one of his productions.
• Totally NSFW: Avant Garde Music Performance Looks A Lot Like Oral Sex
  Posted on Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 in Music Videos – Comments: (6)

  Click here to view the embedded video.

  This video captures a performance of Blowjob, a experimental exploration of controlled feedback. 
• V-Machine Turns Your Music Software Into Hardware
  Posted on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 in Electronic Instruments – Comments: (5)
  The V-Machine is a compact VST/VSTi hardware playback module designed to take plug-ins on the road or into the studio and access them directly without a computer. 

If you enjoy the content on this site, please make sure to subscribe to the RSS feed.

This video captures a performance of Blowjob, a experimental exploration of controlled feedback.

If you’re in London, you may want to check out the Dec 12 IMT performance, which will feature Wojciech Kosma’s recent compositions, Headfuck and Blowjob, a composition by Berlin based artist Oliver Laric, and an appearance by Polish new-media artist Jan Simon.

Is this music? Art? Exploitation?

Let me know what you think in the comments.

And if you can’t decide, there are more performances of this particular piece that may help you make up your mind.

Here are the details on the Dec 12 IMT performance:

IMT is proud to present an evening of innovative contemporary music performed by the Wrong Ensemble, an experimental music group established in 2008 by Polish visual artist and composer Wojciech Kosma. Wrong Ensemble is dedicated to performing musical and music theatre works by non-musical artists. For this performance the London based group of amateur and professional classical musicians will consist of Phil D’Aroso, John Bingham-Hall, Nicole Kearey, Kate Lush, Wojciech Pucilowski, Thom Tew, Chris White and others.

Wojciech Kosma lives between Berlin and London, working between art and composition. His artworks and performances are often spatial, sonic, obliquely interactive and poetic, creating speculative aesthetic interventions in public and gallery space. He has exhibited, undertaken commissions and residencies and performed widely in a variety of institutions and arts organisations, as well as informal networks of cultural producers. Most recently in MOMA Warsaw and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. He is currently research student at Goldsmiths University in London. www.wojciechkosma.com

Oliver Laric studied at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and, together with Aleksandra Domanovic, Christoph Priglinger and Georg Schnitzer, is one of the co-founders of the platform VVORK. His recent exhibitions include ‘50 50 2008 ? ? TOUCH MY BODY’, Seventeen, London, ‘I love the Horizon’, Le Magasin-Centre National d’art Contemporain, Grenoble, ‘Montage: Unmonumental Online’, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, and ‘Becks Fusions’, ICA, London.oliverlaric.com

Jan Simon studied psychology and sociology at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow. He works chiefly with films and interactive installations, which make use of motifs from computer games. His works were exhibited at a number of group shows, both in Poland and abroad. In 2006 he was nominated for the “Passport of Polityka” award.

via Muff Wiggler

Darkmatter, by Brazilian multimedia designer Nagash, is sort of an experimental electronic music acid trip. The audio signal is generated from the animation.

A clip from R. Luke DuBois and Lesley Flanigan’s Bioluminescence performance at Issue Project Room in NYC.

Two performers, one singing and one processing, create a dense pallet of sound and imagery derived entirely from voice.

Beat Frequency’s video for Iron Sun, from The Chordless Chord (iTunes link).

The track features theremin plus delay, pitch shift, panic box and whistle pig (http://tinyurl.com/panicbox). It was recorded in a single take, with no post-processing.

It’s a track so strange that the Beatles never wanted you to hear it.

Carnival Of Light, described as “a jumble of shrieks and psychedelic effects”, is rumored to be the most avant garde track the Fab Four ever did. The track was put together on January 5, 1967, in between working on the vocals for the song Penny Lane.

“It does exist,” said McCartney on a BBC Radio 4 arts program to be broadcast this week. “I like it because it’s the Beatles free, going off piste,” he adds.

In the 40 years since Carnival of Light was recorded by McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison and John Lennon in the Abbey Road studios in London, its collection of disparate rhythms has become a kind of holy grail for Beatles obsessives.

“We were set up in the studio and would just go in every day and record,” adds McCartney. “I said to the guys, this is a bit indulgent but would you mind giving me 10 minutes? I’ve been asked to do this thing. All I want you to do is just wander round all of the stuff and bang it, shout, play it. It doesn’t need to make any sense. Hit a drum, wander to the piano, hit a few notes … and then we put a bit of echo on it. It’s very free.”

McCartney had been commissioned to create a piece for an electronic music festival at the Roundhouse Theatre in north London, the Million Volt Light and Sound Rave. Many in the audience had no idea they were listening to a new Beatles track. Other performers included Delia Derbyshire.

The piece was inspired, McCartney says, by the works of composers John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Is it a lost gem, or a pile of magical mystery crap?

via Guardian.co.uk

Excepts from a modern dance performance that was part of the Danish Dance Theatre installation Labyrint by Tim Rushton, in Kaleidoskop K2, Copenhagen 2008.

3xw.ole.kristensen.name/works/body-navigation/

Infrared Tracking and Interactive Video Projection:
Ole Kristensen and Jonas Jongejan

Choreography:
Tina Tarpgaard

Music performed by Athelas Sinfonietta

John Kannenberg’s Reductive Waves is a meditation on the visualization of sound, via contrasting natural and human-crafted environments.

It features two main visual elements, the first of which is non-manipulated video footage of light moving across his living room wall, shot during a summer sunrise. The second is a series of digital images created via a reductive process in Photoshop, creating 150 abstract images which resemble soundwaves by using his photographs of resonant architectural spaces as source material.

These images were then animated and set to a soundtrack of manipulated field recordings of urban construction and waves on a lakefront along with synthesizer melodies and drones.
Reductive Waves premiered at Soundwalk 2008, East Village Arts District, Long Beach, California, 20 September 2008.

Vivian Caccuri’s Submersed Songs is a sound installation that generates mp3 player remixes through the movements of four live fish. The animals’ movements and the proximity among them work as a parameter for mixing and spatializing the audience’s music tracks in real time.

This system constantly mashes-up two different songs recorded by different users. The two tracks are submitted to different modification processes, building a real time continuity between the swimming of the carp fish and the levels of distortion- which can vary from an intense reverberation to a simulation of hearing underwater.

This is a bit off topic, but it’s an interesting art multimedia art installation. 

Cell Phone Disco is a surface that visualizes the electromagnetic field of an active mobile phone. Several thousand lights illuminate when you make or recieve a phone call in the vicinity of the installation.

Cell Phone Disco makes an invisible property of the environment perceptible to our senses. It reveals the communicating body of the mobile phone.

Avant Garde samplemeister Johannes Kriedler is using his latest work, product placements, to create a nightmare for GEMA (the German RIAA, and explore the ways that copyrights limit art in the process.

Here’s the text of his announcement:

If you want to register a song at GEMA (RIAA, ASCAP of Germany) you have to fill in a form for each sample you use, even the tiniest bit. On 12 Sept 08, German Avant garde musician Johannes Kreidler will —as a live performance event—register a short musical work that contains 70,200 quotations with GEMA using 70,200 forms.

This doesn’t sound like it would be much fun to listen to – but it’s a great performance piece that challenges the status quo when it comes to the arts.

via Crate Kings