Tierkreis bei Karlheinz Stockhausen

A work in which performative bodies become revealed as living sculptures in the fantasy world of performance!

A new and very exciting project. Imogene Newland (pianist) and myself (saxes) are doing a 'physical' version of Karlheinz Stockhausen's piece "Tierkreis"(1974–75).
Our work explores the physical and the sonic relationship between our instruments and our performative bodies. In this work we appropriate each other’s instruments, their intrinsic sonic qualities as well as the performative space of the other player by alternating our positions to each other and to our instruments. The idea is to extend and constrain each others’ gestural movements, thus questioning traditional performance identities and performative gestures and the ways in which particular gestures have become established and expected as part of our Western Classical music traditions.
"Tierkreis" is heavily and heavenly inspired by the universe's star signs and each star sign's alignment with its respective element. We use the visuals supplied in the score as the basis for our choreographic decisions, including stage layout, our relationships to each other, as well as the constraints which each of us may impose onto the other performative body.

Forthcoming Performances:
Bodies/Music conference, Cork 20 March 2009 (this concert has been postponed)
Musical Bodies Conference, London, 23 April 2009

DISPARATE BODIES 3.0

We staged a great performance on December 11th 2008 of the work DISPARATE BODIES 3.0 - a three-way network performance

This event was programmed to coincide with the launch of the Fragmented Orchestra Project.

Disparate Bodies 3.0 is the third in a series of strategies, which addresses the network as a performance environment exploring multi-modal remote presence and key issues in “playing apart”, such as Performance Cues, Distributed Electronic Scores, Remote Monitoring, Performance Avatars and Dramaturgical Strategies.

The concert took place in three sites simultaneously: at SARC in Belfast, at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and the Banff Center for the Arts in Canada.

PERFORMERS:
Performers at SARC/Belfast:
Franziska Schroeder - saxophones
Pedro Rebelo - composer/piano and instrumental parasites
Alain Renaud - network technologies

Performers at the Deep Listening institute. Ltd./ Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute/New York
Pauline Oliveros - accordion
Jonas Braasch - soprano saxophone
Doug Van Nort - laptop

Performer at Banff Center for the Arts/Canada:
Chris Chafe (Director of CCRMA at Stanford University) - Celleto

Disparate Bodies website

Network[ed] Listening: exploring possibilities of a haptic aurality (Schroeder 2009)

This paper closely examines listening attitudes in a network environment; in particular it asks how the network itself makes us listen to ourselves and others. It takes as a starting point Laura Marks’ proposal for a haptic visuality (Marks 2004) and suggest an analogical paradigm for listening, what I entitle a haptic aurality.

It is essential to note that at least two types of listening spaces in a network performance exist, a ‘local’ and a ‘virtual’ listening space. These two spaces in a networked performance become particularly differentiated, as the virtual space is often a non-visual space, i.e. it is a space in a different location to which the audience may not have visual access but has sonic access. Although one can argue that in every listening situation these two types of spaces exist: we listen to an orchestra ‘locally’, i.e. to the orchestra in the physical space itself as well as ‘virtually’, i.e. to the sonic reflections and re-fractions of the orchestral sound off the enclosed space. However it is by means of the mere physical distance and the absence of direct visual information that these two types of listening spaces become more clearly delineated in a networked environment. Listening in a networked performance is closer to a sonic flânerie, a listening more akin to a constant zooming-in and out of specific sonic images of the different nodes.

RIAM - Guest Lecture

I am also back from Dublin, where I was invited to give a guest lecture.
Please feel free to check out a quicktime version of the talk here. The video is meant for you to click through at your own speed.

A Dramaturgy of the Network – Views From Within And From Without

I am working on a paper that addresses different types of strategies of working/collaborating in a network environment.
This here is a diagram with a short extract from the forthcoming paper:

.

Some of these ideas were presented in a position paper for the Network Performance panel at the International Computer Music Conference 2008. Here is a link to the SARC Dramaturgy Page.

I have met io 0.0.1 beta

I am back from Cork and am happy to say that I had a chance to play with io 0.0.1 beta.
Han-earl who runs the Stet Lab has kindly put some links on his blog from my recent visit. This is io and me in action:














A few shots from the evening gig in the Roundy:

The Royal Irish Academy of Music

Just to let you all know that I will be giving a talk at the RIAM in November (19th) 2009. If you are in Dublin or somewhere close by, do come and join me.

STeT Lab

I am excited that I am going to be playing at STeT Lab in Cork on the 10th of November 2008. A venue that celebrates "the practice of improvisation in all its diversity, complexity and, perhaps, contradictions"... no better to place to be!

Silly Movie

DRHA 2008

Just back from the DRHA 2008 where I presented "SL'Étude" which was originally supposed to be a performance. This didn't work out as it was technically a bit complicated. Instead, I talked about the project, and Chris Chong came for the presentation to talk more about the hard-core programming.
Some short clips from the presentation:


- LED lights for gesture tracking of performer -


- SL object interaction with MAX -

ICMC - more Photos

A few more Photos from the last few ICMC days
(also courtesy of Christopher Chong):



(Ivan and Elisabeth - Whitla Hall)







(John Kenny - Whitla Hall)







(Roots Ensemble - Oosterveld piece)







(Roots Ensemble - Weixler piece)







(Ivan and Franziska - Weixler piece)







(Roots Ensemble - Oliveros network piece)







(Last gig of ICMC08: Trad night - Mandela Hall)

ICMC 2008 is over

ICMC 2008 is behind us. We are all relieved and have had our one day post-ICMC depression. Now back to our daily jobs...
Here are further photos on flickr from the entire ICMC week.
(Photos below courtesy of Christopher Chong)

Photos:

New CD is out "May there be..."

Our new CD on the creativesources label is out. It features Pedro Rebelo on piano, Guilherme Rodrigues on cello, Ernesto Rodrigues on viola and myself on soprano saxophone.

Listen to Track 8: May there be ... space (7mins)

Network Performance ICMC/NYU/CCRMA

Today we will be testing/rehearsing the piece for next week's ICMC network performance. Exciting news is that we will be using Curtis Bahn’s vibrobytes.
We will be joined by two other ensembles in Troy/New York:
Tintinabulate (directed by Pauline Oliveros, Jonas Braasch and Curtis Bahn of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute):
Curtis Bahn - dilruba
Jonas Braasch - soprano sax
Pauline Oliveros - accordion
Dan Valente - violin
Holland Hobson - ?
Anne Guthrie - horn
Bobby Gibbs - clarinet
Doug van Nort - laptop

In Palo Alto/California by SoundWire (directed by Chris Chafe, director of CCRMA at Stanford University):
Chris Chafe - Celleto
Juan-Pablo Caceres – synthesizer

In Belfast from SARC The Roots Ensemble (directed by Franziska Schroeder):
Franziska Schroeder - saxophone
Pedro Rebelo - piano
Alain Renaud - laptop
Gascia Ouzounian - violin

Next week, we will also be joined by:
Laoise Kelly - Traditional harp
Ivan Goff – Pipes
John Kenny – trombone

The piece we are doing is entitled "Tele-Morphosis". It is an improvisation for three co-located music ensembles and telematic live-electronics. In this work the relationships between co-located musicians and their interactions across different acoustic and virtual spaces are explored.

ICMC 2008

The upcoming ICMC (International Computer Music Conference) is very, very close.
It is taking place in Belfast this year and we are all flat out with organising. I have taken on the artisitc direction of the Roots Ensemble, which will be playing the opening concert of the ICMC on Sunday, the 24th of August, 7pm in the Whitla Hall. The Roots Ensemble will be playing throughout the conference in various formations. I have been able to recruit some amazing players and if you are nearby you can hear performers such as German based Flautist Carin Levine, Portuguese Percussionist Pedro Carneiro, UK-based Pianist Philip Thomas, Trombonist John Kenny from Scotland, and Cellist Su-a-Lee, Violinist Roman Mints, Concert Accordionist Denis Patkovic from Germany, Irish born (New-York based) Piper Ivan Goff, Irish Harpist Laoise Kelly, Bass Clarinettist Deirdre O'Leary, US-based Clarinettist Esther Lamneck and my humble self on saxes.

Braço De Prata -Lisbon 2008

Had our free improv gig end of July at the Braço De Prata.
It was a really great gig. I will upload a few samples soon.
Over dinner we talked politics and music and the treatment of musicians in general. There was this sense by the Portuguese based people that musicians are really at the bottom of the 'creative pool'; that they often appear "in brackets".
So, I liked this very much and we decided to call our quartet, which had its second get-together, exactly this - In[brackets].

SL'Étude (click for Flickr Photos)

SL'Étude is a series of pieces for SecondLife (SL) and a RealLife (RL) performance space capable of sound spatialization.
The RL and the SL space have a very similar layout - see diagram above.
SL is explored in a two directional fashion. It engages the avatars by allowing them to spatialize sounds in RL by positioning specifically designed objects in SL.

I recorded these sounds objects. They are solo saxophone snippets that explore the timbral possibilities of one sound (note) on the saxophone. The idea of this one note exploration was derived after talking to Joan La Barbara In March 08 at the Sonic Arts Research Center about her work entitled “One-Note Internal Resonance Investigation for voice alone” - cool piece, and she left me a copy of the score to have a look at.

What Happens?
For example, if an avatar picks up object 1 he/she will hear the one note exploration linked to that object. The avatar may then place the object closer to one of the loudspeakers in the SL space which will result in sound spatialization in the RL space. The saxophonist in the RL space will then interact with the avatars’ compositional strategies.

What Else?
The RL performer is equipped with LED lights in order to track her gestures while playing. In this way the performer’s movements can be mapped onto a SL avatar or a more abstract representation of a humanoid figure, thus enabling a two way interaction of movement and sounds.

How Far Is This?
We are in the process of setting up the SL space with the objects.
The installation has been up and running on the SARC SL space on the European University Island (http://slurl.com/secondlife/European%20University%20II/134/130/27)
since early May 2008.


First Performance?
The first performance tests were carried out at the beginning of June 2008.
The RL space was the Sonic Arts Research Center (SARC) in Belfast, UK.
Here is a short youtube overview of what we did.

Uff. Long Blog, this one.

July Gig at the Fábrica Braço de Prata - Lisbon

I am very exciting about a follow up gig from last sommer's Goethe Institut free improv gig with cellist and improvisor Ulrich Mitzlaff,and guitarist and improvisor Nuno Rebelo plus Pedro Rebelo on prosthetic piano.
On July 26th 2008 we will be playing in the:
Fábrica Braço de Prata:
Rua da Fábrica do Material de Guerra, nº1
Lisbon Portugal

Net vs Net - recording

5th of June 2008 SARC - Stanford:
I will be recording "Net vs Net", the piece I played in the US in April 08.
Also, a new work by Justin Yang with Justin on sax.
Involved: Alain Renaud, Juan-Pablo Caceres and Justin Yang.

Caressing the Skin - mobile devices and bodily engagement

A paper on the skin and mobile devices. Recently given at the Mobile Music Workshop conference in Vienna (13-15th May 2008): Conference link.
A shorter version of this paper will be appearing in the 4th edition of Stimulus Respond: SKIN.