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Documentation: Sound Garden 2009

norbert — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 03:53:54 +0000

For one week each year, the Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts gathers creators and performers of new media arts from around the world to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul (USA) to showcase their work to the public. I was invited to Spark 2009 to show my installation Sound Garden and give a paper, Dérive en Mille Sons.

Thank you Ali, Doug, and J for hosting a great festival in February! The Spark media producers have since been busy editing the festival documentation. It’s not like being there, but a these videos offer a decent tip of the iceberg. During the public tour of the Regis Center I gave a short talk on Sound Garden to provide attendees and other artists with an idea of what was happening in the skyway.

After Spark, I recorded Sound Garden at different times of day with all of the sounds that had been “planted” during the festival. These MP3s are titled by the time at which the recording was made. Due to differences in ambient light, temperature, air movement, and human presence at various times of day, each recording has something unique to offer.

Play 03-08-2009-1500.mp3
Play 03-09-2009-0000.mp3
Play 03-11-2009-1500.mp3
Play 03-18-2009-1200.mp3

Technoetic Arts 7.1

norbert — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 02:06:11 +0000

I wrote a paper “Dérive en Mille Sons” for the 2009 Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts. It has just been re-published as “Dérive entre Mille Sons: a psychogeographic approach to mobile music and mediated interaction” in Technoetic Arts: a journal of speculative research. Much thanks to journal editor Roy Ascott, publishers Intellect, and Guillaume Ansart for his help with a more precise title translation.

Abstract: Dérive entre Mille Sons (Drifting in a Thousand Sounds) is a musical work that uses mobile media technology to artistically examine the relationship between music and the listener. Contemporary media technologies, be they at work, home or in your pocket, emphasize playback. These devices are designed to facilitate the storage and retrieval of pre-made media assets. This work leverages the processing capabilities that rest dormant within these technologies. Drawing from the writings of Guy Debord and the situationist/surrealist practice of the dérive, ‘drifting’ becomes a metaphor for instrumental performance in which the openness and emergence of interactivity is articulated through sound, as music.

Technoetic Arts requires a subscription. Check to see if your library has online access or print copies of the journal. My original Spark paper is available online.

A(rt) Life 2.0

norbert — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 05:23:54 +0000

A(rt)Life 2.0 is an installation of music, sound, and projected animation. It uses a flocking behavior to reveal the possibilities of sound in Artificial Life systems. A(rt)Life 2.0 examines the relationship of music and emergence by exploring how self-organizing behavior can extend music endlessly in time.

Launch A(rt)Life 2.0 project site

A(rt) Life Study

norbert — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 05:22:54 +0000

A(rt)Life is a new project, initiated Summer 2005. This study uses the PSO algorithm and explores the connection between swarm dynamics and specific parameters of a music composition. Unlike my other PSO-related works this example is only available as an MP3.

Play max.s.o.mp3

Particle Swarm Optimization [1]

norbert — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 05:19:14 +0000

PSO[1] is my first composition that used the particle swarm algorithm of Kennedy and Eberhart to perform music.