www.x-tet.com » interactive media

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.

Roy Ascott Retrospective

norbert — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 02:14:38 +0000

The Syncretic Sense

4 April – 24 May 2009

Plymouth Arts Centre

The first UK retrospective exhibition of the pioneering cybernetic artist Roy Ascott, curated in collaboration with i-DAT (Institute for Digital Art and Technology, University of Plymouth).

Long before email and the internet, Roy Ascott started using online computer networks as an art medium and coined the term telematic art. Since the 1960s he has been a pioneer of art, which brought together the science of cybernetics with elements of Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus and Pop Art. Parallel to his artwork, Roy Ascott is a highly acclaimed teacher and theorist of art pedagogy.

This exhibition explores the influences and rhetoric of Roy Ascott’s work, mapping the impact, history and development of technology and looking to the future of Web2 and Second life. Roy Ascott sees telematic art as the transformation of the viewer into an active participant in creating the artwork, which remains in process throughout its duration.

x-tet.com redesign

norbert — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 05:50:18 +0000

Look Mom! WordPress! This represents the first major design overhaul of x-tet.com since 2003. Sure, I still like Japanese action figures, but a revised look and structure for this site was long overdue… Thank you Upstart Blogger for the very cool Minim theme—it’s just what I wanted.

Converting an existing web site to a blog may seem to go against the core ideas of blogging, but this redesign process placed its emphasis on looking forward rather than backward. All entries from the “old” site have been posted without the option to leave a comment. It’s not that feedback and discussion are unwelcome, but most of the older matieral links to work that is done and finished. I’m ready to move on. Plus, this scheme allows me to start new conversations about current projects and launch the site with the most relevant details up front.

Composition-Instrument Studies

norbert — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 05:46:30 +0000

A musical exploration of space, with reference to Henri Bergson, Guy Debord, Kevin Lynch, and Henri Lefebvre. These studies require the arrow keys of a standard computer keyboard and the Flash player.

Launch first study: Dérive
Launch second study: Mazes

This research has taken me to some unexpected and very interesting places. “Psychogeography” in the writings of Guy Debord (1955) and the idea of “city imageability” by Kevin Lynch (1960) have helped me come to the latent realization of a conceptual spatiality in the way I organize sounds in a musical work. My approach is to first conceptualize the core ideas of a project as different sounds. I then arrange these within a conceptual territory (similar to Henri Lefebvre’s socially produced space (1991)) that is then given over to exploration. Debord’s psychogeography, Lynch’s imageability, and Lefebvre’s social space are all constructions of consciousness. They may make reference to actual physical space, but they are immaterial. These spaces are only real to us as a means of facilitating communication and understanding. I am interested in making music that can be experienced in this way. By conceiving of a subject spatially I find the freedom to explore that subject in all its nuance and complexity. When rooted in sound, spatial concepts can acknowledge potentiality. Movement through space then becomes a kind of instrumental performance where the openness and emergence of true interactivity is articulated through sound, as music.

“Clapping Music” Variation

norbert — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 05:32:48 +0000

This is a variation on “Clapping Music” by Steve Reich. I am interested in Reich’s concept of the “gradual process” and wanted to try an experiment: Could I create a performance of this piece for the web? In my variation you can assume the role of audience or performer. To be in the audience you need only listen. To be a performer, click the word “manual” and use the triangular button to advance through the various phases of the composition. To return to an audience perspective, click “auto.”

Launch “Clapping Music”

Note: due to errors with onSoundComplete() introduced in Flash Player 9 “Clapping Music” Variation no longer plays correctly. Thanks to these guys, repairs have been initiated, but my file won’t work without a major overhaul…

Tonal Clusters

norbert — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 05:08:08 +0000

This project was completed in May, 2004. Music, as an element of interactive design, shares an equal significance with color palette, typography, imagery, layout, and animation. This piece explores that relationship through the use of non-linear musical composition.

Launch Tonal Clusters

Molly Z Illustration

norbert — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 04:58:29 +0000

Molly Z is an independent illustrator and graphic designer. For this project I did all of the programming, music, and sound.

Launch MollyZ site

Umba-Imba Player

norbert — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 05:14:57 +0000

The Umba-Imba Player (1.5 MB) requires Adobe Shockwave Player: get it here.
The Umba Imba player was a collaboration with Michael Caporale. Mike did all of the photography, Photoshop, design, and Umba playing; I did the audio recording, editing, and programming in Director/Lingo.
Instructions: In attempting to offer you a musical experience via the computer and the internet that could fully replicate playing the Umba-imba, we have to concede that it is not really possible.
The instrument is played intuitively and that requires direct audible-visual-tactile feedback. Additionally, stick technique such as multiple mallets, variation of types of mallets, and strength and location of the attack on a key all vary the sounds. So that you may experience it to the fullest in this limited way, we offer you three playing modes, each with distinct benefits: Screen Mode, Pattern Mode, and Keyboard mode. These are represented by the three buttons labeled S, P and K, respectively. In screen mode you can get a good feeling for the sound that each note makes by simply mouse- clicking on any given note. In pattern mode you can get a sense of how phrases or patterns are constructed from sections of the instrument. We have divided the instrument into quadrants. By mouse clicking in the left or right halves of the wooden or metal portions of the keyboard, you can trigger a phrase composed of notes from that section of the instrument. Once you understand the instrument, you are ready for keyboard mode. We have assigned the various notes of the UMBA to keys on your keyboard.

Flash Savvy series

norbert — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 20:48:50 +0000

Flash 8 Savvy
With the help of Sham Bhangal, Ethan Watrall and I completed a third Flash book with greater depth and more advanced topics. “Flash 8 Savvy” was published in April of 2006.

Flash MX 2004 Savvy
This thorough revision to the original “Flash MX Savvy” was published in December of 2003.

Flash MX Savvy:
This book was co-authored with Ethan Watrall and published in June of 2002 by Sybex of San Francisco, CA.
Ethan and I both teach Flash classes. We approached writing the book as if it were a slow-motion class. We hope that our readers benefit from the continuity of content and explanations not only of the how, but the why.

Flash Savvy books on the Internet:
von Flashenstein web site (original site archive)

Flash MX Savvy

Flash 8 Savvy