MusicAL 2007 Concert
Programme for the MusicAL concert.
12 September 2007, at 9.30pm, at the "Instituto Franco-Portugues" Concert Hall.
Title: Unit Structures
Type: Piano and live electronics
Duration: 10:00
Composer: David Plans Casal
‘Unit Structures‘ is an improvisation built around a main player (in this case using a piano) and a genetic co-evolution algorithm called Frank. While the player begins the improvisation, Frank builds a live soundworld of the player’s timbral and motivic gestures; later on, Frank’s responses to the human player are informed by everything that has been heard since the beginning of the improvisation. However, Frank’s cultural heritage can include any amount of previously recorded music. In Unit Structures, Frank will use both the live player’s material and some of Cecil Taylor’s discography, including the 1996 album to which this piece is an homage. David Plans Casal works mainly in the free music improvisation domain, adapting cognitive science and artifical life/intelligence techniques to common dataflow frameworks such as Puredata and Flext to build agents which amplify the improvisor's practice, and try to illuminate possible musical pathways in live improvisation. He bases most his practice around late contemporary piano repertoire (Ligeti, Xenakis, Corigliano, Cage) but is influenced by Baroque and Renaissance composers. He has performed live, using home made software, at international venues such as the Sonic Arts Research Centre in Belfast, Centre Pompidou in Paris and Ray's Jazz Cafe in London. He is currently revisiting his sense of play with his sons Thomas and Oliver, and holds as his highest aim to build music improvisation software that won't bore a two-year-old.
Title: Sideral
Type: electroacoustic tape music
Duration: 10:00
Composer: Isabel Pires
“Imagine a universe in wish to understand anything you’d need to understand everything. (…) The beauty of general relativity is that the physics of gravity is controlled by the geometry of space. With extra spatial dimensions…” Brian Greene in 'The Fabric of Cosmos'. The imaginary travels in sidereal multidimensional space and the desire to understand the acousmatic space universe, were the primary ideas to compose this multi-channel piece. Woman composer, investigator and teacher at Marne la Vallée University in Frnce, Isabel Pires has born in 1970 in Portugal. She has finished her superior course of composition at Escola Superior de Música of Lisbon (2000), and her DEA (2002) (first year of doctorate degree) at music department of Paris VIII University. At Paris VIII University, she finish her ThD thesis about the space concepts in music with Mr. Horacio Vaggione direction. She has followed divers conferences and workshops with, namely, Stockhausen, Bernard Parmegiani, J.-C. Risset, Cort Lippe, Eduardo Miranda, Tarasti, Henri Pousseur, James Dashow, and Claude Ledoux. As composer and investigator she had a special interest to the relationship between music and technology. Hers musical compositions includes instrumental music, electronic tape music, live electronic music and music for instrument and tape. She participates frequently as composer at several music festivals in Europe. Prize winner of the international contest of spatialisation and interpretation acousmatic music – Espace du Son 2004, she makes regularly the concert sound projection (France, Portugal and Belgium). Of hers works we remark in from chamber music « SEPTETO » (1998); « MÉDITATIONS INTIMES » (2003); « INCERTITUDE » (2003); and « VIAGENS DA MINHA TERRA – Homenagem a Garrett » (2000) – for ensemble and an actor. In acousmatic music we mention « LAMENTO » (2000); « ESTRANHAS PRESENÇAS QUE JA NÃO EXISTEM » (2002); « VOYAGE AU CENTRE DE LA 5ÈME ESSENCE » (2004); « SIDERAL » (2006). In the instrumental music with tape and live electronics : IMAGENS (1999); « REFLEXIONS INTEMPORELLES » (2002); « TRIFORMIS MUNDUS » (2003). We remark also the work for piano solo, « OMBRES » (2007), dedicated to the pianist Guillaume Coppola.
Title: Whitewater
Type: Saxophone and live electronics
Duration: 8:00
Composer: Scott McLaughlin
Whitewater is an open-form piece for improvising saxophonist and Max/MSP. The performer is limited to playing only multiphonics (and whichever of its individual partials are playable) as well as having a set of guiding principles on style and how to interact with the computer part. Max/MSP analyses the multiphonics and plays back representations of them, while using cellular automata to both modify the existing multiphonics and to 'breed' new ones. The player and computer thus participate in a limited feedback loop with no top-down form, the form is an emergent property of the moment-to-moment interactions between computer and player. The piece's starting point was the idea of representing audio spectra as 2D visual patterns which could then evolve as a cellular automata (Conway's classic 'Life' in this case). The main issue here is that of appropriate mapping; in such a way as to allow the spectra to evolve but without their rather fragile sonic identity being obliterated by the CA. To this end, the CA is on a relatively small grid and generations are several seconds long – both to accommodate the sometimes sluggish attack of multiphonics and as a stylistic element of the piece. Multiphonics are mapped to 2D using partial-frequency as the main determinant but with partial-amplitude as a nudge factor to create micro-variance: each iteration of the multiphonic will result in a pattern similar to the last but with a few cells in the difference which may radically alter the CA's proliferation and the resulting audio. Each multiphonic inhabits its own grid with the strongest partial as the centre-point, frequency and amplitude radiate out from this point: each partial is initially mapped to enough cells to ensure its survival for at least one generation. Interaction and breeding between multiphonics is controlled at this stage by a basic genetic-type process but a future version of the patch will hopefully include a master CA grid on which all the multiphonics will interact: also planned is a multi-channel spatialisation element to improve gestalt differentiation between the evolving multiphonics produced by the computer. Scott McLaughlin was born in 1975 in Co. Clare, Ireland. He played in indie-rock bands and tried to do a science degree before deciding in his mid-20s to go back and study music: he studied with David Morris at the University of Ulster at Jordanstown in Belfast and gained his BMus degree in 2001. Currently, he is completing a PhD in composition at the University of Huddersfield with James Saunders and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay; supported by funding from the Arts Council of Ireland. Recent works have concentrated on pieces for solo improviser and Max/MSP, working with feedback systems, interaction and emergent forms. Mostly, his music concentrates on audible processes and elements of microtonality. He has previously had works performed by Iain Harrison, MusiKFabriK, Simon Mawhinney, Susan Doyle, Concorde, Ensemble Soozvuk, Goldberg Ensemble and others. As a performer, Scott McLaughlin is active in the field of live electronics and free improvisation. He performs regularly with the groups Murmansk and United Bible Studies – parts of the Deserted Village collective – and has released several albums on independent labels in Ireland and Europe. He is a member of the Association of Irish Composers.
Title: Exiguum Clinamen
Type: Live electronics
Duration: 8:00
Composer: Daniel Jones
“Exiguum Clinamen” is the debut performance devised for AtomSwarm, a virtual agent whose research and development was conducted at Middlesex University's Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts. This system emulates the swarming behaviours seen in large groups of insects or birds. Within these collectives, each individual operates under a set of very simple rules, but the swarm as a whole appears to exhibit astoundingly complex and adaptive behaviours, capable of responding rapidly to new environments. Here, these behaviours correspond to a spectrum of sonic characteristics, which are transformed as the population of the swarm develops through encounters between agents of each species. This development is manipulated by the human conductor, whose role is likewise limited by the parameters of the system; though he is able to manipulate the population's growth and interactions, this control is continually held in tension with the individual drives of its agents. The sonic output of the system is diffused live via ambisonics, with the Euclidean swarm-space corresponding to the speaker space surrounding the audience. When the population of the swarm is stable, its space can then be frozen and ‘explored’ via a Listener agent, from whose perspective we can hear the surrounding terrain. Accompanying the performance is a visual representation of the swarm space, using language informed by the grammars of game culture and contemporary information networks. Daniel Jones is an artist and software engineer based in south London, currently conducting a research-driven MA as part of Middlesex University's Sonic Arts program. His work revolves around the behaviours that emerge from complex systems, and the application of such systems to a creative environment. Since 2004, he has produced a multitude of independent projects and commissions, including scores for two short films (‘Making a Mark’ and ‘Sadie’), sound design for a theatrical performance derived from Inuit folk tales, several site-specific audio/video performances, and web-based generative works, plus live and pre-recorded pieces for radio. He frequently performs improvised sets under the moniker ‘Ad Hoc’, using one of several self-developed software systems.
INTERVAL
Title: Circadia
Type: Live electronics
Durations: 6:50
Composer: Paula Matthusen
Paula Matthusen is a composer, currently based in Brooklyn. She writes both electroacoustic and acoustic music and realizes sound installations. In addition to writing for a variety of different ensembles, she also collaborates with choreographers and theater companies. She has written for diverse instrumentations, such as run-on sentence of the pavement for piano, ping-pong balls, and electronics, which Alex Ross of The New Yorker noted as being "entrancing". Her work often considers discrepancies in musical space—real, imagined, and remembered. Her music has been performed by Alarm Will Sound, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), orchest de ereprijs, Ballett Frankfurt, noranewdanceco, Kathryn Woodard, Diesel Lounge Boys, and Jody Redhage. Her work has been performed at numerous venues and festivals in America and Europe, including Merkin Concert Hall, WAX, Judson Dance, Joyce SoHo, the Construction Company, Das TAT, the Aspen Music Festival, Bang on a Can Summer Institute of Music at MassMoCA, Aural Tick Festival, the Gaudeamus New Music Week, SEAMUS, NWEAMO, and the Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival. She performs frequently with the electroacoustic duo ouisaudei, Groundwave New Music Collective, Object Collection, and recently winter company. Awards include a Fulbright Grant, ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers' Award, First Prize in the Young Composers' Meeting Composition Competition, the MacCracken and Langley Ryan Fellowship. Matthusen has also held residencies at create@iEar at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, STEIM, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Matthusen is currently studying at New York University - Graduate School of Arts and Science, where she is pursuing her Ph.D.
Title: Olivine Trees
Type: electroacoustic tape music
Duration: 8:30
Composer: Eduardo Reck Miranda
Olivine Trees is inspired by Vincent van Gogh’s painting “Olive Trees”. As with impressionist painting, where small touches of unmixed colour mingle in the spectator’s eyes, Olivine Trees is composed of small sounds segments that mingle in the spectator’s ears. Apart from Chaosynth, I also used a number of CDP tools for moulding the sounds. The sounds were synthesised on a parallel Connection Machine running Chaosynth at EPCC, but the final mix was done at the University of Edinburgh’s music studios. Premiere: Royal College of Music, London, England (March 1995). Prize winner at “Concorso Internazionale Luigi Russolo”, Italy (1998). Eduardo Reck Miranda's musical compositions have been broadcast and performed in a number of concerts and festivals worldwide, including the Festival Latino-Americano de Arte e Cultura (Brasília, 1987), the Encompor (Porto Alegre, 1988-89, 1995), the International Symposium for Electronic Arts (Minneapolis, 1993), the Festival Elektronischer Frühling (Vienna, 1993-94), and the Ciclo Acusmático (Bogotá, 1995). His music has won prizes and distinctions in Europe and South America, including awards at the Concours International de Musique Électroacoustique de Bourges (1994), the Concurso de Composição de Londrina (Brazil, 1995) and the Concorso Internazionale Luigi Russolo di Musica Elettroacustica (Italy, 1995, 1998). A review of his latest solo CD Mother Tongue, in The Wire magazine, reads, "These are immensely sophisticated pieces that constitute an electronic global music of convincingly organic simplicity."
Title: Repertoire of the Community 1
Type: electroacoustic tape music
Duration: 6:00
Composers: Alexis Kirke and Lola Perrin
In “Repertoire of the Community 1” by Alexis Kirke and Lola Perrin, 16 autonomous software agents perform an emergent multi-timbral composition across 16 speaker pairs. The phrase “repertoire of the community” is a quote from a 2003 paper by Eduardo Reck Miranda "On the evolution of music in a society of self-taught digital creatures", Digital Creativity, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 29-42: “But what makes this model interesting is the fact that there is no global memory holding the repertoire of the community. The agents are autonomous individuals, each of them has its own memory” MIMACS (Memetics-Inspired Multi-agent Composition System), which was used to compose “Repertoire of the Community” 1 is inspired by Miranda’s paper in which he studies the evolution of music. In Miranda’s system the agents sing to each other and based on the similarity of their songs they develop a shared repertoire. They initially start with each having a random melody. The MIMACS system also involves agents singing to each other and developing their songs based on what they hear. However a new approach has been taken in MIMACS to allow the generation of polyphonic multi-part compositions from Multi-agent systems. The agents’ initial 16 tunes were composed by Lola Perrin. MIMACS and the setting of global profiles were by Alexis Kirke. The 16 agents have different timbres and are assigned independently to speaker sets. Alexis Kirke is currently studying for a PhD the Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music at the University of Plymouth. His first PhD was at the Plymouth Centre for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience. After that he worked in Speech/Sound Recognition and Stock Analysis. He was one of the fundamental contributors to the stock trading theory behind Reuter’s brokerage system Implemetrix. Before starting his current PhD Alexis was Diagnostic Systems Development Manager for Invensys Controls UK. He has published papers on Neural Networks and on Algorithmic Composition, and is a published poet in the UK and US. A New Yorker by birth with Ukrainian and Hungarian roots, Lola Perrin is based in London. Following an early career producing broadcast soundtracks for television she went into a period of musical isolation during which she set about developing a body of works for solo and multiple pianos. After a brief spell working with Brian Eno she launched her work; in 2003 she started to perform her catalogue – to rave reviews - and is now forging a significant career throughout Europe as a composer, performer - and collaborator with world renowned film-makers; The Gray Circle (credits incl. Lord of the Rings on-stage), Mahesh Mathai (Director: first feature "Bhopal Express" was presented by David Lynch) and Phil Maxwell & Hazuan Hashim (credits include Michael Nyman's "The Piano Sings" tour). Lola's music takes deep motivation from visual imagery. Artists such as Edward Hopper, Rachel Whiteread, Ansel Adams, Carsten Hoeller, Nazarin Montag and Roberto Battista inspire her work. Other musicians are now producing arrangements of her compositions and her own recordings are regularly broadcast on the radio. BROADCASTS: BBC3 (TV), BBC Radio, BBC World Service, BFI (Cinema & TV), Channel 4 TV, Danmarks Radio, Deutschlandradio Kultur, France Musique, Jazz Aktuells NDR, Jazz FM, ITV Networks, TV Halle (Germany), XFM Satellite Radio. RADIO & TV INTERVIEWS: BBC Radio, FAB TV Berlin, Danmarks Radio. TV MUSIC VIDEO PLAYLISTS: Classic FM TV, MusFlash Sky Music EPG 375. ON RELEASE: Fragile Light (2006). ART: The exhibition “12 works inspired by Lola Perrin’s music” by award winning Australian artist, John Kennedy, was mounted in March ’07 at London’s South Bank Centre.
Title: Swarm and Attractors
Type: live electronics
Duration: 8:20
Composer: Tim Blackwell
In this work, a large swarm of one hundred particles moves through a number of three-dimensional interpretative spaces. The spaces serve to relate the twisting, swirling swarm to the accompanying melody, rhythm, harmony and spatial location of sound. Each space is a single musical interpretation of particle position (previous swarm musics have imposed interpretative parameters along the axes of a single space): a spherically symmetric space with concentric shells of increasing pitch, a cellular harmony space spanned by seconds, minor thirds and fifths, a rhythmic space with vast diagonal slabs of silence and an actual positional space that relates each particle location to a place in the room. This work of swarm minimalism (swarmalism) uses almost the simplest possible materials; triangular waveforms, mathematically exact tempi and diatonic scales and harmonies. The rules governing particle motion are also very parsimonious: if you can see another particle, or an attractor, move closer, but don't bump into anyone else. Despite this simplicity, the motion of the swarm is extremely complex. This motion, manifest as eddies, vortices, oscillations, bifurcations and other patterns, subtly modulates the wave streams (one for each particle) and the music is heard as detailed variations of a number of 'cases'. Each case, which is a particular instance of the underlying interpretations, represents a compositional scenario. The animation consists of a few elements: particles, attractors and the Queen. Attractors can be likened to food; particles congregate around an attractor until the attractor is consumed and vanishes. The swarm is then forced to search elsewhere. New attractors will be automatically placed at locations previously visited by a particle in the swarm. Attractor trails can also be added by external interaction, enticing the swarm into other, distant regions of space. The Queen lies at the geometric centre of the swarm, and her slow progress through harmony space determines key. The three dimensional positional space is divided into a number of regions and then mapped to the multi-channel system so that the listener can identify the position of the particle – and hence of the corresponding modulation – with a point in actual space. Swarm and Attractors is generated in real time and is conducted by an operator who is able to adjust particle speed, visibility of neighbouring particles and other algorithm parameters. The conductor can add attractor trails, choose a particular case and alter characteristics of the projection. Particles are coloured green when they bound to an attractor (red dot); otherwise they are white. The two blue flashes correspond to particles that have just been sonified. The Queen is positioned at the heart of the swarm and is coloured brown in this image. The particles produce faint trails that appear as fluffy bundles of thread. The solitary motion of the Queen is clearly visible. Biography: Tim Blackwell is with the Department of Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has degrees in physics, theoretical physics and computer science and has researched a wide range of subjects including quantum field theory, condensed matter theory, psychology, computer music, digital art and swarm intelligence. He is an active musician and is well known for the application of swarms to improvised music. His Swarm Music system has been the subject of numerous articles, radio programmes and TV documentaries worldwide. Recently he has headed, with the composer Michael Young, the EPSRC Live Algorithms for Music (LAM) research network, an interdisciplinary network of 100+ musicians, engineers and computer scientists. The aim of the network is to research autonomous computer music applications, and the LAM holds regular conferences, workshops and concerts. His work in swarm optimization has been focused on dynamic problems. Using an atom analogy, he introduced charge, multi-swarms and the exclusion principle into particle swarm optimization. He is Principal Investigator (Goldsmiths) for the EPSRC Extended Particle Swarms project. His recent work in this field is concerned with the statistical distribution of particle positions and his team have developed a swarm that is inspired by the movements of foraging animals. He is currently collaborating with the artist Janis Jefferies in a number of works that have been exhibited and performed internationally. This body of work concerns the sensation of texture across the senses. He has developed Woven Sound, a technique for mapping sound to textile patterns. He uses principles of stigmergy, swarms and sound granulation to render woven sound back into sound in real-time performance.
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