Tyrannosaurus Sex (and other truths) :: Ira Liss

20110603

Ira Liss is the director of communications for the ATLAS building, and a brilliant musician.  I have been close friends with him during my time at ATLAS and was very happy to find that he was given the opportunity to perform for all his friends and family.  Also, a number of my friends were heavily involved with the show.

I have always been a fan of Ira's music.  It is witty and rateable, and most importantly, entertaining.  It was also very nice to hear his normally solo piano playing accompanied by bass, guitar, drums, and saxophone/clarinet.  His show was comprised of his songs (including my favorite about an acorn... who wears a little hat) intermingled with short theatrical vignettes by Katie Cross and Graham Emmons (who has been involved with many of my previous productions), and very well choreographed segments by Katie Cross (the producer of UNA).

The story progresses through the concepts of a relationships, from childhood romances to teenage hormones to old age.  All the while, Cole Ingraham added Tyrannosaurus roars at amusingly appropriate times.  The flow was very smooth and the combination of dance, music, and images (taken by Ira himself) was very nice.

I was hoping to be more involved in this production, but my workload prevented me from being able to contribute :(  Regardless, I think that Ira did a fantastic job, and I was so happy to see and hear his vision come to fruition.  I'm very proud of him, Katie (choreography), and everyone involved in the production.  It was especially touching to hear Ira mention during the talk-back that this was, in fact, his dream come true.

Carnivals and Snowstorms

Better late than never...
20110429-30

I've had a hard time coming up a way to summarize the experience of working on this show.  That's not a bad or a good thing.  For over a year, I worked with Daniella Vinitski (a CU PhD. Theatre candidate) helping her to execute the technical aspects of her production Carnivals and Snowstorms.  I thoroughly enjoyed working with her and the team, and we executed a complex show with relatively small amount of rehearsal time within the Black Box Space.

The production played through four different scenes (I. Brilliant Silence, II. Carnival Barkers, III. Apotheosis, IV. Memory) carrying an avant-garde pacing, with multi-disciplinary collaboration throughout.  There were dancers, actors, music and a violinist with live audio processing, alongside a complicated curtain-rigged system juxtaposing a relatively simple set.  All in all, there were a few mixed reactions, but it was very well received.  I really enjoyed the outcome of the final show despite some last minute delays in production, and am proud to put my name alongside these fantastic artists.  In fact, it was one of the most pleasurable shows I've had to work on, as our run and production crew was extremely professional and creative (with a few exceptions, as always).  Videos below and more pictures here!

Communikey11!!

20110413-20110417

Opening Night at Bombay Bistro

Wow, it was only a week ago, but time is just flying by.  Communikey, for those of you who don't know is Boulder, Colorado's Festival of Electronic Art and Music.  Check out past year's festivals.  I've been involved for the past 3 years, and attending for the past 4.  This was the fourth edition of the festival, and it was a tremendous success.  My role is to act as technical lead at various venues and assist with tech issues as they arise.

Normal Ones and Jason from offthesky in the ATLAS Black Box
  
This is a fairly media heavy post, so please bear with the loading times :)  And there's lots more after the break and on Flickr and YouTube.

 

Pulshar at the ATLAS Black Box

Tim Eriksen and the Batteries Die Media Ensemble

The Batteries Die Media Ensemble

20110305

Over the weekend, Michael Theodore held a reincarnation of the What I Saw at the Apocalypse show from February of 2009. He brought Tim Eriksen, a "shape note" or throat singer, back for the very special reunion. The Apocalypse show was one of my first shows to work on at ATLAS, and this reunion was, by far, one of the most complex audio patches I've built in the space. We routed about 30 channels to the FOH mixer and about 24 channels into the ProToolsHD system. Additionally, we documented the concert with a live-mixed three camera shoot.

Here is an edited video from my Zoom Q3-HD:

More info and pictures after the break...

Feburary bLOrk-taculair

20110225/6

Last weeks bLOrk concert was an amazing collaboration of musicians, dancers, and digital artists. Here is a full video from the uStream copy of the Saturday concert if it is still being hosted (It starts around the 20:00 mark), try this link.  Keep reading, I also have a high quality, edited version of the Friday night show, and a few pictures.

I was fortunate enough to perform alongside new and returning members of bLOrk, and even performed my piece about tuning and calibrating the laptop orchestra, 'Tuning Up'. This time, I included a malfunctioning computer which is designed to give me troubles throughout the piece. We were also excited to have Trace Reddell and a couple of his students from the Digital Media Studies program at DU showcase Jitter patches they have developed.

New levels of interaction

Feburary Pendulum

20110223

Wow, what a week.  Pendulum followed by blOrk only two days later.  The Pendulum New Music Series showcases new works from composers at CU, and this month's performance had a very eclectic bill. This installation of Pendulum included these world premiers:
Kari Kraakevik  - Canyons Leading Home: Los Angeles to Lost Angel (2010)
Keane Southard - Two Symmetries for Disklavier (2010)
Cole Ingraham - Chaos Geometry (2010)
Leanna Kirchoff - The House Explodes
Hunter Ewen - Invasion of the Monkey Mind (2010)

Also featuring "Open Score," an audience-participation piece with Paul Miller and Jeff Nytch.

Poster

Catherine Havasi: Digital Intuition through Natural Language Processing

ConceptNet Map describing
relationships between concepts

20110221

As my faithful readers will know, I have recently become very interested in data processing.  This season's ATLAS lecture series has been excellent so far, and I couldn't pass this one up.  Catherine Havasi conducts research at the MIT Media Lab in the field of Natural Language Processing or NLP.  This is the field that is defining the way  we use computers to analyze data, specifically in the linguistic realm.  For the past 12 years, she has been working on  a research project, Open Mind Common Sense, which shifts the focus towards Natural Language Understanding.  Using assumptions about how things work and the connections between objects and concepts, conclusions can be made about very large data sets.  She presents these conclusions in a three dimensional vector space known as AnalogySpace (built in Processing) and a database known as ConceptNet.

Upcoming Events!!

There's lots of cool things happening in the Black Box in the next few weeks or so... be sure to get your free tickets, a lot of these will reserve fast.  However, if they do get a full list, still put your name on the waiting list.  Most of time, people on the waiting list still get in.  Do this especially for the blOrk show, because I'm performing a piece I wrote!

Ian Bogost: The Material Constraints of Art and Programming

Double Plus Good... I was planning on attending this lecture, and then was asked to work the event.  Score.  I got to get paid to go, and had a few extra moments to speak with Ian.  Not only that, it was amazing.

Ian Bogost at ATL&S' Black Box Theater

Ian Bogost is a media philosopher and designer who focuses particularly on video games.  He is a professor at Georgia Tech and accomplished author.  This afternoon Ian gave an excellent presentation about the evolution of not only video game media, but also some of the theory behind material constraints.  For example, he programs for an Atari system, but is limited not only by the amount of RAM he can use, but also the number of addressable sprites and objects is 'limited'.  These boundaries, Ian poses, help to define the creativity that goes into the utilization of these types of tools.  This goes for older systems like Atari, or even newer platforms like like the XBox360 or PS3.

Sept. Sixth - Nathan Wheeler's performance memoir

Nate's harmonium, laptop, and found objects

This was the first show in the Black Box that I had a chance to see as an audience member.  That being said, I'm really glad it was my good friend Nathan Wheeler's performance piece about the loss of his childhood home in the Four Mile Canyon fire on September Sixth, 2010.  I knew going in that this would be an emotional and powerful piece, and indeed it was.  The Daily Camera did a great review of the work that tells more about the background of the piece.  Nate describes the performance as the progression of his emotional processes.  He used the show for catharsis, as well as to make a product to give back to the community that supported him throughout the ordeal.

Bridging Imaginary Boundaries

Broadcast Station

Back in March, Synthia Payne and John Gunther organized a telematic music event "Memory and the Internet".  This was a collaboration between CU, NYU, and KAIST in Korea over Internet2.  Gunther and Payne returned this Fall for another installation of the event, "Bridging Imaginary Boundaries".  I feel these remote performances are truly on the cutting edge of music technology, so I was very excited to have another such collaboration.  For this version, we changed a few things, and collaborated with IUPUI (Indiana University Purdue at University of Indiana) as opposed to KAIST.

UNA - Katie Key's MFA Thesis Performance

 

"Una is a trip through the shadows of our subconscious.  The audience witnesses the main character, Una, surrender to her demons as she moves through worlds made of materialism, emotion, and spirit.  Each world grows in abstraction as her journey travels deeper into her subconscious.

The overarching narrative is a dreamscape, yet each world shifts into its own style of narration from verbal, to non-linear vignettes, to singularly visual.  This is not just a story about Una; I hope that the audience will see glimpses of themselves."

~Katie Key

Stockhausen 2010

Kreuzspiel

CU Pendulum New Music in conjunction with ATL&S has begun to do an annual contemporary composer series.  Last year was George Crumb, and this year featured Karlheinz Stockhausen.  Paul Miller organized to have Stockhausen's personal engineer, or sound projectionist, Bryan Wolf come from Pforzheim, Germany to run with the event.  Stockhausen was a pioneer of experimental electronic music and has created some amazing compositions for surround sound systems as well as orchestration.

Disappear Here - 5 projections at once

2010 ATL&S Innovator award recipients Kim Olson and Nathan Montgomery produced a projection and movement themed show in the Butoh style.  The goal is to "explore the wilderness within and without, the seen, unseen, and the world’s ephemeral beauty."  Nathan began the show in a net hung from the ceiling as a 'womb' (or diaper as some of us called it) and natural elements such as flowers and tumbleweeds were used as props.  The technical challenges for me were tremendous, as I was responsible for synchronizing 5 different projections.

Dangerously Safe

Gemma Wilcox and Liz Barron performed "Dangerously Safe" for the Boulder 2010 Fringe Festival.  The performance was a unique way to utilize the space, and it created some memorable moments.  To begin, the audience was split into two different groups and seated on opposite sides of the space.  While the two groups were facing each other, there was a curtain preventing any visual contact.  Both performed simultaneously to their respective audiences by improvising, showing video, telling mythical stories, and having shadow dance fights through the curtain.  Ultimately, the piece came together when the curtain was finally drawn and the audience was reminded of the dual nature of the performance.

Film by Betsy Tobin, Tech by Jessica Bynam and David Ortolano

reConstruction

This is a clip from Ryan Wurst's performance on prepared piano:

Prepared Piano - clips, screws,balloons...

For those of you who don't know, to 'prepare' an instrument means to attach objects to the strings on an instrument.  When you play it, interesting, somewhat random timbrel effects happen.

CU New Opera Workshop

Sister Carrie - 3 screen projectio

This was an impressive display of talent by the student performers, writers, and crew members.  At the beginning of the (2) week(s), the operas were read for the first time and performed by the end of the week.  I don't think I need to describe the difficulty of this.  Short operatic scenes were shown each night and each week featured a longer opera.  "Sister Carrie" composed by Robert Aldridge is the story of a woman achieving the American Dream. "Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" was composed by Herschel Garfein.  The second week's performance was the premier of "Autumn Orchard" composed by Daniel Kellog and librettist J. Michael Martinez.  It features the powerful story of Garcia Lorca's imprisonment during the Spanish Civil War.

For the performance, I projected on to three 8' x 24' vertically mounted screens for scene changes.  Instead of using MAX/MSP/Jitter as I normally would.  I experimented with Isadora which was simple enough to manipulate the scenic images created by Andrew Metzroth.  Many of Isadora's tools are helpful (especially for video), however, I would still prefer to use MAX/MSP/Jitter.

Congrats to Leigh Holman - Producer, Andrew Metzroth - Technical Director, and Halley Albers - Stage Manager

ATL&S Spring 10 Shows

The Black Box was very busy this spring with everything from world-wide electronic jam sessions to extreme multi-media collaborations. Here is a short summary of the shows I assisted with. There is more information about each show in each link.

2010.02.27

Hullo, My Name is Lily Foster

Hunter Ewen

2010.03.12-14

Gunther fest – blOrk, Psychoangelo/Safari Trio, [NYU, KAIST] link

John Gunther and Synthia Payne
CISMAT : Center for Innovative Studies in Music, Art, and Technology

2010.04.02-3

There Came a Voice/She

Jacob Herold / Esmeralda Kundanis-Grow

2010.04.16-18

Communikey Electronic Arts Festival
Produced by Kate Lesta, hosted by Communikey.us

2010.05.01

Tethered/She Waded in Time

Maximilian Shiffman / Nicole Dagesse and Tara Rynders

She Waded in Time/Tethered

“Tethered” was a special show for me because Maximilian Shiffman asked me to be a technical director and sound designer early in the process. “She Waded in Time” was an MFA Dance collaboration between Nicole Dagesse and Tara Rynders. Both contained very different scenic elements, but performers participated in both shows. This collaboration is definitely worth watching and reading about.

Check out these flickr streams for SWIT and Tethered for more pictures and video.

Communikey 10

Wow, Communikey 10 was a blast.  This year I was a member of the technical support crew.  I assisted with the planning and performance of the Artificiel performance "POWEr" as well as the other performances and workshops in the black box.  This was the third installment of the festival, and Communikey 11 is already being planned.  Other events I was involved with included the Lucky Dragons' workshops, "Make a Baby", D Numbers' "Chop Shop", performances by White Rainbow, Lissom, and a special guest performance by the eccentrically brilliant Xavier van Wersch.  Peter Kirn also gave a lecture about Processing.  You can see more about the many other events and performances on the Communikey 10 website.  I also have lots of documentation of the event.