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

Noisefold at DAM.... yes the DAM again

 20110402

Noisefold - triple projection

I can't believe I got to go to the DAM 3 weeks in a row for free!    And this time was.... cranial-y disintegrating, but in a good way.  In fact, I'm still processing some of the things I saw.  Congrats to Lindsey Housel for putting the show on and getting me on the guest list :)   Read on for some great setup pictures... I prefer to keep the pictures of the work to a minimum... the magnitude of the experience can't be captured on film, especially on iFilm.  Plus you can always go to their shows, or check out their website...

Cory (left) and David (right)

Noisefold is comprised of Cory Metcalf and David Stout.  I had the pleasure of working with them during their last performance in the area at Communikey09.  Back then, the standard setup was that each artist had a projector correlated to their visuals and sounds that met in the middle.  However, Noisefold has been evolving. 

Cory's two-system setup
(one for each projector)

They now use three projectors.  Cory and David both have their respective projectors, but there is now a third in the middle that can be a separate or conglomerated version of the two other projections.    Another direction that I am ecstatic to hear they are taking is the addition of live musicians!  While they did not do this here, (I'm actually glad I got the more traditional experience) I do look forward to seeing what comes from this cross-collaboration.

Get ready for CMKY11 !

Only 6 weeks till Communikey11!

For those of you who don't know... Communikey is Boulder's yearly electronic art and music festival, and this is our fourth year!  Right now were looking for volunteers for all kinds of different things.  I'm helping out with transportation, so if you want to volunteer to get a free festival pass, click here.

A few of the acts slated to perform at the 4th edition of the Communikey Festival include:

- ATOM TM 

-Ableton developer MONOLAKE 

- MARK MCGUIRE of Emeralds

- DARK DARK DARK performing as themselves and to the film FLOOD TIDE REMIXED 

-Detroit legend MIKE HUCKABY 

-Zizek Record’s CHANCHA VIA CIRCUITO and label head EL G, the audio responsive dynamic lighting installation of AUDIOPIXEL 

-tape loop artist WILLIAM BASINSKI 

-The Bunker’s mastermind returning for a 3rd appearance, SPINOZA

-and my personal favorite GAMELATRON - a fully robotic Gamelan Orchestra!

Of course there will be more to come!  So to whet you're appetite and encourage you to click on the volunteer form... I've attached some pictures from last years festival after the break... Enjoy!

Prepare for LED madness!

So I'm working on an art installation for the communikey11 festival in collaboration with my friend Meg.  It involves lots of LEDs responding to audio.  I'll have more info soon, but you can read about it in this blog in the meantime.

But since were talking about LEDs... here is a project from a little while back.  It is a digital flower using a tri-colored LED to project onto a drawing of a flower.  Coded in MAX/MSP and communication through Arduino.




Tri-LED Flower from EJ Posselius.

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

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.

Communikey 09

Communikey is an annual electronic art and music festival in Boulder that happens on Earth Day weekend.

Normal One's setup

The ATL&S Building hosted a number of electronic music workshops and I attended every one that I could... except for SuperDraw, which I missed for the Wooten masterclass. Morgan Packard's Ripple featured an Evolver - 8 floating point bits that "evolve" over the [8] iterations. The Max for Live preview was the highlight of the workshops for me as I was able to see the future of the software months before the release.

Darwin Grosse, from Cycling '74 gave the preview and showed how MAX/MSP objects will now be able to interact with the Ableton Live environment... I'm very excited to say the least. Next was a screening of the film Speaking in Code, the story of people who devote their entire lives to electronic music. I unfortunately had to leave early to go downstairs and set up for the concert that evening.

NoiseFold Projections

NoiseFold gave an amazing show with layers of evolving sound and visuals, and Gudren Gut was the headliner for the evening. We set the room up for 5.1 surround (for the Normal Ones) and there were some cutting edge electronics being used throughout the performances. There was also an Ableton workshop on Saturday held by Christopher Willts.