CCRMA Tour

20110615

Foyer Exhibit/Study Area

While I was in California, I happened to be very close to the Stanford Campus.  Stanford has a program within their music department that I have been interested in for quite a while.  So I set up a tour of the building and the program, CCRMA (Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics), pronounced "karma".  The building was relatively empty, as this was the first day on campus after the spring graduation.

The center is located in the old governors mansion at one of the highest points on campus and has a fantastic view of the  buildings below.  Right as you enter the building, you know that you are in the right place.  There are various keyboards, speakers, and other things I would bet are instruments, but not like any I've ever seen.  There is also a reel to reel, next to a pyramid shaped speaker array, and a giant machine that appears to be one of the earliest GUI based DAWs.

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

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!

ATL&S Fall 10 Shows

 These were some of the most technically advanced shows to come through ATL&S in my time.  It was also my last semester here, and my skills were pushed to their limits.  In addition to my usual sound duties, I did a lot of projection work for many of the shows.

There are links to more information about each program.  There are pictures and information in the links.

2010.07.30-31 & 08.05-07

CU New Opera Workshop 

"Sister Carrie", "Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead", "Autumn Orchard" 

Leigh Holman, Andrew Metzroth, Hally Albers, Robert Aldridge, Herschel Garfein, Daniel Kellogg, J. Michael Martinez

  

2010.08.27-29

Dangerously Safe

Gemma Wilcox and Liz Barron, Betsy Tobin, Jessica Bynam, David Ortolano

2010.08.10

reConstruction

Ryan Wurst

2010.09.17-18 & 24-25

Disappear Here

Nathan Montgomery, Kim Olson, Ana Baer Carrillo, Jessica Bynam, David Ortolano

2010.10.03

Stockhausen Festival

Paul Miller, Bryan Wolf

2010.11.18

UNA

Katie Key's MFA Dance Thesis Performance

Kristin Dalleske, Autumn Bjustad, Rebecca Holley, Esmeralda Kundanis-Grow

2010.12.12

Bridging Imaginary Boundaries

real-time collaboration between CU, NYU, IUPUI

John Gunther, Synthia Payne, Cole Ingrahm

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.

Shodekeh and blOrk

World famous beatboxer Shodekeh gave a free concert for the Conference on World Affairs Athanaeum series that we participated in with blOrk.  I warmed the house manipulating Paul Hembree's Henon Attractor patch.  (Sorry I can't share it, cuz its not mine).  Actually, running that thing for 30 minutes was a miracle as it tends to crash if you're not extremely careful. 

We then performed a "Man vs. Machine" piece with each blOrker trying to make crazier noises than Shodekeh.  It was a fun experience and we had top notch stage presence.  John Gunther and company also performed Cantaloupe Island with Shodekeh.  Shodekeh also performed a sort of interesting rendition of 'Viva La Vida' with the a capella group CU on the Rocks.  It was a pretty interesting version of the song.  We only had a couple of hours to rehearse and a lot of it was improvised, but the performance turned out really well.

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

There Came a Voice/She

The last few shows of the semester were dual projects. The first two were individual performances involving a number of interesting technology interactions. Jacob Herold’s “There Came a Voice” was a jazz performance with score for electronics and vivid projections to accompany each section. The musical theme of the piece is very memorable, and use of projections was a crucial visual element.

SHE

The second portion of this show was a live dance and video collaboration produced by Esmeralda Kundanis-Grow with video work by Mara Tasker and Nathan Minatta. The show followed a ”Tarantino-style femme fatale” theme and explored the Black Box space in an interesting way. The ceiling grid was used as scenic element and the video was an excellent performance element.

Tuning Up

For the Spring blOrk performance I composed a piece about how a laptop orchestra tunes up compared to a true orchestra.  I had a few concepts I wanted to try, one was musical and the other was more performance.  Since we have 6 blOrk stations, I wanted to simulate tuning each of these to the desired frequency, 440 Hz.  I also wanted to turn on each computer separately using a MAX object (aka.booklight) that allows you to change the brightness of the screen.  Incidentally, this is how the apple logo on the back of your laptop is lit.  So by switching the screen from completely dimmed to full brightness, it appeared that the laptop had turned on.  In fact, it was already on and ready to run my program.

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

Psychoangelo

John Gunther’s 3 day technology fest was a huge success. We participated in collaborations of every variety and pushed the limits of the Black Box Space. Day 1 was a performance with Michael Theodore and Glen Whitehead's  band Psychoangelo followed by Gunther’s Safari Trio. Day 2 was a collaboration between blOrk and members of the Safari Trio.  I also performed a piece Tuning Up which is about warming up a laptop orchestra. Finally Day 3 was a live dance, visual, and musical collaboration between NYU and KAIST university in Korea over Internet2 entitled "Memory and the Internet." Doing this all in one weekend was a technical challenge to say the least.

ATL&S Fall 09 Shows

Michael Theodore was appointed the director of the new Center for Media, Arts, and Performance (formerly CAMP). He has brought a fresh perspective to the space along with collaboration with Michelle Ellsworth. As a result of the work involved in such a change, the number of shows this semester was lower than usual.

Gabe's Percussive Toothpicks

Samantha Keehn’s trombone recital featuring multi-media work inspired by William Carlos William was well received. Notable performances were with the Tesla Quartet and blOrk, and the CrumbFest, which the composer George Crumb actually attended. There were also a number of other shows which I was not involved with.  Namely, Mark McCoin's brilliant thesis performance "Gifts from Unknown Islands".  This program featured superb staging, aerial dancing, fascinating projections and performance.  Gabriel Todd was the main performer, emerging from the depths of a primordial beginning, and evolving into a technological being.  At one point, toothpicks were dropped on to his character creating a unique percussive effect.  Michelle Ellsworth performed in a suspended orb surrounded by projections recorded and created live by Mark.  It was even brought back for a two-week film shoot for full documentation.

Filming setup

"We work towards revealing something important, perhaps something about our nature or past that is meaningful, and if were lucky, universal."

~Mark McCoin

ATL&S Spring 09 Shows

This Spring, I was fortunate enough to land a job working for the Center for Arts, Media, and Performance (CAMP) in the ATL&S building at CU Boulder. Here's a quick rundown of the some of the events I got to help set up and run:

I helped run sound for everything from the Italian Theatre's puppet-reality show, to the Conference on World Affairs, and the Multi-Dimensional Dance Performance Thesis 'Toeplitz'. The artistic and erotic interdisciplinary performance 'Sweeping' was a fresh experience -- we only had the performance day to set up... so when we saw the show, it was for the first time (instead of the usual 5th).

The three musical highlights included Michael Theodore's What I Saw at the Apocalypse, Paul Hembree's The Antikythera Mechanism, and the Boulder Laptop Orchestra's (bLOrk) performance:

Janet Feder in front of the Second Life performance