learning the ropes

Aaron Siegel and Chris Peck and were guest lecturers in Audio Art this afternoon. Both compose works for untrained performers. This is one of the reasons I came to study at ITP. I want to design systems to enable untrained performers to collaborate musically.

Aaron’s piece “Work in Manufacturing” was a percussive piece with fixed rules, but varying outcomes regulated by each performer’s breathing. The rules of the piece made me feel disoriented at times because I had to keep a number of things in mind: how times I had inhaled or exhaled since beginning my current “station,” how many “stations” I had completed, and the number I had chosen as my “jump” number for selecting subsequent stations.

The overall sound of the piece was intriguing, but I prefer tonal music.

Chris’ piece “Worried Long” was a “choral” piece. I found it easier to appreciate the quality of the sound in this piece because it was richer and sustained. It sounded majestic as we sang it. I was very surprised at how harmonic it sounded — even though none of us knew the intervals we were supposed to sing. Further, only about half the class was musically trained. I don’t know how many of us could say that we know how to sing, but I really enjoyed the sound we created and would definitely consider it music. The dynamics were incredible and it was invigorating to belt out the slowed down lyrics with the rest of the class as we reached the climax of the piece.

I’ve been thinking about the discussion Amit and I had about believability. Both of the pieces seemed to have that quality. I knew nothing of the two composers beyond their remarks prior to performing the pieces, but it seemed that each piece matched the personality of its composer. Additionally, it was believable that we were creating the music together. Neither piece asked us to make an “impossible” committments in performing them. Collectively, we had all of the skills necessary to render the works. There was no need to think about which performers would be capable of properly interpreting their parts.

I’m working with Shinyoung on a project called “Dust” for Wearables.

“Dust” is a discrete, wearable character who offers spoken affirmation and support in response to “deflated” gestures.

Initially we tried sensing a sigh in order to trigger Dust’s affirmations. We planned to mount a stretch sensor inside a waist-belt and sense the expansion and contraction of the wearer’s diaphragm. Preliminary experiments with the stretch sensor did not yield favorable results. The stretch sensor seems to be optimized for applications involving greater ranges of motion.

We decided to try a different approach. It may be possible to use pleated material with conductive thread or fabric between the pleats to sense the sigh. In the pictures below, I am pleating a section of fabric to create a prototype of the gesture sensing mechanism.

Shlomit and I are proposing a final project around visualizing the propagation of sound and exploring the physicality of sound.

One of our ideas is an installation which captures the evolution of sound in a space. Colored lights suspended from the ceiling of the space react to sounds created in the space. We draw our inspiration from the ephemeral quality of warm breath in cold winter air. As you exhale, a gentle fog issues from your lips into the surrounding air.

Other ideas surrounding this first proposal are issues of memory and the incarnational power of words. The words we speak and the words we hear are not mere acoustical vibrations. They carry meaning. What if we could see these vibrations as they occured? What if we could see lingering traces of these vibrations?

Our second idea is an installation where the viewer walks through a field of flexible reeds. As the reeds are pushed aside, pleasant sounds are created in the space.

I spoke with Peter today about the difficulty I was having with the with fftin~ and fftout~ objects in MAX. He suggested I try the fffb~ object instead, which he used in the past to create a real-time frequency analyzer. I’ll give it a try this weekend.

I’m not sure how to react to this reading. I don’t think I’ve listened to minimal music, yet. Perhaps I should try to find some. Composers mentioned in the reading were La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass. Perhaps the Avery Fischer Media Collection at Bobst has recordings. It would be even more ideal if there was a place online to listen — and in fact there is. We have access to The Anthology of Recorded Music

I’ll have more to say after I hear some.