ULTRASOUND / 2004 / 25 / 26 / 27 November /

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ULTRASOUND / 2004 / 25 / 26 / 27 November /
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Ultrasound is a three day international festival
exploring experimental sound, electronic music
and the creative use of new and emerging
technologies. Ultrasound 2004 presents a diverse
programme of live performances, workshop,
installation, presentations and DJ night.

The live sets present UK and international creators
of contemporary electronic music who use experimental
programming techniques to create a range of musical
performances embracing fractured, impossible rhythms
and delicate organic sounds.

+ Please note - all events are FREE.

www.ultrasound.ws
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WORKSHOP / PURE DATA / WED 24 - FRI 26 /
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Workshop Leaders: Andy Gracie, Enrike Hurtado,
Thor Magnusson and Aymeric Mansoux.

BOOKING IS ESSENTIAL!

A hands on workshop designed for all skill levels;
anyone can attend, but it will be of special
interest to artists, new media practitioners, video
artists, musicians, graphic, multimedia, and
3D designers.

The workshop explores open source coding
environments and tools, new instruments, concepts,
and play for multimedia. Introducing Pure Data,
Python, SuperCollider, Processing, and Max/MSP.

After a short introduction to these environments,
we explore how they can communicate with each other
via a new protocol called OSC [Open Sound Control].
We present the fundamentals of device control,
using the Teleo system within Max/MSP.

A Digital Research Unit event, part of the Creative
Labs series of workshops. Supported by Yorkshire
Forward as part of the Centre of Excellence in Digital
Design at the University of Huddersfield.

To book please contact Clare Danek on:
0870 990 5007
or email:
[email protected]

http://gem.iem.at
http://crca.ucsd.edu/~msp/software.html
http://processing.org
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ALKU DJs [ES] / THU 25 / 7.30pm - Late /
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Anna Ramos and Roc Jimenez de Cisneros have been
active in the area of computer music and digital
arts since 1997, both creating music and
installations and publishing other artists
material on their home label, Alku. These include:
Jliat, Edwin van der Heide, Hecker, Charlie
Ferrari, Wobbly, Yasunao Tone, Team Doyobi,
Powerbooks for Peace and Pita.

Alku return this year with an eclectic DJ set,
playing classic computer music, early
electroacoustics, whale songs, bluegrass, black
metal and everything in between.

http://personal.ilimit.es/principio
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SHOWCASE / FRI 26 / 10am - 4.30pm /
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A Digital Research Unit event featuring
presentations, demonstrations and discussions
relating to the application of new technologies to
creative practice.

Chaired by Drew Hemment, Director, Futuresonic.

Steve Symons | Aura
A sonic multi-user augmented reality that allows
users to create a personal audio landscape through
their actions within a defined space, and in doing
so, they also alter the soundscape for other users.

Alex McLean | TOPLAP
The application of live programming to composition
and performance. TOPLAP advocates treating
algorithms as live artistic material, allowing them
to be written and manipulated on the fly.

Andrew Wilson | Anywhereblogs
A locative media project which allows anyone with
a mobile phone to join in location based conversations
with others.

Tuomo Tammenpaa | Creative R&D
Computer vision and video tracking within a Max/MSP
environment. Combined with physical computing
prototypes these experiments form a basic set of
participatory tools for installation based interactive
artwork.
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FARMERSMANUAL [AT] / FRI 26 / 7.30pm - Late /
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Farmersmanual is a pan-European, multisensory
disturbance conglomerate creating new instruments
for improvisation, networked performances and
remote collaboration, developing ways of recording
that encourage openness and reinterpretation.

Farmersmanual have created a series of performances
and installations since 1996, continuously
expanding their performance and publishing practice
from music concerts to interdisciplinary cultural,
aesthetic and political experiments, which move
away from static representations of art and culture,
towards environments where the public becomes an
essential part of the work. Their latest experiments
focus on integrating virtual and physical space to
create synaesthetical objects, presenting an
interconnected, holistic view of the world by
layering sensual experiences.

Extracting a shadow from the skeleton of network
flow. A layer of technological reality usually
hidden becomes accessible through mediation
into sound and visual flicker. Erratically shifting
from chittering machines into the human realm. Replay
in different timescales. Different times. Different
speeds. Useless information ­ still unpredictable.

During Ultrasound, Farmersmanual will produce a
networked concert between Huddersfield and elsewhere.

http://www.farmersmanual.co.at
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KLIPP AV [UK/SE] / FRI 26 / 7.30pm - Late /
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Presented in accordance with the TOPLAP manifesto,
so we can see [as well as hear] beat cutting and
body rocking algorithms develop.

Fredrik Olofsson works with visual and audio art,
programming, secret intelligence agents, and cafes.
Fredrik is the more important and generally
better turned out half of klipp av. Nick Collins
is secretly a hard working music researcher who
develops new technologies for laptop performance.
Nick is the more important and generally better
turned out half of klipp av.

Live audiovisual cutting is the linking of
interactive generative beats with video and
computer graphics. A klipp av performance is
extremely live ­ all algorithmic composition runs
in realtime under a host of user controls,
including the difficult but powerful method of
live coding, that is, programming SuperCollider on
the fly.

The audience witness the use of live video,
scratched and cut up in sync with the audio cutters
running in the music. Stutters in sound translate
into stutters in video, while the performers
themselves dance frantically for the cameras; the
audience is involved through video and audio capture.
More subtle and abstract mappings are used,
aside from live video, some fantastic demonstrations
of the techniques come with the control of
generative 3D graphics.

http://www.klippav.org
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MILEECE [UK] / FRI 26 / 7.30pm - Late /
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Mileece was born in 1978 in London, England. She
has a degree in Sonic Art where she specialised
in generative computer programming languages.

Her first album Formations [Lo-Recordings] is
comprised of a series of compositions, wholly or
partly derived from programs she wrote in
SuperCollider.

The compositions themselves were inspired by
formations in nature: the rotating progression
of sparse then condensed spouts of growth in
plants, the changing hues and intensities of light,
the sudden changing gusts to wisps of the wind,
the unfathomably intricate structures of
snowflakes, the random patterns of raindrops as
they fall to ground.

Mileece believes that the computer can be
transformed from an inanimate object to something
capable of participating in the creation of music
in a way which is interactive with the composer
as well as the audience.

In her programs, the computer assumes the role
of performer within a spectrum from the spontaneous
to the directed [even at times co-composer],
navigating through restricted chance operations
to generate its uncannily human sounding formations
and sundry levels of listening.

http://www.mileece.net
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STEPHAN MATHIEU [DE] / SAT 27 / 7.30pm - Late /
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Stephan Mathieu is a digital artist who lives in
Saarbrucken, Germany. He spent a good part of
the 90s as an improvising drummer in Berlin but
now works mainly in the field of digital music.

Stephan¹s music [either released under his own
name or as Full Swing] is infused with a warmth
and glow usually associated with analogue sound
production. Using extracts of melodies and texture
from various sources, he weaves deep, beautiful
evolving soundscapes bathed in swathes of static
and hiss.

He also creates sound installations, graphic
design and teaches digital arts and conceptual
practice at the University for Arts and Design,
Saarbrucken and works as a guest lecturer at the
Bauhaus University, Weimar and the Merz-Akademie
in Stuttgart, Germany.

Stephan¹s music has been released on Fallt,
Ritornell, Korm Plastics, EN/OF, Lucky Kitchen,
Brombron, Hapna and Orthlorng Musork.

|— – | — | - -| ||

http://www.bitsteam.de
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MARK FELL [UK] / SAT 27 / 7.30pm - Late /
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Topology is a branch of mathematics concerning
possible spaces and objects: curves, surfaces,
knots, manifolds, phase spaces, symmetrical
groups, etc. The work explores spatial and temporal
deformations, twistings, rotations, reflections
and stretchings. Here spaces and objects are not
self-evident and singular, but multiple, irregular,
anomalous.

The work began as a documentation of recent
installations ­ some in public spaces, some gallery
works, some large works, some small. Inspired by
the problems brought up by this activity, instead
of using recordings to document them, ten processes
came about, each of which relates to the spaces
and works in a different way; a recording, or system
used to run the work, a pattern, a method or
technique, a way of working, a name, or a reference
point outside the work.

Mark Fell was born and educated in Sheffield. His
works, usually interactive, time based or
generative, draw upon an interest in contemporary
philosophy, computer science, and being human.

With collaborator Mat Steel he works as snd,
releasing on Mille Plateaux [Frankfurt], with
other projects on OR [London], Line [New York],
and Fals.ch [Vienna]. Mark¹s major works have been
show at Hong Kong National Film archive,
ISEA [Paris], Sonar [Barcelona], Creativity
Cognition Studios [Sydney], Siggraph [LA], Mutek
[Montreal] and others.

http://www.markfell.com
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TABLEX [UK/FR] / SAT 27 / 7.30pm - Late /
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TOPLAP [Temporary Organisation for the Promotion
of Live Algorithm Programming], was set up to
explore the application of live programming to
composition and performance. TOPLAP advocates
treating algorithms as live artistic material,
allowing them to be written and manipulated while
they create music or video, perhaps in front of
an audience.

Tablex is a collaboration between Alex Garacotche
of Voodoo Muzak and Alex McLean of slub. Garacotche
plays processed drums, his software chopping up
and restructuring his sound into fractured,
impossible rhythms. McLean writes Perl software
live according to the TOPLAP manifesto, working
with his code as musical material, generating
wigged-out skiffle.

Two unusual directions towards the simple end of
making very live, improvised computer music.

http://toplap.org
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SI-CUT.DB [UK] / SAT 27 / 7.30PM - LATE /
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Hailing from Brentford, West London, Douglas
Benford has been releasing his digital music under
the alias SI-CUT.DB since 1991. As well as the
SI-CUT.DB moniker, with seven albums released
under this guise, Benford has also recorded as
Radial Blend, Pantunes Music, Phoenix Jig and
Media Form.

Benford has collaborated with Scanner,
Rechenzentrum, Janek Schaefer, Iris Garrelfs,
Stephan Mathieu, Benge [currently as Tennis],
and Tonne. Ranging from microsound and electronica
to dub, Benford has released music on Fallt, Bip
Hop, Back Ground, Highpoint Lowlife and 12K.

Benford's current approach to his SI-CUT.DB work
tends, with perfomances and recordings, to use a
variety of softwares [generative and file morphing
is a trademark] and sound sample source techniques
from improvised acoustic recordings and lo-fi
childrens keyboards, which are then edited, effected,
and sequenced. The latest SI-CUT.DB album entitled
Offices At Night is recently released on the Fallt
label, with remixes up-coming from Mitchell
Akiyama, Akira Rabelais, Hrvatski and others.

He has played Ars Electronica, Tate Modern, Nokialab,
Transmediale, Sintesi and New Forms festivals,
and has been a co-curator of Sprawl electronic
music events and label for over eight years, as
well as founding the Suburb Of Hell and Pantunes
labels.

http://home.earthlink.net/~efrans/benford
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ULTRASOUND / INSTALLATION / rand()%lab /
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by Tom Betts and Joe Gilmore.

rand()% is commissioned by Media Centre Network.

rand()%lab is a group exhibition created by Tom
Betts and Joe Gilmore. rand()% is an automated
internet radio station broadcasting real-time
generative music by sound artists and programmers.
rand()%lab features installations by Joe Gilmore,
Tom Betts and Alku, and a selection of
audiovisual works by Dextro, Lia, Miguel Carvalhais,
Steinbruchel, Brusa, Renox, Thor Magnusson, Runar
Magnusson and Birta Thrastardottir.

http://www.r4nd.org/lab
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VENUE /
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The Media Centre
07 Northumberland St
Huddersfield
HD1 1RL
England
+44 [0]870 990 5007
[email protected]
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