NEWSgrist: *Optometry* - The Music & Art Issue - Vol.3, no.17 (Oct 28, 2002)
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NEWSgrist
where spin is art
http://newsgrist.net
{bi-weekly news digest}
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Vol. 3, no. 17 (Oct. 28, 2002)
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CONTENTS:
- *Splash* DJ Spooky's Optometry
- *Quote/s* Plunderphonics goes online…
- *Url/s* 2 Many DJs, etc., etc.
- *Digital Impact* Phillip Glass, a roundtable discussion
- *Dr. Moog* Performance + party @ Harvestworks
- *Auto Motive* Ben Neill's North American tour
- *Sound & the Fury* Welcome to Soundtoys
- *Jam Packed* IMPAKT FESTIVAL 2002
- *Final Fantasy?* Mirapaul on 3D music
- *Science of Sound* Paul Miller's Musical Snapshot
- *Snooker* Jaron Lanier talks w/ William Duckworth
- *21st-C Synergy* Tim Nye's Foundation 20 21
- *Birds & the Bees* Creative Time's Sonic Garden
- *Classified* CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Net.Noise
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*Splash* http://newsgrist.net
Optometry
Like an angry thunderstorm dissipating into still winds and humid
temperatures, Optometry opens like gangbusters with free jazz and
DJ squabble, and then slowly spirals into more meditative moods.
Manning laptop, kalimba, and turntable, New York DJ-theorist DJ
Spooky stretches and shifts the free jazz ramblings of the Matthew
Shipp quartet like a sea captain navigating a treacherous ocean.
Spooky is as much an improviser as Shipp and crew, adding
atmospheric samples, gentle melodies, and laptop mayhem at will.
Beat poetry by Carl Hancock Rux adds hip-hop edge, and Spooky
still opts for pretentious song titles ("Reactive Switching
Strategies for the Control of Uninhabited Air"), but you
definitely get the feeling that something fresh is happening
here. Optometry sure ain't dance music, and it's too funky for
free jazz purists, but it's just right for DJ Spooky's subliminal
mind music. –Ken Micallef
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000069B12/qid\%3D1035647179/sr\%3D11-1/ref\%3Dsr\%5F11\%5F1/102-5130093-1596158
this splash page is archived at: http://newsgrist.net/Splash\_Optometry.html
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*Quote/s*
Plunderphonics goes online in the zeros. If the Internet is the
new street, than the cutup or bootleg is the sound pouring out
of the boomboxes. Uploadphonix, the uploading of bootlegs and
cutups, is the first musical movement born post peer to peer
sharing technology and in large part, because of it. On the
surface uploadphonix seems to use the net only as a convenience
of distribution, but really it is a movement of creative exchange
and reestablishing the aura that is lost in all pop (by pop I
mean popular; heavy rotation, unavoidable) music. In uploadphonix
bedroom remixers offer up their sacrifices to the web in hope
that the web will return to them creative responses and
inspiration.
– Rick Silva, Uploadphonix, 21C Magazine http://www.21cmagazine.com/upload.html
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*Url/s*
2 Many DJs
http://www.2manydjs.com/
Soul Wax
http://www.soulwax.com/
21C Bootleg Remix by Rick Silva:
http://www.21cmagazine.com/upload.html
more Rick Silva:
http://www.lightmovingintime.com/
Cathedral - a work of music and art for the Web
http://www.monroestreet.com/Cathedral/
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*Digital Impact*
Music and Technology: A Roundtable Discussion
Andante Magazine (Summer 2002)
http://www.andante.com/article/article.cfm?id375
Philip Glass moderates a discussion with four composers
about digital technology's impact on new music:
Philip Glass, Morton Subotnick, Paul Miller,
John Moran, Michael Riesman
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*Dr. Moog*
Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center
25th Anniversary Event
November 7th, 2002
honoring Dr. Robert Moog with buffet and cocktails
followed by performances with John Cale and others.
7pm - 9pm
Buffet and cocktails at Engine 27
(173 Franklin Street NYC)
Multi-channel sound works from the Engine 27 collection:
Stephen Vitiello with Pauline Oliveros , Elliott Sharp, Ron Kuivila
with Ed Tomney, Ellen Christi with William Parker, Chris Mann
9:30pm - 11:30pm
Performances at The Screening Room (54 Varick at Canal)
Performances by John Cale, Mark C and Zeena Parkins,
Marina Rosenfeld, DJ Taketo Shimada
Master of Ceremonies: Judy Nylon and "Sally"
Video and Digital Media by Toni Dove, Cory Arcangel, Zoe Beloff
Press Release:
http://www.harvestworks.org/25.php?submit=5
Reserve a place!!!!!
http://www.harvestworks.org/25invite.php
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*Auto Motive*
Six Degrees Records proudly announces Ben Neill's 18 city tour of
North America in honor of his new CD, Automotive. The new album
features expanded arrangements of music Neill has composed for a
series of groundbreaking Volkswagen television ads which can be
viewed at http://www.greenbeet.com
Joining Ben on stage for the tour will be vocalist from the album,
and lead singer for UK rock band Geneva, Andrew Montgomery. Melody
Maker heralded Andrew's voice as "veering from Jeff Buckley's open-
throat wail through Craig Wedren's falsetto to Al Green's croon. The
show will also feature VJ Bill Jones' live video remixes of the VW ads
triggered by Neill's self-designed mutantrumpet and VJ Eric Calvi.
Ben Neill is an artist whose work spans the worlds of electronic
dance culture, jazz, art music and visual media. His distinctive
style of breakbeat programming and the trippy sounds of his
mutantrumpet are familiar to fans of his earlier album releases on
Astralwerks and Verve Antilles. Rather than separate his artistic
endeavors from the soundtracks he has created for commercials,
Neill has transformed his televised music into a new album,
Automotive.
Come see what this ever-eclectic, creative musician is up to and
enjoy the music and visuals of Automotive in live performance
when Ben Neill and Andrew Montgomery open for Supreme Beings of
Leisure across the country.
remaining tour dates:
. October 31 . Montreal, QC . Cabaret Music Hall
. November 1 . Toronto, ON . Opera House
. November 2 . Detroit . Shelter at St. Andrews
. November 3 . Chicago . House of Blues
. November 6 . New York City . Bowery Ballroom
. November 7 . Cambridge . House of Blues
. November 9 . Philadelphia . 5-Spot
. November 11 . Washington DC . 9:30 Club
. November 13 . New Orleans . Parish@House of Blues
. November 14 . Atlanta . Eleven 50
. November 16 . West Palm Beach . Respectable St. Cafe
. November 17 . Lake Buena Vista, FL . House of Blues
Media contact: Louisa Spier 415.626.6334x15
http://www.benneill.com
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*Sound & the Fury*
Sound Toys
http://www.soundtoys.net/
In recognition of the pioneering experimental works continually
being produced by artists for the internet Soundtoys.net has
been established to provide a space for the exhibition of exciting
new works by a growing community of audio visual artists, while
also providing a forum for discourse around new technologies and
the nature of soundtoys. The site is intended to provide a meeting
point for this growing community of artists and users, and in addition
to the exhibition of audio visual projects, the site contains areas for
artists interviews, links to resources, and texts by contributing
writers where serious issues around interactive arts, audio visual
synthesis, generative art, and a history of interactivity are discussed.
If you have a festival or media event and want to showcase and
exhibit soundtoys get in touch: http://www.soundtoys.net/a/festivals.html
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*Jam Packed*
IMPAKT FESTIVAL 2002
29 Oct. - 3 Nov.
http://www.impakt.nl/
Former Court Building - Hamburgerstraat 28
Cinema 't Hoogt and Concert Hall De Vloer
Utrecht, The Netherlands
From 29 October - 3 November the Impakt festival will be
experiencing its 13th edition. The interdisciplinary character
will be further emphasized at the coming festival. Various nights
during the festival will present programs which
combine new media, visual arts, music, film and video.
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*Final Fantasy?*
Ever-Changing Modern Music, Controlled by a Cursor
By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL
NYTimes ARTS ONLINE October 14, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/14/arts/design/14ARTS.html
Giovanni Gabrieli was among the first to compose music for a specific
space. The works he wrote for St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice, where he
became an organist in 1585, often incorporated call-and-response
passages that made dramatic use of the balconies arrayed around the
mammoth church. Four centuries later the English composer Sam Hayden
and a team of artistic collaborators have boldly created music for a
new kind of space: a Web site on the Internet. "3D Music," an
interactive orchestral work written specifically for the vast expanse
of cyberspace, makes its debut today at http://www.braunarts.com/3dmusic
As in Gabrieli's works, "3D Music" capitalizes on the characteristics
of its locale. Dozens of sound files are embedded in a series of
three-dimensional environments that are manipulated like computer
games. What you hear is determined by where you are and what you do
within the virtual space. Travel from the center of a chamber to a
distant edge and listen as braying strings yield to angular piano
chords. Topple a brown rectangle and trigger a cackle of brass.
By combining the feel of a computer game with a serious contemporary
composition, "3D Music" resembles a happy collision between "Fantasia,"
the Walt Disney film that popularized the classics, and the game Final
Fantasy. There are no dancing "Fantasia" elephants in "3D Music," but
its surreal virtual landscapes, by the digital artist Eduardo Carrillo,
soften the impact of Mr. Hayden's score, which is crowded with spiky
dissonances and clashing timbres.
"3D Music" was conceived by Gabi and Terry Braun, who run an arts-
oriented multimedia-development company in London. They produced
"3D Music" with the London Sinfonietta, the contemporary-music
ensemble, which commissioned Mr. Hayden and recorded his score for
the site. The project was supported by a grant from the Arts Council
of England.
Gillian Moore, the Sinfonietta's artistic director, said Mr. Hayden's
score was intended to take full advantage of the Internet's interactive
capabilities, just as the space of St. Mark's had dictated to Gabrieli
that singers and brass instruments should be deployed around the
cathedral. "If you are creating work on the Internet," she said, "it's
pointless to do a one-dimensional version of what you might hear in a
concert hall. We're hoping we've continued the tradition of developing
music that is specific to its venue."
"3D Music" also extends to the Internet several important concepts in
contemporary composition. For instance, it experiments with
spatialized sounds, so that a listener hears different music in
different locations. Surrendering control of the work's structure to
individual online visitors challenges the notion of a classical
composition as a fixed entity. Ms. Moore said that letting audience
members determine "how a piece of music sounds to a large degree,
not to a cosmetic degree is clearly something very new and radical."
Classical musicians, especially those in the avant-garde, frequently
assert that the Internet will help them reach new audiences. This
usually means using the Net as a substitute for the record store or
the radio. Performers, from solo pianists to major orchestras, without
recording contracts can sell their music online. Meanwhile obscure
recordings can be freely accessed from new Web sites like http://www.artofthestates.org and http://www.newmusicjukebox.org
Although these initiatives may fulfill the aural desires of existing
classical-music fans, the "3D Music" project has the potential to
cultivate new audiences by speaking to online listeners in a language
with which they are familiar: computer games. Peter Gabriel and
several other pop musicians tried similar tactics in the 1990's with
CD-ROM's that had at best modest commercial success.
To experience all of "3D Music," one must solve two game-like puzzles.
The work has seven sections: an introduction, five movements and a
coda. Each has its own virtual environment, and five of the seven
spaces can be easily entered. But one of the movements and the coda
cannot be explored until visitors complete certain tasks.
"We do like the idea of having hidden rooms as a reward for the
perseverance of your curiosity," Gabi Braun said. So, no, I will
not spoil the fun by revealing the solutions here.
This description may make it seem as if one must master the
twitchy-fingered controls for a fast-paced game like Quake before
one can navigate through "3D Music," but fear not. The keyboard
commands are quite simple. Nor is there any violence in this
abstract universe, which in a way puts "3D Music" a step ahead
of, say, "Tosca.".
Mr. Carrillo, the digital artist responsible for the work's vivid
hues and rich textures, said he was trying to demonstrate that the
visual language of gaming was "not just shootings and racing cars."
If anything, it is the music of "3D Music" that will provide the
largest challenge to its visitors, unless they are already fond of
such thorny contemporary composers as Gyorgy Ligeti, Pierre Boulez
and Louis Andriessen, one of the 33-year-old Mr. Hayden's mentors.
Mr. Hayden said his compositions tended to be abstract, nonlinear works
that were built around large blocks of sound. He sometimes allows
conductors or performers to decide on the order in which they are
played. So "it wasn't such a strange notion to compose a work
which consists of lots and lots of small pieces of music which
have the potential for overlapping in various combinations," he
said. "That was fairly appropriate for how I think about music."
More unusual for him, Mr. Hayden said, was working with collaborators.
During the first half of 2002 he met weekly with Mr. Carrillo and Ms.
Braun to brainstorm and experiment. For instance, in certain places,
they decided to install differently mixed versions of the same musical
passage. A listener arriving at a squiggly shape from the left might
hear a flute; if the same listener later approached the same shape
from the right, a double bass might dominate.
"3D Music" will remain freely available online for at least six months,
then it will be sold as a CD-ROM. If the sound files for "3D Music"
were played continuously, Mr. Hayden estimated, the piece would last
15 to 20 minutes. Depending on one's computer speed, it can take much
longer.
I asked my septuagenarian father, who has attended the Cleveland
Orchestra's weekly concerts for more than 40 years, to take "3D
Music" for a spin. After 45 minutes, he said, "There are so many
possibilities that you don't know what to do first." Or last.
"3D Music" is a cyber-symphony that remains unfinished until you are
ready to put down the baton.
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*Science of Sound*
A Snapshot of Music Making on the Internet
by Ken Jordan and Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid
NewMusicBox Issue 42, Vol.4, no.6 (Oct 2002)
[Excerpt]
http://www.newmusicbox.org/page.nmbx?idBtp00
Paul D. Miller's Preamble:
In an era of intensely networked systems, when you create, it's not
just how you create, but the context of the activity that makes the
product. Operating systems, editing environments, graphical user
interfaces
NEWSgrist: *Optometry* - The Music & Art Issue - Vol.3, no.17 (Oct 28, 2002)
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Type: discussion