Fabric Machine Plays Fabric Like a Tape

There is something fascinating about playing the sounds of seemingly unplayable things. We have seen how in Harvest by Olle Cornéer and Martin Lübcke the soil gets played like a record, with a huge needle. In Fabric Machine we can listen to the sound of fabric, being played like a tape. 

The machine, created by Kathrin Stumreich in Vienna, plays multiple loops of fabric. Light sensors are used to generate the sounds and the quality and density of the cloth determine the pitch and the rhythm of the sound. So for example, the number of threads interrupting the light per second determine the pitch of the sound. 

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Urban Devas

On your work from home to work you are suddenly surprised by a “roving chorus of 10 women dressed in high visibility clothing and carrying megaphones”, singing strange songs and moving around the unsuspecting passers-by. 

That is what happens when you encounter Urban Devas, a project by New Zealand’s sonic artist Phil Dadson in collaboration with choreographer Carol Brown. This guerilla performance was created for Living Room 2010 - “A Week of Goodness”, in Auckland. I would love to be surprised by their voices. 

BOT makes Music with Machines

Tonight I visited my friend Tomas Postema, and he showed me this video of BOT, an amazing new act he is part of. They play together with crazy noise making machines engineered by Geert Jonkers, and together with third band member Job van Gorkum this results in an energetic musical experience. 

If you want to see BOT play live, you will have to come to one of the theater festivals in the Netherlands this summer. They do not have their own website yet, but for all our Dutch readers who want to stay up to date, you can become a fan on Facebook.

Nord Rute

If you happen to be in London, visiting Nord Rute must be a great way to spend your weekend. Nord Rute is an ambisonic (surround sound) narrative based on poems by Nils Aslak Valkaeapää, a renowned Sámi artist. His poem No. 272 will be interpreted by Plaid, Sámi poet Synnøve Persen and field recordist Ross Adams. 

I would love to experience the Sámi culture, the reindeer migration and the freezing cold of the most nordic part of Europe, in sound. To complete the experience there will be no heating in the venue (the Trinity Buoy Wharf), the audience will be given blindfolds and sit or lie down on reindeer pelts. So bring you sleeping bag and immerse yourself!

Via Joachim Baan

Harvest

Wouldn't it be wonderful to cruise the beautiful Swedish landscape, stop for a while to stretch your legs and then hear the screeching sound of Harvest, combined with the surreal image of a well dressed church choir playing the soil like it's a record.

Harvest is a performance "for terrafon, traditional music ensemble and cropland", created by the people behind Bacterial Orchestra, Olle Cornéer and Martin Lübcke. Only this time there are no electronics involved, only old iron, the soil of Uppland and human power. We listen to what the earth has to say.

Update on Saturday, November 7, 2009 at 12:31 by admin

Olle Cornéer sent me an email to tell me there actually are electronics involved. Namely a loudspeaker and amplifier in the cone. The signal is even running through a computer for some eq as well as recording the direct signal. Thank you Olle!

WeAreWaves: move your body

While we're having a look at ways of using the human body to control music, this is a project that should not be missed: WeAreWaves, created by Sebastián Gonzalez and Javier Chávarri, involves the human body in creating sound. The performer isn't influencing existing music. Rather, he is creating waveforms, using his body to influence the timbre of the sound.

The silhouette of the body is registered by a camera and this shape becomes the actual wave form. By moving around you change the wave form and the timbre of the sound. An interesting experiment. In this interactive installation we are all waves. 

Are you curious what you sound like? You can find out at the Sonar festival in Barcelona this week, where the WeAreWaves installation can be experienced.

Oscillare: Movement controls the sound

Creating an interesting experience using sensors to control image and sound in a performance isn’t the easiest thing to do. You don’t want it to look like Mickey Mouse, and you still want the interaction between the performer and the sound/visuals to be clearly visible.

Oscillare, a project by a group called Electronic Performers is an interesting attempt to use a dancers’ movement to control sound and visuals without becoming too cheesy. The movements are analysed using accelerometers and gyroscopes, and Max/MSP/Jitter software is used to process the incoming data. The sounds we hear come from an Access Virus TI synthesizer. 

You can see this interactive multimedia performance at the Sonar festival, which starts today.

The Vienna vegetable orchestra

This is not the latest video on the net, I know, but still a fun one to watch: the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra performs live on their home-made carrot flutes, cabbage drums and pumpkin basses.

It’s surprising the kind of sounds you can get from some fresh vegetables. I don’t think you can use those instruments for more than a day. And what happens with them after the performance, soup maybe?

The orchestra was formed in 1998, yet it still performs almost every month. For the tour schedule look at their website gemueseorchester.org.

Daedelus and his Monome

Yesterday I saw Daedelus perform on the Monome at de Verdieping. It gave rise to the question: What is the perfect performance instrument for electronic musicians? Does such an instrument exist at all? What does the audience want to see?

First of all, any device is better than a performer sitting behind his laptop with a mouse an nothing else. We all know he’s not checking his email but the fact that he could be is enough to conclude this is not a very pleasing way of addressing an audience, right?

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Particle by Kanta Horio

On the subject of the physical value of sound, this is another interesting example. Kanta Horio created Particle, an instrument containing nine electromagnets and broken paper-clips. By controlling the current for each magnet separately the instrument creates interesting patterns.

What I particularly like about Particle is how it physically shows you how the somewhat abstract sounds are created. This makes it more interesting to watch than similar sounds being produced and processed by a computer. The performance lacks complexity though. By adding various other layers of sound a more interesting composition could be created, with sounds from Particle as an ongoing supporting element, rustling in the background.