Vocalise Sintetica at Echofluxx 14, Prague

On May 7, 2014 I performed Vocalise Sintetica at the Echofluxx Festival in Prague. The piece is made up of four movements: I. Machines (00:00), II. Liquid (18:43), III. Vocalise (28:55), and, IV. Sintetica (38:41). Each movement is a playlist of five audiovisual objects that are instantly available to be projected and amplified while being granulated in real-time by a performer using a multitouch interface. The performer may loop their gestures applied to the audiovisual objects in order to bring in additional synthesized sound layers that contrast or mimic the audiovisual objects. My performance at Echofluxx was made possible by a grant from the American Composers Forum with funds provided by the Jerome Foundation.
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Audiovisual Granular Synthesis of Water Objects

This is a screen capture from a Max project I developed that does interactive, synchronized, granular synthesis of corresponding sound and video that’s tentatively titled AVGM for Audiovisual Grain Machine. I have used the software during aperformance at the Echofluxx festival in Prague and at the Katherine E. Nash gallery for the opening of The Audible Edge exhibition during Northern Spark 2014.

Audiovisual Grain Machine Demo

Here’s a quick demo of the software I am designing to do audiovisual granular synthesis that I’ll be presenting at Moogfest and performing with at Echofluxx. It allows a performer to apply granular synthesis to sound and corresponding video using a touch interface such as MIRA (shown). The audio and video are synchronized in parallel. The software also has the capability to capture and repeat gestures so that the performer can accompany the projections with multiple layers and arrange compositions in a performance setting. This demo granulates the voice and image of Lister Rossel. In addition I use analogue synthesizers to contrast the digital manipulations.

This work alludes to the speech-to-song illusion discovered by Diana Deutsch. It also evokes an “event fusion” as vocalizations are repeated much faster than humanly possible until they enter the audio range. Adding the corresponding visuals makes it appear uncanny as video and sound are looped in millisecond intervals.

Video of Voice Lessons Touch Screen Installation

Voice Lessons is an electronic, audio device that interrogates the popular myth that every musical instrument imitates the human voice. Touching the screen allows the participant to manipulate the visuals and vocalizations of the “voice teacher” as he recites vocal warm up exercises.

The piece resides in the space between a musical instrument and voice lesson. Move the touch point left, right, up, and down to explore the visual and auditory possibilities. Rapid high pitched loops occur while touching near the top of the screen while lower pitched longer loops are heard near the bottom.

The actor, also named John Keston, is my retired father who became a voice teacher after a long career on stage in plays, operas, and musicals with the Royal Shakespeare Company in our native country England and abroad.

Voice Lessons
32” interactive touch screen installation
By John Keston 2011
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