Five Movements for Five Sampled Sounds in Five Loud Speakers from Unearthed Music on Vimeo.
This video was shot during a performance of Fives at the University of Minnesota last December. The sound quality is poor, but I think it illustrates how I was able to sort of “pour” my looped granular experiments into each of the five channels using the iPod Touch as a controller. For more about this project visit my portfolio site at www.johnkeston.com.
Andrea Streudel just posted some really nice video documentation of the People on Shelves exhibit that was performed on December 9, 2009 at the West Bank Social Center, using music I created during the show. From the original post, “The world premiere of maw.shelves, a software for dynamic 3-dimensional projection. We overlaid another projector to place our real-time, full-body silhouettes on the “shelves”. Music was performed live by Ostraka.” Checkout Minneapolis Art on Wheels for more details.
Last Tuesday I performed a sound art installation titled, Fives, at the University of Minnesota. The subtitle of the work is, Five Movements for Five Sampled Sounds in Five Loud Speakers. To produce the sound for the work I used the wavetable glitch machine that I have discussed in a number of recent entries, controlled over a wireless network with an iPod Touch running TouchOSC. The sound objects generated were amplified through five distinct loud speakers arranged on pedestals at about chest height in a pentagonal configuration.
I have more detailed documentation about the project on my portfolio site along with a few photographs taken during the performance, and a 15:37 audio study of the piece in stereo, simulating the five channels necessary to perform the work. Check it out at the link below.
I’ve just rendered my full eighty-six minute Ostraka set from last night’s event at the West Bank Social Center. So, while waiting for the delightful documentation that Andrea Streudel is sure to produce, here’s a short segment of audio from the set.
I used Ableton Live to produce in real-time and my wavetable glitch machine Max patch to make most of the noises, which I routed into Live using Soundflower.
The projection work of the evening was top notch. An entire wall of the building across from the WBSC was covered with animated silhouettes of attendees on simulated three dimensional “shelves”.
Here’s the excerpt. I’m also including a link to the entire eighty-six minute set that I uploaded to soundcloud.com for all the brave people who’d like to hear the full set.
Excerpt from Music for People on Shelves
I will be presenting and performing at the Minneapolis Ableton Live Users Group on December 8, 2009, 7:00pm at the Nomad in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In my presentation I’ll be showing what I do with custom built applications and Ableton Live, including the GMS and my new Wavetable Glitch Machine. Currently I interface my custom built applications with Live, using MIDI via the IAC drivers in Mac OS X, and Soundflower for audio. Soon I’ll be converting my audio based Max patches over to Max for Live, so I can use them in Live directly.
Also appearing is Ali Momeni who’ll be showing some of his Max for Live patches, and JP Hungelmann who also organizes the event. Last time the group met it was held at IPR and there was an excellent turn out. The speakers were terrific and they gave away Ableton demo discs and t-shirts at the end of the event. If you use Live, have any interest in it, or electronic music in general, I highly recommend attending.