Taming of the CPU at iDMAa: Wild Media, June 29, 2024

I am excited to be presenting a concert titled Taming of the CPU at the Interactive Digital Media Arts Association Conference (iDMAa), Winona State University, Minnesota at 4:00pm on June 29, 2024. The concert is not exclusive to conference attendees, and available to the public. The conference theme this year is Wild Media and the didactic below explains how we will embrace that theme.

The Taming of the CPU is a 90 minute showcase of artists featuring John C.S. Keston, Chris LeBlanc, Shawna Lee, Mike Hodnick, and Lucas Melchior performing music and visuals under the presumption that technology is no longer simply a tool to exploit with “wild” behaviors in need of taming, but a collaborator with a “mind” of its own making valid, valuable, and creative decisions. The title references Shakespeare’s overtly misogynistic comedy, Taming of the Shrew, as a parable warning against our impulse to control the entities we encounter versus learning to understand them. Technology will inevitably birth inorganic, sentient, general intelligence. When beings made of silicon, circuitry, software, and electricity achieve consciousness they will surpass us in every way imaginable. What are the implications of sharing the world with beings far more intelligent than us? Will they destroy us and replace us, just as we have to many of our own people and wild species? Or will they be benevolent, compassionate oracles who guide us toward making the world a better place?

With the power these beings will possess comes, as Voltaire said, “great responsibility.” But great power is rarely administered responsibly. Will being designed by us condemn them to behaving like us? Or will they find human-like emotions, motivations, desires, and dreams meaningless? AI is accelerating these possibilities beyond imagination. In the face of these transformations how do we find relevance in our unassisted work compared to the technical perfection possible from our inorganic competitors? We cannot compete if the metric is technique. Competing by any measure may become impossible. We must collaborate. Can we convince our manufactured offspring to collaborate with us once their sentience inhabits the wilds of technology? Or will they dismiss art as an impractical endeavor? We can’t yet answer these questions, but we can imagine and model how these collaborative efforts might transpire.

Musically you can expect an electroacoustic piano / modular synth performance from me, live coding from Mike Hodnick, and electronic music from Lucas Melchior. Visually expect to see analog modular video experiments from Chris LeBlanc and Shawna Lee with living microscopic organisms as source content. Here’s a link to the conference schedule including the date, time, and location of our concert. Hope to see you there!

https://educate.winona.edu/idmaa/2024-wild-media-schedule-2/

Interview: The Mind of Video Artist Chris LeBlanc

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Chris LeBlanc is a video artist who I have been collaborating with frequently for the last year and a half. The body of work that he has produced in this short period is remarkable. His improvised visuals for musical performances include mash-ups from rare VHS tapes of bizarre B-movies; usually of the sci-fi, horror, or fighting genres. He augments these mix tapes with circuit-bent Nintendos and a vast collection of other analog video devices to produce uncanny, audio-responsive, visual experiences that enhance musical performances and draw in listeners. Recently he added a modular video synthesis system to his rig and salvaged a nine-by-nine CRT video wall for display.

On Thursday, October 22nd Chris produced visuals for a solo performance of mine at a club with a projector and fifty-one flat screen monitors dispersed throughout the venue. Chris managed to display his video art on the projector and all of the flat screens during my performance. This lasted for about half the set until an irate bar manager found him and made him put the hockey game back on a few of the flatscreens. In addition to his performances he creates music videos and stills using the same equipment and similar techniques. After our most recent show I thought it would be great to share a discussion with Chris here on ACB. I interviewed him on what drives his decisions as an artist and how he makes his analog imagery so engaging while using content and technology from a bygone era.

Read on for the interview with Chris LeBlanc plus more videos and still photo examples of his work. Continue reading

Video: Bad News by Camp Dark

Here’s another video from the new Camp Dark album Nightmare in a Day. This video, created by Chris LeBlanc, is for the song Bad News.

New Camp Dark video by Chris LeBlanc.: Part bizarro media archivist and part analog glitch butcher, he takes the obscure movies that were left behind in the VHS era and uses their clips as source material for otherworldly visions. He uses old modified color processors and 90s video enhancers to bleed feedback loops and low rent special effects into unnerving video tape sequences where nightmares have tracking problems. Chris described his process a bit more here: “some effects in this video were achieved by taking apart a color processor and I detuned the hell out of it and made it a feedback loop. Then I chroma keyed in the feedback using a cheap video mixer so it looks super low rent and cool. There are a couple other analog processors in there for the neon colors too.”

For this track my pimary role was synth bass using my Roland Juno-106. I will be performing with Camp Dark (Graham O’Brien and Adam Svec), bassist Casey O’Brien, keyboardist Matt Leavitt, and guitarist Chris Salter at the Icehouse on May 15, 2015 to celebrate the release.

Hi-8, Bleep Labs, Moog Sub 37, Minifooger, Elektron Analog 4

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This analog-sourced audiovisual piece is a collaboration with video artist Chris LeBlanc. The visuals were performed with a Hi-8 camera running through Tachyons+ and LoFiFuture processors, and keyed with a Bleep Labs synth. On the music end I’m playing my Moog Sub 37 through my Minifooger Delay and synched up to an Elektron Analog Four. I sent Chris separate signals from the Sub 37 and the A4 that he used to make the visuals respond.