Today’s synthesizer sound is contained within the video above and includes the acoustic sound of rice grains bouncing on a speaker cone. The tone was generated by the cycle~ object in MaxMSP and set to a frequency of somewhere around 156 Hertz.
I just came across this five minute video shot by Ghostband artist Jon Davis on his mobile phone of my duet project Ostracon performing at the Kitty Cat Klub in Minneapolis on July 17, 2010. I’ve been enjoying a lot of these lofi videos that Jon puts up on YouTube, and it reminds me of a quote I read recently from David Byrne in the liner notes for My Life in the Bush of Ghosts: “…we came to realize that high fidelity was a vastly over-rated convention that noboby had bothered to question…”. I can’t agree more, except that today, thankfully, it is being questioned more than ever.
WTDL9min from Aniccha Arts on Vimeo.
I just finished collaborating on a grant funded project titled Words to Dead Lips at Intermedia Arts last month. I did live electronic music and sound design, as well as build sound objects that the dancers used in the piece. The collaboration began with choreographer Pramila Vasudevan and visual artist Matt Wells with whom I joined to expand the project in December, 2009. Here’s more documentation including project notes, photos and press:
Words to Dead Lips on mnartists.org
Words to Dead Lips in intermediaarts.org
Closing night sound excerpt posted on AudioCookbook.org
Words to Dead Lips article on Twin Cities Daily Planet
Recently I have been investigating some of the new capabilities of web browsers that support HTML5 and include JavaScript enabled audio APIs. This video excerpt above is a screen capture of an audio visualization that I produced with Processing.js, HTML5 and the Audio Data API that’s built into Firefox 4 Beta. The audio analysis is based on code from this example by Corbin Brook.
Circles are drawn that vary in size dynamically based on the amplitude of the music. The track is Illuminator Console by Ostraka (John Keston) from the album Precambrian Resonance on Unearthed Music. This application will only work in Firefox 4 Beta. To view the full visualization visit the following link:
I just checked out the latest episode of Motherboard‘s series, Electric Independence, on synthesist Oneohtrix Point Never. I have no argument against his return to the rich tone of instruments like the Roland Juno-60. Just have a listen to some of his work and check the interview above.