NIME 2005

So I'm sitting in this beautiful atrium in the University of British Columbia's Forest Sciences Center waiting for the bus to take me to the final concert event of this year's NIME conference.

NIME is new instruments for musical expression, and I've had 4 full days now here in Vancouver being exposed to lots of strange musical paraphernalia like robotic bagpipes, sensor violins, headbanging-aware guitars, and the like. (try to figure out the next element in that sequence... if you chose "teddy ruxpin cello" you'd be wrong, but a likely candidate for acceptance into the conference next year).

Quick run down of the coolest things I've seen here. Unfortunately, the links may be non-existent because lots of these musicians I've noticed have a strange relationship to the interweb...

McBlare: A Robotic Bagpipe Player

Ok, it's just robotic bagpipes, but I'm a sucker for robots.

Don Buchla's Marimba Lumina

This thing has been out for a little while, but it's an amazingly expressive intstrument. A good description of the instrument is here.

Pocket Gamelan: A Pure Data interface for mobile phones

Attempt to port a version of pd (precursor to max) into a complied j2me application that can run on (still higher end and java based) mobile phones. The footprint they've developed is only 25k, which is pretty amazing. They've implemented almost all the pd objects, so the phone can do some cool things with midi (doing digital audio processing clearly is not possible with current phone processors). Future work is wireless communication between mobiles running a pd patch.

The Overtone Violin

I wish I had the video of this dude playing this violin, but it was pretty cool. The nice part of the instrument is the vast number of sensors on its sides and on the violin bow. During the performance, these sensors (motion, light, and more) allowed the performer to highlight all the crazy gestures that a violinist makes when they are playing -- the pace arm movements from long sweeps to staccato twitches. So what was great about it was highlighting all these subtle gestures embedded in the performance of a traditional instrument, and toying with the audience as to whether he was actually ever going to bow the strings or not. But then he started playing the strings, and that was kinda weak, because it tainted the coolness of the performance up to that point.

Golan Leving and Zzchery Libermans's Sounds from Shapes Project

Great Myron Kruger type stuff with shape analysis and music creation.

tf + mb

some fragments from todd and mike's presentations. was sorry I didn't get anyone else's...

here be dragons: Download movie

clownerstrike: Download movie

video game revolution to be televised by PBS

Link

South Hall...interpretation?

Brown U. E-Fest

Brown University Program in Literary Arts will present E-Fest 2004, a celebration of electronic literary art February 17-19. The program will feature readings by John Cayley, Stephanie Strickland, Talan Memmott, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Brian Kim Stefans, Aya Karpinska, Alan Sondheim and more.

The program will open with an overview of electronic writing activities at Brown University, including readings by Talan Memmott and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, with a special performance by Thalia Field and Jamie Jewett. Wednesday's program includes panels and discussions with artists and theorists in the field including George Landow, Roberto Simanowski, and Alan Sondheim. An evening reading will feature John Cayley, Stephanie Strickland, Brian Kim Stefans, and Aya Karpinksa. Thursday will feature artist demos and the introduction of new books on digital media. [Including Nick's Twisty Little Passages.]

link via Grand Text Auto

naimark notes

uber-media guru michael naimark:

place representation. how do we best accomplish this?
photorealism vs. abstraction -- do we need full-resolution VR?

golden gate -- hyperreal -- not realistic, but succesful (still installed in SF).

the ability to navigate the same place throughout different times is very compelling.

can we overestimate our own reality -- can the resolution of a representation be too high? we only see a small slice of the world in total focus, we only hear certain frequencies...how can we use these flaws in our own reality to forge appealing representations...

links
tholos-systems.com
arts lab
naimark