current state 2012: human actors

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 03:45:20 +0000

I’ll be posting an article dealing with an aspect of the technical and theoretical construction and operation of a interactive musical automaton in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here’s an update on what some of the (human) actors in the io 0.0.1 beta++ network have been up to, and will be doing in the coming year.

Han-earl Park

Leaving Cork in the summer of 2011, Han-earl Park was resident in California for six months during which time he performed with Gino Robair, Tim Perkis, John Shiurba, Matt Ingalls, Scott R. Looney, Ted Byrnes and Kris Tiner, and as a guest of Gargantius Effect (Murray Campbell and Randy McKean). In December, Vicmod Records released Han-earl Park and Richard Scott’s ‘artillery’ (VMDL11).

Relocating to Brooklyn in December 2011, Park made his New York debut at the Roulette as part of the Silver Orchestra for Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith’s 70th birthday event presented by Interpretations. His first performances in 2012 was a duo with saxophonist-scholar Tracy McMullen at the Downtown Music Gallery, and with saxophonist-composer Catherine Sikora at The Brecht Forum.

2012 will see the release of Richard Barrett and Han-earl Park’s ‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) by Creative Sources Recordings. In addition to what he hopes will be a creative time in NY, he will be back in Europe in April/May performing as part of Numbers and Mathilde 253 (with Charles Hayward and Ian Smith), and, in October, Numbers will be performing across North America.

Bruce Coates

In addition to his continuing work with FrImp and Improvisation Birmingham, in April 2012, Bruce Coates performs/conducts as part of Birmingham Improvisers’ Orchestra: Migrations at Déda (Derby):

Using film, dance and performance art, Migration is created in response to the orchestra’s improvised soundtrack. The piece explores ideas about the movement and displacement of people—not only the political, economic and ecological factors, but also the human desire to find a place to belong.

More info…

Franziska Schroeder

In 2011, Franziska Schroeder, the theorist-practitioner, presented at Digital Resources in the Humanities and Arts conference (Ningbo) and performed at the International Computer Music Conference (Huddersfield).

In 2012, Schroeder will be taking on the Artistic Direction for the Sonorities Festival (Belfast), premiering a new work by Evan Parker commissioned by the PRS, running the Sonic Arts Research Centre’s Public Engagement Training for PhD students (‘Big Ears’), performing as part of Noise Quartet Concert (April), premiere of five new works by SARC PhD composers (May).

Forthcoming articles will include a book chapter, ‘Shifting Listening Identities—Towards a Fluidity of Form in Digital Music’, in Identity, Performance and Technology: Practices of empowerment, embodiment and technicity edited by S. Broadhurst and J. Machon (Palgrave Macmillan), and ‘Network[ed] Listening—Towards a de-centering of beings’ in Contemporary Music Review (Routledge).

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its own sound (liner notes: io 0.0.1 beta++)

Sat, 21 May 2011 11:53:48 +0000

Another short excerpt from Sara Roberts’ liner notes to ‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531):

io 0.0.1 beta++ is rather special in being both an instrument and a player. And given the two attributes it has a very particular sound, ‘sound’ here referring to both timbral quality and the broader sense of having an indelible identity, a style, having its own sound. [2]

io has an extravagant range of sounds made with superhuman amounts of air, and superhuman articulations of air resistance: a hummingbird trill that can go on without the limit of breath, bleats, blats, a grainy slur, shifts between piping and sandy sounds, elephant-like trumpeting, a faint spitty-sounding purr, slushy trills, a hoarse blast of full-spectrum noise, scumbling, whispery hisses ramping up to loud razzing. It can make delicate birdlike chirpings then abruptly sound like a power tool under duress, or render sounds reminiscent of emergency vehicles.

[2] George E. Lewis, ‘Interacting with Latter-Day Musical Automata’, Contemporary Music Review, Vol.18, No.3, 99–112 (1999).

© 2011 Sara Roberts.

Read the first excerpt: ‘a curious situation (liner notes: io 0.0.1 beta++)’.

‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) will be released by SLAM Productions in ~~fall~~ August 2011. [Details…]

personnel: io 0.0.1 beta++ (itself), Han-earl Park (guitar), Bruce Coates (alto and sopranino saxophones) and Franziska Schroeder (soprano saxophone).

updates

06–11–11: change release date to August 2011.