Valse Automatique is a design performance made to illustrate the symbiosis between humans and technology by translating music to form over the use of a kuka industrial robot. Invited to the project by Hermann Weizenegger – Stephan Thiel was responsible for designing the overall interface between the music by composer and violinist miki and the production process of the robot

Continue reading.... Valse Automatique – Symbiosis Between Humans and Technology [Processing, Rhino]

Created by Sebastian Trump, Orphion is a musical instrument in-between string and percussion. Aim is to create easy or virtuosic melodies just by moving fingers on virtual pads. Included are a several layouts and depending on the surface area of your touch, the sound is softer or on the contrary with more attack. Here is what is included:

• Different articulations from soft to plucked to hardly slapped
• Natural interaction
• Extend your ways of expression as a percussionist, guitarist, pianist or other musician
• 9 transposable pad-layouts with different tonalities from easy to complex (Five, Bluesscale, Pentawheel, Piano, Guitar Strings, 5ths circle, 3rd Matrix, Bassdrums, Waterdrops)
• 8 individual voices for 8 fingers (4 on iPad 1)

Continue reading.... Orphion – Musical instrument for iPad [iPad, Sound]

A few months ago, Marc Tiedemann got asked to come up with an animations for the upcoming documentary ”DAIKU | 10000 Japaner singen Beethovens Neunte” to be aired 31.12.2011 15:20 on ARTE. They required a main title and graphics within the movie. Friedemann Hottenbacher, the director of the piece, showed him the work of Malinowski which turned out to be the key inspiration for the graphics.

Thinking of Japan and Osaka, big cities as well as tradition came to mind. So the result should in a way resemble both while still keeping the aesthetics of a notational system. So I started to program my very own Music Machine based on a simple FFT analysis via processing and played around with shapes and the depth in 3D space.

Continue reading.... Daiku [Processing, Sound]

We are happy to announce that after months of hard work, and even more to come, Resonate Festival has launched it’s full site and tickets are now available for purchase.

‘Resonate’ is an initiative by “Magnetic Field B” in collaboration with CreativeApplications.Net and Dom Omladine in Belgrade. It’s core aim is to set a new standard in the arts industry by creating a new event platform for inspiration, networking, information, knowledge sharing and education. It brings together distinguished, world class artists, with an opportunity of participating in a forward-looking debate on the position of technology in art and culture. But Resonate is also much more than just a festival, expert seminar or exhibition of visual arts. It is a project broad enough to encompass areas ranging from software engineering to visual arts theory, but also to create a bridge between culturally separated segments of the artistic and intellectual scene through a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach.

Taking place in Belgrade, Serbia from 16th – 17th March 2012, the event will give visitors an overview of current situation in the fields of music, visual arts and digital culture. Guest artists, lecturers and other participants have been chosen to represent the cutting edge of the contemporary creative industry in Europe. Interactivity is the key feature of contemporary communications and as a festival of new media, Resonate will be structured in such a way to reflect this fact on several levels. First of all, that means the interaction between audience and authors, or audience and art forms, as visitors of the festival will be active participants and will have contact with the authors through workshops, lectures, multimedia installations and the music program.

- 20 speakers from Europe, Asia and North America
- Collaborations with both national and international educational institutions
- Talks, workshops, panel discussions, performances and concerts
- Day and night programme (DJ Sets, Live Audio/Visual Performances and Concerts)
- In the heart of europe, city of history and culture – Belgrade

Featuring Nicholas Felton, Josh Nimoy, Jer Thorp, Greg J. Smith, Regine Debatty, Champagne Valentine, Niklas Roy, Benjamin Gaulon, Martial Geoffre-Rouland, Karsten Schmidt, FIELD, LAb[au], Rafaël Rozendaal, United Visual Artists, Written Images, Jürg Lehni, WARP, onedotzero and many more.

…and this is just the beginning. Yet to announce are night event details including 2 headlining acts, audio-visual performances, DJs, workshops, screenings, panels and more. You will not be disappointed!

Tickets are now on sale (Only €40.00). Book now and save 50% on the door price. Only available for few weeks and in limited numbers.

Dates: 16th – 17th March 2012
Location: Belgrade, Serbia 

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The video below, created by Lasal, shows a short part of a new installation which explores the relationship between 2 Harmonic waves in different graphical/musical ways. The piece includes 98 pair of points trigger notes depending on the collision position in the Y axis and panning depends on the X position. The phase and velocity of booth waves are synchronised to collide in a harmonic chord.

Continue reading.... Harmophon [vvvv, Sound]

Designed by Katharina Hölzl, the following are very special business cards for Ritornell, experimental music duo. The cards were inspired by the project’s live show where Ritornell invited the audience to bring along their private musicboxes. With the aid of laser cutter, nine micro compositions consisting of circles, triangles and Ritornell’s contact information were cut onto a long musicbox paper stripe.

Continue reading.... Ritornell for Musicbox [Objects, Sound]

Baroque.me by Alexander Chen visualizes the first Prelude from Bach’s Cello Suites by drawing notes as strings. Instead of a stream of classical notation on a page, this interactive project highlights the music’s underlying structure and subtle shifts.

I created eight strings, as the Prelude’s natural phrasing is in groups of eight notes. The orbiting nodes pluck the strings, like a rotating music box. The user can also grab and throw the nodes off track, and watch the system slowly regain its rhythm. A harp is built around string length, with strings shortening as they ascend in pitch. This piece behaves like an impossible harp, as strings morph to the needed lengths. The looping, eight-note pattern is something we see all the time in grid-based drum sequencers. Bach’s Prelude is actually very grid-like as well. At every moment, the piece shows a visual snapshot of an arpeggio. It shows which notes change from bar to bar, and which stay the same.

Continue reading.... Baroque.me [Javascript, Sound]

Latest by Joshua Nimoy is this synaesthetic, interactive musical experience provides six original modes in which the player may produce music.

Advanced configuration is possible by editing the contents of the bundled settings.yml. By changing the values of that file, you can control the window properties, startup behaviour, user interface detail, and OSC network parameters. When set up on multiple machines, Bandwidth’s ‘grid’ mode will broadcast OSC messages and most other modes will receive.

Continue reading.... Bandwidth [openFrameworks, Mac, Windows, Sound]

Inspired by current sampling techniques, either as a piece of hardware or as software, Ishac Bertran takes an analog route emulating the audio tape cut&paste technique by literally cutting and pasting pieces of vinyl to create samples. Ishac tried out different techniques, from wire cutter to knife, to finally settle for laser, carefully considering laser power to get the cleanest cut possible and avoid any jumps between the samples.

The best setting was to let the laser go through *almost* through the vinyl, and then crack manually the last thin layer (1). If the laser goes all the way through, it melts too much material and leaves a gap (2). If the laser doesn’t go enough deep, it’s pretty much impossible to take the piece out without creating an undesired crack (3).

Continue reading.... Analog Vinyl Sampling [Analog]

Created by Émile Sacré, Kulbuto is an installation and an instrument, exploring possibilities of non-uniform compositions by both visualising what is being created and using the visual content as the driving force behind the rhythmic cycles.

The formal outcome of Kulbuto is based on principles of changing rates, determined by graphic collisions at speeds. We are facing environment created by tensions, where some variations of unstable rhythmic cycles are synchronized and de-synchronized in time. The composition appears “wobbly” which varies across different types of sequencing. In a way, we can say that this device is the opposite of the principle of arpeggiator, controller and tool rack of from the rhythmic point of view.

Continue reading.... Kulbuto [Quarz Composer, Sound]