Don’t forget that we’ll meet in Room 301 tomorrow. Akio Suzuki, a pioneer explorer of Sound Art, will be visiting. I have no idea what he will do which just makes his visit even more interesting.
Suzuki-san really keeps busy. Later this month he’ll be giving a workshop on sound art and performance at YCAM (山口情報芸術センター). You can find many videos of his performances on YouTube. Here’s a sample of a collaboration with Jim O’Rourke.
This is one of the events kicking off the annual NIME-12 conference, which will be held starting next weekend at the University of Michigan. Really looking forward to this and all the other exciting things that will be happening at NIME-12. Nice also that this performance is part of the centennial brithday celebrations for our patron saint, John Cage.
From the University of Michigan Museum of Art web site:
As the lights go down on UMMA’s exhibition Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life, please join us for a rare performance of Motor Vehicle Sundown, written by Fluxus artist George Brecht and dedicated to the American composer John Cage. This performance by students and faculty from the University of Michigan is presented in conjunction with the annual International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), and in celebration of John Cage’s 2012 centennial. Motor Vehicle Sundown is written for any number of motor vehicles arranged outdoors. In true Cagean fashion, 22 timed auditory and visual events and 22 pauses written on randomly shuffled instruction cards are performed on each vehicle.
The performance will take place in parking Lot C-2 on the south side of N. University at Thayer, next to Kraus Natural Science Building.
This program is co-sponsored by NIME, the UM School of Music, Theatre, and Dance, the UM College of Engineering and UMMA. Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life was organized by the Hood Museum of Art and was generously supported by Constance and Walter Burke, Dartmouth College Class of 1944, the Marie-Louise and Samuel R. Rosenthal Fund, and the Ray Winfield Smith 1918 Fund. UMMA’s installation is made possible in part by the University of Michigan Health System, the University of Michigan Office of the Provost, Arts at Michigan, and the CEW Frances and Sydney Lewis Visiting Leaders Fund.
This performances makes use of the NeuroSky EEG sensor as well as the Kinect. Visuals and music are driven by EEG and registered with the performers body using the Kinect. It seems their system runs under OpenFrameworks. In fact, I noticed this video in the OF gallery. The second half of the video consists of an interview with the technical team and performer.
This performance uses off-the-shelf technology but is cutting edge in more than one sense. No one can accuse these guys of lacking commitment.
A project page may be found here: Danse Neurale.
They generously list the code used to acquire signals from the NeuroSky server in the OF forum. This part of the system is written in P5 (Processing).
Here are a few details on the technical background of the work, given by one of the creators in the OF forum:
Sensors:
– breath: it’s sensed with a wireless mic positioned inside Lukas’ mask. its signal goes directly through a mixer controlled by the audio workstation
– heart: it’s sensed with modified stethoscope connected with a wireless mic; signal works just like the breath (we’re not sure, but in the future we may decide to apply some DSP on it)
– EEG: we use the cheaper sensor from NeuroSky; it streams brainwaves (already splitted into frequencies) via radio in a serial like protocol; these radio packets arrive to my computer where they’re parsed, conveted into OSC and broadcasted via wifi (we only have 2 computers on stage, but the idea is that if we have an affine hacker soul between the public, he/she can join the jam session 🙂 )
– skeleton tracking: it’s obviously done with ofxOpenNI (as you can see in the video we also stage the infamous “calibration pose”, because we wanted to let people understand as much as possible what was going on)
The audio part maps the brainwave data onto volumes and scales, while the visual part uses spikes (originated i.e. by the piercings and by the winch pulling on the hooks) to trigger events; so, conceptually speaking, the wings are a correct representation of Lukas’s neural response and they really lift him off the ground.
This video offers a glimpse at an earlier era in electronic and computer music production – as well as what it was like to use a computer in the early 1970s. My first experience with computers dates from this around this time. It is interesting to reflect what has and hasn’t changed in the nearly 40 year interim.
Der Lauf der Dinge is a 1987 experimental adventure by Swiss duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss.
Some of you might remember Prof. Clark Lunberry, who visited the zemi as a guest speaker last year. Clark has organized a festival this year in honour of John Cage’s 100th birthday. The festival came to an end recently and Clark has provided is a nice set of images of his installation based on a famous Cage aphorism about silence. You can find the images at Clark’s home page. Highly recommended!
Thanks to Atsushi Nishijima, former guest speaker in the zemi, for information about the Rolf Julius Memorial Exhibition which will be at Art Space Niji (アートスペース虹) until April 15th. Rolf Julius, who, sadly, passed away last year, was one of the earliest artists to explore relations between sounds, objects, and settings. Here is a rare and valuable opportunity to see original works by an influential sound artist right here in Kyoto. If you visit the exhibition you may have a chance to meet and talk with people who knew and worked with Julius. I met his daughter, curator and art historian, Maija Julius, gallerist Sumiko Kumagai (熊谷寿美子) who opened Art Space Niji in 1981, and art photographer Toshio Kuwabara (桑原敏郎) who showed a work created in collaboration with Julius. The exhibition includes works by other artists that worked with Julius, including Akio Suzuki (鈴木昭男) who is scheduled to be an invited speaker in our seminar in 2012.
Here is a photo of a work by Rolf Julius, linked directly from the Niji Gallery web site:
Access/Opening times for the Exhibition. Note here will be a symposium held at MOMAK (京都国立近代美術館) this coming Saturday afternoon.
Christian Boltanski, with the help of visitors to the “Archives of the Heart” located on a remote part of Teshima Island, is compiling an album of human heartbeats from around the world. Participants self-record the sound of their beating heart for inclusion in an archive at a dedicated building, which opened during the 2010 Setouchi Triennale. The building also has recording rooms and a special listening room where the heart beats are played back at loud volume. I recorded the sound of my heart on March 15, 2012 when I visited Teshima Island. Here’s how the recorded audio waveform looks:
Clearly it’s not a completely quiet recording, as the microphone was held against the chest manually. Have a listen (headphones recommended):
Conceptual art photographer Miwa Yanagi is producing Tomoyoshi Murayama (村山 知義) 1924 play Ningen Kikai (人間機械). Performances will be held at the Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto April 13-15, in conjunction with the Murayama exhibition. Tickets may be reserved at Miwa Yanagi’s official web site.
Students from Kyoto University of Art and Design (京都造形芸術大学) are holding an exhibition of video art in a dis-used office just east of Hyakumanben, on the south side of Imadegawa street. If you are interested in video art, it is well worth going to have a look. The exhibition will be open again next week (金土日). Check the flier above for details. Here’s the access map.
