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Sonimation

This system is currently under development and has been inspired by the experience of being part of an ensemble who, in 2009, were asked to provide a live improvised sound track to the 1926 film by Henry King called The Winning of Barbara Worth, as part of a trio. The trio consisted of myself playing trumpet with electronics, together with Nick Grew on keyboards and electronics, and Sam Richards playing keyboards and an assortment of mechanical toys and devices which has become known as the ‘Toychestra’. For me, this experience started a journey of exploration to try and understand the human subsystems which come into play when improvised music making is stimulated by visual media. It made me consider the function of music manuscript over and above its generally accepted purpose, as a means of storing and communicating musical material. It made me questions the concept of a score as a passive component in the process of music making. It drew attention to the fact that freewill and volition are not the only controlling mechanisms in improvised music making and made me consider the potential that exists to extend the fixed media cinematic experience, into an eco-systemic parameter space, of film projection with live musical performer and dynamic visual media to create a situation where fixed and malleable media can coexist in a cohesive performance.

React/Respond

Dynamic graphic score commissioned by Plymouth Contemporary Music Festival performed by the ensemble 'Audio Political'. Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt (16 August 1832 - 31 August 1920) is widely regarded as the "father of experimental psychology".  In an area of his work concerned with the measurement of reaction times he developed a device knows as a complexity clock.  The clock moved a spot of light around a circle every 2.56 seconds and allowed him to accurately time the mental experiences of his subjects.  The experiments undertaken with this device provided a foundation for many of the debates around consciousness and freewill. This interface was inspired by Wundt’s work in this area and was performed by the ensemble Audio Politica at the Plymouth Contemporary Music Festival 2011.  The first half of the concert comprised a number of short acoustic pieces each themed around the notion of ‘reaction’ and inspired by the psychological experiments undertaken by Wundt.  The concluding piece was the first performance of an improvisatory work entitled “React/Respond”.  Using the digital performance system developed for this piece the ensemble interacts with the projection of a generative and reactive visual score. 

FreeKey

An early of this piece was used in a concert by the Sam Richards ensemble Groove Welders in 2003. More recently this piece was performed with pianist Dave Holland as part of the Totnes Jazz Collectives' anniversary concert in 2005. This piece is designed to be used by a solo instrumentalist using a keyboard instrument. the piece uses imagery based on the keys of a keyboard which are animated and transformed and with which the performer interacts. The content of the animation is partly fixed and partly generated in real time. The sequence of sections is always the same but the duration of each section can vary depending on the behaviour of the animation. There is no reciprocal interaction between the performer and the interface, the system generates its own musical behaviour but does not respond to the sound of the musician. Unlike interfaces I previously developed, the nature of this system affords the performer the ability to predict the behaviour of the animated agents to a certain extent. The performer therefore engages with the interface not purely in a reactive mode but is also able to exhibit proactive behaviour.

Scribbler

This work was the first environment I developed that was responsive to sound.  In the context of the rest of the work presented here it is somewhat of an anomaly because it was not designed as a performance or installation environment bet as a durational piece that responded to sound over long periods and created a visual response or ‘acoustic trace’.  The piece monitors an acoustic signal and makes decisions about mark making, based on the data it received.  The decisions relate to the colour, line thickness, range of movement etc.  The mapping between sound and response is configurable; the system’s parameters can be altered using a GUI prior to execution I have used this system in a number of environments and have included two examples generated from binaural recordings.

Hexagram

This piece was created in collaboration with Michael McInerney for a performance with the ensemble Works at Dartington College of Arts, Devon. The ensemble comprised Michael on piano and shakuhachi, Tony Moore cello and Jeff Cloke electronics.  The ensemble engaged in free improvisation while the system listened and generated sequences of hexagrams that were projected behind the performers.  The projection also included a very slow moving Yin Yang symbol which transformed from black to white at a speed almost indiscernible to the human eye.  When one transformation had taken place the piece ended.  The performers could view the projection and therefore were aware of the cumulative effect their playing was having on the images being generated but were not able to predict the system output.  Unfortunately no documentation of the performance exists so I have created a simulation showing the system in operation.

LostHour

This work was created in collaboration with Nic Sandiland from Middlesex University.  It was a site specific interactive installation as part of the Night Walking conference, a commission by Rescen, Greenwich Dance Agency, London.  The premise of the piece was to explore the ‘lost hour’ between Greenwich meantime and British summertime.  The installation comprised a sonar device for translating distance into MIDI, a line marked on the floor to represent the hour and a projection of a clock.  Visitors walked up and down the hour line and the sensor picked up their distance along the line and relayed it as MIDI messages to the software which changed the hands on the projected clock and triggered samples.  As people walked the line, the clock want forwards or backwards in time and the soundscape was created. 

Musaic

This interface was developed for artist Pauline Amos. The requirement was to produce a visual interface which would behave in an unpredictable manner, creating a soundscape with which Pauline could interact. I used a number of short audio samples of Pauline's voice and designed other sounds which were combined into a single library. The visual interface was to give an indication of the systems current state but k=not an indication of what was to come. To this end I designed a simple eight by eight grid of tiles. I based the amount of information that the interface communicated around Millers "7 plus or minus 2" rule of cognitive capacity. The eight rows of tiles represented four channels of sound, two rows for each channel. Each tile on the upper row represented a sound in the library and each tile on the lower row represented the volume of each channel; left to right representing low to high. The system randomly selects tiles on the grid after a foxed period of time (approximately six seconds). This piece was performed by Pauline early in 2002 and demonstrated at Cybersonica later that year.