working with installation

I have been very busy working with the installation for the Soundgallery in Bergen. The process with developing Victoria Counts into an installation started a year ago, but first during this summer I got to work on the real development. I had some very interesting talk with Birgitta Cappelen and Anders-Petter Anderson during this summer. They have been working with installation art and crossover genres for ages in the the group musical for fields forever. The most important question which came out of the discussions is:  What do you want to communicate in this piece?

To find the core of the piece has been a challenge. I have decided to divide the piece into different “worlds”; home, world and spiritual. Aiming for the spiritual using the Counting exercise from Gurdieff as the read tread. He have bee reading Gurdieff,s book “Views from the real world”

Technically I started off with some sketches in Max with help from Ivar Frounberg. After a while  I got a patch from Jørgen Larsson based on the sketches. Visually I have landed on some jitter patches which can show the photos really slowly, or faster. I will use the combination of slow/fast to illustrate the different speed and density of the 3 worlds. Regarding the other pieces I will come back with some reflection later.

Another artist which writes very well about the spiritual world is David Lynch. he manages to combine his artwork and his spiritual growth, and let the art emerge out og contact with the unconscious. I read the book “Catching the big fish” while working on my installation.

Last week I was at Henie Onstad seeing Schwitters exibition. I also heard a concert with the text/sound artist Sten Hanson. Very inspiring.

I found the reconstructed mini-version of Merzbow the most interesting

I am off to Bergen on Sunday to see HC Giljes exhibition Blink and then put up my own, Satellite.

lately

I have also participated in the conference Sensious Knowledge at Solstrand, Bergen (September 23-25) and made a presentation in International Contemporary Music days in Gothenburg (October 2-3 rd 2009) During the seminar at Solstrand we heard many interesting presentations, but the most interesting thing was for me to meet other artist outside my field. In the conference in Gothenburg was about the boundaries of interpretation and practical Artistic research and was very interesting for my project. I did the presentation together with Henrik Hellstenius. I also played some excerpts of Victoria Counts II during the presentation.

Video-analysis and CatArt

Having the second workshop together with Alexander R Jensenius (October 5-6) has given me more understanding about how CatArt works. Again using a fairly big space at the Academy (4×4m) gave us the possibility to go through many different parameters in CatArt to evaluate what works the best. In this space it works best if the grains are fairly evenly distributed like in preset 2: Spectral centroid periodicity Loudness. Using this preset I am then able to use the whole space to interact. It also works best if the sounds we use are not too brutal and strong. (crush does not work so well as pizzicato and flageolets)

Working with open form

October 7-9 we had rehearsals for the open form festival in November practising Else Storesunds piece Liquid Vapour. The piece is based on schemes and graphs from a research book about water. We use these schemes as a starting point and ground for improvisations where the theme is water.

recording of Victoria Counts II

September 29+29 I did a recording of Victoria Counts II by Henrik Hellstenius. The recording took place in my studio at the Academy. Mats Claesson kindly agreed to record the music and make a “nice” sound of my electric violin. We used his equipment from his studio and my speakers for listening back. Henrik Hellstenius was producing and Edvin Østvik did the live electronics. The result will appear as an installation in Lydgalleriet in Bergen opening at November 13.

On photo: Mats Claesson and Henrik Hellstenius

hyperimprovisation seminar

I arranged in cooperation NMH an international workshop on hyperimprovisation where the theme was; own practise with real-time improvisation and augmented instruments. The seminar took place at NMH during Ultima festival from 15-17 September 2009.

I have during the conference met some of the best international performers working in my field. I made a presentation of my project during this conference and got a lot of important feedback. I had the possibility to discuss musical, aesthetical and technical questions more informally with the participants during the seminar. To put the music, improvisation own practise and interaction with the computer as the main topic has been missing in many conferences such as NIME and ICMC etc.

I hope to arrange this seminar on annual basis and refine and sharpen the topic.

I have got written feedback from the participants and this feedback will be important for forthcoming seminars.

Participants: Victoria Johnson, Cléo Palacio-Quintin, Øyvind Brandtsegg, Peter Tornquist, Hans Tammen, Jan Schacher, Alex Gunia, Bjørnar Habbestad,
Tanja Orning, Natasha Barrett, Kjell Tore Innervik, Alexander Refsum Jensenius.

For photos follow link

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexarje/sets/72157622395123793/

info seminar

For more info about the seminar please follow the links:

http://www.ultima.no/nb/program/details/42-workshop-hyperimprovisasjon

http://www.nmh.no/Konserter/71481

hyperimprovisation seminar September 15-17

One of the pioneers within the genre of electronics Joel Chadabe says so well:
.. I have always imagined myself as the pilot of a space ship flying through that musical universe, going wherever I want to go, encountering sounds in whatever order I choose, Realizing a limitless variety of musical forms …
The prefix hyper-is used in mathematics to describe the operations that have more than four dimensions, or something that is above, beyond or expanded.

Does the use of electronics provide improvisation a new dimension?

In my desire to expand sound wise and musically the exploration and work with electronics has been a natural choice. The electronics gives the performer the opportunity to expand their soundpalette and to navigate as in an open form composition. This freedom and improvisation, in my opinion the key to that musician from different genres can communicate together within the same sound universe. It is this sense of freedom and participation in my musical work that has created this fascination for working with electronics. A concurrent observation, I have also found in the research of one of the participants in the seminar hyper flutist Cleo Palacio-Quintin.
A musician’s role changes in the work with electronics. The performer must make compositional decisions as he / she “orchestrates” his own improvisations.
Having participated in many scientific conferences where technology and music are viewed from a technological perspective, I have felt the need for a forum in which live electronics and improvisation is seen in the practitioner’s perspective. A meeting place where praxis and musical meetings are emphasized, and where there also will be time for discussion.
The performers at the seminar comes from the classical, jazz, electronica and noise scene, but have in common that they are using electronics as their partner and as a tool of improvisation. No matter what kind of program or setup to use, I see live electronics and interaction with the computer and other electronics as an extension of my own instrument. One gets the opportunity to interact in relation to different types of sounds and textures. Because the processes and transformations on the computer may have a degree of “unpredictability” about it, it will give the performer a material to react to. In other words, the electronics is affected of the musician’s response to the electronic, which again affects the performer.
To control the processes on the computer different controllers are used. Some participants using sensors on the instrument, or they have designed a unique set of control counters as sensor gloves, pedals, or using the audio input.

Some questions:

How is the different performers personal practise of improvising with extended instruments and software?
Can you experience a difference between different software and controllers used in improvisation?
Can set up of electronics be perceived as a new or expanded instrument?
These and other questions will attempt to be answered during the seminar.

Thanks to the NOTAM and BEK and NMH for financial support.

punktfestival

September 5th I played Peter Torquists “Traces” at the Punktfestival in Kristiansand. A very interesting festival very various artist work with remix of each others concerts. We were remixing Arve Henriksen toghether with members of Kristiansand Symhony Orchestra. Later the same evening “Traces” were remixed by helge Sten and Jan Bang.

Every performance in the festival were had beautiful lightening and/ or use of video and visual elements. It was very natural incorporated into the festival.

More about the music and some more pics later.

videoanalysis

August 24 and 25 I had a workshop with video-analysis together with Alexander R Jensenius. Based on his research he made patches which could track my movements in a room. I used the sound to interact with recorded material from the violin. We used a big space ar the Academy hanging a web-camera in the roof.
on photo Alexander with research and development on a HIGH level! More about this later.

punkt festivalen

On Saturday September 5th I will perform Peter Tornquist new piece Traces on Punkt- festival in Kristiansand together with a symfonietta from the Kristiansand Symphony orchestra. “The piece is based on the collaboration with Arve Henriksen in the development of an interactive model for musical composition. In this collaboration, Improvisation and composition are understood as equivalent phenomena in distinct artistic domains and as complementary attitudes towards musical creativity.

The collaboration stretches from the use of improvised data in formalized compositional systems into broader issues of production and perception of art, challenging the boundaries between the creative and performative realms of music defined by the conventional roles of composer/performer.The concept of feedback is used for describing the cyclical exchange between composer and a performer in sucessive ImproSessions. The distinct stages of these cyclical interactions are described as translation, reaction and response.” (from program to www.punktfestivalen.no)

In the concert Peter will conduct the orchestra, I will interact with the orchestra and the electronics, and we will also play some of our duomaterial in between the 5 movements.

recording

June 25 and 26 Peter Tornquist and I met to record the sound material for the installation at Lydgalleriet this Autumn. We got very good support from Ulf Holand at NMH how to get every line recorded separately. We used Ableton live for recording and Peter used his beautiful Syntplant and GRM tools as well as Ableton.

We discovered many new sounds and worked with  noice, minimalistic elements and melodic elements using  “freeze” device in GRM tools. Peter used several at the same time to create the feelig of looping. We also worked on transformation from one musical state to another. After a while we discovered that the musical landscape led by the choice of tool in the syntplant, GRM tools and Ableton  gave the best musical result.