Monday 25 June 2018

@ The Martin Harris Centre

Place: John Thaw Studio Theatre

Focus: Creation

Register

2 - 5pm - Interactive Installations and Videos

Interactive Installations and Videos 
Ludger Brümmer | Elizabeth Pich | Yannick Hofmann (ZKM, Karlsruhe) | Alexandros Kontogeorgakopoulos |Daniel Burgarth (Cardiff Metropolitan University)
Martin Harris Centre – FOYER interactive works

Code Chain (2017)
Ludger Brümmer & Elizabeth Pich (ZKM, Karlsruhe)
Interactive sound installation, app, tablet PC
Devices connected to each other enable chain processes involving several players. In “CodeChain”, sounds are generated according to the principle of the popular children’s game “whisper down the lane” or “telephone”, which are sent to other players and processed by them. Thus the players alter a sound step-by-step, and may change it until it bears no resemblance to the initial sound.
The chain begins with rushing sounds, various oscillators, frequency modulators, and own or prepared recordings, which users select via double click. The selected sound is sent to one of the devices in the pool, where a fellow player can add effects. Available effects are echoes and reverberations, delay, treble and bass filters, granular synthesis, and distortion. In addition the sounds can be formed into a melody with a sequencer. After the sound has had as many effects as desired added to it, it is sent to the next player. Each player changes the sound one more time. The sounds resulting from this process are therefore the result of a collective, partially random, partially deliberate process.


Monocause. Dialectics of the Post-Truth Era (2017)
Yannick Hofmann (ZKM, Karlsruhe)
Interactive sound installation, iOS app
It seems as though in the post-truth age processes of public opinion formation are following more and more the exclusive disjunction of mathematical logic (“either … or …”). Whether in the context of the US presidential election campaign of 2016, so-called Brexit, or the Hamburg G20 protests, post-truthism and false dilemmas polarize society and suggest that only extremes exist that are opposed to each other (for example like/dislike, black/white, rich/poor). For “Monocause. Dialectics of the Post-Truth Era”, excerpts from various texts and speeches were collected – including, for example, the doctrine of US President Bush in the 2000s (“you’re either with us, or against us”). With a swipe, museum visitors can express sympathy with or resentment towards people from A like Adorno to Z like Žižek. The swipe gesture thus becomes the equivalent of the “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” hand gestures of Roman emperors at the circus. The interface is based conceptually and in its design on the famous dating app Tinder.


Martin Harris Centre – Room F20 – video projections

Sculpture (2017)
Ludger Brümmer (ZKM)
Audiovisual Installation
Cybernetic objects are self-regulating or recursively acting systems that seem to act independently. In the Sculpture installation, the computer initially generates manually generated sounds, which are measured by a microphone in their volume and trigger new sounds at the appropriate volume. This system acts completely self-sufficiently and creates different sound patterns as well as visual objects in the form of short video passages. During the performance, the composer does not interfere with the way it works, but merely changes the sounds or video scenes used.


Quantum Music #002 (2018)
Alexandros Kontogeorgakopoulos, Daniel Burgarth
Music and Quantum Dynamics share a wave-like nature. Many analogies and surprising connections between the two fields exists, which can be illustrated and explored through sonification techniques. Quantum Music #002 is is an audiovisual installation based on controlled quantum dynamical systems. The artists / scientists of the composition have suggested in a research paper in the past an intuitive sonification process in order to represent acoustically and musically an important quantum phenomenon that is used in quantum computation. Quantum Music #002 employees these techniques and communicates the inherent beauty of the magic world of quantum mechanics by combining musical and visual content in a pure minimalistic language.

12:00 - Meet and Greet the Network

Meet and Greet the Network
Length: 60 minutes | Official Welcome from Professor Caroline Bithell

Informal gathering and official Welcome from Professor Caroline Bithell, Head of Music at the University of Manchester, and staff from NOVARS Research Centre, followed by a quick programme overview.

FOYER & THAW

13:00 - Welcome lunch

Welcome lunch
Length: 60 minutes – (registration needed via eventbrite)
Lunch and drinks provided in the Martin Harris Centre foyer (registration needed via eventbrite)

FOYER
Short lunch break

14:00 - Digital Creativity 1a: robotcowboy: Onwards to Mars

Digital Creativity 1a: robotcowboy: Onwards to Mars
Length: 45 minutes ( + 15 min break) – Dan Wilkox – ZKM: Zentrum Für Kunst Und Medientechnologie

robotcowboy is an audio/visual performance platform using wearable computing with an emphasis on embodiment and action. It explores near-scifi themes of nuclear energy, ballistic trajectories, space travel, medical imaging, and machine communication.

robotcowboy: Onwards to Mars – a one astronaut space opera
Dan Wilkox (ZKM)

OTM landing sequence

15:00 - Digital Creativity 1b: Hörspiel Composition

Digital Creativity 1b: Hörspiel Composition
Length: 45 minutes ( + 15 min break) -Henrik Frisk | Kim Hedås (Royal College of Music, Stockholm)
A presentation of a recent workshop in Sweden with participants with little or no experience in sound composition.

Hörspiel Composition
Henrik Frisk, Kim Hedås and Anders Elberling (Royal College of Music, Stockholm)

16:00 - Digital Creativity 2a: Game Audio for Virtual & Real Instruments

Digital Creativity 2a: Game Audio for Virtual & Real Instruments
Length: 45 minutes ( + 5 min break)- Ricardo Climent (NOVARS, University of Manchester)
After a 10-year journey using game-audio and game engines to construct sonic centric immersive experiences, Ricardo will introduce his new ideas towards combining his different digital instruments for competitive Musical Duel performances.

Band together with Digital Musicians: Mixed Reality and Digital Instruments
Ricardo Climent (NOVARS, University of Manchester)

mixed reality digital instruments

17:00 - Digital Creativity 2b: Audio-visual Composition

Digital Creativity 2b: Audio-visual Composition
Length: 45 minutes – Mark Pilkington – Thought universe music

Mark Pilkington will discuss approaches to working with audio-visual media to create EA music, focusing on the composition ​Current 9 (2018) that integrates non-representational imagery with electronic sounds through an interactive performance platform. The talk will offering a rare insight into working practices and a chance to have first-hand experience of a custom-built music system.

Current 9: Audio-visual presentation
Mark Pilkington – Thought universe music

audio video presentation

Full programme:

Week outline: