Live electronics in live performance : a performance practice emerging from the piano+ used in free improvisation

This thesis explores a performance practice within free improvisation. This is not a theory based improvisation – performances do not require specific preparation and the music refrains from repetition of musical structures. It engages in investigative and experimental approaches emerging from holistic considerations of acoustics, interaction and instrument, and also philosophy, psychology, sociopolitics and technology. The performance practice explores modes and approaches to working with the given potentiality of an electronically augmented acoustic instrument and involves the development of a suitably flexible computerised performance system, the piano+, combining extended techniques and real-time electroacoustic processes, which has the acoustic piano at its core. Contingencies of acoustic events and performance gestures – captured by audio analysis and sensors and combined to control the parameter space of computer processes – manipulate the fundamental properties of sound, timbre and time. Spherical abstractions, developed under consideration of Agamben’s potentiality and Sloterdijk’s philosophical theory of spheres, allow a shared metaphor for technical, instrumental, personal, and interpersonal concerns. This facilitates a theoretical approach for heuristic and investigative improvisation where performance is considered ‘Ereignis’ (an event) for sociopolitically aware activities that draw on the situational potentiality and present themselves in fragile and context dependent forms. Ever new relationships can be found and developed, but can equally be lost. Sloterdijk supplied the concept of knowledge resulting from equipping our ‘inner space’, an image suiting non-linearity of thought that transpires from Kuhl’s psychological PSI-theory to explain human motivation and behaviour. The role of technology – diversion and subversion of sound and activity – creates a space between performer and instrument that retains a fundamental pianism but defies expectation and anticipation. Responsibility for one’s actions is required to deal with the unexpected without resorting to preliminary strategies restricting potential discourses, particularly within ensemble situations. This type of performance embraces the ‘Ereignis’.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Live Electronics in Live Performance: A Performance Practice Emerging from the piano+ used in Free Improvisation.

This thesis explores a performance practice within free improvisation. This is not a theory based improvisation – performances do not require specific preparation and the music refrains from repetition of musical structures. It engages in investigative and experimental approaches emerging from holistic considerations of acoustics, interaction and instrument, and also philosophy, psychology, sociopolitics and technology. The performance practice explores modes and approaches to working with the given potentiality of an electronically augmented acoustic instrument and involves the development of a suitably flexible computerised performance system, the piano+, combining extended techniques and real-time electroacoustic processes, which has the acoustic piano at its core. Contingencies of acoustic events and performance gestures – captured by audio analysis and sensors and combined to control the parameter space of computer processes – manipulate the fundamental properties of sound, timbre and time. Spherical abstractions, developed under consideration of Agamben’s potentiality and Sloterdijk’s philosophical theory of spheres, allow a shared metaphor for technical, instrumental, personal, and interpersonal concerns. This facilitates a theoretical approach for heuristic and investigative improvisation where performance is considered ‘Ereignis’ (an event) for sociopolitically aware activities that draw on the situational potentiality and present themselves in fragile and context dependent forms. Ever new relationships can be found and developed, but can equally be lost. Sloterdijk supplied the concept of knowledge resulting from equipping our ‘inner space’, an image suiting non-linearity of thought that transpires from Kuhl’s psychological PSI-theory to explain human motivation and behaviour. The role of technology – diversion and subversion of sound and activity – creates a space between performer and instrument that retains a fundamental pianism but defies expectation and anticipation. Responsibility for one’s actions is required to deal with the unexpected without resorting to preliminary strategies restricting potential discourses, particularly within ensemble situations. This type of performance embraces the ‘Ereignis’

Exploring Audio and Tactile Qualities of Instrumentality with Bowed String Simulations

Posters session III - Proceedings available online: http://www.eecs.umich.edu/nime2012/Proceedings/NIME2012WebProceedings.htmlInternational audienceForce-feedback and physical modeling technologies now allow to achieve the same kind of relation with virtual instruments as with acoustic instruments, but the design of such elaborate models needs guidelines based on the study of the human sensory-motor system and behaviour. This article presents a qualitative study of a simulated instrumental interaction in the case of the virtual bowed string, using both waveguide and mass-interaction models. Subjects were invited to explore the possibilities of the simulations and to express themselves verbally at the same time, allowing us to identify key qualities of the proposed systems that determine the construction of an intimate and rich relationship with the users

Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Live Coding

Open Access peer reviewed papers on live coding published at the 1st International Conference on Live Coding (ICLC) in Leeds

Epistemic tools: the phenomenology of digital musical instruments

Digital music technologies, and instruments in particular, are the result of specific systems of thought that define and enframe the user’s creative options. Distinctive divisions between digital and acoustic instruments can be traced, contrasting the conceptually based design of software with the affordances and constraints of physical artefacts. Having lost the world’s gift of physical properties, the digital instrument builder becomes more than a mere luthier. The process of designing and building the instrument is transformed into a process of composition, for it typically contains a greater degree of classification and music theory than its acoustic counterpart. Part I of this thesis begins by framing musical systems in the context of the philosophy of technology. Here technological conditions are questioned and theories introduced that will assist the investigation into the relationship between creativity and technology. After this general grounding, the ramifications digital technologies pose to the human body are explored in the context of human expression through tool use. The human-machine relationship is described from phenomenological perspectives and relevant theories of cognitive science. This analysis serves as a foundation for the concept of epistemic tools, defined as the mechanism whereby techno-cultural models are inscribed into technological artefacts. The cultural element of tool use and tool origins is therefore emphasised, an aspect that is highly relevant in musical technologies. Part I thus frames the material properties of acoustic and digital instruments in relation to human culture, cognition, performance and epistemology. Part II contextualises these theories in practice. The ixiQuarks, the live improvisation musical environment that resulted from the current research, are presented as a system addressing some of the vital problems of musical performance with digital systems (such as the question of embodiment and theoretical inscriptions), proposing an innovative interaction model for screen-based musical instruments. The concept of virtual embodiment is introduced and framed in the context of the ixi interaction model. Two extensive user studies are described that support the report on ixiQuarks. Furthermore, comparative surveys on the relationship between expression and technology are presented: a) the phenomenology of musical instruments, where the divergence between the acoustic and the digital is investigated; b) the question of expressive freedom versus time constraints in musical environments is explored with practitioners in the field; and c) the key players in the design of audio programming environments explain the rationale and philosophy behind their work. These are the first major surveys of this type conducted to date, and the results interweave smoothly with the observations and findings in the chapters on the nature and the design of digital instruments that make up the majority of Part II. This interdisciplinary research investigates the nature of making creative tools in the digital realm, through an active, philosophically framed and ethnographically inspired study, of both practical and theoretical engagement. It questions the nature of digital musical instruments, particularly in comparison with acoustic instruments. Through a survey of material epistemologies, the dichotomy between the acoustic and the digital is employed to illustrate the epistemic nature of digital artefacts, necessitating a theory of epistemic tools. Consequently virtual embodiment is presented as a definition of the specific interaction mode constituting human relations with digital technologies. It is demonstrated that such interactions are indeed embodied, contrasting common claims that interaction with software is a disembodied activity. The role of cultural context in such design is emphasised, through an analysis of how system design is always an intricate process of analyses, categorisations, normalisations, abstractions, and constructions; where the design paths taken are often defined by highly personal, culturally conditioned and often arbitrary reasons. The dissertation therefore dissects the digital musical instrument from the perspectives of ontology, phenomenology and epistemology. Respective sections in Part I and Part II deal with these views. The practical outcome of this research – the ixiQuarks – embodies many of the theoretical points made on these pages. The software itself, together with the theoretical elucidation of its context, should therefore be viewed as equal contributions to the field of music technology. The thesis closes by considering what has been achieved through these investigations of the technological context, software development, user studies, surveys, and the phenomenological and epistemological enquiries into the realities of digital musical instruments, emphasising that technology can never be neutral

Exploring Audio and Tactile Qualities of Instrumentality with Bowed String Simulations

Posters session III - Proceedings available online: http://www.eecs.umich.edu/nime2012/Proceedings/NIME2012WebProceedings.htmlInternational audienceForce-feedback and physical modeling technologies now allow to achieve the same kind of relation with virtual instruments as with acoustic instruments, but the design of such elaborate models needs guidelines based on the study of the human sensory-motor system and behaviour. This article presents a qualitative study of a simulated instrumental interaction in the case of the virtual bowed string, using both waveguide and mass-interaction models. Subjects were invited to explore the possibilities of the simulations and to express themselves verbally at the same time, allowing us to identify key qualities of the proposed systems that determine the construction of an intimate and rich relationship with the users

Composing in the internet age of post-auratic art

This thesis argues the emergence of problematic issues arising from the dematerialisation of studio music technology and its compositional output, compounded by increasingly technically homogenised means of production and distribution. The thesis contends that optimistic claims of democratisation and emancipation surrounding computer music, in addition to proclamations extolling the virtues of the decentralised, distributive opportunities of the web, obscure the effects of such technologies, inviting critical inquiry. An understanding of the origins of techno-romanticism, and the technical processes that inform such utopian viewpoints, are therefore essential in addressing these issues. Using Jacques Attali’s Noise, with his Adorno-influenced ‘Repeating’ and utopian ‘Composing’ chapters in particular as a starting point, this thesis illustrates how the critical stances of Adorno and Benjamin are reflected in Attali’s chapters, and how their respective ideas translate to the imbalances between modes of production and reception present in our fragmented cultural music economy. The thesis argues that the emancipatory affordances that arise within the quotidian use of music, resulting from an unprecedented access to portable music, are at odds with the increased technical demands placed upon musicians within such a system. Additionally, via Heidegger’s modes of revealing and the work of McLuhan, this thesis attempts to articulate the polarising, quasi-deterministic effects of hardware and software technology involved in music production, plus the myriad activities pertaining to its distribution and promotion, as indicative of the subsuming nature of a technological monolith. The existence of contemporary techno-romanticism, resulting from such technical modes of revealing, is posited as driving the mythological dialectics at the core of technological progress, with Platonic dualism at its foundation. Conclusively, I proposed several practical means of addressing the concerns raised by my research, by rematerialising my own practice and music, including the creation of auratic artefacts, site-specific works, and physical mechanical instruments.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Paradoxes of interactivity: perspectives for media theory, human-computer interaction, and artistic investigations

Current findings from anthropology, genetics, prehistory, cognitive and neuroscience indicate that human nature is grounded in a co-evolution of tool use, symbolic communication, social interaction and cultural transmission. Digital information technology has recently entered as a new tool in this co-evolution, and will probably have the strongest impact on shaping the human mind in the near future. A common effort from the humanities, the sciences, art and technology is necessary to understand this ongoing co- evolutionary process. Interactivity is a key for understanding the new relationships formed by humans with social robots as well as interactive environments and wearables underlying this process. Of special importance for understanding interactivity are human-computer and human-robot interaction, as well as media theory and New Media Art. "Paradoxes of Interactivity" brings together reflections on "interactivity" from different theoretical perspectives, the interplay of science and art, and recent technological developments for artistic applications, especially in the realm of sound

Paradoxes of Interactivity

Current findings from anthropology, genetics, prehistory, cognitive and neuroscience indicate that human nature is grounded in a co-evolution of tool use, symbolic communication, social interaction and cultural transmission. Digital information technology has recently entered as a new tool in this co-evolution, and will probably have the strongest impact on shaping the human mind in the near future. A common effort from the humanities, the sciences, art and technology is necessary to understand this ongoing co- evolutionary process. Interactivity is a key for understanding the new relationships formed by humans with social robots as well as interactive environments and wearables underlying this process. Of special importance for understanding interactivity are human-computer and human-robot interaction, as well as media theory and New Media Art. »Paradoxes of Interactivity« brings together reflections on »interactivity« from different theoretical perspectives, the interplay of science and art, and recent technological developments for artistic applications, especially in the realm of sound