21 research outputs found

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

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    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.

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    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

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    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

    Exploring Audio and Tactile Qualities of Instrumentality with Bowed String Simulations

    No full text
    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

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    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

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

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    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

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    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
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