Videogames as digital audiovisual performance

Video games are an ideal medium for creating a live-cinema experience because of their potential for cinematic narrative and open structure. "Performing digital media' as opposed to 'performing with digital media' or using digital media in performance, means to play the media like a musical instrument as much as possible. This is to be able to control and finely nuance the audiovisual and kinetic data stream through live manipulation and interaction on stage. This is, in a sense, to grant the performance an immediacy that belies remediation. This paper looks at recent instances in which the media itself is being performed and a similar audiovisual contract to that of cinema is being entered to by an audience. Thus, the performance or live event itself becomes a product of media technologies yet is indistinctly unified with them

Creative Intuition as a Compositional Strategy in Electroacoustic Music

Creative Intuition can be said to be the motivating force behind the compositional act. To harness it the composer must develop those musical resources which allow him to deal with inspiration, when it comes, as well as developing the techniques to elaborate upon the inspiration received and remain true to his original vision. In this compositional folio, I have tried to highlight different ways in which I as a composer deal with musical inspiration and the development of musical ideas. For this purpose, I begin by considering the moment in time in which I have had to write the pieces included in this folio, and its impact upon my musical practice. In order to introduce my approach to sound creation, I have included a brief section on timbre creation as composition , here I revise some fundamental concepts and examine the general types of sound used and the methods of synthesis at my disposal. In considering intuition and musical association, I discuss improvisation as a compositional act. In Son del Seis , I am concerned with the composer's improvisation at his instrument and how this influences his writing; In Salta Mortal , I examine improvisation at the computer keyboard, and how it is possible, given the software facilities we have today, to operate directly upon the sounds themselves, and organize them musically, in particular I look at my approach to phrase construction with timbral gestures; In Viaje I combine the instrumental and computer improvisational approaches, dealing with pitched timbral gestures within the harmonic framework of modal jazz. The compositional manipulation of time in electroacoustic music could be seen to present different challenges to the composer than those of traditional acoustic music. In considering the poetics of time in electroacoustic music I have used Sin Ti Par EI Alma Adentro as a starting point for my discussion. In my view, setting words to music presents the composer with an opportunity to impress his own reading of the text material upon the listener, in Sin Medida , I discuss my choices in musically illustrating the three poems used. From the composition of all the pieces in this folio and my speculative explanations, I arrive at a number of concluding ideas and briefly state their relevance to my work: composition away from the traditional manuscript pad; the creative manipulation of timbre using synthesizers and samplers; the establishing of notational conventions for the representation of tape parts; the search for a compositional voice that would express my musical mind specifically in regards to integrating 'non -classical' idioms and electroacoustic sounds. In the appendix I have included my summary of a neo-thomistic notion of art, proposed by J. Maritain, to illustrate the philosophical grounds for my compositional work

Outcome and Predictors of Treatment Failure in Total Hip/Knee Prosthetic Joint Infections Due to Staphylococcus aureus

The results of the present study suggest that ASA score ≤ 2 and use of rifampin-combination therapy are two independent factors associated with favorable outcome of patients treated for total hip or knee prosthetic infections due to S. aureus

Live Cinema? A composer’s thoughts about a musical new media approach to the performing of audiovisuals

This article explores the idea of audiovisual performance and its relationship to multimedia, expanded cinerma, VJing and Live Cinema, eventually placing it within the context of new media

Composing with SuperCollider

The actual process of composing, and deciding how to go about it, can be one of the most difficult things about using SuperCollider. People often find it hard to make the jump from modifying simple examples to producing a full-scale piece. In contrast to Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software such as Pro Tools, for example, SC doesn’t present the user with a single “preferred” way of working. This can be confusing, but it’s an inevitable side effect of the flexibility of SC, which allows for many different approaches to generating and assembling material

Terra Nova

Terra Nova, a First Person Concerto for videogamer and semi-improvisational ensemble is a practical investigation into adaptive music, where performers are given possible musical responses but can also be guided in semi-improvisation or live-composed through soundpainting (W. Thompson, ca. 1974, www.soundpainting.org). The work was composed to commemorate the 100 years of Robert Scott’s ill-fated Antarctic Expedition with the support of the Scott Polar Research Institute, who facilitated original photography by Herbert Ponting for the ‘cut-scenes’ in the game.The videogame itself was created by post-production professional Matt Hollis, to my instructions,. In the game, we attempt three scenarios of the polar expedition. The playing of the videogame itself directs the musical material to adapt as appropriate as cues and responses must be chosen on the fly by the conductor

Geometries of Flight: Remix as Nodal Practice

his paper considers the authors' audiovisual work Geometries of Flight as an example of nodal practice as proposed by Philip Gochenour. The paper outlines Gochenour's concept and situates the 'remix'and the 'mashup'within this model. The paper interrogates various models of thought concurrent with Gochenour's to question the nature of the 'remix', appropriation, and originality in creative practice

Imaginary Listening

The definition of the four listening modes by Schaeffer presupposes that sound is encountered and that composers react to it. This explanation seems to cast the composer or sound artist in a passive role. What the modes don’t seem to deal with is the sound which is dreamt up in order to accompany a visual image or an evoked mental image; a sound with no real source. Through reviewing cinematic instances such as the nightmarish sound world created for the transformation of Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde in the 1931 film by Reuben Mamoulian and the electronic sounds of futuristic space age machines in Maetzig’s Spaceship to Venus (1960), amongst others, this paper seeks to show how the work of sound artists in film precedes and then shadows the work of electroacoustic composers as they endow their sound creations with causal and semantic cues, through imaginary listening

To Sing the Body Electric: Instruments and Effort in the Performance of Electronic Music

Visualized emotion can be transmitted through minimal physical gestures in a musical performance; this process can be described as ‘sentic’, a term originally coined by Manfred Clynes in the 1970s during research into the effects of space travel. The development of alternate musical instruments from the 1960s up to the present day breaks the traditional musical paradigm of effort in performance. This development also shadows concepts of space exploration technology such as teleoperation. Musical instruments can be evaluated in terms of a new musical effort paradigm; a young generation seems content to accept that there may be no apparent correlation between input effort and sound output. This article explores what a contemporary notion of effort might be, inspired by a reading of Walt Whitman’s poem ‘I Sing the Body Electric’