io 0.0.1 beta++: (musical) time and machine musicianship

HZ: ‘wind-chimes’

First post as part of a series at the io 0.0.1 beta++ website about musical time, bodies, computation, machine musicianship, and the regulation of the musical:

Perhaps the assumption of a foundational importance to musicality of a simple ‘beat detection’ stems from subscribing to a command-control model of musicality. In this model the mind is the central hub of the musical. In this model, rhythm is constant, inherited, external and which must be followed. This model, in turn, arises from certain, widely held to be sure, cultural assumptions about desirable and ‘natural’ social and political interactions. What do these assumptions blind us from?

[Read the rest…]

arts council logo

The construction of io 0.0.1 beta++ has been made possible by the generous support of the Arts Council of Ireland.

io 0.0.1 beta++: dreams of the future

Curiosity Rover

At the io 0.0.1 beta++ website, I’ve just posted some thoughts and questions from the Scientific American / American Museum of Natural History Beyond Planet Earth Tweetup on January 18, 2012.

I’m moved by the planetarium: I travel to the stars I cannot see, struggle with the scale of what I cannot fathom. Modern planetariums demonstrate the grandeur of God’s creation, but in a secular scientific context. They bring the distant close; make the visible the imperceptible; make manifest the abstract.

[Read the rest…]

CD: io 0.0.1 beta++: excerpts from the liner notes

Franziska Schroeder and io 0.0.1 beta++, Ó Riada Hall, 05-25-2010
Franziska Schroeder and io 0.0.1 beta++ (Ó Riada Hall, Cork, May 25, 2010)

At the io 0.0.1 beta++ ’site, I’m posting short excerpts from the liner notes to ‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531). Written by the California-based interactive media artist Sara Roberts, here’s the second excerpt:

io 0.0.1 beta++ is rather special in being both an instrument and a player. And given the two attributes it has a very particular sound, ‘sound’ here referring to both timbral quality and the broader sense of having an indelible identity, a style, having its own sound. [2]

io has an extravagant range of sounds made with superhuman amounts of air, and superhuman articulations of air resistance: a hummingbird trill that can go on without the limit of breath, bleats, blats, a grainy slur, shifts between piping and sandy sounds, elephant-like trumpeting, a faint spitty-sounding purr, slushy trills, a hoarse blast of full-spectrum noise, scumbling, whispery hisses ramping up to loud razzing. It can make delicate birdlike chirpings then abruptly sound like a power tool under duress, or render sounds reminiscent of emergency vehicles. [Original post at io 0.0.1 beta++…]

[2] George E. Lewis, ‘Interacting with Latter-Day Musical Automata’, Contemporary Music Review, Vol.18, No.3, 99–112 (1999).

© 2011 Sara Roberts.

Read the first excerpt: ‘a curious situation (liner notes: io 0.0.1 beta++)’. [All excerpts…]

‘io 0.0.1 beta++ (SLAMCD 531) CD cover (copyright 2011, Han-earl Park)

‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) will be released by SLAM Productions in fall August 2011.

Performers: io 0.0.1 beta++ (itself), Han-earl Park (guitar), Bruce Coates (alto and sopranino saxophones) and Franziska Schroeder (soprano saxophone).

© 2011 Han-earl Park.
℗ 2011 SLAM Productions.

updates

06–11–11: change release date to August 2011.

Ten Questions from the Cork Independent

From the local free tabloid, the Cork Independent. My first (last?) fluff piece…

From the Cork Independent March 26th 2009
From the Cork Independent March 26th 2009

How many members of the (semi-fictional) trans-national tribe of latter-day improvising musicians can say they’ve done a fluff piece, huh? (Not counting the blindfold tests.) Braxton? Crispell? Parker? Ha! I don’t think so….

The newspaper piece was by Graham Lynch, with a photo by John Hough.