Samples II (1987) and Artificial Languages (1981) in MixTape 1980s at the National Gallery of Victoria

My piece "Samples II: Ravel Homage - That Which is Neither a Deconstruction nor an Appropriation, Neither Bricollage nor Post-Modern" (1987) is on display as part of

Mix Tape 1980s

Appropriation, Subculture, Critical Style

which is on at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia at Federation Square from 11 Apr – 01 Sep 2013.

While mostly a show of visual works, there are four iPads attached to the walls of the exhibition, each with a playlist faceplate (that looks like a blown-up, hand-written cassette label) and a pair of headphones attached to them.  Each iPad has a different playlist on it, chosen by a different person.  My piece is on the iPad in the right-hand room of the exhibit, on the right-hand wall, about half-way into the room.  The playlist was chosen by Peter Tyndall, to whom I give many thanks for including me.  Also on his playlist is "Artificial Languages" (1981) a collaboration between Chris Mann and myself, which was performed by the Astra Choir, John McCaughey directing.  The show is well worth seeing - for me, at any rate, there was a lot of nostalgia in seeing works I'd seen many years ago.  And especially worth seeing, from a new music historical point of view, is a large wall-full of posters, record jackets and other objects from the Clifton Hill Community Music Centre and Innocent Records, designed by Philip Brophy.  So if you're in Melbourne in the Federation Square area, drop in.   

Photos from Sound Poetry Performance at La Mama, 18 March 2013

Here are some photos from a performance I gave as part of La Mama Poetica, on March 18.  The performance was organized by Sjaak de Jong, and featured Jaap Blonk, Santo Cassati, jeltje, Sjaak, Mark Lewis, and Peter Fraser as well as myself.  A good time was had by all.  I was performing on an iPhone (not visible in these pix), an iPad, and voice.  My performing material consisted of letters on alphabet beads I drew at random from a small box.  I sang/intoned these letters, and also entered them into the iDevices for use in the program abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz, running on both.  The captions of the photos (taken by Catherine Schieve) are the phonemes I was performing at the time, according to Catherine.

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iiiooiiiiooooiiioooiii

Ooooooo

Rrrrrrrrr

Sssssss

Cellular Etudes - A New CD length piece, free for downloading

From about July 2012 until March 2013, I worked on a series of 12 computer music etudes, each one lasting 5 minutes, called Cellular Etudes.  Following on from my earlier Nightshade Etudes, I used a single technique to generate musical information for the piece.  In this case, it was the mathematical technique of Cellular Automata.  Complete notes for the piece can be downloaded HERE.  And you can download mp3 versions of all 12 etudes HERE.

Here are two of the etudes as a sample of the others:

No. 4: A Bureaucrat Tells the Truth

No. 11: Non-Pythagorean Dance for Felix

(which is dedicated to the memory of my dear friend Felix Werder 1922-2012)

I hope you enjoy listening to these two pieces, and if you download the whole thing, I hope you enjoy all of them.

A Blast from the Past - 1995 concert tour video!

Back in 1995, I was invited by Dan Senn, then of Tacoma, Washington to be part of a new music festival he was putting on called Six Exquisites.  The participants were Dan, myself, Jaap Blonk, Johannes S. Sistermanns, Jim Staley and Trimpin.  As part of the festival, we toured the show out to Spokane, Washington to the Interplayers Theatre, and Dan videoed part of the performance.  Now, years later, he's made an edited version of the show, and put it up on the web at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHMoUfZl-BA&feature=youtu.be. It's a very nice video.  There are brief excerpts from three pieces of mine: "Tuning the Furniture of Chaos," "Werribee Mitsubishi Minnesota Bonsai," (in a duet version with Jaap Blonk), and "Artists are the Roadkill of the Information Superhighway."  The real delight of this edit though, are extended takes of spectacular performances by Jaap Blonk and Johannes Sistermanns.  A good time was had by all, including the audience, as you'll see.  Enjoy!

Two New Articles On Line

In October I published a review of AudioMulch 2.2.1 (it's now up to 2.2.3) in Wusik Sound Magazine, then in December, I published an article, "Extreme Distortion" in the December issue.  The distortion one deals with the idea of using sound modification software to change source sounds to the point where their origin is almost or totally obscured.  I mention plugins such as Sonic Charge's Bitspeek and Permut8, and dBlue's Glitch, among others.  Here's the link for accessing the magazines: http://www.wusik.com/ww/products/wusik-magazine.  The AudioMulch review is on Page 43 of the October 2012 issue, and "Extreme Distortion is on P29 of the December issue.  Enjoy.