UVTOWER
(2024)
author(s): Andrea Guidi
published in: Research Catalogue
The UVTOWER is a generative installation and interactive performance instrument which produces dense post-rave music.
Performing with Sonic Tools. An approach to designing and analysing new instruments
(2023)
author(s): Gaute Barlindhaug
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
In recent decades, digital technology has accelerated the development of new musical instruments, not only establishing new techniques for creating sound but also enabling new performance practices. From the perspective of the performer, this has significantly broadened their possibility to express themselves, but through earlier experimentations it has become clear to me that audiences have problem comprehend such use of new musical instruments. In a traditional setting, when an artist performs with an instrument the audience can build on their cumulative experience and knowledge to evaluate the skill of an artist. With new experimental instruments such a strategy to understand a performance is not possible. This text describes my work with the dance performance Sound of Silence, and the creation of a device called the Looping Camera. Base on previous experience from using sensor technology in musical performances combined with theories and about the listeners position, we tried find a new approach to the creation of new sound producing devises that could overcome earlier problems with audience comprehension. With our work we tried to create a device that, even if it was largely unfamiliar for the audience, could establish a sense of meaning for the audience by including references to non-musical media technology. This performance also resulted in the developing of an analytical concept, that of “sonic tools”, that is meant to draw attention to the aesthetics of new an unfamiliar instrument through liberating such tools from the dichotomy of musical vs- nonmusical sounds.
Deliberately Practicing the Saxophone
(2017)
author(s): Per Anders Nilsson
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
A point of departure in this exposition is the author’s experience of practicing and playing on the saxophone for more than 30 years. In particular, three aspects of practicing a musical instrument are discussed: firstly, development and maintenance of general skills; secondly avoiding stagnation and so-called arrested development, and thirdly practicing for specific events. These aspects of practicing are elucidated thru long time personal experience from playing and practicing the saxophone. The saxophone is an acoustic instrument where its properties are given by design and acoustics, and it is up to the player to master and perhaps extend its playing possibilities to its physical limits. Noteworthy, parts in this article is taken from the author’s thesis A Field of Possibilities (Nilsson, 2011), however practicing examples are either reworked or new, and reformatted for this context. In my thesis, which treats designing and playing digital musical instruments, the purpose of discussing the saxophone was about to create a background, something else, as contrast to the main subject. In this exposition practicing the saxophone is at the forefront, however written with more than 15 year’s experience of deliberately practicing electronic musical instruments of various kinds as a background.
Between air and electricity : microphones and loudspeakers as musical instruments
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Cathy van Eck
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This research of Cathy van Eck takes the artistic use of the devices that bring sound waves into electricity and back as its central focus point; they are commonly called microphones and loudspeakers. These devices have become essential for many forms of music making. Through the same pair of loudspeakers, people listen to diverse music and sound, such as violin sonatas, rock songs or simply the latest news. Accordingly, microphones and loudspeakers are often designed to remain transparent; that is, "inaudible" in the final sound result. From the 1950s on, microphones and loudspeakers started to play a crucial role not only in the mere reproduction of sound, but also in the creation of music. Composers and musicians often described these new possibilities of using microphones and loudspeakers as musical instruments.
This resulted not only in many pieces and performances that used microphones and loudspeakers in unusual ways but also in many new possibilities for musical composition. Confronted with microphones and loudspeakers through my own practice as a composer using electro-acoustic media, Van Eck investigated how microphones and loudspeakers could become musical instruments. This resulted in 28 compositions and a text about historical, theoretical, and practical aspects of the subject. To obtain a clear picture of the possibilities of microphones and loudspeakers in music, Van Ec develops four approaches in my dissertation. Three of them focus on the transparent use (reproducing, supporting and generating). The fourth approach focuses on the use of microphone and loudspeakers in an opaque way; that is, as musical instruments. Van Eck calls this the interacting approach, since the music should, in contrast to the other approaches, not be transmitted through microphones and loudspeakers, but formed, coloured, and changed by these devices. The fourth approach was the starting point for 28 compositions, in which Van Eck investigates in what ways one could interact or "play" microphones and loudspeakers. This resulted in a categorisation of three interaction parameters: movement, material and space. Van Eck looked at how these interaction parameters might be recognised in the work of other musicians and composers, as well as how the interaction with microphones and loudspeakers influenced compositional form, the performance situation, and the relationship between musician and musical instrument. This resulted in a theory and praxis in which Van Eck elaborates upon unique features of music, composed with microphones and loudspeakers.
Several chapters of this dissertation have been adapted and made into the book ‘Between Air and Electricity : Microphones and Loudspeakers as Musical Instruments’ which has been published at Bloomsbury Open Access DOI 10.5040/9781501327636
The UVTOWER is a generative installation and interactive performance instrument which produces dense post-rave music.open exposition comments (0)