June 8 through 9, 2013 is this year’s Northern Spark Festival and I am participating with a project that I am directing called Instant Cinema: Teleportation Platform X. This is a collaborative effort with an amazing team of artists and musicians involved including the members of DKO, David T. Steinman as the Mobile Conductor, and Jon Steinhorst as our Artistic Director.
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Jon Steinhorst put together this video preview for our Northern Spark project, Instant Cinema: Teleportation Platform X. It was compiled from footage that was shot during our recent work-in-progress performance at the Northrup King for the Visual Storage exhibition. This should provide a small scale example of what to expect from the final performance on June 8, 2013.
This piece was shot under a railroad bridge that I ride under during my commute. While trains are going over the bridge a nice rumbling, screechy ambience envelopes the space. On this occasion, a few weeks ago, melting icicles were dripping onto the sidewalk adding a chaotic rhythm to the soundscape. Rather than producing a drone to mimic the ambience I used noise, LFO pitch sweeps, and sample-and-hold on the Monotribe to contrast the reverberated railroad rumbling, and screeching.
NOTE: This is a binaural recording mixed with a monophonic, analog, synthesizer performance. Please use circumaural headphones to experience the binaural effect.
Here’s a recent addition to my series of duets for synthesizers and environments. Once again I have used the cleaners as a setting, but this time focusing on the spin cycle and using the binaural head with a fixed camera. The accelerating oscillations of the spin cycle are really fun to mimic with the Korg Monotribe. The dual speed setting on the LFO goes a long way. Pushing the speed up into the audio range one can create cross mod or FM like textures. This piece will be shown, along with similar work, at my MFA thesis exhibition next month.
NOTE: This is a binaural recording mixed with a monophonic, analog, synthesizer performance. Please use circumaural headphones to experience the binaural effect.
This is an excerpt from a performance by DKO from the MCAD MFA open studio night on December 7, 2012 as discussed in the post Live Binaural Recording of DKO with Oliver Grudem. The document features Oliver Grudem (not shown) who produced the audiovisual score in real-time. The video and sound coming from the LED display and loud speaker below it was broadcast into the performance space as Oliver walked around the Minneapolis Uptown area during a snow storm. The visuals and sound from his walk provided a “score” for us to respond to as we improvised. Oliver was also able to hear our musical reactions to the audiovisual score as he was broadcasting and respond accordingly.
The piece was recorded with my custom built binaural head microphone to capture the sound localization of the performance space. NOTE: It is necessary to wear high quality headphones to experience the binaural effect. The spatial properties of studio monitors are also acceptable but will not produce the same localization of the sound sources. Thanks goes out to Eric Dowell for shooting video of the one hour long performance. I am working on editing a shorter version to briefly summarize the essence of the piece. This 13 minute video is a more in depth snapshot of what the performance entailed.