Warning: Declaration of Suffusion_MM_Walker::start_el(&$output, $item, $depth, $args) should be compatible with Walker_Nav_Menu::start_el(&$output, $item, $depth = 0, $args = Array, $id = 0) in /home/theatr23/public_html/wp-content/themes/suffusion/library/suffusion-walkers.php on line 39
Jun 212013
 
Still from a/v synth performance at Transcinema, 1999, Benton C. Bainbridge

Still from a/v synth performance at Transcinema, 1999, Benton C. Bainbridge

Here’s episode 104: Adventure Bomb: Projecting, a revised and expanded edition of the set I performed at Soundcrawl in collaboration with Benton-C Bainbridge’s live video projection mapping (“Fast-mapping”). Recorded at Brick Factory Nashville. Best experienced through headphones.

Adventure Bomb is my experimental “scoop & loop” solo project.  “Scoop & loop” is a performance-style that involves scooping out sections of recordings and looping them live … basically, audio juggling.

Benton-C Bainbridge is a media artist based in The Bronx, working with custom systems of his own design. Benton has presented immersive environments, screenings, installations and live performances across five continents, collaborating with scores of artists around the world. He even has a Wikipedia page! (Someone should add this collaboration!)

Soundcrawl is a sound art and new media organization led by Kyle Baker presenting works by the best and brightest new media artists and composers in a unique “opt in” gallery format.

“Projecting” is comprised of:

  • Interviews with Soundcrawl attendees. As they listened to Soundcrawl “sound art” selections via headphones, they were asked to describe what they were hearing. The central idea to this experiment was seeing if I could “map” their descriptions onto the music I was generating live.
  • Snippets of live musical performances occurring at Soundcrawl 2012.
  • Instruments performed by Adventure Bomb live, including a Casio Sk-1 keyboard, circuit-bent toys and various effects.
  • Sound effects and field recordings from Freesound.org. Freesound aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, etc … released under Creative Commons licenses that allow their reuse. Listeners are encouraged to donate to Freesound.

The interviewees (in order of appearance):

  • Lesley Beeman
  • Unknown (Let me know if you can identify this person)
  • Antonia Oakes
  • Joe Nolan
  • Tony Youngblood
  • Ilana Morgan
  • Ryan Hogan
  • Unknown (Let me know if you can identify this person)

The 2012 Soundcrawl performers sampled (in alphabetical order):

  • Jason Fick
  • Timothy Harenda
  • Ilana Morgan
  • Adam Vidiksis
  • Sally Williams
  • Mark Zanter

Freesound.org collaborators and the names of the samples used:

Big thanks to the participants and to the Freesound artists! Thanks for listening!

Nov 032012
 

If you give most 1st Saturday Art Crawls a skip, consider making tonight an exception! For one, tonight is the last aftercrawl party to take place at Brick Factory’s Cummins Station location. They’re already in the process of moving to the neighborhood which houses Chestnut Studios, Infinity Cat Records, United Records Pressing, and house venue Noa Noa. I scoped out the new digs yesterday afternoon, and the space is MUCH larger than the Cummins Station pad. There are multiple rooms, making way for a dedicated wood shop, art gallery, photography studio, stage, and much more. I can’t wait until Brick Factory opens to the public again!

For two, tonight’s Art Crawl features the intriguing “temporary hyper-reality” environ Jerkwater Burg. An experiment by local artists including members of Blacktooth Records, Square People, and Fly Golden Eagle, the Burg will take over Open Gallery in the downtown Arcade tonight from 6pm to 9pm. I’ve been incorrectly pronouncing and spelling it “Jerkwater BUG” until this very moment. In fact, I had to correct the spelling in all the spots I wrote it above. Is the Burg already screwing with my mind?!?!

I can’t do any better than the description on the Facebook event page:

The evening of November 3, Open Gallery will play host to an environment built up of corporeal experience. ‘Jerkwater Burg’ is the collaboration of Nashville artists, under the guise of Blacktooth Records (in the archival sense), who work in varying mediums, combining their abilities in order to manipulate multiple senses with the hope of wholly influencing and enhancing the physiological, psychological, and emotional state of its audience. It is not a gallery showcase, but a temporary hyper-reality, designed to encourage its inhabitants to feel something new, something strange.

In ‘Jerkwater Burg’ an attempt is made to house an environment not unlike what Alan Watts described as, “the experiencer and the experience becoming a single, ever-changing, self-forming process,” one where the situation is familiar – semiotically, artistically, etc. – but unlike the unification of the place and person, we desire a slight discomfort with what we call the Arpeggio of Meaning while still holding belief in the singular experience. Magical. Curious. Off-putting. Inviting. A kind of forcing of an unconscious suspension of disbelief.Our idle frustration with our own inability to project a concrete meaning on experiences is fascinating to us, and in our current age we think that many others feel the same. Perhaps it is that these affects exist entirely outside of logistics. We invite you to explore ‘Jerkwater Burg’.You may accidentally find yourself in the middle of Jihad or adorning yourself with Mimosa in the springtime. Perhaps you’ll discover your lover to be too coquettish in this space, or that all your friends are a pale mutiny of dispossessed voidoids hatched in a misty somewhere between fictive and mundane. And we know you’ll want to help – we do too, that’s the idea – but we can’t help, and we view all these attempts at meaning as banging your head against a wall: it’s nice when it stops.The more unsure we are of the exact spacial province we’re inhabiting, the further into the ‘liminal hinterland we go. You have to know it feelingly in these ugly, mystifying times and the last thing we want to do is rest on our laurels when it comes to this slug we’re trying to salt.

Yes, I know. This could go either way. But I’m a sucker for experiential art ala St. Louis City Museum, and I’m placing my bet that this exhibit will be the most talked about Art Crawl show in a long time. The folks behind Black Tooth Records haven’t steered us wrong yet.

Jerkwater Burg
6pm-9pm, free

Open Gallery
The Arcade
244 5th Ave. N.
Nashville, TN 37219

Oct 042012
 
Robbie Hunsinger

Robbie Hunsinger

I don’t know how Soundcrawl director and co-founder Kyle Baker does it. I have enough trouble organizing a one day festival. Soundcrawl 2012’s schedule spans five continuous days! And every single event is a major attraction for lovers of sound art and avant garde music.

As the Soundcrawl home page states, “Soundcrawl is a sound art and new media organization presenting works by best and brightest new media artists and composers in a unique ‘opt in’ gallery format. Since 2009 we’ve received 450+ works by 90 composers in 43 countries on 6 continents, and presented 72 to audiences in Nashville, Tennessee.”

Check out our 2011 interview with Kyle Baker. The really cool thing about Soundcrawl is that it’s interlocked with the October 6th First Saturday Art Crawl. As you roam from gallery to gallery, you’ll discover sound stations playing Soundcrawl official selections.

But this year, that’s just the beginning. Here’s the schedule of events:

Saturday Oct 6th

First Saturday Art Crawl, 6-8pm The Arcade

Tracy Silverman, 9:30pm Brick Factory

Sunday Oct 7th

 Soundcrawl: Art of the Future, 5PM – 8PM

Monday Oct 8th

Soundcrawl Presents Benton-C Bainbridge & Tony Youngblood,  7PM

Tuesday Oct 9th

Soundcrawl Presents Tim Hinck, 7PM – 9PM

Wednesday Oct 10th

Soundcrawl Presents Robbie Lynn Hunsinger,  7PM – 9PM

I’m really looking forward to Robbie Hunsinger‘s performance. The Facebook event page states, “This concert will feature opportunities for audience participation along with several premieres: a duet for arduino and soprano sax, a composition for alto sax and vocoder, and a multimedia composition for two English Horns and Bass. This last piece is her third project in a multimedia series based on source material captured from a canoe in Ebenezer Creek, an eerie, historic black water swamp in Georgia. This will be Hunsinger’s first composition for multiple player interactive multimedia and each player will independently control imagery in real-time.”

VERY COOL!

There’s also video artist Benton C Bainbridge‘s collaboration with some young ruffian. 😉

That event’s Facebook event page states, “An evening of FastMappin’; wherein video artist extrodinaire Benton-C will map projections onto what you bring while Tony Youngblood provides mind-expanding musical accompaniment. Put it in the Beam and Benton-C will Map it.” Guaranteed fun.

There’s also electric violinist extraordinaire Tracy Silverman (whom Terry Riley liked so much he wrote a symphony for), digital media manipulator Tim Hinck, and the carnivalesque symposium known as Art of the Future:

Grab your interesting friends and head down to downtown for a great night of sounds and wonders as Soundcrawl presents Art of the Future, an eclectic mix of live performances and innovative media installations in a carnival atmosphere.  Stroll through cutting edge new media from 5 until 8pm: interact with a video, listen to sound art from a world away,  tweak the knobs on a sound sculpture, lose yourself in an electric haze of sound from accomplished performers, take in new visual art, experience what’s possible when imagination and technology mix.

Every event except the Art Crawl is happening at my favorite Nashville creative space Brick Factory Nashville. Don’t miss it!

Joe Nolan wrote a great SoundCrawl preview over at the Nashville Scene.

Brick Factory Nashville
(Inside Cummins Station)
Suite 126
209 10th Ave South
Nashville, TN 37203

Sep 282012
 


2012 Circuit Benders’ Ball Nashville

A celebration of hardware hacking, art, music, and the creative spirit.

Saturday, September 29th at Brick Factory Nashville

Sponsored by:

Workshops 10am to 7pm.

Art and music 8pm to 1am, $15 at door or until September 27th via Kickstarter.

Brick Factory Nashville
(Inside Cummins Station)
Suite 126
209 10th Ave South
Nashville, TN 37203

Get tickets to the Ball and lots of great rewards via our Kickstarter campaign!

What is Circuit Bending?

“Circuit Bending is the creative recycling of common discarded technology, often children’s toys, by opening the device and soldering in new connections to create unique musical and video instruments.” – Roth Mobot

What makes circuit bending so cool is that ANYONE can do it! All you need is curiosity, a screwdriver, and a willingness to experiment. Circuit bending is a gateway into electronics, art, music, and making!

What is the Circuit Benders’ Ball Nashville?

The Circuit Benders’ Ball is a daylong symposium dedicated to the art of the bend, taking place on Saturday, September 29th. It will feature two stages, over a dozen performers, an interactive art gallery, and workshops.

We have invited circuit bent artists from Tennessee and beyond to perform and lead electronic workshops. The afternoon workshops are open to all ages and all levels of experience. In the evening, experimental musicians and sound artists will perform with circuit bent instruments, custom-made electronics, and/or battery-powered electronic devices.

If you’re curious about experimental music, making stuff, electronics, art, hacking, and sonic mayhem, this event is for you!

The Ball will take place on Saturday, September 29th, 2012 at Brick Factory Nashville, a hackerspace, community workshop, educational facility, art gallery, and performance space.

Performers:

Roth Mobot – Chicago
Blight Side of Life
– Nashville
Brain Lesion
– Murfreesboro, TN
Elegant Bassterds (Ben Marcantel and Derek Schartung) – Nashville
Josh Gumiela, Kelli Shay Hix, Lucas McCallister – Nashville
Hadals – Nashville / Montgomery, AL
Joey Molinaro – New York City
Nashville Robotic Philharmonic – (Zack Adams of CMKT4) Benton, KY
Pimpdaddysupreme – Nashville
Pineapple Explode – Nashville
Posttaste (Tommy Stangroom of Square People) – Nashville
Teletron Orchestra (Dylan Simon and Ken Soper) – Nashville / Murfreesboro

Schedule:

Times are approximate and are subject to change.

IN STAGE: 8:15-8:30 Posttaste
OUT STAGE: 8:35-8:50 Elegant Bassterds
IN STAGE: 8:55-9:10 Kelli Shay Hix / Josh Gumiela / Lucas McCallister
OUT STAGE: 9:15-9:30 Pineapple Explode
IN STAGE: 9:35-9:50 Teletron Orchestra
OUT STAGE: 9:55-10:10 Brain Lesion
IN STAGE: 10:15-10:50 Roth Mobot

Intermission

IN STAGE: 11:05-11:20 Pimpdaddysupreme w/ Matt the PM
OUT STAGE: 11:25-11:40 Hadals
IN STAGE: 11:45-12:05 Joey Molinaro
OUT STAGE: 12:10-12:25 Blight Side of Life
IN STAGE: 12:30-12:50 Nashville Robotic Philharmonic

House DJ of WEIRD: Gabriel Batres

Visual Artists:

Benton Bainbridge
Rhendi Greenwell

Josh Gumiela
Ryan Hogan
Matt the PM
Aric Vance

Tilman Zitzman

Workshops:

Build a BuckAWatt Boost Kit

Build a Buckawatt Boost Kit Custom Printed Circuit Boards

Tickets for the workshops are limited. While a few tickets may be available at the event, we highly recommend you purchase your tickets in advance via TheSkillery.com.

Chip to be Square: Build Your Own Synthesizer

10:00AM – 1:00PM, Brick Factory Nashville

Build your own square wave sequencing synthesizer! A synthesizer is an electronic musical instrument capable of producing a wide range of frequencies (notes) to make melodies. Square waves are one of the most commonly used waveforms in all synthesizers. They sound somewhat rough to our ears and might remind you of old 8-bit video game systems such as the Atari 2600 or Nintendo Entertainment System.

By the end of the 3 hour session, you will have built your own synthesizer! Workshop cost includes all supplies. Just bring yourself. No previous electronic experience necessary.

Price: $55. Buy tickets.

Intro to Circuit Bending w/ Roth Mobot

2:00PM – 5:00PM, Brick Factory Nashville

In this workshop, you will take apart an old toy and make a brand new musical instrument! You’ll be able to identify and explore the basic components of a typical circuit board, the basics of soldering, install output jacks, switches, body contacts (and more!), and control a world of new sounds. Workshop cost includes all supplies EXCEPT the toy. Just bring yourself and 2 toys to bend. No previous electronic experience necessary.

IMPORTANT: This workshop is BYOT (Bring Your Own Toy). Participants are required to bring 1 battery-powered device (with batteries!) to the class. It’s best to bring 2 toys … Some toys just don’t bend. Sometimes a toy fries during the workshop. We don’t want anyone to be left out.

What’s a good toy to bend? Find out on Roth Mobot’s workshop page: http://www.rubbermonkey.org/rothmobot/workshops.htm

Price: $45. Buy tickets.

Build a Buckawatt “Bend-a-Boost” Modular Boost Kit

5:30PM – 7:00PM, Brick Factory Nashville

In this workshop, attendees will learn how to build and design a single stage amplifier using sockets. Attendees will practice beginner soldering skills, populating a circuit board with sockets, before experimenting with a number of different custom biasing configurations with no additional soldering.

The Bend-a-Boost is a transistor-based boost kit. It can be used to add color and character to other devices and can be configured in a number of different ways to create signal clipping and oscillations. It has practical applications for circuit benders and stomp box lovers alike and teaches building blocks of amplification, overdrive, and fuzz. Workshop cost includes all supplies. Just bring yourself. No previous electronic experience necessary.

Price: $45. Buy tickets.

Official Sponsors: