SOFT REVOLVERS
Soft Revolvers is a music performance for 4 spinning tops built with clear acrylic by the artist. Each spinning top, 10’ in diameter, is associated with an ‘instrument’ or part in an electronic music composition. The tops are equipped with gyroscopes and accelerometers that communicate wirelessly with a computer where the motion data collected (speed,unsteadiness at the end of a spin, acceleration spikes in case of collisions) informs musical algorithms designed in Pure Data. LEDs placed inside the tops illuminate the body of the objects in a precise counterpoint to the music.

Brazil Now
BRAZIL NOW is a composition that addresses increasing militarization and surveillance within urban areas. Its geographical and acoustic reference is São Paulo, the largest megacity in Latin America. The piece is based on field recordings that capture the symptoms of a Latin American variant of turbo-capitalism with its distinctive acoustic features. Eruptive public demonstrations on the streets are often accompanied by loud, carnivalesque elements. These are controlled by a militarized infrastructure, openly demonstrating a readiness to deploy violence. The sonic documents are analyzed by machine learning algorithms searching for acoustic memes, textures, and rhythms that could be symptomatic for predominant social forces. The algorithmic results are then used as a base for a score and its interpretation through a musical ensemble. The piece drafts a phantasmatic auditory landscape built on the algorithmic evaluation of urban conflict zones.

Exformation, an interactive installation inspired by the concept of “exformation,” was developed for a composition by Jesper Nordin performed by the Diotima string quartet and combines musical, luminous and colorimetric scores. Around the musicians, positioned on a technically equipped stage, three aluminium-edged cubes with LEDs mounted on circular rails move and angle their light in keeping with an algorithmic programme based on analysis of the spectrum, timbre and intensity of the music. This sensitive object becomes a total composition, a poetic, digital entity responding to the work played at its centre.

Anomy, for U.S.and Mexican News
Anomy, for U.S.and Mexican News uses news media RSS feeds in real time in combination with data sanitization and sound synthesis algorithms in order to create visual displacement and generate a non-linear musical score. Through immersion, adjacency, perpetuity, uncertainty, and content in real time, it offers a contemplative experience with mass media, censorship, and language in contemporary society. Information containing the letter “e” in news briefs from eleven different sources in English and Spanish will be redacted—each triggering a musical note. Inspired by lipogrammatic literature and concrete poetry, this piece uses the lipogram to call attention to subjectivity and control in mainstream news media. The result is both a rhythmically diverse sound piece and a visual document that continuously evolves along with the flow of information published by Mexican and American news outlets.

Cellogram
composed by James Tenney
performed by Ashley Walters – cello
James Tenney made significant early musical contributions to plunderphonics, sound synthesis, algorithmic composition, process music, spectral music, microtonal music, and tuning systems including extended just intonation.

1024 ARCHITECTURE

FILE FESTIVAL

The project consists of a podium with a microphone installed on the sidewalk of the Paulista Avenue, where people could interact through the vocal conversion into musical notes. The 1024 architecture group elaborated a brand new algorithm for this project, which changes the graphic behaviors by means of sounds. Depending on the note sung, several parameters of the program, such as colors, shapes and density.

FILE LED Show

The art-technology exhibition of FILE São Paulo 2013 brings the new interactive work by the famous 1024 architecture group to be presented on the gigantic LED panel of FIESP building on Paulista Avenue. People could change the images on the panel through their voices or by humming a song.
The 1024 architecture group created the “interactive LED” digital graphic project for the Paulista Avenue, which will be presented from July 22 through August 18, 2013. The project consists of a podium with a microphone installed on the sidewalk of the Paulista Avenue, where people could interact through the vocal conversion into musical notes. The 1024 architecture group elaborated a brand new algorithm for this project, which changes the graphic behaviors by means of sounds. Depending on the note sung, several parameters of the program, such as colors, shapes, density, and rhythms (squares, circles, stripes, etc.), will change.