Between Bare Trees And Falling Leaves

Between Bare Trees And Falling Leaves:

Skry 2:

So here are two pieces that utilizes the same technology and audio material, a sort of theme and variation. Originally “Between Bare Trees And Falling Leaves” was designed and composed for The Daniel Pearl Memorial held in Stanford University’s Memorial Chapel October 3rd 2012. During a performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons short “microclimates” were performed between each movement – my piece was placed between Autumn and Winter.

There were certain filming restrictions during the event and so I was actually out of shot during the concert; this video was taken during the sound check and it’s audio has been replaced by the audio of the live performance.

Skry 2: “Skrying is a magic practice that involves seeing things psychically in a medium, usually for purposes of obtaining spiritual visions and less often for purposes of divination or fortune-telling”, thank you very much wikipedia! The piece is an extended realization of “Between Bare Trees and Falling Leaves”. This version was performed at CCRMA, Stanford University, and also includes a close up projection that allows you to see how the food coloring interacts with the water over the duration of the piece. Movement near the water also causes it to move/oscillate – this is most noticeable near the end of the video when I walk out of shot.I think this was performed on October 25th 2012. I’m currently working on a third iteration of this piece. I think the audio/performance need a little reworking and I’ll probably try a different setting….. time will tell.

So this is what you can do with Supercollider, Food Coloring, Arduino, and Photo-resistors. Thanks as always to Dave Kerr for the filming of both videos.

The two other inserted “microclimates” can be seen/heard here:

Laura Steenberg (A love song for a woman named mia) –

Holly Herdon (Solo Voice) –

The Workshop At The Back Of The Barracks

This piece is an interactive situation/installation inspired by various elements of The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien.

Those who encountered the piece follow simple instructions, which explain how the anglepoise lamp should be moved. The movement changes the sound (not telling you how!) and also changes the lighting cast onto the object/sculptural elements in front of the participant. The central sculptural element is a magnifying lens, which points towards a set of gradually shrinking pieces of bent metal gauze. Still images of these element will be available soon.

This realization was set-up in the old MAX Lab at CCRMA Stanford University. There are three sample encounters in the following video

Petition

This piece was an attempt to make a simple electronic audience participation piece. In the end I’m not sure whether the end result is funny or sinister – it’s pretty easy to get people to scream and do your bidding!

On a related note – “You can not petition the the Lord with prayer”, Jim Morrison screaming during the opening The Soft Parade.

Pressing

This is a short flute and electronic piece written for the Talea Ensembles visit to Stanford University in May 2012. The idea for the pieces is unusually singularly-narrative, not something I normally do in instrumental music. I went through a month or two thinking about how call centers and automated phone lines are both excruciatingly annoying and well (and by well I mean evil!) designed. They turn back on us, led us astray, distort or comments, ware us out….etc….etc….. we’ve all been there!

Enjoy

Sound File

As Drunk As Bad Dubbing

A 2D and stereo version of a project originally made for 3D and 32 channel sound by Lulu DeBoer, Mayank Sanganeria, and Myself. This Version was also shown at CCRMA’s Modulations event in San Francisco held at CellSpace.

There is something of a loose narrative for the video – disorientation, drunkenness, and trying to understand what people are saying as they try to rouse you from your disoriented drunkenness!

Enjoy

The View From The High Horse

This piece is for interactive video and audio, with 4 live-performers. It explores the concept of changing rates of movements in both the computer environment and in the physical performance. By rate I am refering to the speed at which the video and the bodies of the performers move through a sequence of events. The positions and movements of the live performers influence both the audio and video events.
Two versions of both the video and audio are played linearly from start to finish by Supercollider patches. The default position of the patches maintains one video and audio pattern playing back at the normal rate, looping and repeating when it reaches the end. Another version of both the video and audio are simultaneously played back over a length of time controlled by a random number generator with values ranging from 10 seconds to 776 seconds. The patch flicks between these two copies of the video every 0.1 seconds.
The audio component has additional real-time elements: a pitch-tracker, an amplitude-follower, and a type of gate with adjustable slope parameters. The type of audio component and the frequency of their occurrence are controlled by an adjustable, simple weighted-probability system.

TVFTHH Notes