Forum wk 11

Forum

Luke Harrald



As you can see, Luke was hard at work attending conferences during his stay in Paris.


After having spent 7 weeks on a grant funded trip to Paris, Luke has returned with some interesting tales of his time there. He was there to attend a major event in Paris called 'nime' (new interfaces for musical expression) held this year at Pierre Boulez’s IRCAM- Centre Pompidou and to go to the ccmix summer intensive course at Xenakis’s EMF institute.




The CCmix website... pity thats all there is. The rest is just PDF documents. A program based around technology.. and they don't have a functioning website?

I felt very self conscious when Luke relayed the incredible things people presented at ‘nime.’

Firstly was a room with movable baffles to alter the resonance of the room. The possibilities for cutting out all resonant frequencies of a room or targeting specific ones would have incredible creative outcomes. I could imagine changing the resonant frequencies of a room in real time as part of a performance; it would put an EQ and mixing desk to shame with the possibilities.

The installation for 10 snare drums sounded interesting. The idea behind the installation is the use of little Piezzo speakers to excite the skin of each drum in a different way. I think something like that would have worked well in a very resonant space, so different frequencies could ring out and interact with each other. Maybe I just have the room with the movable baffles on my brain. :P

The earthquake simulator seemed interesting, although other than using sub sonic frequencies, I'm unsure as to the musical application of it. Still cool though.

"The Bent Leather Band" also seemed interesting. I can understand their view point of creating controllers that are artistic and interactive for creating music with technology, yet I feel that there approach limits what technology can do, because their trying to make it conform to a historical standard. Any interactive technological device should think outside the box, addressing the specific functions which they wish to achieve. Although on a performance level, it would be a lot more engaging to see them play than someone crouched behind a computer screen. But devices that offer a performance aspect with out being based on standard instruments are still possible. Another point to make is that things like timbre of acoustic instruments are something that is a great thing to explore on the technological side of things. I might just have to sit on the fence on this subject.

Tying into this idea creating musical interfaces which offer a performance aspect without being based on an instrument was Adachi Tomomi's Jacket controller. It basically manipulated his voice as he sung. It was quite incredible to see, but aesthetically the sound wasn’t all that interesting. It had its moments, but overall got a bit tedious. I also had this awful thought of the latest commercial pop acts AKA Britney spears or some terrible boy band using these jackets in there performances to trigger certain sounds etc. I really hate that type of 'music.'

Luke’s intensive summer CCmix course at Xenakis’s EMF institute herald the production of his piece “monuments” based on the monuments around Paris. To create the sounds he used a combination of the programs Max and Jitter and then sequenced them within Pro Tools. I really enjoyed the piece though. It had a very subtle and emotional mood. It reminded me of soft eerie strings being played in a minor key. My only criticism was that it could have been a bit shorter, or introduced other materials. It was really well done though. The use of dynamics in particular worked really well.

Xenakis’s Upic system at the EMF institute seemed interesting, but I think it would take a long time to master, and I would prefer a different approach to utilising the sound possibilities of wave table synthesis.

The last thing I would like to comment on in this ridiculously long blog is a Poem Luke read us which were part of a paper talk presented at the ‘nime’ conference. I really liked the sentiments about moving past the consumerist attitude. Firstly it relates to idea that mastering a program is paramount to constantly upgrading before you can use something to its full potential. And secondly in our current environmental situation, consumption is a big issue we all need to be aware of.

Enhancement Vs Interaction

References
Luke, Harrald. "My trip to Paris." Lecture presented at University of Adelaide, 10 October 2006.

Pic References in order of appearance
1. Luke,Harrold. "playing guitar in france."
2. CCmix. "CCmix page." 20 october 2006.