13:00 Master class for Kyma 7 Practitioners, TBD
Control patterns in Kyma 7 — Carla Scaletti
The more you work with time-varying parameter controls in Kyma, the more you start to notice certain useful models or patterns of control that seem to come up over and over again in different circumstances. In this workshop, we’ll identify and study several of these useful patterns and see how to recognize them in the Sound library and how to apply them in your own work.
This workshop assumes that you are familiar with Kyma 7 (so if you are not, please watch these videos to prepare).
Following the workshop, we will all walk over to the Open Lab in VCB Studio B so you can try out some of the ideas from the master class, ask questions, and help answer the questions from your fellow Kyma 7 practitioners.
17:00 Concert, Black Box Theatre
The Road to Bozeman — Michael Wittgraf & Catherine Mullen. Michael Wittgraf, Kyma; SoundProof; Catherine Mullen, video
The Road to Bozeman was composed for the 2015 Kyma International Sound Symposium, to be performed by SoundProof. Catherine Mullen produced the video. SoundProof, with the composer on Kyma, improvise to the video. Video footage from which the final piece was made is from GoPro and iPhone video and photos taken during the composer’s travels to the Symposium on a motorcycle. The route began in Grand Forks, North Dakota (USA), across the entire northern region of the state, passing by Devils Lake and through the Bakken oil formation in the process. The route continues into Montana to the southwest, through Billings and through the Beartooth range of mountains. From there it continues into Wyoming, passing through the northern part of Yellowstone National Park, finally veering north back into Montana and Bozeman. The journey from the extreme flat landscape of northeastern North Dakota, along chronically flooded Devils Lake, through the frantic oil extraction activities of northwestern North Dakota and the Bakken formation, across the badlands of eastern Montana, and into the mountains surrounding Yellowstone as well as the Park itself, provide a glimpse of the variety of landscapes found in the north-central tier of U.S. states.
Tiger and Dragon — Simon Hutchinson. Simon Hutchinson, Kyma; Jennifer Gookin Cavanaugh, oboe
The tiger and the dragon symbolize duality and balance in the universe: yin and yang. These two beasts are evenly matched opponents, but, if you consider it, no one can say who would win in a match between them. The dragon, of course, is a fictional creature, from our myths and legends, while the tiger is a creature that we find roaming the earth. A tiger and a dragon, therefore, cannot possibly battle because they exist in two different worlds.
In this piece, we explore the balanced and irreconcilable worlds oboe and live electronics: yin and yang, tiger and dragon.
LINKS — Silvia Matheus. Silvia Matheus, Kyma; Stephen Ruppenthal, trumpet
Links is a piece inspired by the work of Fabricio Lopez, a visual artist from Brazil.
The first time I came across with the work of Fabricio Lopes was two years ago in São Paulo, Brazil. I was mesmerized by the energy, light, texture and movement of his paintings. My immediate thought was music.
Links is a structural improvisation for two players – Stephen Ruppenthal and Silvia Matheus. The work will be structured the way Fabricio constructs his paintings.
A block of wood is the impetus for the painting and color is added as part of the structural element of his images. The strokes of the brush are created by two gestures: controlled and primal. The controlled gesture evolves into a drawing. The primal gesture is created from the material he’s working with.The tension between these two gestural discourses makes Fabricio’s work to come alive with great dramatic force. We will try to translate the idea of color and gesture into a live performance interaction.
The video backdrop was created using one of Fabricio’s paintings. I separated color and texture from the painting which was the inspiration for the starting of LINKS. The result of this intervention is a beautiful music score.
Textures — Brian Belet & Madison McClintock. Brian Belet, Kyma; SoundProof; Madison McClintock, video
Textures is a collaborative film and soundscape project exploring textures in the artists’ respective found environments. Found objects in the visual realm include wood, metal, air, plant, animal, and human images filmed in rural Montana. Sonic found objects include the wood, metal, and vocal generators from SoundProof. These objects are presented in both real and imaginary contexts, often obscuring the distinction between the two worlds.
How The “Glitch” Stole The Party: Something found that became something else — İlker Işıkyakar. İlker Işıkyakar, video & Kyma
What is this thing we call glitch? An electronics glitch is an undesired transition that occurs before the signal settles to its intended value. A computer glitch is the failure of a system. In a technical sense a glitch is the unexpected result of a malfunction. Glitch Art, in turn, is the aestheticization of digital or analog errors (such as artifacts and other “bugs”) by corrupting digital code/data or by physically manipulating electronic devices. The glitch takes on a different form in relation to noise, failure or the accident. It transitions between artifact and filter, between radical breakages and commodification processes. Thus, the glitch in Glitch Art is a definitional precondition where the recovery of technical failure is the formal basis for the creative process.
To this day I remember my first glitch-experience when my beloved commodore 64 home computer crashed and the “ghost in the machine” was awakened. Ever since that moment I have wondered whether machine malfunctions are in fact a curious form of communication… between human and machine, between machine and human, between machine and machine.
For this performance piece, I shall accompany a short film that I created combining found imagery from old Video 8 footage. The real time Kyma soundscape draws from found sounds of everyday life. My intent is to emphasize the totalizing nature of the breakdown that glitch imposes on a work: A failure that is a transposition of the material (video and audio) itself.
Biographies of Presenters and Performers