WORKING CONTINGENCIES
WORKING CONTINGENCIES
Special Event Leader: Arthur Clay
2nd Leader: Basak Dilara Ozdemir
The programme focuses on works that employ score methods that could be termed “open” or “malleablel”, where scores are no longer fixed and where the artistic license of the interpreter becomes an aspect of the compositional process.
Cipher Series(2010)
by Pedro Rebelo
Cipher Series is a collection of graphic scores that are displayed to audience and performers in accordance to a fixed temporal structure generated for each performance. The performance plays on the role of notation as a mediator of listening, setting up a performative condition based on interpretative strategies based on engagement by both the performer and the audience. The change from one graphic score to the next has immediate formal implications for the music and acts as a way of articulating shifts in musical material or interpretation strategy.
Valses and Etudes (2005)
by David Kim-Boyle
In Valses and Etudes (2005) for piano and computer, a score is generated in real-time for the pianist from eight pre-scanned scores. As the pianist performs these excerpts, the computer generates complementary musical textures composed of excerpts from recordings of various piano works. The use of scanned scores not only facilitates easier sight-reading, but more importantly allows the excerpts performed to more easily weave in and out of the excerpts that comprise the musical textures generated by the computer. Much of the musical complexity of Valses and Etudes stems from the simultaneous performance of up to a dozen different excerpts by the computer, and the interaction within this musical tapestry by the pianist.
One River & Five Bridges (2006)
by Art Clay
The score of A River with Five Dams is constructed out of multiple transparent score elements which are combined to initiate the parameters of the piece and to determine the interaction between them by using the rule based system provided by the composer. Musically, the piece deals with ideas of flow and anti flow in contrasts and balances. Concerning the pieces notational language, one could just term it graphic, but the graphic element is used in a unique way. Here, the elements of a language take on symbolic metaphor for action and work like a function ëlibraryí of a computer language.
Hour Angle (2008)
by John Eacott
Hour Angle sonifies the movement of the sun by mapping astronomical data to musical parameters. This work, like a related piece Flood Tide which generates music from the flow of tide, has evolved from a desire to use algorithmic processes to produce musical performances located specifically in a moment of time.
Fingerprints (1992)
by Georg Hajdu
Fingerprints is a piano piece in which the continuity or discontinuity of musical time is subject to exploration. Seven fragments of unequal length, most subdivided into shorter segments, may be combined according to three different aspects:_Linearity (strict continuity without repeats)._Circularity (interlocked continuity with repeats, nested structures and omissions)._Discontinuity (scrambled “continuity” with repeats, nested structures, omissions, and ‘erratic’ leaps)
Piano Etudes (2009)
by Jason Freeman
Piano Etudes combines the tradition of open-form scores with participatory technologies, enabling anyone to create and share their own unique versions of four short piano pieces through an interactive web site, and enabling any pianist to perform the versions shared by online users.
Kinesics (2009)
by Nicholas Collins
Kinesics is a structure for improvisation where action is guided by a computer generated score based around the affordances of the human body. Machine listening technology tracks the pianist, and feature-based effects are generated driven by the analysis. A feedback loop is established of interpretation of sounding and physical gesture.
Bios of the Performing Artists
Basak Dilara Ozdemir (Piano + Electronics), was born in 1981, started to study piano at the age of 7 at Istanbul University State Conservatory, after that she got her diplome and masterís degree in Budapest at Liszt Ferenc Music Academy, she also studied at the Paris Conservatory and a year long composition- electronic music course at IRCAM in Paris. Currently she is pursuing her PhD and working as an instructor at the music academy in Istanbul.
Bios of the Composers
Pedro Rebelo is a composer/digital artist and performer working in electroacoustic music, improvisation, digital media and installation. In 2002, he was awarded a PhD by the University of Edinburgh where he conducted research in both music and architecture. His work as a pianist and improvisor has been released by Creative Source Recordings and he has collaborated with musicians such as Chris Brown, Mark Applebaum, Carlos Zingaro and Evan Parker.
David Kim-Boyle is an Australian composer and new media artist who over the past ten years has developed a distinctive voice in the field of interactive computer music. His work has been heard around the world and he has been a guest artist at some of the leading research facilities for computer music including ZKM, SARC and STEIM. His research has been presented at many of the worldís leading forums for new music research including ICMC, DAFX, and NIME and published in journals such as Contemporary Music Review amongst others. He is presently working on a number of works for ensemble that feature a variety of real-time score generation techniques as well as a series of Arduino-based installation works
Art Clay, artist, was born in New York and lives in Basel Switzerland. He is a specialist in the performance of self created works with the use of intermedia and has appeared at international festivals, on radio and television television in Europe, Asia & North America. Recent work focus on performative works using mobile device and installation works that involve the public directly with “play”. He has received awards for sound works, performance, theatre, and new media art. He has taught media and interactive arts at various Art Schools and Universities in Europe and North America.
John Eacott ís career began in the 1980s with anarchic jazz group Loose Tubes and industrial metal bashers Test Dept. In the 1990s he composed for theatre; Gormenghast (1991 to 2007), TV and Film; Three Stept to Heaven (1995), A Bit of Scarlet (1997), Escape to Life (2000 and jazz arrangements for Alfie. Previous algorithmic works include The Street 2000, Morpheus (2001) Intelligent Street (2003). Hour Angle and Flood Tide have received numerous performances since 2008 including Flood Tide-Thames Festival (2009), Hour Angle Summer Solstice (Royal Observatory Greenwich 2010), Flood Tide See Further Festival of Science Southbank, London (2010).
Georg Hajdu, born in Gottingen, Germany in 1960, is among the first composers of his generation dedicated to the combination of music, science and computer technology. After studies in Cologne and at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT), he received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. In 1996, following residencies at IRCAM and the ZKM, Karlsruhe, he co-founded the ensemble WireWorks with his wife Jennifer Hymer_a group specializing in the performance of electro-acoustic music. Georg Hajdu published articles on several topics on the borderline of music and science. His areas of interest include multimedia, microtonality, algorithmic, interactive and networked composition. Currently, Georg Hajdu is professor of multimedia composition at the Hamburg School of Music and Theater.
Jason Freeman ís works break down conventional barriers between composers, performers, and listeners, using cutting-edge technology and unconventional notation to turn audiences and musicians into compositional collaborators. His music has been performed by groups such as the American Composers Orchestra and the Rova Saxophone Quartet and featured in the New York Times and on National Public Radio. Freeman studied at Yale University and Columbia University. He is currently an assistant professor in the School of Music at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.
Nick Collins is a composer, performer and researcher in computer music based at the University of Sussex. He co-edited the Cambridge Companion to Electronic Music (Cambridge University Press 2007) and The SuperCollider Book (2011, MIT Press), and wrote the Introduction to Computer Music (Wiley 2009). iPhone apps include BBCut, Concat, iGendyn, and TOPLAPapp. Recent concerts include live coding in a vineyard in Corfu, falling off a piano stool in Sydney, singing the 100 metres in Brighton, and playing harpsichord in Wirral. Sometimes, he writes in the third person about himself, but is trying to give it up.
For more information: http://isea2011.sabanciuniv.edu/other-event/working-contingencies
Posted by: Ebru Surek