05.20.08
mpc2059 is a conceptual art and audio project that utilizes puredata and max/msp.
The year is 2059. We have just emerged from a 50 year global civil-war. Ecological disaster has not been averted. We have become increasingly reliant upon machine technologies. Our biological life support systems have failed. The vital impulse of our planet is artificial.
mpc2059 is the sound of that mechanical heart beat – machine music manipulated by biorobots for a new cultural computer controlled phenomenon….
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mpc2059 is a conceptual art and audio project that utilizes puredata and max/msp.
The year is 2059. We have just emerged from a 50 year global civil-war. Ecological disaster has not been averted. We have become increasingly reliant upon machine technologies. Our biological life support systems have failed. The vital impulse of our planet is artificial.
mpc2059 is the sound of that mechanical heart beat – machine music manipulated by biorobots for a new cultural computer controlled phenomenon….
DOWNLOAD mpc2059_machinic_demo.zip 66.32MB HERE
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]]>11.04.07
mpc2059 is a conceptual art and audio project that utilizes puredata and max/msp although this project was realized fully in Propellerheads Reason with only some Puredata programing.
The year is 2059. We have just emerged from a 50 year global civil-war. Ecological disaster has not been averted. We have become increasingly reliant upon machine technologies. Our biological life support systems have failed. The vital impulse of our planet is artificial.
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11.02.06
All songs were written and recorded in a 24 hour period.
This album explores how simple song structures are created and recorded. These songs are based on ‘melodies’ or ‘tunes’ that I have been developing in my head for the past few years.
01 bubble juice
02 heart meat
03 terrorism fads
04 killers me
05 bombs and guns
06 sing me a song you retch
07 under the gun
08 make em grow
09 idol liar
10 urban heat
11 alive to die
12 its my holiday
13 emotions
Without any prior song writing experience I wrote and recorded a 13 song album using only one microphone, a computer and an old beat up classical guitar. The idea was to understand the process of song writing – lyrics, chords and melodies.
All complicated arrangements were purposely striped from this experience. I understand it as giving power back to the amateur. All songs should be kept as simple as possible. NO manipulations. NO trickery. NO cleverness. NO gimmicks. ALL LEFT RAW!!!
All songs/recordings were ONE TAKE ONLY.
I was very interested in my ability to relinquish my ego and awareness of self-critique to the forces of immediatism and immediate action. It also proved useful in understanding distortions in the creative process. By trying to replicate some type of idealized cultural state, distortions in the outcome were inevitable yielding to my own personal subjectivities through the conscious replication processes.
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Musical experirments with electronica, computers, sequencing, filters and noise rock.
A Pro-Tools studio was built equipped with a Digi 002 rack, mixing board, computers and mic’ed instruments (drums, keys, bass guitar). The following are recordings done over a 2 year period starting in 2005. Experiments commenced with musical forms such as techno-electronica, noise rock and jam rock. Other experiments in noise and sound creation often commenced.
The Long Emergency Notification System: The Thick Neck Sessions
right click each track and save
Disk 01
01 Trials
02 Butter
03 Busters
04 Soft Cream
05 Germs
06 Bubbly Red
07 Tight Rope
Disk 02
D02_Track_01
D02_Track_02
D02_Track_03
D02_Track_04
D02_Track_05
D02_Track_06
D02_Track_07
D02_Track_08
D02_Track_09
D02_Track_10
Disk 03
D03_Track_01
D03_Track_02
D03_Track_03
D03_Track_04
D03_Track_05
D03_Track_06
D03_Track_07
D03_Track_08
D03_Track_09
Description
The LENS (Long Emergency Notification System for short) was a conceptual project band that was interested in exploring the relationships between the production of culture and the political. How can music alter or influence the body politic? How can a musical collaboration between individuals create a situational arena where new interpretations and participatory creations can emerge and develop?
The idea was to create an electronic band that would step away from the traditional venue of ‘the stage’ to perform in and around the spectators on the floor. In this regard the band ‘Lightning Bolt’ was influential. (see http://laserbeast.com/) This allowed us to question and critique the use of the stage – where all who attend gaze upon in order to consume a pre-designed ‘show’ of imagery and sound. We felt that in order for the audience to be participatory they needed to become an integral part of the performance and at times become the performance – much like a ‘rave’ in this sense except with a live band instead of a DJ/VJ.
Performances became more like original artworks. There was always a ‘pre-designed’ beat but the structure and sounds would always differ. Because it was instrumental and improvisational, new forms, sounds and structure would emerge to form dense textures of sound – synthesized, sampled, electronic and acoustic (drums).
Electronic instruments were networked together using MIDI. Filters were synchronized to each other and to a beat clock in the computer. The drummer played to the clock and filters.
MIDI information was then sent back to the computer. Video clips were loaded in a customs developed program patch created with the visual programming software max/msp/jitter (see http://www.cycling74.com/). These video signals were triggered by the events of the live music and sent to a digital projector (or several) that were displayed on the wall(s). Performers and participants responded to the imagery. The responses changed the imagery through trigger events. The imagery then changed the performers and so on. This created an improvisational loop between the performers and the imagery that the performers were responding to.
This was very interesting to me because it helped me to understand the relationship between social organizations and computer technologies. Throughout a performance it was observable how each material (whether is be physical, biological, electronic etc) affected one another. As one change occurred in the structure the entire chain of events between all bodies would also inevitably change in reaction.
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Experiments with recording and ‘Pop’ song structures.
The following recordings were done over a 4-year period in NYC from around 2001 to 2004. Most recordings during this period were experimental jam sessions that resulted in fixed songs structures. Experiments included singer/songwriter material, instrumental compositions, and indie-rock structures. Many pieces have an ‘un-finished’ quality and are not very refined. Their ‘incomplete’ nature is what makes them interesting and complete. These recording DO NOT have a underlying coherence but instead are meant to experiment with different musical genres, sounds and content.
Description
While this project I was back to the idea of ‘amateurism’. All recording were done under very unprofessional conditions – one mic in the room, cheap microphones etc. I was also very interested in the concept of ‘collaboration’ and understanding how music and sounds can be a collaborative enterprise. Many various individuals participated – all from varying musical background and expertise.
What materialized was some very interesting recording and experiments. It was not that these recordings were meant to be ‘unserious’ but instead time was utilized in a way that increased the enjoyment of the experience rather than force a product into a preconceived mold.
Many of these recordings started with a simple idea or song structure that was built upon. Some were a product of just ‘on-the-spot’ song creation. There was really no one in particular lens in which we started or ended. No recordings presented here have been finalized but instead have been chosen to be displayed ‘as is’ giving them a characteristic of unfinished, unrefined and even sloppy.
But I think to quickly label these recording as nothing more that ‘messing around’ would be foolishly underestimating their purpose – to be a presentation of an exploratory process. These recording are not meant to be provocative, interesting or in many ways even listenable for that matter. What I think is important is that through these recordings and educational process can be witnessed. This is a process not of consuming a product but in the creation of processes. Whether accomplish musicianship is present or not, just though the act of creation and recording do technologies become learned and understood – music in this sense is something that is made and shared rather that something that is bought and sold.
It is this aspect of this project that I am really very interested in- the idea that students, individuals, groups have a technology at their disposal but are afraid to create and to share because the product that might be produced doesn’t sound like ‘whats on the radio’ or is not professional enough. Radio, television and internet technologies have molded the ears, eyes and brain to be aesthetically responsive only to those creations that are legitimized through the media industries. Prior to electronic recording and distribution, sounds and music were much more of a vital folk dance where participation in the medium was a prerequisite to it legitimacy as an art form. Now it seems like an art form is only legitimized through its consumptions rather than its participation, collaboration and production.
Throughout this project these were just a few of the observations that were made.
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Experiments in Computer Generated Noise
The third ‘Volume’ in the SFTUNOTHDB series I began taking ‘found’ sounds and manipulating them on the computer. I was really interesting in this volume in understanding what the computer could do and how audio could be manipulated in different forms. The program ‘pure-data’ was used in conjunction with audio samples to create this entire recording.
SFTUNOTHDB: Volume III
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Description
An unreleased recording from 1968 of a Ugandan children’s choir was digitized from reel-to-reel into the computer. The program ‘Pure Data (pd)’ was used to manipulate the audio with granular synthesis.
“PD (aka Pure Data) is a real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing. ” (from the Pure Data website)
“Granular synthesis is a sound synthesis method that operates on the micro-sound time scale. It is often based on the same principles as sampling but often includes analog technology. The samples are not used directly however, they are split in small pieces of around 1 to 50 ms (milliseconds) in length, or the synthesized sounds are very short. These small pieces are called grains. Multiple grains may be layered on top of each other all playing at different speed, phase and volume.” (from the Wikipedia entry on grandular synthesis)
With this content and these tools I was really interested in understanding the concept of time within the framework. There is a ‘time’ or a history of the original recording of those sounds. There is a history to the sounds that are recorded. There is a history to the individuals and groups that those sounds were created by. With this in mind I could understand the complicated networks and relationships between the sounds I had obtained and where they are historically placed.
Manipulations of these sounds brought the concepts of time and history to another level. Micro-samples of sounds became mixed. Ghostly appearances of Ugandan children began to emerge. Time itself became blurred. Sounds folded and unfolded. Sounds became textures instead of images.
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Experiments in Computer Generated Noise
SFTUNOTHDB: Volume II
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Description
Every other track is comprised of a different and sometimes opposing method of creation. Several of the compositions use a MIDI keyboard as an interface to a soft-synthesizer that is entirely computer based. The soft-synth used was a ‘grand-piano’ sampler called ‘Steinberg The Grand’. It is a sampled instrument of a real grand piano. According to ‘Steinberg’:
“The samples used by The Grand were recorded at 24-bit, 48kHz resolution from a Kawai concert grand in an anechoic chamber, and together make up a hefty 1.3Gb of data. Because of this, there are three CD-ROMs in the gatefold pack. The first contains the Mac and PC instrument files, along with an 18Mb audio demo, while disks two and three house the sample data.”
With this I was very interested seeing the relationships between the various technologies being used and its connection to computer technology. I found it extremely interesting that anyone with a computer could create the virtual sounds that the sampler made. What was intriguing was the fact that the computer acted as a ‘hub’ for these sounds that were previously recorded, edited and turned into a sample bank that were originally derived from a physical, tangible instrument. The samples themselves are only reproductions of the real sounds, waveforms created. I then, in a sense, remixed these sounds. A listener is deceived in this transition because the sounds are so realistic in emulating a ‘real’ piano that the average listener cannot tell the virtual and the physical apart from one another.
What I also was interested in this experiment was understanding how the ‘amateur’ can play a role in the re-mixing and creation process. I myself have no ability in deciphering the logic of the piano instrument. At the time this was my first experience with trying to actually ‘create’ something with the piano. I am very interested in the ‘amateur’ logic and find what can be produced by the untrained in many ways much more interesting that what an accomplished pianist might create!
As far as the rest of the recordings are concerned I was also very interested in the relationship off the ‘amateur’ to the instrument. Most of my recordings take this as a primary feature but this was my first experiment in understanding the validity of ‘lo-fi’, amateur recording and realizing that it does have importance.
These recordings are concerned with acoustic instruments and how sound can be recorded and manipulated in the computer. Some of the recordings are just simple ideas – an acoustic guitar playing very slowly. Others are larger and longer pieces that record layers upon layers of information over each other. Many of the instruments (in true amateur fashion) utilize various objects around the house – pots and pans, stomping on the floor. Occasionally a drum was present to make different sounds. Cymbals, piano, and guitar were also used.
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Experiments in Computer Generated Noise
The first ‘Volume’ in the SFTUNOTHDB series was some first innitial experiments with computer generated noise and beats. These experiments were conducted over the course of a 2 month period using basic ‘WAV’ editing programs. This work proved a stating point for future computer related works that span several volumes.
SFTUNOTHDB: Volume I
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0102 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70
71 72
Description
The first section of this Volume was created by recording and manipulating computer noise. All external computer hardware (speakers, microphone, monitor) was detached except for the keyboard. The recording program was set to take a single keystroke to begin and stop recoding. Recording lasted one hour.
The resulting audio was a recording of computer noise itself. A computer recording of a computer recording the internal sounds of itself – an infinite loop recording of computer noise.
The resulting sounds were sounds random sounds of static, a recording of the computers internal electricity and mechanisms. This recording was then analyzed for content in terms of patterns or “beats”. The recording was amplified and continuously stretched (zoom-in) several times in order to ‘detect’ interesting sounds and patterns. Chosen sounds were highlighted and saved.
In the resulting Volume, the first 30 minutes is dedicated to this computer ‘static’.
In the second section, the saved ‘snippets’ of audio were used to create ‘beats’. These small beats were only a few seconds in length. they are ‘mixed’ samples of short pieces of information. There is 70 three to ten second ‘songs’ on this Volume, all various bits of mixed information generated from computer static.
Note: I used ‘filters’ on the static pieces that were generated in order to create ‘instruments’. These ‘instruments’ were then replicated throughout the experiments to give me a palette of beats and sounds to work with.
]]>02.13.1999
mmpc was a first experiment with the structure of an electronic band format. The music was primarliy ‘Jam Rock’ based but became highly experimental with electronic improvisational formats and time progressed.
‘Jams’ were extended sometimes reaching an hour or so in length. Songs structures began with ‘cover’ songs and some originals, often evolving into experiments in controled noise. The following is our one ‘album’ of original music and other various recording.
mmpc: Pink Triangle Man
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01 Hoyass
02 ER
03 Happy
04 Cities
05 Tech196
06 Burrito Song
07 TSTEHBM
08 Feels Like Hawaii
09 Hoyass Reprise
Description
Pink Triangle Man was recorded on cassete tape with a single room microphone in a studio environment. It was then digitized on the computer and editted. Copies were given to close friends and band members.
The name mmpc is derived from the first letter of our first names – Mark, Matt, Paul, Craig. ‘Pink Triangle Man’ is derived from a bass player that ‘tried out’ with a pink bass with a triangle on it.
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