CreateWorld 2008

Back in Australia now, and into CreateWorld 2008, the Australian national digital arts conference, hosted by the Apple University Consortium (AUC) and Griffith University. Now in its third year, the 2008 conference must have been the most successful, with a terrific attendance and a wide range of panels, papers, keynotes, performances and podcast program.

AUC chair, Denis Antionelle opens the conference.

Some of the highlights for me were the various performance /talk events, including some stunning music-scored-to-speech patterns from Brisbane's Topology ensemble . . .

. . and some engaging VJ work from Adelaide's Luke Toop, featuring Apple's Quartz Composer software tools.

There were also a good range of academic papers and session presentations. Stephen Emmerson and I presented some of our recent recording work in IMERSD around our paper on Music, Recording and the Art of Interpretation (see earlier blog entry). Great fun to try to squeeze that many people into a recording studio control room!

A Podcast Team (Allan Carrington, Kate Foy, Cat Hope and Ian Green) were cruising the conference, audio recorders in hand, gathering short interviews to help better understand the conference themes in their broader context, and to tease out their implications for learning, teaching, research and creative performance in higher education.

WAAPA's Cat Hope works up some new podcasts.

The podcast program from CreateWorld 2008 is available at createworld2008.edublogs.org.

Great turn-out, fantastic location at Griffith's South Bank campus.

Look out for the final series of refereed papers in the conference proceedings, to be published shortly on the Create World 2008 site. Thanks everyone, for a great conference.

New York (Part 2)

I visited La Monte Young & Marian Zazella's 'Dream House' installation, nearby to where we were staying in Tribeca. When we first entered this unassuming loft, we saw purple light and heard a very loud, constant drone. The noise and light flooded the entire floor, immersing us as we wandered about.

After a time though, we finally 'got it'. The light comprised two sources of red and blue and cast odd shadows on objects, urging you to move your head to see better. When moving then, the sound changed, in fact, by a simple left-to-right head movement, the drone now became two distinct pitches.

So in fact, the room itself became an instrument, which you 'played' with the movement of your body. Often different when seated on the floor cushions, or moving deliberately around the room. Fantastic, engaging project. For more, see the MELA Foundation.

I also had the opportunity to spend time in the wonderful Electric Lady Studios, the brainchild of Jimi Hendrix who comissioned John Storyk to build the facility in the late 60s. Many thanks to the generosity of studio manager Lee Foster who looked after me during my visit.

Lee showed me around the three studio spaces (and especially Studio A, where that great music from Hendrix was made), as well as telling me much about the historical background, more recent modifications and the recent projects which have been happening (including Dylan, Guns & Roses, Beyonce and others).

So much history here, and as Lee explained, the artwork around the building was commissioned by Hendrix himself who wanted a 'spaceship' (albeit, psychedelic). Spine-chilling really, to wander the rooms and the corridors.
Inspired, I headed off in search on Manny's, where Hendrix, Dylan and others shopped for their guitars.


I came away with this fantastic Martin CF-1, a collaboration between Martin Guitars and Dale Unger (American Archtop). Represenative of that special period where the acoustic guitar evolved into the electric, it's not simply a jazz guitar, but rather, a high quality acoustic instument with a pickup fitted.

A great piece of memorabilia from New York, Manny's and a reminder of why I started playing music in the first place: Jimi Hendrix.

New York (Part 1)

Following the Lowell, Massachusetts Art of Record Production conference, I headed down to New York for a week to catch up with Bill Duckworth and Nora Farrell. Some of this was about work and the forthcoming Sound Gardens project, scheduled to be undertaken in a range of Queensland locations in 2009.

However, being the amazing people that they are, I got a lot more that I would have imagined - thanks Bill & Nora: was an amazing experience being hosted in NYC by locals! They also put on an amazing birthday evening for me in their New Jersey home, right across the Hudson from Manhattan:

View from Bill & Nora's New Jersey apartment.

What a way to do pumpkin soup!

Over the week, we got to experience so many wonderful perspectives on New York arts, including Birdland, Chelsea galleries, Smoke (jazz club), the Apple Store and others.

Tommy Igoe Birdland Big Band.

Chelsea gallery.

The Apple store.

Smoke, Jazz and Supper Club Lounge (featuring the Larry Goldings Trio

Nora and Jenny in Times Square.

We also experienced this gigantic multimedia installation at MoMA: Pipilotti Rist's Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters).

More about New York and Music Technology in New York (Part 2) of this blog, but for now: thanks so much to Bill and Nora and very much looking forward to treating them to Australia when they visit, next June 2009.

The Art of Record Production conference, Lowell USA

Presently visiting the USA, via LA, to Boston then to Lowell for the 4th annual international Art of Record Production conference.


This year, the conference was hosted by UMass Lowell's music department and the home of Prof William Moylan, the author of one of the world's leading music technology education texts, Understanding and Crafting the Mix, Second Edition: The Art of Recording.

One of the highlights was the opening keynote from industry legend record producer Phil Ramone (14 Grammys!), who also has just launched his new book, Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music. He spoke at length with wonderful personal tales about his work with Dylan, Streisand, Sinatra, Quincy Jones, Ray Charles, Billy Joel, on and on . . .

Another highlight was Lowel's 'critical listening room' where conference delegates were treated to amazing sound and analysis work with both famous recordings, as well as exceptional work form their graduate (Masters) students.

A discussion panel featured Dj Spooky (Paul Miller), Steve D'Agostino, David Hewitt, Mark Rubel on the theme 'The Recording Studio as Musical Instrument'.

I presented a paper entitled On disintermediated culture, education, and craft and it was teriffic to meet UMass's Wil Moylan and Alan Williams, as well as old friends from the UK (I saw them last at the first 2005 APR conference in London).

Speaking of old friends, following the ARP conference here, I'll then be heading down to New York city for a week, to catch up with William Duckworth and Nora Farrell. Bill and Nora were in Australia last 2007 and collaborated with the Queensland Conservatorium research centre on the fabulous iOrpheus - Art Among Us. Will be plotting for iOrpheus II.

Music, Recording, and the Art of Interpretation

Presently working on a new research project with pianist extrodinaire, Dr Stephen Emmerson. The project examines the recordings of a series of classical piano works, but rather than try to attempt to record these 'authentically' (following the recent fascination with recordings 'as' music), the project aims to deliberately manipulate and re-construct the pieces as sound art or 'phonography', with a view to expanding of some of the underlying narratives.

As a starting point, we took a series works performed by Stephen on the 29 October 2008 in the Queensland Conservatorium’s Ian Hanger Recital Hall. The compositions date from 1908, regarded as a landmark in the history of European Modernism with a number of the 20th century’s most remarkable composers finding their distinctive voice around that time via seminal works for solo piano. These included Alban Berg’s Sonata Op.1, Arnold Schoenberg’s 3 Piano Pieces Op.11 and Béla Bartók’s 14 Bagatelles Op.6.

Here's a few excerpts from the concert:

Boomp3.com

Boomp3.com

Boomp3.com

Next, we're working to present a paper and interactive session in the IMERSD recording studios as part of the CreateWorld 2008 digital arts conference, this coming December. In particular, we will be preparing 5 of Bartók’s Bagatelles, famous as a collection of pieces which explore a range of innovative compositional techniques (polytonality/bitonality, symmetry, twelve-note collections, quartal harmony, clusters etc.) as well as reflecting his explorations with folk music.

The range of the musical languages employed has encouraged the view that they are a collection of separate individual and almost incompatible pieces. However, as a musciologist, Emmerson is convinced that the sharp contrasts in style are part of the overall concept of the work as a cycle of pieces that successively builds with a cohesive sense of narrative progression. Beyond merely a collection of compositional experiments or exercises, he understands them as having strong emotional and programmatic implications that develop through the cycle.

Stephen has come up with a range of 'sound types' to parallel musicological arguments about the personal emotions and historical settings for the pieces, and we'll be producing these though a variety of multi-track and post-production techniques, including varing treatments for right and left hand parts . .

. . . overdubs, layers, compression, tape distortion, a host of microphone placements and manipulations of spatiality. 

Fundamentally, the project challenges the predominant approach in the recording of classical music where such works promote the illusion of capturing a concert experience and that sound production decisions appear to be transparent. Here the authors argue that classical music language can benefit from deliberate interference in the recorded product provided this is congruent with research into the underpinning musical meanings. 

And so the music is not just manipulated/remixed to produce an essentially a different piece (although this remains a valid possibility) but maintains that central aspect of musicking which leads to new ways of experiencing music. If this can be realised, then perhaps the artists have begun to master the art of interpretation and the ability to speak music’s language more effectively.

We'll be continuing the project following CreateWorld by producing all the works on Steinway and recorded in the Conservatorium's Concert Theatre. Aiming for a journal articel early in the new year, accompanied by a two CD set and booklet. Perhaps 'before and after' CDs, and what we're most interested in is – which one is really the 'fake'?

ACUADS in Adelaide

Just returned from a week in Adelaide, brilliant old buildings, terrific art, but also must be the Australian capital for the best restaurants in the country! (a pic here of Glenelg, beach-side of Adelaide).


I was in Adelaide to attend the Australian Council for University Art and Design Schools (ACUADS) annual national conference.


So, why a muso at an Art & Design conference? Well, for one reason, my partner Jenny was presenting some of her PhD work there, about the state of the creative and performing arts and their place in academia. 'Goal displacing behaviour' as some call it, that is, metrics about grants and journal articles, rather than about (say), music, art or film.


One of the relationships that is quickly developing now in Australia, is a ever-closer relationship between the arts peaks bodies. This includes matters of lobbying the federal government around the ERA review (Excellence in Research for Australia) of research indicators, ideas about a national Creative and Performing Arts body, and alternative competitive funding arrangements to what some consider as currently science-dominated Australian Research Council. In the case of this year's ACUADS conference, these and related themes were well put by Australian Chair of ACUADS and acting Head of the Victorian College of the Arts (part of the University of Melbourne), AsProf Su Baker:


To date, Art & Design (ACUADS), Film (ASPERA) and Music (NACTMUS) have been forging ever closer links and collaboration. For example, I think there is a particularly strong and useful example in the Future-proofing the Creative Arts PhD project. Essentially, this is a national collaborative project to examine the practices, outputs and assessment standards for research higher degrees in these disciplines, and by exemplar of course, what creative and performing artists *really* do when it comes to the nexus of practice-as-research through art projects . . . onward and upward.

Clocked Out

Back in the studio again, and in concert recording with Clocked Out, a wonderful Brisbane based duo who have been writing, rehearsing and recording for their album Foreign Objects.


We spent about five days trying out ideas and getting sounds for some of their more unusual ideas for instrumentation, arrangement and subsequent sound production interpretation. Prepared piano, strange percussion objects scattered about the floor, really unusual combinations of timbres, but orchestrated remarkably and performed with professional precision - terrific performers and composers. Quite challenging but a very enjoyable experience for us all.


After the studio work, we moved directly into a live concert event, and from my perspective, moved the technology approaches of what I had learned from them into the concert environment. The IMERSD studio was patched into our Ian Hanger Recital Hall and off we went with the concert entitled Dedications - compositions that paid homage to 2 giants of contemporary music: Terry Riley, the master of expanded space, and Morton Feldman, the master of intricate patterns.


This was then a premier for the new works, centred around six pieces, viginettes entitled Foreign Objects. Later back to the studio, the thing now was to produce and edit all of the material from both studio and live recordings - in some cases, by comp-ing together both environments together within a single piece. Normally, I would find this somewhat of a challenge, but these people are so professional and given that we got to know each other so well, I think the outcomes are really beautiful. Some snippets and teasers here:

Boomp3.com

Boomp3.com

Boomp3.com

Clocked Out will be touring the US West and East coasts late November /early December 2008, so look out for them around Los Angeles and New York if you're in the area. Just wonderful in concert. Foreign Objects the album will be out in early 2009.

Brian Eno's 'Bloom'

Speaking of iPhone apps (see earlier post on ProTools controller), Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers have teamed to produce this highly addictive generative music application for the iPhone - Bloom.


Its available from the iTunes App store for around $US4.00 and has to be of the nicest little additions I've made to my iPhone in recent times. Hard to put your finger on just why this works, but I do know that everyone who touches it is enthralled (and by this I also mean, those who are not musicians or usually have that little interest in music technology).

The user (performer?) is provided with a colored screen and a quiet drone. Tap the screen in various places and different tones play depending on where the screen is tapped. This loops, creating a unique piece of music on the fly, and one that changes gradually on its own. It's also beautiful, with the tones appearing as colored spots that slowly fade.

An interesting idea for musicians - to make such little apps/pieces of interactive music for a different kind of 'prod-user' audience - quite different to the old record consumption culture? For more on developing iPhone Apps and distribution, see the iPhone DevCenter.

iPhone Pro Remote

Available on the iTunes App Store, 'Pro Remote' for iPhone and ProTools or Logic Audio.

The software duplicates the Pro Tools onscreen interface in a touchable interface on an iPod Touch or iPhone, complete with interactive feedback on channel settings, audio levels, etc. There's a Lite version at AUD$47.99 and a 'pro' edition at $189.99. Perhaps a bit pricey, but check out the feature set at www.folabs.com/proremotespecs.html and here in this video:

ProRemote uses a wireless network and remote server server software available at http://www.folabs.com/download.html. Looks like Far Out want to expand this to control a range of apps. Speaking of which, here's Telekenisis on an iPhone driving Ableton Live:

Kim Carr Address: The Art of Innovation

An inspirational address to the National Press Club in Canberra today, by the (new-ish) Australian Government and Senator the Hon Kim Carr. 
Things are looking up . . . I'll just skip ahead to these concluding remarks from the speech:

Why the humanities matter

As I said at the beginning, the humanities, arts and social sciences are critical to solving our most pressing real-world problems. These are problems so complex that our only hope of sorting them out is through a multidisciplinary effort.

We can’t improve Indigenous health without understanding the social and cultural circumstances of the people involved. We can’t build better cities without understanding how people live, how they want to live, and how the different parts of their lives fit together. We can’t adapt to global warming without understanding what people’s capacities are, how they interact, and what motivates them.

The humanities, arts and social sciences also have important political work to do. They can give a voice to people who might otherwise be silent. They can articulate the needs of people whose needs might otherwise be overlooked. They can defend the rights of people whose rights might otherwise be denied. Without them it would be impossible to create an innovation system that was truly inclusive, democratic and just.

Without them life would also be pretty dull.

My cultural activities are fairly restricted these days, but a couple of things I’ve enjoyed recently are:

* Peter Temple’s novel The Broken Shore; and

* the Bell Shakespeare Company’s production of Hamlet.

The first showed me a world similar enough to my own to feel familiar, but different enough to make me look at my own world with fresh eyes. The second reminded me where a great deal of our language comes from, and left me with a strong sense of the continuity between past and present.

Did the book and the play turn a dollar? I hope so. Did they add to the nation’s bottom line? No doubt, in a small way. Is that why I enjoyed them? No, it’s not.

I believe the creative arts – and the humanities and the social sciences – make a terrible mistake when they claim support on the basis of their commercial value.

Whatever they may be worth in the marketplace, it is their intrinsic value we should treasure them for. We should support these disciplines because they give us pleasure, knowledge, meaning, and inspiration.

No other pay-off is required.

The full transcript is well worth a full read, available here: http://minister.industry.gov.au/Carr/Pages/THEARTOFINNOVATION-ADDRESSTOTHENATIONALPRESSCLUB.aspx

Senator the Hon Kim Carr
03 Sep 2008 THE ART OF INNOVATION - ADDRESS TO THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB
National Press Club Canberra, ACT

Barack Obama on reforming arts education

Nice piece from Barack Obama, speaking in Wallingford, PA about about reforming the education system and the importance of the arts. While he uses some of the usual rhetoric about the benefits of music and art tied to other positive outcomes in thinking, productivity and well-being – he also talks about the unintentional misuse of the US law around 'No job Left Behind' - school teaching measured by tests (reminiscent of Australia with Rudd's 'Education Revolution' - ie, no cultural curriculum? Why no painting in primary schools? ).

Obama not only articulates the need to fund arts through endowments and direct government funding, but also the bigger picture – the value of being creative, and learning “to see each other through each other's eyes". 

Frank Millward on Interdisciplinarity

Dr Frank Millward is an Australian composer and new media artist based in the UK. His work includes compositions and performances for film, TV, recordings, theatre, site specific performance and multimedia productions. His musical style combines audio art, sound design, jazz, experimental, orchestral and electro-acoustic forms. His collaborators and/or clients include: international producers, TV production companies, festivals, theatre companies, established & emerging film-makers, performance artists, directors, choreographers and designers.

Dr Millward is also the Course Director of Art, Performance & Digital Media at Kingston University, London and has wide experience in research and teaching in Australia, the UK and South East Asia. He has been visiting Brisbane's Queensland Conservatorium over the last week or so and during this time, has presented to students and staff on a range of related subjects, including the Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre-hosted seminar entitled Music, Sound & Interdisciplinary Collaboration in the Digital Arts with invited staff from the Queensland Conservatorium, the Queensland College of Art and the Griffith Film School. 

This seminar works through a range of contemporary issues including creative, technical, theoretical and professional aspects of creative & performing arts practice. A video of the seminar is posted here and as a podcast at the QCRC's RadioIMERSD.

For more about Frank Millward's work, see his website at www.frankmillward.com