Field, Entity, Software

We've been doing some research and development for Random Dance in the area of artificial evolution and programming language semantics, with a side-helping of graphical presentation thanks to (F)ield. Over the next couple of years we'll be looking into ways that evolutionary techniques and software agency can be incorporated into the choreographic process.

(The thumbnail image is from a biomorphs implementation which we translated into Python for (F)ield. And, yes, some gratuitous colour and compositing has been added for artistic effect.)

Max 5 at 0101

Cycling '74's Max 5 course for beginners runs at 01zero-one from Saturday to Tuesday. Instructors: Gregory Taylor and Nick Rothwell.

Expert Witness

I have been appointed as an "expert" (it says here) for the Coda symposium (Exploring software for music and audio: Cutting edge techniques and enabling technologies) at the University of the West of England, on the 31st of May. I wonder if my very own Monome will be here in time?

Monome at Home

We're seeing a number of Monome boxes appearing here in London, mainly due to the efforts of Cybersonica. I worked with Brian Crabtree in Los Angeles some years ago, when the Monome concept was starting to take shape, so it's wonderful that something is coming of an ecological, sustainable approach to product development and support.

We've had a Monome sixty four on loan for a few weeks, and have been doing some Python coding for it, although the box is currently out with a certain music technology magazine, for whom we've written the review. More later, when the box returns. And, needless to say, we're on the waiting list (for a one twenty eight).

Snooping at SnipSnap

Ever since Stephan Schmidt and Matthias Jugel discontinued development of the SnipSnap wiki and blog platform (which runs several Cassiel sites), speculation has been rife as to the package's future. Luckily, since it's open-source, we're not locked into a dead product. Paulo Abrantes has an active fork of the source code and has been working on enhancements to the system, and there's a SourceForge project headed by Angelo Schneider.

We have the Abrantes version running here under laboratory conditions; in particular, we've managed to wean it off the Jetty packaging, and it seems happy talking to MySQL under Tomcat 6. We hope to go live with it soon, and also develop some plugins for hosting audio and video clips. (The main reason for deploying a Tomcat-hosted SnipSnap, rather than staying standalone, is that we are also working on a Cocoon-based project; more later.)

I suppose we could have just jumped ship to WordPress, but where's the fun in that?

Bath Sounds

We're gigging as part of the Staging Sound event at Media Art Bath, doing a solo set and kicking off an open improvisation alongside Matt Davies, Jo Hyde and Adrian Smith. Expect a mix of P3 sequencing and MaxMSP sample shard … stuff.

Field Research

We are currently doing a bit of exploration of Marc Downie's software package Field (slightly more accurately written (F)ield - I haven't yet found the circled "F" in the tables of HTML Unicode entities). It's a framework for media agents, written in Java but allowing dynamic extension via Python. It's too early to form any strong opinions about it, especially given our comparatively high levels of experience with the other paradigms found in Max/MSP, Jitter, Isadora and Processing. More later, as they say, with screen shots as soon as we've worked out how to actually draw stuff.

All Night Turkey at the Shrub Farm

We are just back from a rather strange, but quite enjoyable, all-night Turkish-themed festival held at La Ferme du Buisson in Noisiel, a few miles east of Paris. As well as "displays" of Turkish fortune-telling and Turkish börek-making, theatre spaces hosted dance works, including three by Aydin Teker: STKH (for which we composed the score), Trio and Momentum. Audience numbers were very respectable, especially given that STKH and Momentum were performed at around 2am...

The stage was shared with a superb performance of the piece Dolap by taldans, featuring Mustafa Kaplan, Filiz Sızanlı and a heavily sellotaped fridge-freezer.

(Unless informed otherwise, I'm assuming that the video screen in the photograph is showing some suitably Turkish footage of Taksim, İstanbul on a Friday night.)

Loud (and Bright) Festivities

We have just finished the soundtrack for a massive outdoor Christmas display commissioned by the Birmingham Bullring. The project was produced by Isobel Advertising and the visual and technical design is by Evoke Productions. The display launches on December 3rd: we plan to be there to blag some champagne.

(This image is from the design brief: a similar display for Saks on Fifth Avenue, produced by Philips. It's been captured on a shaky camcorder and uploaded to YouTube.)

Assembling the Troupe

We've just done a week of rehearsals at The Junction in Cambridge for Jane Turner's Troop project, coming to a theatre which may or may not be near you later this year. There's lots of Isadora video processing going on, some of which we'll upload in due course.

Dates:

Friday October 19th: The Junction, Cambridge
Thursday November 15th: Colchester Arts Centre, Essex
Friday November 16th: The Cut, Halesworth, Suffolk
Friday November 23rd: The Centre for the Arts, NHC, Hitchin, Herts
Wednesday November 28th: The ShowRoom, Chichester University, West Sussex
Thursday December 6th: Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall