ATCHLEY / BISCHOFF
Bischoff will perform two recent pieces that project sound into a framed space where details are highlighted and recycled as a context for further contemplation.
Sidewalk Chatter employs an analog "crackle box" circuit (made by STEIM) as a sound-making input for initiating a digital audio response via laptop computer. As a performer plays the circuit by touching exposed metal traces, the computer program analyses peak loudness and pitch contours in the analog sound and generates its own synthesized voices and responses based on those patterns. His second piece, Audio Combine, employs the sounds from a toy chime, a music box, a detuned ukulele, and a hand drum. As the objects are activated one at a time, sounds are amplified, colorized, and recycled in fragmented form based on the timing patterns of their initial occurrence. One can think of the piece as the real-time construction of a sonic collage where the initial materials are clipped and juxtaposed together automatically based on performer timing.
K. Atchley presents laptop interpretations of digitally generated sound waves and legacy field recordings that reflect and maintain the current of absorbed thought and empirical romanticist leanings.
233.08 (original and stolen). The sound material is rendered in a field disconnected from the arguments: can a sonic artifact that results from the inter-connection of commercially designed and marketed equipment produce a sound that is original? Can the primacy of that sound be authenticated? If two artists first hear this sound at the same time, do both have the right to claim it their own and use the sound in performance? A third field is introduced: perhaps these topics are more suitable for discussion after a show; a thoughtful conversation, perhaps accompanied by drinks, and a distant air.
17 fountains is a multi-movement, in-progress work for computer generated electronic sounds based on site-specific recordings of water. The intention of the work is to extend the definition of what constitutes a fountain (rather than a representational or non-representational portrayal) and to expand the range of circumstances in which a listener may hear a sound-field, rich in minute detail, which allows attention to fluctuate between the particular and the immersive. "17 fountains (Oakland) is one movement of this larger work. It uses water sounds that I recorded around that city intermittently alternating with a single sawtooth audio wave. These sounds are not directly heard; they are used as data sources for the computer program and inspirational sources for me as I compose and perform the work.
BILL SHU
Flay/Flock is an audio-reactive audiovisual improvisation for 1-3 musicians, who interact with a particle system that evolves amongst a variety of structures, including point clouds and linear forms. Thanks to Kyle McDonald for the flocking simulation that was the origin of this piece.
DAVIS/ONDA
For 20 years now Aki Onda has been using the cassette Walkman for making field recordings which he keeps as a sound diary. By physically manipulating these Walkmans by hand, re-collecting and re-constructing concrete sounds, he produces a sonic collage of distorted loops, crackle and grainy fidelity. Textures of undulating sound which sit beneath Gareth Davis' almost self-distorting bass clarinet, morphing from recognisable fragments of found sound and attempts at melody to polyphonic cut-ups, that are at once lyrical and unnatural.
SHACKLE
Shackle is Anne La Berge on flute and electronics and Robert van Heumen on laptop. Their aim is to explicity and subtly exploit shackling in both concept and material. http://hardhatarea.com/shackle
This extraordinarily inventive duo has a way of making music all their own. At the heart of their duo is a self-designed, cutting-edge digital cueing system which operates as a sometimes visible third member. Both prodding and reactive, the Shackle system suggests musical directions and textures to these two highly gifted performers, opening up a fascinating array of sonic choices for La Berge and Van Heumen to both play with and against. Shackle’s performances explode the line between improvisation without borders and tightly controlled forms that are both playful and daring.
Working with a computerized communicationsystem that proposes various compositional elements to each player, they can then choose whether or not to cooperate with the proposed material. Proposals also involve aspects of restriction, either in soundmaterial, timing, dynamics or other musical parameters. Musical sections are visually presented to the audience by video snippets occuring regularly or irregularly throughout the performance.
Artist bios
BILL SHU
I work with electronics and real-time animation systems. My work mostly involves using gestural interfaces to control synthesis and animation, and building systems that interact with human performers. I am inspired by improvisers who have developed rich palettes of extended techniques, and the unstable, evolving forms and movements that we observe in natural environments. I have been fortunate to collaborate with musicians and artists such as Peter van Bergen, John Butcher, James Fei, Matt Heckert, and Lynn Hershman, and have performed in the US, Asia, and Europe. I am an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at San Francisco State University.
JOHN BISCHOFF (b. 1949, San Francisco) has been active in the experimental music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 30 years as a composer, performer, and teacher. He is known for his solo constructions in real-time computer synthesis and the pioneering development of computer network music. His performances around the US include NEW MUSIC AMERICA festivals in 1981 (SF) and 1989 (NYC), Lampo (Chicago), and the Beyond Music Festival (LA). He has performed numerous times in Europe at such venues as the Festival d'Automne in Paris, Akademie der KŸnst in Berlin, Fylkingen in Stockholm, and Tesla in Berlin. He was a founding member of the League of Automatic Music Composers (1978) and he co-authored an article on the League's music that appears in "Foundations of Computer Music" (MIT Press 1985). He is also a founding member of the network band The Hub that released a 3-CD set of their work in 2007 titled ÒBoundary LayerÓ on Tzadik. In 1999 he received an award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (NYC) in recognition of his music. Recordings of his work are available on Artifact, 23Five, Tzadik, and Lovely Music. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Music at Mills College in Oakland, California.
KENNETH ATCHLEY (b. 1954, Lebanon, TN) is a San Francisco Bay Area sound, video, and installation artist who fashions and performs works ranging from pure-tone and noise hymns to distortion-studded, electro-acoustic devotionals. Much of his work from 1997 to 2005 included the use of fountains and his current presentations continue to be informed by that work and study. Atchley's performances and works have been featured in venues and festivals including Alternating the Medium (SF), San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, The Kitchen (NYC), T.U.B.E (Munich), CEAIT (Redcat, Los Angeles), Echo De Pensees (CCA, SF), Bang On A Can (NYC), CageFest (SF), Rachel Hafferkamp (Cologne). Atchley's CD of solo, electro-acoustic-noise works Fountains was released by Auscultare Research. His duet Sealed Cantus with John Bischoff has been released on Bischoff's 23Five CD Aperture. An interpretive score for 14251 was included in SoundVisions (published by PFAU Neue Musik, Germany, 2005). The libretto of his opera Edision's Last Project(ION) and lyrics to the choral work Lumiere de Main were published in the book the guests go in to supper (Burning Books, USA). His article, "An Introduction to the Operatic Works of K. Atchley Including an In-Depth Discussion of an Original Opera Titled Don Giovanni," published in the Leonardo Music Journal. A profile of his work appeared in the June, 2005 issue of The Wire (#256).
AKI ONDA is an electronic musician, composer, and photographer. Onda was born in Japan and currently resides in New York. He is particularly known for his Cassette Memories project – works compiled from a “sound diary” of field-recordings collected by Onda over a span of two decades. Onda’s musical instrument of choice is the cassette Walkman. Not only does he capture field recordings with the Walkman, he also physically manipulates multiple Walkmans with electronics in his performances. In another of his projects, Cinemage, Onda produces slide projections of still photo images set to live guitar improvisation. Onda has collaborated with artists such as Michael Snow, Ken Jacobs, Alan Licht, Loren Connors, Oren Ambarchi, Noël Akchoté, Jac Berrocal, Linda Sharrock, and Shelley Hirsch.
GARETH DAVIS plays clarinets of various shapes and sizes, and on occasion, some other instruments. Sometimes they sound like clarinets, sometimes not so much. When not playing he amuses himself by alternate means. That more or less sums it up.
ANNE LA BERGE is a pioneer flutist/composer, working her entire career with interactive computer systems, microtonality, improvisation and as a leading interpreter of contemporary chamber music. She can be heard in a range of settings from modern chamber music in the music theaters of Holland to international science and art symposia and finally to improvised electronic music in the local squat buildings. In addition to creating her own work she regulary commissions artists to compose solo works for her with interactive/improvised music and video. The last few years have seen a new addition to her work: self-penned enigmatic short stories which slide seemlessly in and out of her compositions and improvisations.
ROBERT VAN HEUMEN works with electronic means to create soundworlds. As a musician Van Heumen uses STEIM's live sampling software LiSa and real-time audio-synthesis software SuperCollider, controlled by various physical devices. His soundworlds are a mixture of digital crackles, heavy distortion, melancholic melodies, environmental sounds, voices and sounds from kitchen appliances, some of the time smashed beyond repair. Live sampled source sounds are gesturally manipulated and reworked within open ended narratives, exploring cycles of repetition beyond episodic improvisation.