On Missing the Live of the Everyday AmbientAuthor(s): Natalie BellSource: Leonardo Music Journal, Vol. 18, Why Live? Performance in the Age of DigitalReproduction (2008), pp. 43-44Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25578119 .

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ments audibly and inaudibly vibrated

the strings and soundboard, thereby

transducing the signals from my rig: two wide-band radio receivers and a

MIDI synthesizer. They were, in turn,

processed and matrix-routed through a Max/MSP patch to the transducer's

amplifiers.

Improvising on such an instrument

is less like conversation and more like

being in the same head. Each perform er's actions inside the piano affected

those of the other, reinforcing, negat

ing or

bending each conversational

element such that the resulting utter

ance was not a completely individual

event but rather a composite expression

with a singular, hybrid voice. At each

moment, the acoustic parameters of the

instrument changed, and actions did

not always have the predicted outcome.

The nature of the preparations and the

resultant modes of interaction engen dered an organic, living piano that was

both a challenge and a

pleasure to play. In order to maintain the life of the

instrument and the performances, the resultant eight recordings will be

released as superimposable tracks,

inviting the listener to freely choose the

number of recordings playing at any

one time and to tweak other param eters such as volume and individual

start times. Playing two of the eight

recordings simultaneously results in

a quadraphonic experience with 28

possible combinations. If the listener

chooses more, the overall complexity of the experience increases, but the

possible combinations are reduced.

The available permutations may not

be as numerous as in live performance, but are certainly more than that of a

single track, sustaining the vivacity of

the performance to satisfy a healthy

wanderlust.

Brett Ian Balogh is an artist and instructor

currently teaching at the School of the Art In

stitute of Chicago and the Illinois Institute of

Technology. Balogh is also a member of the im

provisational sound collective Clairaudient.

On Missing the Live of the Everyday Ambient Natalie Bell. E-mail: <natalie.a.bell@

gmail.com>. Web site: <www.nataliebell.

org>.

Sound examples related to this article are

available at <www.nataliebell.org/sounds>.

When John Cage introduced ambient

sounds as musical material, music was

no longer

a creation of the performer but one of the listener. Following his

precedent, I understand performance as

prescribing a way of listening?and of listening to ambient sounds in par ticular. My performance is minimal

and mute. With a tap on the shoulder, I

silently interrupt the subway passengers who are

listening to their ear buds and

pass them a small flier that encourages them to download and listen to my

podcast, Sounds Like, while riding the

subway. My compositions for the pod cast consist of my own field recordings of the subway, layered with old ethno

graphic field recordings and various

20th-century avant-garde works as well

as contemporary popular music. The

predominance of subway recordings,

however, is primary to my goal: that lis

teners learn to open their perception to

the aesthetic qualities of these ambient

sounds and appreciate the experience of collective listening practices in public

spaces. In contemporary culture, not only

the concert hall is obsolete. Still more

impertinent are the casual perfor mances of the urban everyday?namely,

Soto^Brltt to fitfj""

?f Pia"? Preparati0nS USCd m <**"*?* " ?* recent project, *??*, !?*?*?.

Artists' Statements 43

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subway musicians and the ambient

soundscapes that subsume them. The

use of a podcast

as media?though

somewhat elementary?is a precise

element of my endeavor. In reincor

porating the ambient sounds that

would otherwise be live into a listener

controlled private performance in the

collective public space of the sounds'

origin, I invite the listener to investigate her capacity to aestheticize the famil

iar and locally present sounds and to

reconsider how listening practices with

respect to one's everyday surround

ings are cultivated or

neglected. As a

prelude to other works involving sound

environments and technology, my pod cast is a

simple exercise in engaging the contemporary listening practices that are

privately motivated and often

focused on excluding ambient sounds.

Natalie Bell's recent pieces can be heard at

<www. nataliebell. org/sounds>.

Collaborative Creation, Live Performance and Flock

Jason Freeman, Music Department,

Georgia Institute of Technology, Col

lege of Architecture, 840 McMillan

Street, Atlanta, GA 30332-0456, U.S.A.

E-mail: <jason@jasonfreeman.net>. Web site: <www.jasonfreeman.net>.

Photos, sound and video examples related to

this article are available at <www.jasonfree

man.net/flock>.

In Flock (2007), my recent full-evening work for saxophone quartet, dancers,

electronic sound, video and audience

participation, I attempt to reconcile the

growing cultural shift toward collabora

tive models of content creation with the

one-to-many model of music creation

and dissemination that has tradition

ally dominated live performance. We

attend live concerts, in part, because

we want to participate in a unique,

spontaneous musical experience and

to share that experience with others.

Many such concerts, however, seem

more concerned with delivering a con

sistent product than with creating music

in the moment. For some artists, the

biggest risk is that their lip-synching will be discovered.

Flock uses novel computer vision

and real-time notation systems to delay content creation until the moment of

each performance, so that the music

can reflect the creative activities of each

show's performers and audience mem

bers. Music notation, electronic sound

and video animation are all generated in real time based on the location of

musicians, dancers and audience mem

bers as they stand up, move around and

interact with each other in accordance

with simple textual and visual instruc

tions.

Computer vision software, developed

by my collaborator Mark Godfrey, ana

lyzes images from an overhead video

camera to calculate the location data.

After pre-processing and lens distortion

correction, the software calculates an

(x, y) point for each participant, using blob detection for the audience mem

bers and dancers and a more sophis

ticated particle filter [ 1 ] to uniquely identify each saxophonist. Each par

ticipant wears a lighted hat to facilitate

efficient and reliable tracking.

My own custom software then gener ates music notation for each saxophon ist based on the location data; that

notation is sent wirelessly to a PDA

mounted on each player's instrument.

The notation (Fig. 2) sometimes dis

plays music on conventional staves but

often utilizes graphical contours, along with pitch labels, dynamics and articula

tions, to guide the musicians' improvi sation.

I employ a

variety of algorithms to

generate the notation. Sometimes,

the coordinates of each point simply

map to measure position (x) and pitch

(y). At other times, each saxophonist serves as the center of a

polar coor

dinate system, and each point within

range is mapped to a pitch (radius)

and measure position (angle). Often,

Fig. 2. Jason Freeman, four styles of real-time music notation generated by FlocKs software. (Drawing ? J. Freeman) The musician plays the darker notes; the lighter items show music played by the other saxophonists. The vertical bar shows measure position and maintains time

synchronization among the players.

F F F F Eb Eb Eb -jjf- Eb

Bb 8b Bb ^?? ^ Bb Ab - --

Ab Ab # -r^ -

Ab

Db .i.p".I.|.|

,^^r Db Db ^K Jfc 4 F&jL Ob

F cb ggn**1. dfej ''^Ifcj?"^^

f Cb f Cb::: mm m~': -?:^HF: --igF f b

44 Artists' Statements

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