Network Music Festival

Next up in our performer conversations with journalist Ross Cotton are Birmingham-based sound artist Samuel Rodgers and Jack Harris

Samuel Rodgers and Jack Harris will be performing a live set at Network Music Festival via skype with Samuel at the concert venue and Jack in London. Their performance will take on Friday 27th January, 7.30pm.

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Samuel Rodgers is a sound artist and composer, and Jack Harris works with field recordings, amplification and electronics.

The duo began performing together, after both attending Dartington College of Arts in Devon.

“I noticed parallels between our work, notably our approach to form, and the quality of sounds we were working with”, says Samuel.
“I suggested we improvise together, and these initial sessions started a much longer and evolving collaboration.”

Jack and Samuel’s performance at Network Music Festival will be quite unique, as it will be taking place simultaneously in both Birmingham and London, with the two sound experimentalists sending audio to each other via the video call software Skype.

“We originally started working over Skype out of necessity”, explains Samuel.

“Having lived in the same town whilst at university, we soon realised the impossibility for our work of living several hundred miles apart.

“Once we started to explore what could happen with this process, we became interested in VoiP [Voice Over IP] services as performance spaces, with unique and intriguing implications, sonic and otherwise.

“For example, when a sound is sent from London to Birmingham, back to London and then back to Birmingham, etc, the sound starts to morph and decay”, he says.

“Taking on not only the qualities of each acoustic location, but also the qualities of the digital space created by the software.”

The improvisational qualities of Jack and Samuel’s performance will also be very interesting, with the sound being manipulated each time it is sent over through the software.

“When we improvise, we often don’t discuss beforehand what we will use, and turn up to a situation with a selection of materials and equipment, opening ourselves up to what might happen”, says Samuel.

“The audio that Jack sends via Skype will form the majority of the material I am working with.

“This audio will be amplified and re-amplified in various ways, creating timbral and textural shifts.

“The sounds within and surrounding the two performance spaces will also be key.

“We are both interested in a more open notion of arts practise, an enquiry into what is happening and can happen, rather than the pursuit of personal goals or explicit self expression.

“This is, among many other reasons, why we choose to work with improvisation and concurrently, elements of chance and non-intention through an awareness of environmental sound.”

The actual sound created by Jack and Samuel is also very pioneering, as their use of electronic technologies are “sometimes used in ways they were not designed to be”, explains Samuel.

Along with recordings of the environment and “amplified objects used as nascent instruments”, Samuel leaves you with an insight into the actual experience of the duo’s sonic language.

“Think about the noise between radio stations, continuous fluctuating tones, the sounds of dusk in a distant space.”

Recordings of Jack and Samuel’s initial sessions have just been released here: http://consumerwaste.org.uk/cw03

– by Ross Cotton – Freelance Music Journalist – http://domesticcity.posterous.com/

Ross Cotton has been talking to composer Henry Vega. Henry’s piece Wormsongs, for Soprano and electronics is being performed at Network Music Festival on Saturday 28th January 3pm.

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Henry Vega‘s work ranges between virtuosic instrumental writing, to colourful compositions.

He has created music that appears in theatrical productions, dance and concert music, with a strong focus on modern artistic trends.

At Network Music Festival, Vega’s piece the Wormsongs will be performed along with stage production composer Anat Spiegel, and visual creator Emmanuel Flores Elias.

Written by Vega himself, the Wormsongs is a collection of vocal pieces, stripped down from lyrical lines and instead, replaced with automatic instruments, triggered to match an automatic vocal part.

With the music itself written in block gestures, from harmony, to noise and back.

“I got the chance to work with Earl Brown [American composer who died in 2002], who was one of the fathers of aleatoric music [some element of a composition left to chance]”, says Henry.

“He had a way of scoring which was precise in some parameters, but open and free in others, and that stuck with me.

“The idea of a ‘block of music’ means that I provide material for the musician who can perform that block repeatedly until they are cue’d to move onto the next block.

“This gives the musicians a type of freedom of interpretation that is not improvisation, but something more controlled.

“So I give the performer a few notes and rhythms, and they improvise on that material, always stopping and starting on cue.

“This makes an impression of synchronisity between the performers, even though while they are in the block, they are completely unsynchronised.

“I give Anat text which she reads as fast as she can, and give her one or two notes she can use.”

Each score in Wormsongs is motivated by social evolution, something that influences Henry greatly during his creative processes.

“The first text I got for the Wormsongs was by [performance artist] Georg Hobmeier, a director/choreographer who wrote the text I I, manipulated in Sermon on Files and Vile Springs.

“In that text, [Hobmeier] mentions the ‘extropic delights’, which led to my research in ‘extropy’ and ‘post-humanism’.

“The idea of planning evolution past our current frontiers and past our physical limitations with clarity was very interesting and positive for me.

“It inspired me to evolve musically with very conscious understanding of musical tradition.”

Working alongside Emmanuel Flores Elias and his visual extravaganzas,

Anat Spiegel’s vocals will be linked to the imagery quite literally within the performance at Network Music Festival.

Henry explains further, “Anat and I had worked together on a theatre piece we called Iminami in 2006.

“It was a complicated piece to stage, but we enjoyed working with each other very much, so I came up with a project that would focus on the duo dynamics that we had developed together.

“That’s the core of the Wormsongs, and we kept it in a way that could easily incorporate other musicians/artists.

“This is how we came to include Emmanuel’s visual designs.

“We built on an idea of musicians with video interaction, based on a network.

With this network, we were able to synchronise and perform the video from my controllers, while also including Anat in the network, by tracking her voice and sending that as streams of numbers to be used as video parameters.

[Anat is] a fantastic singer, who is mesmerizing to watch, and she’ll be accompanied by a wall of harmonious electronic sound, dressed in digital colours.”

With strong interests in theatrical settings, inspirations from this area are clear within Wormsongs itself, and Henry continues by describing the scores as “a music theatre piece, without the theatre part.

“There is no clear narrative, and no linear text, but the music is set in an operatic way.”

And what are Henry’s plans for the future?

“I want to work with more singers, I’d clone Anat if I could….

“At the moment, I’m working on a larger work for three voices – Anat included – percussion and strings.

“I’m looking for a theme to inspire the whole thing, and I look forward to finding out what it is!”

– by Ross Cotton – Freelance Music Journalist – http://domesticcity.posterous.com/

We’re very pleased that a new venture in Birmingham – Ort. artists and community cafe – will be hosting Network Music Festival’s talks as well as the Social Sofa installation by Peter Maxwell-Dixon.

The cafe – based in The Old Print Works, Balsall Heath – opened in November and has had an exciting line up of music events, language classes, skill shares, philosophy talks and more since opening. Their opening night at the beginning of November included performances from Network Music Festival performers BiLE and Juneau Brothers

Ort. released a video today showing what they’ve been up to for the past couple of months, check it out:

The Network Music Festival Talks – Sunday 29th January // 11am-1pm – chaired by University of Birmingham lecturer Dr. Scott Wilson, will include presentations by network music performers and tech experts.

Social Sofa, which will be in the cafe in the run up to and during the festival uses tweets containing the hastag #NMF2012 to make sound… tweet about us and you’ll end up in a sound installation! 😉

BiLE (Birmingham Laptop Ensemble) will now be performing Saturday 6pm and BEER will now be performing Sunday 4pm.

Ross Cotton has been talking to Curtis McKinney of Glitch Lich, who is also presenting his installation Leech at Network Music Festival.

Glitch Lich are performing on Sunday 29th January.

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Glitch Lich are an innovative collective of experimental musicians, who perform and collaborate with members spread over three different times zones.

Developing new ways to create music and expanding on the idea of what it means to perform as a group, the four piece study further in composition across their different bases on the globe.

Made up of researchers Cole Ingraham, Benjamin O’Brien and brothers Chad McKinney and Curtis McKinney, Glitch Lich craft real-time network music like no other group on the planet.

“My brother and I have been performing music together our entire lives”, says Glitch Lich member Curtis.

“In California, Chad and I formed a band with two fellow students at Mills College.

“This ensemble was informed by the work of The League of Automatic Music Composers, and The Hub, two members of which where professors at Mills.

“These ensembles focused on creating music through a unique process of collaboration, using computers via data networks as a medium to share music information.

“Once we graduated, we all went our own ways, which is often the case.

“Myself moving to England, Cole to Colorado, Ben to Florida and Chad stayed in California, though he now joins me in England.

“Of course the band still wanted to perform together”, says Curtis.

“Since we were already using networks as a medium for musical collaboration, it was only logical that we could extend the performance space by using custom programmed applications.

“Allowing us to use the same collaborative methods on a global scale.

“Thus, Glitch Lich became an international Ensemble!”

The group’s goal is never to cultivate a sound, but instead to focus on the principle of experimental music.

Researching new techniques for performance and sound production, the collective discover new ways of where music can lead to.

Curtis explains further, “Sometimes you fail miserably, sometimes it works more successfully than you could ever imagine.”

Although, it seems that the press may not always see Glitch Lich as innovative in their approach.

“We recently received a rather humorous review from an individual unfamiliar with experimental music”, says Curtis.

“They compared us to [American abstract expressionist painter] Jackson Pollock and horror movie scores.

“I believe they meant it derisively, but we all found it rather complimentary!”

The sound of Glitch Lich is always one that treads on dangerous territory, something that Curtis is very much keen on doing, as it’s all part of the thrill to him.

“Every performance is a treacherous and exciting journey”, he says.

“A large part of our work has researched the possibility of a group collaboratively influencing chaotic structures, often through the usage of recursion and feedback.

“These pieces can be extremely surprising, and often feel more like herding wild beasts than performing.

“At their best, the pieces produce results I’m not sure we could have ever derived in any other fashion”, he says.

“When this occurs in performance, it’s like a gift from Azathoth [a supreme being in the Cthulhu Mythos and Dream Cycle stories of H.P. Lovecraft].”

“On the other hand, sometimes the system just won’t comply, and just produces boring or painful results.

“Worst case scenario is a fatal technical glitch that brings the performance to a halt.

“However, I consider this to be a boon”, he says.

Network Music Festival will also feature an installation piece called Leech, which is one of Curtis’s own creations.

Leech from Curtis McKinney on Vimeo.

Harnessing BitTorrent downloads as data, the piece reveals the look and sound of piracy, using the actual music being pirated itself as a new musical composition.

Curtis says, “I began thinking about alternative methods of using networks in music.

“Almost everyone I know pirates music, including myself and many other musicians.

“I often hear about how we should support musicians by buying their albums from the same people who pirate music themselves!

“It’s a strange dichotomy that no one wants to talk about”, he says.

“I decided that it would be interesting to tackle the issue the one way I know how, through music and sound itself.”

Curtis continues, “to accomplish this, I set out to sonify the BitTorrent traffic of an actual act of music piracy.

“Gathering the data involves using Packet Sniffing [a piece of computer hardware that intercepts and logs traffic passing over a digital network] in combination with Geo IP location, and data mining a BitTorrent client.

“By using this information, I am able to plot all the individuals involved in a particular torrent onto a global map, to both visualise and sonify the pirated data that is being uploaded and downloaded.

“Simultaneously, I use the pirated songs themselves as a musical resource for effects processing as they download onto my computer.”

Curtis has written more about his piece Leech here: http://smcnetwork.org/system/files/smc2011_submission_154.pdf

Glitch Lich welcome anybody with an open mind to come and see their performance at Network Music Festival.

“As long as people listen actively and critically, I am happy”, says Curtis

“If they react by buying the band a round and having a friendly chat about what the heck just happened, that would be optimal, though not required”, he jokes.

And what are Curtis’s and Glitch Lich’s plans for the future?

“We want to be the first organisation to design human eradicating AI, in hope that perhaps they will be more forgiving to us”, he says.

(More about Curtis’s opinions on Artificial Intelligence can be read below this article).

“We are also currently researching how to more intimately involve beer in our performance practice.

“And I personally plan on creating more installation pieces that are illegal in at least one country.”

Curtis’s opinion on the future threat of music and artificial intelligence is definitely a unique and highly interesting one, as he explains “Unless some drastic event were to derail research into the fields of computer science and AI, I believe there will be no way of avoiding the fact that we as technology researchers are paving the way for humanity’s utter destruction.

“At the very least, we are designing our own replacements.

“In my own way, I am helping it along myself”, he says.

“As technology increases, the rate of changes increases, eventually leading to what Ray Kurzweil terms, the ‘Technological Singularity’, a point at which the rate of change is so great that it would approach infinity.

“To reach this level will require the design of advanced artificial intelligence.

“Once to a sufficient point, this artificial intelligence will then be used to design the next generation of more capable artificial intelligence and technology.

“This will precede until AI becomes many magnitudes more capable than human beings, appearing to us almost as gods.

“Kurzweil has a rather Utopian view on these things, and believes that somehow it will all work to the good of humanity.

“I tend to agree more with those such as Hugo De Garis, who foresees that advance AI will look upon the human race as a nuisance, akin to how we look upon ants.

“And as such, they would see little moral consequence in eradicating the vermin.

“I’d recommend reading The Artilect War by Hugo De Garis and I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, by Harlan Ellison for more insight.”, explains Curtis, who’s in depth knowledge on the subject matter is both extremely thought provoking and eye opening.

– by Ross Cotton – Freelance Music Journalist – http://domesticcity.posterous.com/

Next up in our performer conversations with journalist Ross Cotton is local laptop band BiLE (Birmingham Laptop Ensemble).

BiLE will be performing a live set at Network Music Festival consisting of a sonic battle and the premiere of Act II of the world’s first “Laptopera” (or opera for laptops)!

Enjoy!

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Birmingham Laptop Ensemble (BiLE) are a team of experimental sound performers.

Focusing on instrumental and electroacoustic music, the ensemble improvise and interact together to generate and manipulate new ways of expression for live performances.

The six piece (consisting of Shelly Knotts, Julien Guillamat, Charles Celeste Hutchins, Chris Tarren, Norah Lorway and Iain Armstrong), are also accompanied by glitch artist Antonio Roberts, who crafts supporting visual wonders for BiLE’s on stage shows.

“We are playing two pieces [at Network Music Festival]”, says laptop enthusiast Shelly Knotts.

“One of them we’ve performed at two other festivals, which is our XYZ piece, and then we are doing one of Les’s pieces.”

“It’s a premiere”, says fellow member Charles Celeste Hutchins.

“It’s a ‘Laptopera’, we’re doing just act two of it, but as far as I know, it’s the first ever opera for laptops!”, he says.

“A guy I really like called Gino Robair did an improvised opera for really open instrumentation.

“There were guys performing it with singers and laptops.

“I also really like things with spoken text.

“So I thought, what if we did a similarly open opera thing with computers, but with more text”, says Les.

Shelly continues by explaining the story behind XYZ, which will also be performed at Network Music Festival, “we wrote that for the New Interfaces for Musical Expression conference in Oslo in May.

“The idea was that we’d all be able to control each other’s sounds, with an iPhone or using a Wiimote for example.

“I wanted to think of a way that wasn’t just sharing sounds or chatting to each other during the performance”, says Shelly.

“So this is a way we could be really communicating.

“I’ve got my iPhone, if I move it one way, it controls one piece of sound, if I move it another way, it controls another part of the sound in three dimensions.

“And then, everybody in the ensemble has a sound which has three things you can control on it.

“Then I can say, I’m going to control the pitch on Les’s sound, the resonance on Chris’s and density on Julien’s. So it’s 3 dimensions with the iPhone controlling those things.

“And we’re all fighting the whole time to control each other’s sounds.”

“It’s like a big sonic battle!”, adds Julien.

“Sonic arm wrestle was the working title!”, says Shelly.

With elements of both art and music within their sound, BiLE fuse together two creative outlets and present their experiments through performance.

“It’s very much a musical background that we all come from, and I think that translates into the approach that we take” says Iain.

“I was a classical violinist.”

Shelly adds, “and I came from writing instrumental music, to doing electronics, to doing BiLE.

“We’re more about exploring other avenues alongside the other things that we are doing. But the stuff that we’re doing in BiLE is definitely influencing my other compositions. Working with a group of composers with other ideas just opens your eyes to other avenues.”

“We are always trying to create interesting music”, says fellow member Chris.

“We’re not about technical fetishes or using technology for the sake of it, we are just using technology as a way of enabling us to do interesting and new things.

“The technology is much more of an enabling factor, rather than a necessity.

“It’s more about new ways of expression, rather than genre based roots,” he says.

“The difference is that we aren’t coming from a fine art background”, concludes Iain.

The sound of BiLE is very unique and unusual to most listeners, as they continuously adapt layers to their pieces with occasional improvisational qualities.

“We generally rehearse quite a lot, so there’s always an amount of structure”, says Julien.

“We know what the aim is we want to create in a piece.”

Les continues, “and when we start improvising, we have a stopwatch going. “So people always have an idea of how long we are going for.

“It’s kind of thinking about musical forms always happening.”

“When we’re nearing the climax, we’ll say go on! Go crazy! Do something! Push the volume up!”, adds Julien.

“We always have a score”, says Shelly.

“And during the performance, we’ve got a chat open.”

“We can always type at each other if someone’s doing something totally crazy”, says Les.

“And we have hand signs for things like ‘Help! My computer has crashed!’.”

Live sampling is also a huge part of the BiLE collective, feeding electroacoustic elements into their sound.

Iain explains further, “we are all designing our own instruments, and that can vary from piece to piece depending on the demands of the scores.

“If you need to sample something live and apply some kind of process to it, then generally we’ll write a patch that meets that brief.

“Then there’s flexibility; What you do to the sound is up to you.

“Whether you want to make it more extreme or pitched based.”

And it seems that other samples used by the group are much more obscure than you could ever imagine.

“I had porn sounds once”, says Les.

“You had some good vocal samples as well, people being racist or homophobic?”, adds Shelly.

“Oh yeah”, Les continues.

“They were all my offensive samples.

“I had one from the BNP which I didn’t end up using because it was just too much.

“And then some representative in the states talking about how gay people are like a cancer upon society, which is a one way speech.

“And then George Bush talking about terrorism”, he says.

“But the classic is Chris’s cheese grater!”, adds Julien.

“I still haven’t got my cheese grater back!, I can’t grate cheese!”, jokes Chris.

“And generally, some of the pieces that we play, define the material that we use”, says Iain.

“So for the Partially Percussive one, we use metallic, percussive instruments like kitchen utensils.”

“But I think all this comes from us being composers”, says Shelly.

“When I go out, I have my microphone with me.”

“When we were in Venice, everybody had their recorders.

“They’re always doing it it seems!”, explains Antonio.

And what future projects are BiLE looking to pursue?

“It would be quite fun to do a Chinese whispers piece,” says Les.

“By modifying the sounds that everybody else was making.”

“So that’s basically to chain the Laptops together”, explains Shelly.

“Whatever Les makes gets sent to Iain, then whatever Iain does to it gets sent to me, then whatever I do gets sent to Julien, and then there will be one person at the end who will be playing the eventual sounds!”

“I’m personally trying to work out ways of having more control [with Laptops]”, says Iain.

“For me, it’s about finding ways of making it more performative.

“That’s the thing with the Ensemble, it allows you to develop these ways of playing.

“And it’s also easier to do that as a group rather than on your own, because there are limitations”, he says.

“Laptop performance is relatively a new area”, says Shelly.

“People are still working out ways to make it an interesting performance as well as an interesting sound. “The thing I find interesting about BiLE is writing a piece that is specifically for a group of laptops, all connected via a Network.

“And thinking about the possibilities that you can have from that specifically.

“We are all mixed ability coding types, the participation is about what you can bring musically to the group.” says Shelly.

“That’s what appealed to me”, says Iain.

“There was no demand from the group saying you need to be excellent at coding, just as long as you can make sounds and you can control it.

“I think that’s what’s great about the way we work.” concludes Iain.

by Ross Cotton – Freelance Music Journalist – http://domesticcity.posterous.com/

The Financial Times published an article profiling the rise of Laptop Orchestras and Ensembles last week.

As well as a number of Laptop Orchestras – PLOrk, L2Ork and BiLE, The Network Music Festival got a mention along with the first Symposium of Laptop Orchestras and Ensembles which will be held in Louisiana in the spring!

BiLE will be performing at the Network Music Festival along with many other interesting laptop orchestras/ensembles/bands and other groups who are using networking technology in many other interesting and innovative ways! It’s great to see some media attention for this growing area of music and I hope that we can encapsulate the spirit of experimentation through technology described by Alex Newman in the article:

‘…at the heart of the laptop orchestra movement is both a commitment to experimentation, and an alertness to technological change: two elements that have always driven music to exciting new places.’

I know that I am certainly excited by the festival and I hope that you are too!

You can read the full article here!

The Network Music Festival is now accepting submissions to it’s OPEN CALL. Performances, Installations, Talks, Demos and Workshops which use networking as central to the musical aesthetic, creative process or performance practice are being accepted.

Please read the submission information on the OPEN CALL page and submit using the form here.

Deadline for applications: 30th November 2011.