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ACMA Conference, Perth July 2003
Introduction
The 2003 Australasian Computer Music Conference was held at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA, pronounced like "whopper") on 5th–7th July 2003; the conference title was "Converging Technologies". WAAPA is part of the Mt Lawley campus of Edith Cowan University in Suburban Perth. The organising committee was headed by Lindsay Vickery and included Robert Sazdov, Andrew Brown, Paul Doornbusch and Tos Mahony.
The conference consisted of the usual mix of paper sessions and concerts, and there were also several installations. In the week after the conference there were associated events: three workshops and a four-concert series under the name "E*mergence". However, this report only covers the conference itself. Usual disclaimer: this is a personal view of a complex event.
Presentations
There were altogether 24 papers or presentations. A breakdown of topics:
- 2 keynote addresses;
- 3 technical papers;
- 6 papers offering general critical or analytic discussion;
- 11 papers or talks primarily concerned with issues connected with the presenter's own creative practice;
- 2 studio reports.
From another angle, if we leave aside the studio reports, 18 of the remaining 22 presentations were substantially concerned with live performance or live interaction, a very significant development. I mention only some of the presentations here.
The keynote addresses
The keynote addresses were given by Gil Weinberg and Bernard Parmegiani.
Gil Weinberg has been developing new musical instruments in the MIT Media Lab. He described his work on what he called Interconnected Musical Networks, and specifically the Beatbug Network. The purpose of these networks is to enable collaborative music-making by non-musicians.
The Beatbugs are engaging objects looking like large ladybirds ("ladybugs" in American) with two antennae. They are in fact fairly dumb controllers and only function when connected in a network with a central computer. Then one player can tap a rhythm on the body of the Beatbug, eliciting sounds from the inbuilt speaker. The rhythm can then be sent to the computer, which passes it to another player. The second player can then modify the phrase using the two antennae. Bending one antenna modified the pitch; bending the other changed the rhythm, I think by inserting extra notes. With up to eight performers networked together, quite complex outcomes are possible. Gil said that given enough time, groups of children could develop interesting work starting from scratch. However in a situation where only a day or two was available before a performance, Gil provided a framework of initial rhythms and a pattern of passing the rhythms among the players, and the performers proceeded from this starting-point.
Bernard Parmegiani is a French master of acousmatic music, now 75 years old, who has been active in the field for at least 40 years. He gave his talk in French, and although a young man was brought along to translate, the task was completely beyond him. Since I know almost no French I thus can't give a coherent account of Bernard's talk; however he was describing the evolution of acousmatic music from its origins in the musique concrète of Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henri, through the days of tape-splicing to the eventual adoption of the computer. In this tradition the focus is on the qualities of the sounds themselves, not their sources; Bernard referred to Pythagoras's supposed practice of lecturing from behind a curtain so that the pupils would not be distracted by irrelevancies.
During the discussion people attempted to ask Bernard questions about how his artistic practice had changed over the years, but the language barrier proved too high. He did say that the greatest challenge he faced was to renew or refresh his creativity, so as to avoid constantly repeating himself. I was also able to have a brief discussion with Bernard during a sound check, and it became clear that he was passionately in favour of the practice of live diffusion of a stereo work over many channels, and very much against the rigidity of composing say an eight-channel work for a ring of eight speakers with everything fixed in advance.
Some technical or analytic talks
Ross Bencina described his work on the real-time audio library PortAudio, and indicated the problems that arise when trying to synchronise audio generation with incoming MIDI events, real-time graphics generation and the like. PortAudio is used in Ross's own AudioMulch software and in Miller Puckette's pd, and is clearly an important development.
Angelo Fraietta described work on his Smart Controller, in the context of working on an installation in collaboration with Anne Norman (mentioned below). Angelo's Smart and Dumb controllers convert control voltage signals to MIDI and vice versa, and have been used by at least three people at the conference. The Smart Controller has substantial processing power and, once programmed, can run an installation (for example) without being connected to an external computer.
David Hirst presented a substantial study under the title "Developing a cognitive framework for the interpretation of acousmatic music". His starting-point is a framework by E. Bigand which applies to tonal music; it consists of a series of stages starting with vibrations impinging on the ear and ending with the recognition by the listener of high-level organisation. David has modified Bigand's framework considerably to apply to acousmatic music, taking into account the writings of Denis Smalley and others.
Roger Alsop discussed what he called "polymedia" works, and in particular works involving dance, using the categories of Space, Time and Gesture, which are common to both music and dance. Roger describes polymedia works as those where all the creators collaborate during the development of the work, whereas in multimedia the components are more likely to be developed separately. I got the impression that Roger was being polite and that "multimedia" is now a pejorative term; possibly a reaction to people slapping together some video footage and unrelated synthesiser doodlings and calling the result "multimedia". The term "intermedia" was also mentioned; I'm not sure what it is supposed to mean.
Lindsay Vickery talked about "Non-linear structures for real-time interactive musical works". This was a wide-ranging presentation including discussion of a variety of theoretical approaches. Lindsay introduced the term "multi-linear", referring to simultaneously presented linear strands, where the audience or participants can either choose to direct attention to one strand or another, or in some cases select which strands will be played. He suggested that this can be a useful model for music, as the strands remain synchronised even if some are temporarily inaudible.
Andrew Brown launched a catalogue of digital instruments in Australia. He has included both hardware and software instruments, though he noted that it is hard to draw boundaries: in some sense everyone who has ever created a Max patch is a digital instrument builder. The website is at http://digitalinstruments.ci.qut.edu.au and Andrew is inviting contributions.
Rene Wooller gave an analysis of club drum and bass, one of the genres where a DJ chooses and mixes tracks. Rene made transcriptions of a number of drum and bass tracks to determine the rhythmic patterns used, the overall structure of the tracks, and other features. He carried out this work in the context of his LEMu project, in which he algorithmically creates dance music in real time according to parameters manipulated by a user.
Some talks on creative practice
These included both short "artists' talks" and fully developed papers setting the artist's own work in its social, technical, or creative context.
Two of the presentations concerned new performance interfaces. Donna Hewitt demonstrated her "eMic", a heavily modified microphone stand developed in collaboration with Ian Stevenson. The starting point was an analysis of the hand and body gestures made by singers in popular genres. The result mike stand has a joystick inserted near its top, so moving the mike itself generates joystick X-Y control information. It also has pressure sensors on the microphone holder, a ribbon sensor on the upright part of the stand, and even a tilt sensor in the base of the stand. Additionally there are foot switches on the base and various knobs and buttons just below the joystick.
Cat Hope showed her Digital Audio Control Skirt, a high-waisted pyramidal construction designed to have video projected onto it, with controls built into a belt. Additionally Cat designed a separate bodice on which further controls were mounted, and a collar with a camera. The whole construction was quite elaborate, and designed to give the wearer real-time control over both audio and video.
Hannah Clemen discussed her interactive installation "IntraSpectral". This consists of a microphone, four loudspeakers and a Max patch. The participant vocalises into the mike, and once the amplitude crosses a threshold the Max patch grabs a sound sample, finds prominent frequencies in it and resynthesises them from a bank of sine-wave oscillators. There are in fact four such banks of oscillators, filled up on a round robin basis, so if the participant makes four loud sounds, four different sets of harmonics emerge. "IntraSpectral" is part of a larger project designed by Hannah: it is the second in a planned sequence of three interactive sound installations whose aim is to encourage meditative states. The first installation is to be controlled by the breath of a participant alone; the third will involve group partition after the fashion of a ritual.
Anne Norman described her work-in-progress "Bell Garden", which uses Angelo Fraietta's Smart Controller. The "bells" are actually protective caps for wooden power poles, squat metal cylinders with one end open. They were made in various sizes, and consequently their sounds have differing pitches and harmonic content. Anne is equipping each bell with a solenoid to play it, and is also adding sensors to some of the bells. The idea is that the bells can be part of an installation which is affected by people moving nearby. Anne and Angelo brought along a prototype bell fitted with an infrared detector. Unfortunately this developed a fault and failed to work during their presentations. However, Angelo managed to repair it, and later the bell rang during an unrelated presentation; someone took a photograph and the flash triggered the bell.
Christine McCombe talked about her "mixed media" work "An Opera of Clouds". This can be realised as either a single performance or as a linked series of installations. The work proceeds in several time scales, or "temporal modes". There is a very slowly changing video image as background. The next layer is a slowly changing and cyclic electroacoustic sound track. Then there is another layer of images, manipulated live, and in the "foreground" several episodes of live music and spoken text from two chamber ensembles and a reader.
Jonathan Mustard talked about two works using "sight-to-sound" technology, where images picked up by a video camera control the sound output. In one, entitled "Monody for Coloured Objects", the performer manipulates objects such as a red mug and a yellow alarm clock. The system only tracks certain colours, such as the red of the mug. The other work, "Dismembered", uses variously coloured shapes representing parts of a human body (arm, leg, torso, head). These are manipulated by two dancer-puppeteers so that sometimes they coalesce to a complete body and sometimes move independently. Again, the movements of the coloured shapes control the audio output via a video camera.
A presentation from two members of the group Skadada described their introduction of electronic sensors and interactive multimedia into circus performance, culminating in an "Electronic Big Top". This was described as the "ultimate hybrid performance", and appeared really spectacular, breaking new ground on a grand scale.
Installations
Unfortunately I was only able to engage with one installation, Hannah Clemen's "IntraSpectral", discussed above. I spent some time with this, and found it very engaging and effective. It responds best to singing of relatively slow notes, which suits its purpose, to encourage meditative states. Some very interesting timbres resulted. Sometimes the generated timbres had pronounced vibrato, which I didn't like very much, but discovered afterwards that I could have controlled the vibrato, as it responded to the lengths of the sung notes. So I needed to learn more about the installation's capabilities. The only other possible problem was that Hannah needed to adjust the mike threshold frequently.
The installation was used to give a performance not in the conference series. Anne Norman, who is a skilled shakuhachi player, performed an improvisation mixing traditional shakuhachi techniques with more modern ones such as singing through the instrument. With Hannah controlling aspects of the installation's response (again I think mostly the mike threshold), the result was captivating.
Overall "IntraSpectral" is one of the best interactive sound installations I have encountered.
Concerts
There were three concerts, one on each evening of the conference. They were held in the Music Auditorium, WAAPA's main concert space. It looks somewhat wider than it is long and has acoustically treated walls allowing variable reverberation characteristics. It looks as though it was designed with orchestral rehearsals in mind. For the ACMA concerts all the seating was roped off except chairs towards the front, to put most people in a good listening position. There was a 14-channel speaker system: eight speakers in a ring round the audience, then four more at the corners in raised positions, and two subwoofers (front and back).
Twenty-one pieces were played at the three concerts. Of these ten had a live performance element, five were for video and six for tape, including two composed in stereo but intended to be diffused live over a multi-channel system. Three of the remaining tape works were composed for more than two channels, leaving just one tape piece composed for, and intended to be heard in, stereo.
Here I just mention some of the pieces from each concert.
The first concert consisted mostly of multimedia (polymedia, intermedia,...) works. It opened with a piece by Jonathan Mustard "Cyg.Net". What we saw was a video of a dancer, accompanied by Jonathan playing complex sounds from a keyboard. However, in fact the video was extracted from a performance for which Jonathan was the composer, so in the conference performance Jonathan was responding to a dancer who was responding to a previous incarnation of Jonathan's music. It worked very well.
This concert featured both the new interfaces mentioned above. Donna Hewitt gave a striking performance using her eMic. She sang some folk-music-like phrases and the manipulated them (without further singing) by using the controller abilities of the eMic.
The performance by cAVity (Cat Hope and Ann Walton) using the Digital Audio Control Skirt was less successful for me, partly because I was in a bad position to see what was happening. Cat, who was wearing the skirt, had to stand very still, except for her hands, which were manipulating controls. (From my point of view, she appeared to be fiddling with her bra.) Also, the projector had to be masked so as to illuminate the skirt only, and this wasn't completely successful. I gather that people seated nearer to Cat had a much better experience.
Steve Adam gave an attractive performance controlled by waving his hands in front of a video camera. This is a re-implementation and development of work Steve did a number of years ago; what required special-purpose hardware then can now be achieved by Max and Jitter. Again I had trouble with sight lines, and I would have liked to see what Steve's system was seeing; I would have liked to see a big projection of his hands.
Of the video pieces in the program (and leaving aside my own piece) I liked Brigid Burke's "An Empty Bowl" the best. Brigid is a skilled visual artist as well as a composer and performer, and many of the images were created by her. The piece was in homage to Percy Grainger; other images used were of Grainger himself and some of his instruments. The sounds were also inspired by Grainger in various ways, and some used his actual percussion instruments.
A thought-provoking piece was a video "Pig Wings" from the Tissue Culture and Art group (Oron Catts, Ionat Zurr and Guy Ben-Ary) based at the University of Western Australia. (The music for the video was by Hedkikr, alias Darren Moore and Lindsay Vickery.) The Pig Wings project was to grow living tissue (cartilage) over a substrate to make shapes that might be suitable for wings for pigs. In this project some of the growing "pig wings" were played music (or more precisely a speaker was coupled to the growth chamber so that the fluid was agitated by the sound waves). Afterwards the Musically Entertained pig wings and the Musically Deprived pig wings were found to have significant differences.
The work had a couple of subtexts. The "pig wings" are only a couple of centimetres long (and even so, take a long time to grow). This was a comment at the hype currently surrounding biotechnology. Further, the playing of music to a couple of pig wings was hardly a conclusive experiment. Roger Dean suggested to me that this was a dig at anecdotal reports that somehow get turned into scientific papers and attract media coverage, and Oron Catts confirmed this.
The second concert focused on live performance. It began with two pieces by Simulus (Steve Adam, Ross Bencina and Tim Kreger). The lights went down before I read my program notes, and I thought these were tape pieces. In fact they were live laptop improvisations, but the group members were located behind the audience (everyone else performed at the front). Considered as tape pieces they were certainly acceptable; I preferred the second piece "DRV", which was an abstract representation of a Drum, Rhythm, Voice trio.
The only two pieces in the concerts involving traditional acoustic instruments were both by visiting American composer Joseph (Joe) Waters. The first was described as being for "cello and DJ rig", but Joe said that the DJ rig was cumbersome to carry around, and it was replaced by a laptop plus Max patch on this occasion. It combined a virtuosic cello part with numerous samples triggered by Joe. The samples appeared to have been elaborately composed and in addition Joe had a slider to shape the volume during playback. The piece was about ghosts, the "shadow personalities that inhabit our sleep".
Joe's second piece was for soprano saxophone (Lindsay Vickery) and tape. This was a "spirit of place" piece, with the sounds of water and birds, and also a large and annoying fly (apparently created from a recording of water sound). The instrumental part was generally slow-moving long notes. The piece was originally written for flute, and was adapted remarkably well for the soprano sax by Lindsay Vickery, especially considering that the original contained multiphonics, whistle tones and other extended techniques. Joe was later seen in discussion with Anne Norman about adapting the piece for shakuhachi.
Julian Knowles gave an impressive live laptop performance, manipulating dense layers of sound. The experience was definitely enhanced by seeing Julian grooving along, even if he was partly hidden behind the laptop screen. I think this piece would have worked very well as a tape piece, except perhaps for one repetitive whirling section.
There were two actual tape pieces in this concert. One was by Hannah Clemen, a tranquil meditative piece apparently related to her planned series of installations. The other was by Robert Sazdov, who is a (Slavic) Macedonian — there is a tangled web of geopolitical, nationalistic and ethnic issues here — and the piece was a tribute to the Macedonian traditional singer Vaska Ilieva. It was constructed around a recording Robert made of Ilieva's singing when she visited Australia. This piece was composed for 12 channels, and was the only one conceived for the specific setup of these concerts. Nevertheless, the spatialisation seemed a bit unsatisfactory to me; I'm not sure why.
The final concert was for tape pieces only, and was dominated by Bernard Parmegiani's masterpiece "De Natura Sonorum", diffused by the composer himself. The piece was composed on two-channel magnetic tape by traditional tape-splicing techniques in 1975, and is intended for multi-channel live diffusion. It is in twelve contrasting movements, each generally exploring the interplay of two aspects of sound. The sound sources include electronic sounds as well as recorded sounds, but all are blended and transformed so that what is important is the sounds we actually hear, not their origins. The whole piece takes about 50 minutes and is a spellbinding experience.
Bernard had a score with him; it turned out to be a graphic representation of the two channels of the tape, with no diffusion instructions. In any case he didn't need a score: he knows the piece well, and he said that each diffusion is quite different. He rehearsed the entire piece on the afternoon of the concert.
The other two pieces on the program were much shorter. David Hirst played his "Travail", also a two-channel work intended for diffusion. This is an acousmatic work sculpted from the sounds of a coffee machine. The final piece was my own soundscape of Kangaroo Island, for 5.1 surround sound.
The "West Australian" newspaper ran two items related to the conference after it was over; together they occupied most of a (tabloid) page. One was an interview with Gil Weinberg about his Beatbugs. The other was a review of the Parmegiani concert. The reviewer obviously didn't understand the tape music genre (and didn't like the other two pieces), but found "De Natura Sonorum" to be fascinating and rewarding.
Some general comments
The conference raised a lot of questions about performance in the digital age, computer music, and new media. Here are my own very tentative (and probably naive) post-conference thoughts.
Despite the long history of recorded music and the fact that almost all the music people actually listen to is recorded (heard via radio, CD, MP3,...), the tape music genre is still not understood by the general musical public, and presumably never will be. Tape music is a distinct genre, and even people who appreciate "contemporary classical music" often can't engage with the tape music genre. I take it that a genre requires its own mode of listening, that one more or less consciously adopts a particular frame of mind.
Although recorded music has a long history, for a much longer period
all music was necessarily live, and for most people is still inextricably
connected with live performance. Pop bands and classical performers
alike go on tours to sell more CDs. Furthermore most recorded music
at least appears to be derived from live performance, however much post-processing
may have been done on it.
The introduction of computers into any sphere of endeavour reveals areas of ignorance, and as Julian Knowles commented during the conference, introducing computers into musical performance has shown that we don't know much about performance. In acoustic performance, even so-called fully notated music leaves a great deal up to the performer, in the way of subtle timing and timbral nuances. If direct physical control of an acoustic instrument is taken away, it leaves a gap which needs to be filled, at least in art-music-like contexts.
Tape music attempts to fill this gap by subtle processing of sound in the studio, until recently an inherently non-real-time process. If we consider live performance, digital technology has enabled two rather distinct modes:
- an older mode exemplified by a piano-style keyboard linked via MIDI to a synth module or sampler;
- a newer mode exemplified by a Max/MSP patch or the like running on a laptop computer.
Now, live performance has two big things going for it. Firstly, the audience understands the general capabilities and modes of operation of common acoustic instruments. (To give equivalent information in an electronic context would require a lengthy program note.) Secondly, and more importantly, by genetic makeup and social conditioning we are skilled at reading the facial expressions and body language of other humans. Thus we can feel a rapport with a performer.
In the keyboard/synth situation we may lack the knowledge of how the sounds are produced, but we can still relate to what the performer is doing and feeling, and this helps to fill the gap mentioned above. In the Max/MSP/laptop situation we are often totally disconnected from the performer, and it seems to me that this means the actual sounds must be really compelling. That is, if we are disconnected from the performer, we are really back in the tape music situation (even though a performer is ostensibly present). This may be why laptop performance is seen as so problematic.
From this point of view I see improvisation as intensifying the characteristics of acoustic performance. Improvisations on acoustic instruments often contain virtuosic elements which are essentially impossible to notate, and the body language is typically much more vigorous than in classical performance.
Where does this leave live electronic performance? There is the problem of rapport with the audience; also if everything in a performance is predetermined, a performer is superfluous, so one would expect some improvisatory element. A solution to the rapport problem is to use a performance interface which allows this rapport, as Donna Hewitt did very successfully with her eMic. An additional problem is that improvisation is difficult and those who don't do much of it are unlikely to be good improvisers. So it seems to me that there are two choices for live electronic performers: either accept that you are really making tape music, or use an interface that allows rapport with the audience, and be (become) a good performer.
The above wasn't really a problem in the conference concerts, but it became acute in a couple of the post-conference E*mergence concerts. There were several pieces involving real-time Max/MSP manipulations where the performer was seated in the front row of the audience, and it was impossible to see what was happening. More than once the effect was that of an uninspired tape piece, whatever prodigies of real-time manipulation may have been going on.
These comments are intended only for performance contexts similar to those for art music. If I understood Rene Wooller correctly, the main function of a dance music DJ is not improvisation in the usual sense. Instead it is to read the mood of the dancers, to give them fast and frantic if that is what they want, and to give them a breather and a slower pace when they start to flag.
This leaves the sort of laptop glitch/noise music featured in the 2001 ACMA conference as an enigma. This is essentially a music of live performance, and the performer is visible, but rapport with the listeners is minimal. I can only think that this is a distinct genre with its own social context (which I don't know) and its own mode of listening. Enlightenment, anyone?
Where to now?
What is the current state of computer music in Australia, judging from the conference? (Unfortunately the New Zealanders didn't make it as far as Perth.)
I think that the composition of tape music for its own sake will continue, though it has lost its dominant position. Tape music techniques continue to be important, but the result is likely to be a soundtrack for some other medium.
The availability of surround sound via DVD will ensure that spatialisation continues to be important. Elaborate multi-channel speaker setups are normal at ACMA conferences now, and it appears that live diffusion in some form has established a small but secure place on the Australian scene.
The once standard arrangement of keyboard or sequencer connected via MIDI to a synth or sampler and effects looks to be in danger of extinction, in our context. The replacement is some sort of performer interface (possibly just a mouse, possibly something very elaborate) going to a laptop running Max/MSP or something similar. This raises expectations, as we can reasonably expect a composer working with Max/MSP to do something more interesting than trigger a few samples repeatedly. At present a lot of Max/MSP-based live performance can be described as "Isn't it exciting that we can do this!" I agree, it is exciting, but this phase must surely be nearly over; better reasons for doing it will have to be found.
The interlinked areas of multimedia (polymedia, mixed media, whatever), instrument building, installations and live performance of many kinds now seem to be the dominant concerns of our community.
Lindsay Vickery and his team are to be congratulated on a very stimulating conference which has delineated what looks to be a significant change of direction for our discipline.
© Gordon Monro 2003. Last modified:
July 16th, 2003.
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