Lesley Flanigan ITP

Speaker Synth
Speaker Synth is an instrument that plays natural feedback loops to output a musical experience. By "natural," I am referring to the sound of electricity. There is no external audio input to the system, the only components in the loop are the speakers, microphones, and amplifying circuit.

Speaker Synth is comprised of five autonomous feedback systems made of a speaker, LM386n amplifier circuit and piezo microphone. Individual controls include a volume potentiometer and power switch. By manipulating variables such as the positioning of the piezo in relationship to the speaker, the laying of hands and fingers on the speaker, and the inherent dynamics of the individual piezo and speaker, etc, users develop and play noise. The result are sounds take the shape of notes, chords, rhythms, and harmonies.

Speaker Synth demo1.mov (4min)
Speaker Synth demo2.mov (3.5min)

Further Development
More of these instruments will be made, with more in depth attention to the speaker, piezo and amplifier dynamics. I will also construct at least one with metal tubes attached to the speakers to experiment with a sound output that will not directly reflect back into the feedback loop. My intent is to have several Speaker Synths performed simultaneously, and produce a choral arrangement.

Essence of a Feedback Loop
The concept of a feedback loop is engaging, particularly in regards to consciousness and sense of self. Douglas Hofstadter refers to such a feedback loop as a "strange loop." We know our sense of self though layers of experiential, complex cycles that endlessly loop. Consider the phrase, "history repeats itself" in visualizing our process of living: we learn, add, subtract, and shape our lives, always returning to where we began to repeat again. To illustrate further, "Point a video camera at a TV displaying the camera's output, and you will produce a receding corridor of screens. Pixels make up the picture, but our interest is in the image, the tunnel of rectangles. Identity resembles that phenomenon. Never mind the neurons that make up our brain. Our emotions, others' responses and our repeated looks outward to the world and inward to ourselves shape what we call our self. Nor is ours the only loop we contain. We know how our friends see things; our mind houses their perspectives -- it has the formula for producing their thoughts." (Peter D. Kramer, Washington Post, reviewing Hofstadter's book "I am Strange Loop")

Speaker Synth was not intended as an exploration of such ideas, however the resulting interaction and sound inherently references the concepts of feedback loops in terms of consciousness. Speaker Synth is a "choral" instrument as opposed to either a classical or electronic instrument regarding its interactive and expressive qualities. The term "choral" addresses a voice. Something with a "voice" has an autonomous identity defined by its self. When powered, Speaker Synth plays its natural feedback loops, regardless of user interaction. When users do enter the system, they never have complete control, but rather, collaborate with the instrument. Hence, Speaker Synth embodies the sense of having has a "life of its own." It is self contained, self referential, self reflexive in both physicality and metaphor.

Posted by Lesley at 08:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bioluminescence is a collaborative audio/visual project with Luke DuBois.

The voice has a unique role in our musical culture, bridging the linguistic and the semiotic in a way that transcends instrumentality through a highly personal embodiment of musicianship. The recorded female voice, in particular, has been the subject of academic investigation following its role in aesthetics (Adorno), cinema and psychology (Silverman) and feminist theory (De Laurentis). In electroacoustic music, the voice has a privileged place in our canon, providing an boundless source of material for sonic exploration from the tape works of Berio, Dodge, and Lansky through the composer-performer repertoire of Joan LaBarbera and Pamela Z. Our collaboration centers around an extensive investigation of the possibilities of the improvised voice in tandem with electroacoustic processing, focusing on the possibilities of detemporalization and memory evoked through the use of looping, time-stretching, and spectral processing. The interplay between the two performers (one singing, one processing) takes the metaphor of the voice as impulse and the computer as filter and creates a dense palette of evocative sounds and images derived entirely from the voice of the singer.

Click here to watch a video clip from Tranzducer at LEMURplex.

We performed Bioluminescence as part of ICMC 2007 in Copenhagen, Denmark

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Luke DuBois and I did a remix of the Mr. Softee ice cream song for Ice Cream Headache, a five-borough audio tour broadcasting reinterpreted ice cream truck jingles organized by Lauren Rosati and Jeffery Lopez. This event is getting a lot of attention, including a report on NPR's All Things Considered.

Our reinterpretation stretches the 30 second jingle to about 4 minutes with layered vocal tracks over the top. Throw in a distorted bass line and (presto!) you have Ice Mix.mp3.

Posted by Lesley at 01:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sticking to my goal of learning max/MSP this semester while addressing my usual concepts of communication, I created a monster max patch combining text and voice.

This patch has 4 tracks set up to do live audio recording. Each track is connected to 2 different triggers within an eight channel random sequence generator. Effects (delay, bit reduction, filter sweep, reverb) and tempo can be controlled.

Clean Max View

Messy Max View

Connected to the same triggers are 4 text edit windows. Here, I can type text and as soon as the words are entered, they are printed out via maxJitter onto the screen. Text visualizes the sequence. For example, if I record myself saying the word "hi" into a track1, I can also type "hi" into the corresponding text edit window, causing that word to display on the screen every time the voice sample is triggered. Playing around, I could instead choose to type the word "bye," creating a confusing loop of meaning. Saying "hi" but typing "bye" = saying one thing but meaning another.

Audio Art Performance

As the tempo changes, the audio recordings and text are triggered differently. Slow tempo allows the words to be seen and heard more clearly. Fast tempo creates a blurry mess. This visual/audio component is significant in orchestrating a mood of emotion (chaos and calm), which I have found to be a successful performance element.

(Thanks to Jeremy Rotsztain, Peter Kerlin, Luke DuBois, Zach Layton, Gian Pabolo Villamil, Paul Maurer and Phillip Manget for patch support!)

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I just uploaded some songs I've written these past couple months (along with older favorites).

seseyann.com/music

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Created with Michael Dory using Processing, this performance interface implements video tracking to trigger musical notes. Using a small flashlight, the user “draws” music, controlling both volume and midi note values that are mapped onto a square grid. Midi notes can be played using a virtual synthesizer such as Absynth, allowing for an infinite range of exciting sounds.

Posted by Lesley at 08:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For the past several months, I have been curious about contemporary classical music. The following presentation outlines the connections I've discovered and experiences I've had regarding this genre.

CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL MUSIC

What is it?
In the broadest sense, contemporary music is any music being written in the present day. In the context of classical music the term has been applied to music written in the last quarter century, particularly works post-1975.

Michael Gordon on being a contemporary classical composer:
I used to like to say that I write “strange” or “weird” music, but now, for the sake of simplicity in social situations, I simply tell people when they ask that I’m a “classical” composer. Nine of ten people don’t know how to respond to this, and there’s usually an awkward moment in which they process this information trying to find something to say.

I have always felt uncomfortable with the word “classical.” It sends an instant message to most people that you are involved in something other. And, vainly, I am very aware that classical music has the squarest image on the planet. A bigger problem is that my music is not what most people think of as classical music. It doesn’t sound like Mozart, it is not genteel, will not serve as pleasant background music at a dinner party, and it can not be used to sell a Mercedes. (A passport control officer at Kennedy Airport once told Julia Wolfe that he thought all classical composers were dead.)

If you are an aficionado of contemporary classical music you probably have had similar experiences explaining to your friends and co-workers what kind of music you listen to. For those who are confused, the question that might come to mind is, “Why would you want write weird music?” Or more simply put, “Why would you want to write music that most of the world doesn’t listen to?”

MINIMAL MUSIC
genre of experimental music named in the 1960s which displays some or all of the following features:
•emphasis on consonant harmony, functional tonality
•reiteration of musical phrases and/or infrequent variation over long periods of time, possibly limited to simple repetition
•stasis, often in the form of drones, pulses, and/or long tones.

Tom Johnson describes minimalism in music:
"The idea of minimalism is much larger than most people realize. It includes, by definition, any music that works with limited or minimal materials: pieces that use only a few notes, pieces that use only a few words of text, or pieces written for very limited instruments, such as antique cymbals, bicycle wheels, or whisky glasses. It includes pieces that sustain one basic electronic rumble for a long time. It includes pieces made exclusively from recordings of rivers and streams. It includes pieces that move in endless circles. It includes pieces that set up an unmoving wall of saxophone sound. It includes pieces that take a very long time to move gradually from one kind of music to another kind. It includes pieces that permit all possible pitches, as long as they fall between C and D. It includes pieces that slow the tempo down to two or three notes per minute."

Prominent minimalist composers include John Adams, Philip Glass, and Steve Reich.

LISTENING TO MINIMAL MUSIC

Listen slow...
daydream
sleep
meditate
drift

Listening in context: my soundtrack in Germany

Arvo Pärt
-born 11 September 1935 in Paide
-an Estonian composer, often identified with the school of minimalism and more specifically, that of "mystic minimalism" or "sacred minimalism".
-has said that his music is similar to light going through a prism: the music may have a slightly different meaning for each listener, thus creating a spectrum of musical experience, similar to the rainbow of light.
Berliner Messe - Agnus dei

Henryk Mikołaj Górecki
-born December 6, 1933 in Czernica, Silesia
-Polish composer of classical music. Though his earlier work in the late 1950s and 1960s was characterized by a dissonant modernism, in the mid 1970s he moved towards a 'pure' sacred minimalist sound with Symphony No.3.
-music covers a variety of styles, but tends towards relative harmonic and rhythmical simplicity.
Symphony No. 3 - II. Lento E Largo - Tranquillissimo

David Lang
-born January 8, 1957 in Los Angeles, California
-informed by modernism, minimalism, and rock
-music best described as post-minimalist, a search for greater harmonic and rhythmic complexity
-founding member of Bang on a Can
Sweet Air

Alva Noto
-stage name of German sound artist Carsten Nicolai,
-leading artist amongst current electronic sound and visual designers using art and music as hybrid tools to create microscopic views of creative processes.
-plays with the rules of physicality. Sound is changed and evolved into time and space and transformed by looping oscillators and tone generators. Through these processes the essence of pure electricity is made audible. -mathematically edits his work to give his compositions precise rhythmic structures.
-uses sounds of electronic information transmission such as fax tones, modem sounds and telephone pops and clicks which are sampled and organized into loops
Logic Moon (with Ryuichi Sakamoto)
Train.mov

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Tonight I saw “The Tiger Situation,” a dance performance by choreographer Anna Sperber. I do not usually attend dance performances, let alone contemporary minimal performances, so my opinions on the experience are abstract, raw and without extensive knowledge of the genre. While watching the performance, I felt a range of emotions: trapped, unsure, uncomfortable, tired, engaged, curious, confused, critical, and excited.

“The Tiger Situation” began with different dancers struggling with their bodies through awkward, isolating motions: twisting, falling, hitting, and throwing. Rarely was there a sense of release, but rather like steam in a closed kettle, the energy was multiplying, contained and strained. At times, the dancers met each other in groups of two, but these moments never communicated safety or help. The dancers remained physically isolated while throwing themselves together, unable to synthesize their shapes in the way they seemingly wanted to in order to create one strong body. Their imperfect, perhaps even flawed motions seemed empty and uninteresting, lacking in any concentrated mediation or focused feeling one might expect given the minimal genre.

However, as the piece developed over time, the haphazard motions, sound, lights, and costuming began to resonate in its own repetition and build at its climax a tight cohesive unit. All the little bits and pieces of odd motion from the beginning of the piece began to repeat themselves in rhythm, consequently giving themselves the mediation and focus once thought missing. I felt a pattern: the give and take of force, the push and pull of intimacy, the need and refusal of space, the dominant and submissive, the prey and predator. Essentially, the dance communicated a series of aggressive opposites attracting and reacting in a circular pattern. I embrace these concepts abstractly as a study of form, and more specifically how the shape and energy of a body creates psychology as much as it reflects it. Take for example a fever. A terrible fever causes a claustrophobic, lucid, and painfully uncomfortable physical experience. Struggling to shake oneself out of the feverish aching of his or her body by twisting and turning only fires the condition more, multiplying the energy inside the finite, contained space of the body. It is a painful experience of trying to relax the very motion that is both the cause and the effect of the feverish state.

“The Tiger Situation” is first and foremost a dance performance. It is about physical, movement and the metaphors human bodies translate and communicate. Costumes, lighting, and sound are theoretically superfluous. However, in communicating an idea, context is essential, and context is created by space. Space is defined through a sensorial experience of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch. The space in “The Tiger Situation” is a minimal environment suggesting abstract psychology, dark emotions, and primal experience. The small amount of light used is connected to the dancers through their costuming, at times the sequenced outfits reflect a dancing pattern of light on the floor creating a subtle, aquatic softness against the aggressive physicality of the dancer. The sound, a pulsing wall of white washed noise entering and leaving the performance at various unexplained times, is reminiscent of a static television station missing reception and creates a sense of being lost in unperceivable space. These additional sensorial elements are essential in building the contextual space of the dance, and are woven into throughout performance with careful orchestration. The dancers do not dance for the music and the music does not play for the dancers. They function together as a whole and blend together to build the performance -- an emotional void of isolated, reactive physicality.

Posted by Lesley at 12:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

People walk through New York City with headphones on. Navigating the crowded streets of cars, people, advertisements, posters, shops, restaurants, television displays, lights, noise, dirt, steam, trees, animals, garbage, construction and decay, they walk alone occupying a private space within the public sphere. This private space is marked by sound emanating from headphones which only the user can hear. The sound compliments their living experience, blanketing the immediacy of the physical environment with a personal layer of thoughts, memories, associations, juxtapositions, and projections.

Interpreting our environment is a sensorial experience mixing sights, sounds, smells, and touch. We live in a visually dominated culture because sight is more easily manipulated for messaging. Urban experience is a bombardment of visual spectacle sending us massive amounts of information in such dense layers that we are often unaware of how we filter and interpret the saturated content. The information barrage is accepted as part of the public experience. Consider the sounds that assist these messages in their context -- sounds of the car horns with the piercing bird-like screams of young girls outside of MTV Studios in Times Square playing as a soundtrack for the visual glitz of massive lights and billboard advertisements, or the crack of baseball bats hitting balls and barking of small dogs in Central Park as a soundtrack for the hotdog stand. Spaces are interpreted through the blending of sight and sound.

Headphones let us customize public space with controllable, private sound. The visuals in a public environment remain the same, but with the introduction of a personal soundtrack, the context of the shared images change. Take for example, riding a subway train. This mundane experience of observing the wallpapering of Budweiser commercials, crowds of sullen faces, and the occasional vagabond delivering a speech, becomes an entirely new interpretive experience while contextualized with soprano Maria Callas singing Ave Maria. Depending on the style of headphones or volume level, different amounts of external sound may leak into the private music experience, mixing the content both of the song and public space.

As small plastic objects, headphones nestle close or sometimes inside our ears, cutting out extraneous noise. We “plug in” to our portable audio device, separating ourselves from the sounds of the external world as we move through from one environment to the next. While headphones isolate us, they simultaneously open the world in new interpretive ways. A schizophrenic experience is created as the user occupies two spaces at once, building an entirely new psychological environment composed of the private and public space. Combinatorial in creating meaning, headphones’ designed portability move the personal sound space through various physical spaces weaving intersections of layered interpretation and thought. Included in these intersections are the users’ own memories and personal relationships to the songs, constructing even deeper meaning and subtext within the physical environment. Listening to a certain song that reminds you of a past lover while walking to meet a stranger for a date might flood your thoughts with new, complicated emotions and questions that would otherwise have remained unexamined.

Headphone space is not only auditory and invisible. Headphones are visible and physical objects. The sound emanating from them may be a private experience for the user, but seen by other people, headphones communicate a “do not disturb” message, like a sign on the door of a hotel room. They delineate a clear line of private space within the public space. The user of the headphones is socially excused from listening regardless of whether or not they can hear what is happening outside of the headphone space. In fact, headphones are often worn to create the illusion of separation in order to avoid human interaction or information responsibility. People choose when and where to symbolically excuse themselves by putting on their headphones, and also manipulate (perhaps secretively) the levels of their isolation through volume control. Although interpretation of environments may be unintentional, the decisions to appear absent are always intentional. Headphones are socially recognized private spaces.

There are many provocative ways to use headphone space as a site to explore themes of personal vs shared and private vs public space while probing its inherent intersections of layered space. Consider the concepts of intimacy that result from sharing a headphone space, perhaps the same set of headphones worn simultaneously by two or even one hundred people; or concepts of manipulation and ownership if a set of headphones are controlled not by its user, but rather by an audience. Art and design projects exploring headphone space include Alice Wang’s Peer Pressure, Michelle Rosenberg’s Dynamic Headphones series, Paul Davies’ The Prayer Antenna, and Cre8tive Challenge’s Echo Ricochet, just to name a few. Headphone space is rich with content and metaphor. As the technological and aesthetic design of headphones advance, more complex relationships with these objects are sure emerge as the space grows denser with human experience and meaning.

Posted by Lesley at 01:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I further developed my Max patch form last week. Each letter still has a midi note value but the punctuation midi values are being converted into sine waves using both an "mtof" and "cycle" object. This way I am able to add effects (delay, overdrive, and "noise") using msp. The letters also have a sine wave being generated, but it is much lower and more for consistent "texture."

I also added an analog record + delay so that I can record my voice while typing.

sound samples coming soon...

Posted by Lesley at 07:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Our assignment for this week was to make a max patch that uses keyboard input to trigger sound. I took this concept literally, exploring the idea of keyboard letters having individual sounds. What I have so far uses basic midi note values assigned to each individual letter, but I would like to further customize sounds -- give them a sonic identity. I think this customization will be most successful in terms of punctuation.

typesound max patch

Posted by Lesley at 05:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Amplitude Modulation
Amplitude Modulation (AM) Synthesis is performed by combining two signals together. A source audio signal, the carrier, is multiplied by an unipolar modulation signal. A unipolar signal is a signal that contains only positive values (usually between 0 and 1). This process alters the carrier signal in one of two ways: 1) The modulation signal can be used as an envelope which is applied to the carrier signal to determine the audio signal's amplitude over time. 2) The modulation signal can be used to quickly cycle the carrier signal's amplitude to create two additional frequencies known as sidebands, forming harmonic or non-harmonic sounds.

Ring Modulation
Ring Modulation (RM) Synthesis is like AM Synthsis except that it uses a bipolar modulation signal (positive and negative values). RM synthesis is used by vocoders which are often used to effect a human voice's sound signal to create a "robotic" sounding variation.

Frequency Modulation
Frequency Modulation (FM) Synthesis produces an output signal by oscillating the frequency of a source oscillator's signal. This process can generate fairly complex output containing multiple frequencies/sidebands with only two oscillators, requiring minimal computations.

I created a max patch that uses frequency and ring modulation:

Download maxMSP file

The patch uses different combinations of phasor, cycle, and triangle waves to generate sounds.

To listen to sample clips from this patch, click here and navigate to the audio links under "week 3."

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Is back up and running! Updates coming soon...

www.seseyann.com

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Audio files can be found here.

The field recordings I did (roughly 5-6 minutes each) include the wood shop at ITP, walking up the stairs at TISCH (and around the top floor), walking around Washington Square Park, walking around Washington Square Park and making my own noises, and the library.

I did not concern myself with the raw recordings in terms of content. I was more interested in finding/creating the content using recordings in post audio work. In post, I limited my process work to cutting, looping, layering tracks, and EQ. In a few instances I did implement time reverse and time stretching, but no other processing effects were involved. The resulting collages (roughly 10-20 seconds each) focus on the creation of artificial rhythms using recorded sounds.

Posted by Lesley at 06:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

clicking of heat pipes...rattle. tink. clink. metallic. stops. come back again, speed/rate of hits changes, very quiet suddenly, tiniest rattle in the background, a few louder hits, back to quiet. Unpredictable.

hum of refrigerator...warm, soft, buzz, vibration, wave undulating in out in out, steady volume.

there is some sound whose orgin I can not place. almost a hollow knock. water drop perhaps? it is slightly irregular in rhythm.

soft crack of my neck as I lift my head - little after delay pricks

the sound of keys typing. irregular rhythm. plastic, mid-high percussive, soft.

odd gurgle from my inside...strange. Like a quick sound sweep/delay. Range of highs and lows.

soft scratch of my hand on my back. itch.

deep breath, sigh, release. air push. pad.

the sound of air. empty. reverb. full.

whichever sound I focus on becomes the center of the room, supported by all the other background sounds. I can start to imagine a song. Particularly with the refrigerator and the heating pipe. Their frequencies and patterns coexist nicely.

Posted by Lesley at 03:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

http://www.deeplistening.org/pauline/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Oliveros

Pauline Oliveros is a composer, performer, author and philosopher has influenced American music extensively through her works with improvisation, electronic music, teaching, myth, ritual and meditation. Oliveros coined the term "Deep Listening", which she then applied to her group The Deep Listening Band and to the Deep Listening program of Deep Listening Institute, Ltd. which she founded in 1985. The Deep Listening Band specializes in performing and recording in resonant or reverberant spaces such as caves, cathedrals and huge underground cisterns.

Oliveros developed the musical theory of "sonic awareness" -- the ability to consciously focus attention upon environmental and musical sound, requiring continual alertness and an inclination towards always listening. Sonic awareness describes two ways of processing information, focal attention and global attention, which may be represented by the dot and circle, respectively, of the mandala Oliveros commonly employs in composition. Later this representation was expanded, with the mandala quartered and the quarters representing actively making sound, imagining sound, listening to present sound, and remembering past sound. Practice of the theory creates "complex sound masses possessing a strong tonal center", as focal attention creates tonality and the global attention creates masses of sound, flexible timbre, attack, duration, intensity, and sometimes pitch, as well as untraditional times and spaces for performance such as requiring extended hours or environmental settings.

Posted by Lesley at 03:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

http://www.deeplistening.org/pauline/writings/quantum_listening.html

This is not so much an essay as it is some thoughts on listening. So my response is my own abstract thoughts on listening.

HEADPHONES
I listen to music with my headphones all the time. Why? The obvious reason is that I love music, but a deeper reason is that the context of audio through headphones creates a sonic "bubble" of space around me. I can go anywhere and have my experiences played out with a soundtrack. My walking has rhythm, the environment I move through has pulse, the people I encounter have energy, and my mind is alive. Although alone in my "sonic bubble." I am more engaged and in tune with the world than if I were to walk in silence. In silence, I "space-out." I do not pay attention to my surrounding so much. I become very self-centered without a meaningful focus on my thoughts. Through my headphones, I look at details and feel them. I am sure that the song I listen to dictates my relationships, but that is inconsequential. What matters is the engagement at all.

Perhaps if I walked through my life paying closer attention to all the "natural" sounds of my environment, my headphone experience would be mimicked. I would start to hear the patterns, the rhythms, the pulses of the actual landscape instead of imposing false sound of recorded music over them. The experience would be different, but no less focused and engaging. Emotional connection would be the greatest difference I imagine.

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ACTIVE LISTENING

"Deep Listening is active."

Listening is a skill like drawing. Drawing we are learning to see. Listening we are learning to hear. We all perceive our surroundings differently -- different levels of sensitivity, different interests, different physical strengths -- but no matter what our levels of perception, we can always get "better." Training. Practice. Focus.

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INACTIVE LISTENING

"For audiences the greatest gift is rapt attention."

At some point though, I do not want to think about what I am hearing. I want to be so involved that sound lulls me to sleep...into a state of absolute silence. I do not mind letting myself go. It is not boredom, it is acceptance and release.

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META LISTENING

"The Quantum Listener listens to listening."

We listen to the listening of listening to sounds. BLAH! Ok, but seriously, whenever deeply engaged in analyzing our own analysis of an activity or thought, we are running ourselves in abstract circles. And hopefully finding information buried far beneath the surface of the obvious activity. As this goes further, so do the interpretations of sound, our experiences with sound, the ideas of sound design, what we as people should consider in the sound around us, and we end up with statements like this: "Is sound intelligent? Does sound have consciousness?"

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SPIRITUAL LISTENING

"Listen to sound disappearing. This meditation that I practice takes one to the border of reality and virtuality. When do you stop hearing the sound? When does memory begin?"

After listening to my headphones, listening to the sounds of life around me, sleeping to the background of sound, and thinking about the listening to the listening of sound... I pause. I stop listening. I feel dense with memory. Sound sculpts my space more than any physical object. It's presence fills my body and I don't know what to say.

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