On Monday September 5th I took part in Netrooms performed at The University of Nottingham Ningo, China campus.

Netrooms: The Long Feedback is a participative network piece which invites the public to contribute to an extended feedback loop and delay line across the internet. The work explores the juxtaposition of multiple spaces as the acoustic, the social and the personal environment becomes permanently networked. The performance consists of live manipulation of multiple real-time streams from different locations which receive a common sound source. Netrooms celebrates the private acoustic environment as defined by the space between one audio input (microphone) and output (loudspeaker). The performance of the piece consists of live mixing a feedback loop with the signals from each stream.

Live sound is streamed from the performance to each location, locally processed, and streamed back via a Pure Data patch. The participants communicate via a liveblog.

I set up a speaker and microphone in the Great Hall of the Carnegie Mellon College of Fine Arts building. The performance ran from 18:30-19:00 GMT+8 (6:30-7:00 EST).

Experiments in balloon motion and sound using an MS Kinect depth sensing camera.

Created for the Carnegie Mellon 1st & 2nd year MFA Graduate show entitled “Fresh Baked Goods” at Bakery Square, April 2011.

Description

A machine stands in a room surrounded by balloons. Circulating fans blow the balloons over the machine which creates sound based on their movements.

Mode 1: Tones

Balloon height and x/y position control the pitch and panning of a treble and bass voice. The tones can be quantized into a certain key or a glisssando can be employed for a theremin-style effect.

Mode 2: 99 Luftballons

The playback speed of Nena’s 99 Luftballons is controlled by balloon height. The balloons must be kept in the air for the song to play. Feed the machine.

Built using Open Frameworks, ofxKinect, and OpenCV for balloon tracking and Pure Data for sound generation/playback.

Music: 99 Luftballons by Nena

EDIT: On Create Digital Music

Images

Visit the Flickr set

Notes

Popping Balloons: The space was very dry and dusty. As a result, many balloons popped involuntarily. This was an unintended feature which kept visitors on their toes.

Large Space: The next version of this installation will be made in a smaller space with more balloons …

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Pure Data

We made a simple Pure Data patch which replicates the experience. Plug in a microphone and headphones (preferably closed ear types) and give it a shot.

EDIT: The original patch was using a 100 ms delay. Later on I was told the original piece used 283 ms, calculated form research into cognitive perception, etc. I have updated the speed and, indeed, the effect is much more pronounced.

boomerang.pd

RjDj

I took the Pd patch and then made an RjDj scene which can be run on an iPhone or iPod Touch. RjDj is a “reactive music” environment that runs live, interactive songs.

Install RjDj on the App Store and download Boomerang from the Soundtrips section. The effect works really well with earbuds, just make sure to turn up the volume. You can also make recordings and upload them to RjDj if you create an account.

Transcription

Here is a transcription I made of the original video as source material:

Yes, I can hear my echo and the words are coming back on on top of me. The words are spilling out of my head and then returning into my ear.

It puts a distance between the words and their apprehension or their comprehension. The words coming back seem slow. They don’t seem to have the same forcefulness as when I speak them. I think it’s also slowing me down. I think that it makes my thinking slower. I have a double-take on myself. I am once removed from myself. I am thinking and hearing and filling up a vocal void. I find that I have trouble making connections between thoughts.

I think that the words forming in my mind are somewhat detached from my normal thinking process. I have a feeling that I am not where I am. I feel that this place is removed from reality, although it is a reality already removed from the normal reality. The words keep tumbling out because I want to hear them. I want to hear my own words pouring back in on top of me.

It is …

- some sound samples are played: footsteps, several short snippets of a woman’s voice

It is … I am hearing other things … coming in on me. There is something else besides my own that I am hearing. The words become like things. I am throwing things out into the world and they are boomeranging back. Boomeranging. Boomeranging back. The words bounce and come again, I hear an empty space. My voice or the microphone system lost a word or two that I spoke.

- voice off camera

- the video signal cuts off and there is the sound of tape being rewound

I just had to wait for 60 seconds to come back on. Which makes me think about the difference between instantaneous time in words and delayed time. Instantaneous time is an immediate perception, whereas delayed time is more like a mirror reflection. Reflection. Reflection. A mirror reflection. Delayed time puts another …

I don’t hear my own voice again. I’ve lost the words.

- delay cuts off

- voice off camera: “We ran out of tape, just keep talking”

So now, since they’re changing tape.

- delay returns

Now I think it’s starting to work again, but for a while I heard only my own voice at the time that I was speaking. But now I hear my own voice slightly delayed coming back in on top of me so that I am surrounded by me and my mind surrounds me. My mind goes out into the world and then comes back inside of me. There is no escape. It is a constantly revolving, involuting experience. Sometimes I find that I can’t quite say a word because I hear the first part of it come back and I forget the second part or my mind is stimulated in a new direction by the first half of the word.

The lights are shining down on me while I am speaking about these things. These lights contribute a rather substance, substance-less reality to this situation. The light in it’s immateriality is like the sound in its immateriality. The light hits me and reflects off of me into the camera. The words leave me and are reflected back into my ear and into your ear. You are hearing and seeing a world of double reflections and refractions.

Time in this isolated capsule of television experience is cut off from time as we usually experience it.

On Sunday April 4th I took part in Netrooms [for percussion].

This is an invitation for a special Netrooms performance Netrooms [for percussion]. The performance was commissioned by percussionist Jonathan Shapiro and will take place on Sunday 4th April at the Staller Center music wing, Room 0111 (choral room) at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, NY

Netrooms [for percussion]
Pedro Rebelo, 2009

Netrooms [for percussion] explores the sound of a local percussionist as it travels through various acoustic environments. Each participant will set up a microphone capturing a space as nearby loudspeakers stream the sound of each percussion instrument. Please choose unique and perhaps extreme acoustic spaces such as bathrooms, concert halls, outdoors, domestic spaces, outdoors etc…
Participants will not be required to produce sound but incidental sound from the environment is welcome…

Live sound is streamed from the performance to each location, locally processed, and streamed back via a Pure Data patch. The participants communicate via a liveblog.

I set up a speaker and microphone in the basement hallway of the Ars Electronica Futurelab in Linz, Austria. The bare concrete walls and raised flooring tiles provided a lively acoustic environment. The performance ran from 3:30-4:30 EST (9:30 – 10:30 CET).

Listen to a recording here.

My computer setup:

Tim Devine and I made 4 improvisations for the radiospotting project in Linz, Austria which is taking place Sep 11 – Oct 31 2009. Small radio transmitters tuned to 103Mhz are situated at multiple locations around the city and participants are encouraged to bicycle about the city with portable radios.

Writers and musicians collaborated on each space, with the writer’s text used as inspiration for locational compositions.

We developed and improvised 4 pieces for Pure Data, Roland drum pad, and electric guitar:

Pics from the opening expedition, Sep 11 2009:

Audio of the performance:

Window Feedback

Description from oramos.org:

Project shown at the bellmanlarssonlindstromnord kalendar projekt. It was a sound installation /performance that worked with the properties of audio feedback. For that night, a simple contact microphone was taped to a window looking to the street. The sound picked up by the microphone, was played trough a speaker that was placed against the glass of the same window. This created an audio feedback that was manipulated and altered by the movement and vibrations of the speaker while i moved and smashed it trough all the window. (Dan Wilcox had to take care of the audio feedback running through the P.A and mixerboard)

this album is an exercise in spontaneity. what can we do with 1 microphone, 2 days, and no experience playing together? the title is correct as 80% of the tracks are first takes, the rest being 2nds.

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download the album here.

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• dont squeeze there
• hold me gently
• nightime in roebuck
• please, officer

first take frenzy

the cast outs is an exercise in spontaneity. what can we do with 1 microphone, 2 days, and no experience playing together? the title is correct as 80% of the tracks are first takes, the rest being 2nds.

drizzle and I bring you 14 tracks from the heart, designed to piss you off. leave you hanging. these are 14 tracks with potential, tragically cut short, yet many may live on in future projects in a more completed form. you are witness to the birth of new music, each small section budding with promise for the people of tomorrow.

first take frenzy will hit you with disappointment like the time you forgot the condom or when he didn’t call back after that exciting second date kiss.

deal with it. and drop us a line.

- danomatika, guitar
- drizzle, drums

An exercise in circuit bending:
two eyes and a keyboard of fun
for your noise-ecution.

For an Electronics/Reclamation Seminar

late November 2005

Noisy Machine

Electronic machines and components were sacrificed to produce the Noisy Machine.

Computer keyboard controls on short circuits within the donor keyboard did not work as well as anticipated, yet the various musical farts and analog drum sounds are divine.

Produced in two days by: Eva, Michael, and danomatika

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music from the noisey machine

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pictures of the noisy machine

At the beginning of my Art and Technology masters program, all of the new students were required to present both their background and their work.

I made a music video for “The Sloppy Bytes” (4 of me) in one night as part of my presentation.

A simple blue screen using the color test of a projector provided the back drop and my friend Daniel provided the DV camera.

“sloppy” is the theme as I am tired of digital music being “perfect”

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Amatuer Night at Space Harbor 0088

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amateur movie

DEVO surfs the Talking Heads

Over 50 shows, 2 Tours, and an album in 2 years

Free EP at 7inchwave.com ->
Aug 2004 – Aug 2005

7inchWave.com
7inchWave Myspace Site

This is my second real band. We formed from the ashes of the first 7inchWave, much like a phoenix from the fire.

7inchWave consists of 3 human entities whose mission is to spread the robotic word of music through all space and time.This message goes out to all who have yet to unlock their own personal vices and programmed inhibitions: those who must strive to maintain sanity among the crowd of normals, those who behave abnormally in a most sub-human manner, and those who exhibit signs of severe frustration with the world.

We will absolve all your worldly sins through sheer noise and harmony.

Embrace the wave, people, and all shall be right with the robotic world.

You can read about us here: The Iowa State Daily

or here: radio free chicago

or here: love has no logic

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See a record of our appearances

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Check out the EP “Load, ‘Love Emulator’, 8,1″

• 01 Dynamite
• 02 Mind is ROM
• 03 Ball of Love
• 04 Break Too Fast
• 05 Planet Mars
• 06 Ache
• 07 Modern Plan
• 0A “Theme” – 1.44Mb Floppy Single

The EP + Single can be downloaded here.

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Video of “Dynamite” at The Playground in Des Moines on 6-18-05

More videos can be found here.
Lots of black light, not much white.

Dynamite

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Pictures of some of our costumes. More pics can be found here.