Category: LookingOutwards-10

For this week’s LO, I decided to look into Imogen Heap’s “Mi Mu Gloves”, an idea of hers that was originally conceived in 2010 but only recently was able to be fabricated and prototyped for public consumption. Heap, originally only a musician, wanted to create the product to bring electronic music to another level, allowing artists to step away from their immobile instruments and connect with the audience. The gloves themselves have a mass amount of flex sensors, buttons, and vibrators that come together to simulate the feeling and sounds of real instruments. The gloves correspond over wifi with a dedicated software and algorithm that reads the movements of the wearer and translates them into sounds, depending on what the user records as inputs. 

It was interesting to see how technology has come as far to allow a musician to play instruments without having the physical instrument in front of them. I admire Heap’s ability to bring her dreams, which she dreamt up in 2010, to reality, even with barriers that existed, and the flexibility that the gloves could provide even to people with physical disabilities that don’t allow them to play instruments. This is demonstrated by Kris Halpen, whose life as a musician has been dramatically affected as a result of the Mi Mu gloves.

The project I chose is The Welcome Chorus by Yuri Suzuki. This project is an interactive installation in the county of Kent commissioned by the Turner Contemporary consisting of 12 horns that continuously sing AI generated lyrics. What I admire most about this project, like for most of Suzuki’s other works, is its ability to blend sound and technology to produce music in unconventional ways that are easily accessible to anyone and everyone. The lyrics, reflecting the people’s experiences living in Kent and Kent as a whole, were gathered from workshops and gatherings and put into a data bank in which the AI algorithms learned from to produce the lyrics that will be sung. Another AI system was integrated in order to produce folk song melodies so that the installation can produce songs with both lyrics and melodies. Suzuki’s artistic sensibilities are manifested in the final form since, like his other works, he turns this complex project into an interactive sculpture that any visitor can contribute to (using an ongoing machine learning “conductor”) and learn from without the extra burden of trying to understand complex ideas.

Computer-generated music is not revolutionary, or well known in any way. Music is generally known as an artform, something people make to express themselves – something unique to human nature.

However, computer-generated music, more specifically procedural music, is widely utilized in today’s world; mostly to improve adaptive/dynamic soundtracks in video games. In many games released in the past 2 years, procedural music technology has been a staple for the Triple-A gaming industry. No one ever notices the procedural music because it does its work so seamlessly and subtly. Nowadays, every time a peaceful, ambient, background soundtrack switches to an intense, high-tempo, adrenaline-inducing beat in a game, you never really notice it. The software automatically generates extra notes, extra percussion beats, and even background vocals to make the transition between one soundtrack to another so smooth that almost no one notices.

The technology and intelligence required for a computer to interpolate one piece of music into another on-the-go, depending on the events taking place on-screen is actually quite impressive. Machine learning is used to train the AI by making it analyze many different soundtracks. This results in an AI that can compose a very limited amount of music, but just enough to make the transition between one soundtrack and another sound non-existent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_music

I did some research into the Canadian Electronic Ensemble’s newest release on February 15th, 1. The ensemble is based out of Canada (of course) where they compose and perform using computer and modular synthesis instruments to create unique sounds and produce long concerts and improvisations. They reassemble their instruments during the performance and also make use of the program Ableton to create new effects as well as rebuild their instruments to create new sounds during the performance. Mainly, their performances are based less in traditional computer code and more in the system Max, in the plugin Max for Live, which allows users to create their own effects in the DAW Ableton Live. Their performances are usually long and complex, without a central theme, and feature solo sections for each member of the ensemble as they join and modify their elaborate analog and digital synths. Also, they play without using a keyboard or traditional control of their instruments, and mostly rely and step-based sequencing and MIDI controlling built into their software to assemble songs.

https://reas.com/knbc/

For this LO, I chose to look at artist Casey Reas. Casey is the co-founder of Processing which is the grandfather to p5.js. I was really interested in seeing how the person who created Processing created art using a tool that they had imagined and built. The Sound Art piece I looked at is called KNBC. It was created in December 2015 using footage from news broadcasts from the year. This footage was manipulated in Processing to create a collage of pixels. What I love about this piece is how a video broadcast which was meant to tell a specific story was broken down by Casey into these collages and then combined with music to tell a whole new story. I also love that even though there is no clear clear picture or words, I still feel like I can understand the story that each scene is telling. Throughout the video of the piece playing, the transitions of music and color show you different parts of the story and you can tell when a scene has ended and another has begun.