PIKSEL

Audio Blast Festival is a no-festival within festivals. It’s a new invitation for musicians, sound artist and others noise makers to play live through the internet. This live music will be experienced in 2 venues, one in Bergen for the Piksel festival and the other one in Nantes at the Plateforme Intermedia / Fabrique as a physical node of Piksel festival.

For decades now, experimental music has been seeking its own positioning, through different names, genres and sub-genres, where artists constantly strive to renew themselves. We are facing a mise en abyme of what could be called music so far: there is no more music as such, neither academic, nor popular, we are at the end of an era when music used to be embodied. Post-music no longer bothers with “objectification”, it is constantly being diffused though the extra-sensory ubiquity of its digitisation, of real-time sound and distanced listening.

A chance to experience new forms of music created through Networked Performanes. 8 hours of intensive live audio flowing via Nantes to Bergen over 3 days of the Piksel Festival. more than 30 hours of music Including works from Sound artists, composers, musicians from around the world.

All the live performance will be played on a quadriphonic sound system in both country. Audio Blast Festival is curated by Julien Ottavi and organised by APO33. www.apo33.org

Live CHAT

THENOISER, Jason Kahn, VOMIR, cdrikcroll, STROM VARX, Alex Mclean, th-th, Brice Jeannin, Emmanuelle Gibello Scenophonie, Robert Piotrowicz, Roel Meelkop, Philippe F Roux, Shoï Extrasystole, Romain Zigani, Luc Kerleo, Julien Poidevin, Francisco Meirino, Benjamin Cadon, Zenial, pizMO, Carl Stone, Jenny Pickett, Francois Martig, PifPaf (Avatar), Joachim Montessuis, Marinos Koutsomichalis, Seth Cluett, Raphaël Ilias & Florian Tositti, Oscar Martin (Noish), Kazuyki Kishino (KKNULL), Mattin..

Direct link for VLC/Mplayer etc. : http://apo33.info:8000/audioblast.ogg

Energy Bank: Prototype tests at Piksel[X],
Amanda Steggell (NO) with Kristine Øren (NO)

Since 2009 I’ve been working on various prototype ideas for charging stations in public places.
For the Piskel X event the latest version will be tested; a hand-cranked mobile charging station worn as a backpack with an audio feedback system. Operating from a base station, we will make several field trips into the city of Bergen to test the functional and communicative aspects of Energy Bank with a public in various ways. Information about the field trips will be available at a physical base, and via <www.energy-bank.org>.

Credits:
Developed with assistance from Servando Barreiro (sp/de), Espen Samuelsen (no), Simon Steggell(no), Roman Minaev (ru/de) and Trygve Laugstøl (no).
Supported by KORO, Arts Council Norway, PNEK and Atelier Nord.

The visuals consists of the background and figures.

Figures are created by and interact with the background – architectural forms of the new building of the Bauhaus University Library (Weimar, Germany).

The Fourier resynthesis allows every moving object to create its own frequency band.

The work is made in real-time programming environment Pure Data and can be shown either as a video film or as a real-time performance.

2012
Custom software, projected as video on infinite loop

Each frame, a set of 2,073,600 (or 1920×1080) hexadecimal color values are created, sorted, and drawn to the frame. Values range from #000000 – #FFFFFF (black to white). The patterns across the screen shift subtly in washes of intense color.

Scroll is a new (absurd) media for digital video in net art. Is a power game. It’s all about Foucouldian devices. Linked to the phenomenon of hypertext and to the link/zappingculture. Scroll through the navigation scrollbar means a fragmentary, directional and fast acces to information.

line is the result of an investigation into generative systems where sonic material
influences visual material. Some correlations are direct; many are hidden.

line from Louise Harris on Vimeo.

this is the first in a series of pieces examining chaotic systems. The visual system involves a series of relatively simple calculations, but using sound to push the system to it’s extremes causes unexpected behaviours, oscillations and the collapse of one of the visual structures. this piece is the beginning of a series of works which involves pushing sonic and visual structures to the point of collapse, and the consequences of doing so.

cs1 from Louise Harris on Vimeo.

A fuzee (fusee) is a cone-shaped pulley with a spiral groove used in chord or chain-winding clocks. fuzee is an 8-minute audio/video piece in which sonic momentum is translated into visual movement in a pre-defined and very specific way.

fuzee from Louise Harris on Vimeo.

We will start with a short demonstration and some introductory words on the subject of electro-magnetism. Participants will then wind their own electromagnetic coils, to be used as part of an experimental loudspeaker improvised from a found object resonator supplied by the participant.

Possible resonators: plastic food containers, buckets, drums, cans, glass… does it sound good when you tap your finger on it or speak into it? Bring it in! Bring a bunch of things because not everything will work, and that’s the experimental part.

“LITE2SOUND is a portable sensing device that explores the hidden sounds of light. Not a synthesizer at all, it is more like a microphone. LITE2SOUND reveals unusual sounds by responding to rapid but invisible changes in brightness. Beyond the ubiquitous grid hum transmitted by lighting, there are many other sounds. Near video screens, one often finds a clear pitched tone with variations depending on what model it is or even reacting to changes in the visual picture on a CRT. LED alpanumeric displays in metro rail cars create a blend of sharp singing tones, an optical consequence of lines of code executed by microprocessors. In technology- saturated spaces, musical chords hang in the air as ambient sources harmonize together. Serendipity rewards the curious with soundscapes that weren’t intended to be heard. Even nature creates content for LITE2SOUND’s reception, if one looks in the right places.

The signal level can vary from mic level to line level depending on what you’re observing, and how strongly the light source is modulated. You can’t usually judge this with your eyes; some light sources appear bright but aren’t modulated deeply. Other sources can appear dim or dark but are strongly modulated, such as infrared remotes and LED message signs. Other lights are bright but not modulated at all, like status LEDs on some electronic devices, and any LED running on DC power.” (Eric Archer)

LITE2SOUND was created by Eric Archer (http://www.ericarcher.net) and has been redesigned by him for the purpose of this workshop. The LITE2SOUND PX features a headphone/line out jack, a slider volume control and automatic gain control to compensate for different levels of ambient light.

In this workshop, the participants will each build a LITE2SOUND PX. The kit consists of a PCB and roughly 40 parts. Expected time to build the device is 1-2 hours. Basic soldering skills are helpful, but a quick introduction to soldering will be provided at the start of the workshop. After the build, we explore the sounds of different light sources, both inside and outside. Participants should each bring a pair of headphones for this purpose. We may also give a concert in the evening, where the participants perform on stage to create a sonic landscape from available light sources.

The workshop will be hosted by Hans Kristian Senneseth and is suitable for 10-12 participants. LITE2SOUND photos and schematics are provided courtesy of Eric Archer for educational and noncommercial purposes only.

The workshop is supported by the Municipality of Bergen.

Transmission+Interference is an ongoing collaboration between David Strang and Vincent Van Uffelen researching laser light as medium of sound transmission and creation. In preparation for a performance in February 2013 at the Contemporary Music Festival, Plymouth, UK. We will utilise common laser pointers and electronic parts such as photo-resistors, motors, mirrors, and basic amplification circuits to co-create new musical tools and (analog) sound transmission devices that can be used for music making or live performances. The two day workshop will be concluded by a brief performative presentation demonstrating the devices / tools that have been created by the group.

Recent work by David + Vincent on this topic has explored using laser light wavelength to transmit audio signals and using various objects to interfere with the light signal. Elements of this interference are controlled via arduino using motors and servos. We aim to continue this type of approach whilst remaining open to any other methods developed during the workshop. One element we are keen to explore is the inclusion of software in the project. The use of Pure Data to process live sounds / trigger sounds and to send control data to Arduino we believe can increase the sonic complexity of the project without being too far removed from the noise of the objects themselves.

After the workshop the devices / tools will be gathered together in preparation for the performance in Plymouth where all participants of the workshop will be credited with what was built as well as discussed. In addition David is planning take notes of the experiences in the workshop and use them to put forward a paper submission for the journal Organised Sound (Cambridge Journals) Volume 18 Number 3 ‘Re-wiring Electronic Music’ under the sub-themes of “DIT (do-it-together)” and “Sound Objects and Materialism”. This paper will discuss the processes of working and building in groups and pulling together resources and knowledge to show the potential of this form of collaboration.

We would like to see an open source hardware device, designed with open source tools, capable of running Linux,with a design that is easily modifiable and extendable, with a minimal component cost and which can be made in any small lab. We would like it to run an easily configurable Linux distribution with loads of tools for playing around with networks, audio, video and physical interfaces from any programming language of choice. In this workshop our ambition is to take a step towards this goal.