Kineslimina was performed at the 11th International Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research (CMMR) in Plymouth (UK) and at Sixth International Symposium on Music/Sonic Art in Karlsruhe (Germany).
The performers are Esther Coorevits on viola and motion sensors and yours truly on electric guitar and motion sensors.
Here some pictures from the June 16th performance at the CMMR gala concert.
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Here you can download the paper I presented at CMMR 2015 in collaboration with Esther Coorevits from IPEM, Ghent University, and Rodrigo Schramm from Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul.
It’s titled Instrumental Movements of Neophytes: Analysis of Movement Periodicities, Commonalities and Individualities in Mimed Violin Performance here is the abstract:
Body movement and embodied knowledge play an impor- tant part in how we express and understand music. The gestures of a musician playing an instrument are part of a shared knowledge that contributes to musical expressivity by building expectations and influencing perception. In this study, we investigate the extent in which the movement vocabulary of violin performance is part of the embodied knowledge of individuals with no experience in playing the instrument. We asked people who cannot play the violin to mime a performance along an audio excerpt recorded by an expert. They do so by using a silent violin, specifically modified to be more accessible to neophytes. Preliminary motion data analyses suggest that, despite the individuality of each performance, there is a certain consistency among participants in terms of overall rhythmic resonance with the music and movement in response to melodic phrasing. Individualities and commonalities are then analysed using Functional Principal Component Analysis.
I’m giving the final touches to a piece for viola, guitar, motion sensors and live electronics that I have been working on as part of my PhD research project. It will be premiered during the Gala Concert of the 11th International Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research (CMMR) on Tuesday, 16th June 2015. It will be performed by Esther Coorevits and me.
Here’s an excerpt from the programme notes:
Kineslimina is a piece for viola, electric guitar and live electronics that explores the use of the musicians’ instrumental gestures and movements as an expressive medium. Such gestures merge with the other musical features and become an integral part of the score. While playing their instruments, the musicians wear an armband fitted with motion sensors, which tracks their movements and sends the motion data to a computer. The computer then processes the movement data and sound, responding with a wide range of dynamics: from subtle timbral alterations that follow the movements of the bow during string changes to deeper resonances when more overt gestures are performed by the musicians.
Inspired by the studies of musical gestures and embodied music cognition, the piece requires the performers to exceed the usual boundaries of their instrumental gestures, thus creating new challenges as well as new possibilities of expression and interplay.
I’m co-organinsing the Motion and Music Workshop that will take place at Plymouth University, Plymouth, UK, on 15 June 2015. It will be a satellite event of the 11th International Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research – CMMR 2015: Music, Mind, and Embodiment, which will be held at Plymouth University on 16-19 June 2015.
More info on the workshop webpage.
Unfolding | Clusters will be presented at the Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival this weekend at the Immersive Vision Theatre, Plymouth University.
The Motor Neurone Disease Association (MNDA) will be present to present their work and collect donations (be generous!) and will introduce the work with me, Duncan Williams and Giovanni Dothel during the presentation on Friday at 7pm.
Here is the full schedule, check also the full festival programme.
Friday 27 February
19:00 (introduction)
19:30 (performance)
Saturday 28 February
17:00 (performance)
Sunday 1 March
14:00 (performance)
This week I’ll be in Berlin attending CIM 14, the 9th Conference of Interdisciplinary Musicology.
I’ll be presenting a new scientific paper about new developments of Unfolding | Clusters, a music and visual media installation about ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis).
Unfolding | Clusters was made in collaboration with Duncan Williams and Giovanni Dothel. It was first presented at the UCLA Art|Sci Center in Los Angeles in June 2014 and will be presented at the Pensinsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival in Plymouth in February 2015.
My presentation is scheduled for Saturday 6 December at 14.30 in the Curt-Sachs-Saal at the Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung. The paper can be downloaded here.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qkovmkclda341gh/cim14_submission_72.pdf?dl=0
Our paper “Effects of different bow stroke styles on body movements of a viola player: an exploratory study” was presented at The joint ICMC|SMC|2014 Conference Athens, Greece, on September 18th 2014. Download the full PDF file.
This paper describes an exploratory study of different gestures and body movements of a viola player resulting from the variation of bow strokes length and quantity. Within the theoretical framework of embodied music cognition and the study of musical gestures, we aim to observe how the variation of a musical feature within the piece affects the body movements of the performer. Two brief pieces were performed in four different versions, each one with different directions regarding the bow strokes. The performances were recorded using a multimodal recording platform that included audio, video and motion capture data obtained from high-speed tracking of reflective markers placed on the body of the performer and on the instrument. We extracted measurements of quantity of motion and velocity of different parts of the body, the bow and the viola. Results indicate that an increased activity in sound-producing and instrumental gestures does not always resonate proportionally in the rest of the body and the outcome in terms of ancillary gestures may vary across upper body and lower body.
A full paper about Unfolding | Cluster (an installation about ALS) was presented at the SoniHED Conference in York.
You can download the full PDF here.
Unfolding | Clusters is a music and visual media installation modeled from published scientific data related to the pathophysiology of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The work aims to create an engaging multimodal experience useful for raising awareness in the greater public about the disease and its scientific process. This paper describes the motivation behind the adoption of a musification approach and the musical criteria applied to the data mapping process. Details regarding the mapping structure are illustrated in relation to the different phases of the progress of the disease. The results are then discussed, noting that adopting a musification approach not only helped in obtaining a more engaging audience experience but also in providing expressive solutions that would be useful for modeling other complex biomedical data and processes.
From June 30 to July 3 I’ll be at NIME, the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, which is taking place at Goldsmiths, University of London.
On thursday I’ll be presenting with Rodrigo Schramm a poster entitled “Use of Body Motion to Enhance Traditional Musical Instruments: A Multimodal Embodied Approach to Gesture Mapping, Composition and Performance”
The whole programme is really good this year, see you there!
On 16th and 17th I’ll be at Ircam in Paris for MOCO’14 – International Workshop on Movement and Computing.
I’m presenting a paper co-written with Rodrigo Schramm entitled Gesture in performance with traditional musical instruments and electronics – Use of embodied music cognition and multimodal motion capture to design gestural mapping strategies, which will be soon available for download through the ACM Conference Proceedings Series.
UPDATE: you can now find it in the ACM Digital Library. Here’s the bibtex entry.