Federico Visi

Category: Events

  • Physically distant: online talks on telematic performance

    Physically distant: online talks on telematic performance

    Wednesday 3 June 2020, 13:30 – 21:00 CEST

    Performing live with physically distant co-performers and audiences through audio, video, and other media shared via telematic means has been part of the work of artists and researchers for several decades. Recently, the restrictions put in place to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic required performing artists to find solutions to practice their craft while maintaining physical distance between themselves, their collaborators, and their audience. This scenario brought many questions related to telematic performance to the fore: what are the opportunities and challenges of telematic performance? What are the implications on how performing arts are conceived, developed, experienced? How are research and practice being reconfigured? How is telematic performance suggesting different understandings of the role of instruments, gesture and acoustic spaces? How might telematic performance contribute to reconfiguring our understanding of music in societal and political perspectives?

    The GEMM))) the Gesture Embodiment and Machines in Music research cluster at the School of Music in Piteå, Luleå University of Technology has invited a group of artists, researchers, and scholars to instigate an open, interdisciplinary discussion on these themes. The talks will happen online, on Wednesday 3 June 2020.

    The sessions will be organised in 1-hour time slots. Each slot will include two 15-min presentations, the remaining time will be dedicated to questions and discussion. After each slot, there is going to be a 30-min break in order to avoid “Zoom fatigue.” There will be a plenary at the end of the day, during which we will be discussing issues and opportunities that have emerged during the other sessions.

    Schedule (all times are CEST):
    13:30 – 14:00 Session 0 : Welcome and introduction
    14:00 – 15:00 Session 1 : Roger Mills; Shelly Knotts
    15:00 – 15:30 Break
    15:30 – 16:30 Session 2 : Gamut inc./ Aggregate; Randall Harlow
    16:30 – 17:00 Break
    17:00 – 18:00 Session 3 : Alex Murray-Leslie; Atau Tanaka
    18:00 – 19:00 Dinner break (1 hr)
    19:00 – 20:00 Session 4 : Chris Chafe; Henrik von Coler
    20:00 – 21:00 Plenary

    Moderators: Federico Visi, Stefan Östersjö

    Anyone can join upon registration using this online form: https://forms.gle/1goB2TcjGKjL6nkT8  
    We will send you a link to join a Zoom meeting on the day of the talks.
    NOTE: the talks will be recorded.

    An additional networked performance curated by GEMM))) is taking place on Tuesday 2 June, followed by a short seminar and discussion. Everyone is welcome to also join this event,  we will circulate details to the registered email addresses and via social media.

    Programme (all times are CEST):
    14:00 – 14:15 networked performance with the Acusticum Organ: Robert Ek, Mattias Petersson, Stefan Östersjö
    14:15 – 14:30 Vong Co: networked performance with The Six Tones: Henrik Frisk, Stefan Östersjö & Nguyen Thanh Thuy
    14:40 – 15:00 Paragraph – a live coding front end for SuperCollider patterns: Mattias Petersson
    15:00 – 15:20 Discussion

    A follow up event is planned for the 2020 Piteå Performing Arts Biennial taking place online on 26-27 October 2020.

    Further info: write me.

  • Workshop and Performance at Harvestworks, New York City

    Workshop and Performance at Harvestworks, New York City

    I recently ran a workshop and performed at Harvestworks in New York City. The workshop was done in collaboration with Andrew Telichan Phillips form the Music and Audio Research Laboratory at NYU Steinhardt. The amazing Ana García Caraballos performed with me my piece 11 Degrees of Dependence on alto sax, myo armbands, and live electronics. Here’s a video:

     

  • Performances at Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival 2016

    Performances at Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival 2016

    Very excited to be performing two pieces at this year’s Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival.

    The super talented Esther Coorevits will once again join me to perform an updated version of Kineslimina, which will be performed at the Gala Concert on Saturday night and will feature some of the technologies I started working on while I was in New York last summer.

    On Sunday, the amazing Dr. Katherine Williams will play soprano sax and motion sensors for my new piece 11 Degrees of Dependence. Her movements will control control the parameters of synthetic flute.

    Check out the rest of the programme, there are some very exciting works you won’t be able to hear anywhere else.

  • Paper presentation at CMMR 2015

    Paper presentation at CMMR 2015

    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.

    PQoM

     

  • Kineslimina: a study for guitar, viola and motion sensors

    Kineslimina: a study for guitar, viola and motion sensors

    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.

  • Motion and Music Workshop at CMMR15

    Motion and Music Workshop at CMMR15

    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 presented at the Peninsula Contemporary Music Festival 2015

    Unfolding | Clusters presented at the Peninsula Contemporary Music Festival 2015

    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)

  • Presentation at CIM 14 Conference of Interdisciplinary Musicology, Berlin, DE

    Presentation at CIM 14 Conference of Interdisciplinary Musicology, Berlin, DE

    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

  • Paper presentation at ICMC-SMC Athens, Greece

    Paper presentation at ICMC-SMC Athens, Greece

    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.

    Abstract

    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.

  • Unfolding | Clusters presented at SoniHED York

    Unfolding | Clusters presented at SoniHED York

    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.

    Abstract

    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.