Mexico City-based collective Laboratorio 060 performs Morris’s recent work Ancient Chinese Secret for three sudoku and percussion players. It was chosen as the winner in their competition called “Radio Killed the Video Star” and will be broadcast live on the Neighborhood Public Radio station.
Vests frottoir synesthetiques is an exhibit of digital sound art objects consisting of two wearable chalkboards that prolong the sounds of drawing through a digital delay, allowing the act of drawing to build up sonic textures over time. This project was completed with the help of Texas A&M University students Chris Harper, Njekwa Beasnael, and Brian Davidson. It is now scheduled for inclusion in a soundOBJECTS exhibit within the Digital Media international showcase of digital art at La Nau in Valencia Spain. It was originally exhibited at Vizagogo, the annual showcase of digital art and commercial work in May 2007 at Texas A&M University. Photos you will see show TAMU VizLab student Doug Bell is seen modeling the vests at Vizagogo.
Links:
I’ve heard many stories about the surprisingly large and huge amount of failures that many ultimately successful people have faced in time (Abraham Lincoln comes to mind), and comparing these anecdotes to my own experience, it appears that I am on the right track. It has been difficult to make time for creative and scholarly work amidst my other more “squeaky” job requirements, but somehow (I still don’t know how, really), I managed to complete and submit an extraordinary (for me, at least) amount of creative and scholarly work in and around the month of December, 2007. The speedy onset of new projects hasn’t died down and given me a real chance to breathe yet, but I did take a moment to reflect on the results of that “mensis mirabilis” and see how it turned out. Read the rest of this entry »
The diatonic harmonica can be a gorgeous and expressive instrument. Its standard Richter tuning cleverly allowed players to get the right notes and decent harmonies just by knowing the basic contour of the melody and the difference between tonic and dominant (I and V) harmonies. However, its design allows for a lot more than that. Read the rest of this entry »
Ancient Chinese Secret for three to eight Sudoku and bell players is a sonic performance piece that exploits the inflated mystery of unseen goings-on. In live performance, the details on the paper cannot be seen by the audience, and the sounds produced are only indirectly related to the main task of the performers. In recorded or radio performance, the mystery is heightened because the performers cannot be seen, making the sound seem even more ancient, Chinese, and secret (although they may not be any of these things).
Ancient Chinese Secret score and notes (PDF)
Recorded performance at OurMedia.org (MP3)
Guitarist and composer Lily Maase and her band The Suite Unraveling release their album, Unbind. today. It includes a fascinating blind collaborative project of Lily’s called Vanishingpoint. I contributed some sounds to this project by improvising some short musical passages using samples of things recorded by other contributors.
Check out the album at CD Baby.
My RUhere has been included in a web-based exhibit presented by SoundLAB with the theme “soundSTORY.” The exhibit is presented as part of NewMediaFest 2007.
See the exhibit here (you might need to disable pop-up window blockers).
From the 2007 International Computer Music Conference in Copenhagen:
After an introductory survey of how feedback appears in common musical processes and situations, interactive compositions by the author are described, which have later been incorporated in complex feedback systems. In such systems, software is able to take on a voice of its own and become responsive more like an instrument than a composition. This highlights aspects of the changing roles of the composer and computer in musical creation and performance. A general model of feedback instruments is drawn from observations made in developing and performing these works in the past two years.
Morris, Jeffrey M. “Feedback Instruments: Generating Musical Sounds, Gestures, and Textures in Real Time with Complex Feedback Systems.” In Proceedings of the 2007 International Computer Music Conference. Copenhagen, Denmark: 2007.
I was presented the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition with a specialization in Electroacoustic Music today at the University of North Texas.
Read the dissertation here.
Three original software programs utilizing improvisation and live sampling are presentedhere, along with a discussion of aesthetic issues raised by each. They are entitled Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Musiker, Motet, and Gamepad Sampler. These programs vary in thedegree of required interaction and in the kind of user control. They are each studies in imitative counterpoint through live sampling, with an approach seeking elegance before solutions. Because of the improvisational nature of these works, there is no standard musical score. Instead the complete Max/MSP source code and a sound recording of performances making use of these programs in varied situations are included.
A discussion of issues raised by these works includes aesthetics, ontology, performance, and the role of the composer. Non-interactive indeterminate compositions are ontologically thin,because some composerly agency is required of the performer. An interactive work can be ontologically substantial if it makes distinct and significant contributions to performance, eventhough it may not make sound on its own. Although reproducibility reduces ontology and eliminates aura, live sampling within a performance can deepen the ontology of the performance by recontextualizing previous events, reframing the original event as the first reference to an abstract musical idea that lies outside the musical performance. Reproducibility also diminishes the aura or stage presence in live performance with computers. Complex feedback systems canbe used to create computation instruments: musical instruments whose unique structure resonates in ways not explicit in their programs. As the human condition and the situation of the composer change, definitions of the composer and performer must be revised. Composition is shifting away from the creation of static artifacts toward the design of dynamic systems.
Morris, Jeffrey M. Live Sampling in Improvised Musical Performance: Three Approaches and a Discussion of Aesthetics. DMA dissertation. Denton, Texas: University of North Texas, 2007.