Marco Donnarumma’s Music for Flesh II is a seamless mediation between human biosonic potential and algorithmic composition. By enabling a computer to sense and interact with the muscular sonic potential of human tissues, the work approaches the biological body as a means for computational artistry. Adam Parkinson & Atau Tanaka reappropriate the iPhone and its advanced technical capabilities to transform the consumer object into an expressive musical instrument for concert performance. In a duo, with one in each hand, they create a chamber music, 4-hands iPhone.
Music for Flesh + Four Hands Four iPhones
Marco Donnarumma, Adam Parkinson & Atau Tanaka
Sat, May 19 2012, 8pm
FREE
Location:
Harvestworks – www.harvestworks.org
596 Broadway, #602 | New York, NY 10012 | Phone: 212-431-1130
Subway: F/M/D/B Broadway/Lafayette, R Prince, 6 Bleeker
In a double bill tonight, Marco Donnarumma starts with a performance utilizing the Xth sense technology he teaches this weekend in a class at Harvestworks. This is followed by Adam Parkinson’s and Atau Tanaka’s exploitation of a common consumer electronics device, the iPhone.
Marco Donnarumma: Music For Flesh II / Nascent
Marco Donnarumma’s Music for Flesh II (MFII) is a seamless mediation between human biosonic potential and algorithmic composition. By enabling a computer to sense and interact with the muscular sonic potential of human tissues, the work approaches the biological body as a means for computational artistry. Muscle movements and blood flow produce subcutaneous mechanical oscillations, which are nothing but low frequency sound waves. Two microphone sensors capture the sonic matter created by my limbs and send it to a computer. This develops an understanding of my kinetic behaviour by *listening* to the friction of my flesh. According to this information, it manipulates algorithmically the sound of my flesh and diffuses it through loudspeakers. The neural and biological signals that drive the performer’s actions become analogous expressive matter, for they emerge as a tangible haunting soundscape.
Adam Parkinson & Atau Tanaka: 4-Hands iPhone
Adam & Atau exploit a commonly available consumer electronics device, the Apple iPhone, as an expressive, gestural musical instrument. The device is well known an iconic object of desire in our society of consumption. The iPhone can play music as a commodity, and this is the way most listeners interact with it.
They reappropriate the iPhone and its advanced technical capabilities to transform the consumer object into an expressive musical instrument for concert performance. In a duo, with one in each hand, they create a chamber music, 4-hands iPhone. The accelerometers which typically serve as tilt sensors to rotate photos in fact allow high precision capture of the performer’s free space gestures. The multitouch screen, otherwise used for scrolling and pinch-zooming text, becomes a reconfigurable graphic user interface akin to the JazzMutant Lemur, with programmable faders, buttons, and 2D controllers that control synthesis parameters in real time.
All this drives open source Pure Data (PD) patches running out of the free RJDJ iPhone app. A single advanced granular synthesis patch becomes the process by which a battery of sounds from the natural world are stretched, frozen, scattered, and restitched. The fact that all system components – sensor input, signal processing and sound synthesis, and audio output, are embodied in a single device make it very different than the typical controller + laptop model for digital music performance. The encapsulation in a self-contained, manipulable object take the iPhone beyond consumer icon to become a powerful, expressive musical instrument.
Bios
New media and sonic artist, performer and teacher, Marco Donnarumma was born in Italy and is based in Edinburgh, UK. Weaving a thread around biomedia research, musical and theatrical performance, participatory practices and subversive coding, he looks at the collision of critical creativity with humanized technologies.
Marco has performed and spoken in 28 countries including US and South America, Europe, India, China, South Korea and Australia. His works have been selected at leading art events (ISEA, Venice Biennale, WRO Biennale), specialized festivals (Sonorities, Némo, Mapping, Piksel, Re-New, Laboral, EMAF, Visionsonic, Carnival of e-Creativity) and major academic conferences (NIME, ICMC, Pure Data Convention, Linux Audio Conference Stanford CCRMA, SICMF).
Portfolio: http://marcodonnarumma.com
Music for Flesh II: http://marcodonnarumma.com/works/music-for-flesh-ii/
Xth Sense Technology: http://marcodonnarumma.com/works/xth-sense/
Atau Tanaka, bridges the fields of media art and experimental music. He creates music for sensor instruments, wireless network infrastructures, and democratized digital forms. In the 90ʼs he formed Sensorband with Zbigniew Karkowski and Edwin van der Heide. In Japan at the arrival of the laptop and noise scenes, he came in contact with and played with Merzbow, Otomo, KK Null and others. Atau has released solo, group, and compilation recordings on labels such as Sub Rosa, Bip- hop, Caipirinha Music, Touch/Ash, Sonoris, Sirr-ecords. His work has been presented at Ars Electronica, STEIM, ZKM, Sonar Festival.
Adam Parkinson is an electronic musician based in Newcastle, England. Interested in the embodied experience of music, he likes to use improvisations to explore immersive bass tones and electrifying crackles. For this performance, he will be using two ipod touches running RJDJ alongside other electronics. He regularly plays with harpist Rhodri Davies, vocalizer Gwilly Edmondez and turntablist Mariam Rezaei. His musical output incorporates textural laptop improvisations, stuttering, bass-ridden electronica and disco-pop.
http://www.ataut.net/site/Adam-Atau-4-Hands-iPhone