Neanderthal Vocal Computer + Ring of Fire

Posted in Announcement on July 12th, 2009 by admin

Neanderthal Vocal Computer



Saturday 18 July 2009 2PM


_____-micro_research, pickledfeet, Linienstrasse 54, Berlin 10119

U2, Rosa-Luxemburg-Pl.
U8, Rosenthaler Pl.

Telephone: 3050187482.
Cost: EUR 10-15?
Please email m@1010.co.uk to reserve a place (strictly limited)

This workshop combines three of the basic building blocks of the longer Neanderthal Electronics workshop (TL072 op-amp comparator, 4093 gated oscillator & LM386 audio amplifier) to create a very crude, caveman-style analog computer for the processing of vocal input through a microphone. Participants will learn some analog and digital electronics basics to create an experimental prototype on the solderless breadboard, then recreate the circuit with permanent connections. They are also expected to bring their own box, case or other object in which to construct the final circuit. The last part of the workshop will touch on how this circuit can be expanded later on to include all kinds of mixers, modulators, distortions and filters through the use of other cheap, easily obtained parts.

For more information and videos from the Neanderthal Electronics workshops, see:

http://www.vimeo.com/album/64426

Ring of Fire

Due to popular demand, and as a way of saying “thank you” to Ingo Froelich who helped me with some woodworking for my new synthesizer, I’ll be cooking another transcendental(ly hot) chili at the amazing courtyard gallery at Torstrasse 111 for the opening of Erling TV. Klingenberg and Marcin Szydlowski. Also showing from th eprevious opening is the highly recommended “Return of the Art Zombies” video by Veronika Schumacher and the rather Texas-style paintings of Silke Thomas. Kickoff is at 19.00.

Friday 17 July 2009 19.00
Torstrasse 111 Berlin
Erling TV. Klingenberg and Marcin Szydlowski
Veronika Schumacher and Silke Thomas

http://www.tor111.de

Now Playing

anthony pateras & robin fox-end of daze[2009 editions mego]
iannis xenakis-metastasis pithoprakta eonta[1993]
va-black mirror:reflections in global musics 1918-1955[2007]
z’ev-sum things[2009 cold spring]

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Workshops: xxxxx/CTM Berlin (+ Beograd, Copenhagen, Estonia)

Posted in Announcement on January 20th, 2009 by admin

I’ve just returned from an exhausting but fun Pure Data workshop in Beograd, Srbija for the last few days, and I’m currently getting ready for the next round of activities in Berlin, Copenhagen and Tartu (Estonia).

The Copenhagen/Tartu series will be the first installations of a new workshop/collaborative performance called Ouroboros Orchestra, based on the creation and performance by participants and intermodulation live by myself of simple, small electronic sound/noise circuits, all planned accrording to a graphical score. I’ll be posting more on this soon. Please get in touch if this workshop/performance sounds interesting for a venue near you!

The Berlin event is co-organized with Martin Howse for Club Transmediale as a public laboratory in the Kunstraum Bethanien over 9 days from 23-31 January 2009. Info below.There should be some actions/performances at the workshop space on the opening night, Friday 23 January from 19:30-22:00 featuring some of the artists involved. Hope you can make it! Otherwise, drop by the workshop between 12:00-22:00 the rest of the days of the festival to revel in ther chaos!

xxxxx_temporary_structure for Club Transmediale 2009

Tracing a clear line of development from both xxxxx_workshops: [in]tolerance during CTM.08 examining the material basis of technology and a series of life coding events in Norway and Germany, xxxxx hosts an experimental nine day structure widening the scope of construction and constructivism to embrace the social and economic structures of production and performance. Public interface is to be made explicit, inviting participation, visit and conversation.

xxxxx_temporary_structure presents the expansion of both known and less familiar constructive procedures and apparatus, for example software (Pure Data, Python) and hardware (waves, circuits, simulation) into novel territory. Software becomes script and social pragmatics, hardware expands into optics, architecture, graffiti, elaborate kinetics and novel interfaces to the world addressing biologic and physical processes; a play of light, resonance and transmission.

The relationship between structure and system is playfully opened, with the modelling of systems as core activity within the temporary lab space; simulation within both code and analogue electronics, the embedding of an internal observer allowing for a play with agents and agency.

A concern with materiality and construction forms the base for an energetic examination of all manner of diagrams, public interface (reading space, discussion), bio-computing (plant life, EEG), world interface (practical endophysics), everyday technologies (light, food), code, transitions and translations. Such disciplines branch out mushroom like, revealing instabilities and new structures across nine days, in one space, publicly accessible throughout.

xxxxx_temporary_structure is inherently experimental and interdisciplinary, inviting practitioners and artists who are well able to prise open the gaps between reified disciplines to actively create new social and constructive apparatus within the xxxxx space.

A playful laboratory is proposed which does not mark boundaries between forms and between disciplines – which rather exposes and opens up social and artistic structures for sublime experience.

Info: http://scrying.org/doku.php?id=xxxxx:ctm09

Participants

Oswald Berthold [AT/DE]
Berthold (web.fm) describes himself as a semi-autonomous social particle commissioned in Graz in 1976. His interests lie in media, programming, and networks. He is associated with xdv, farmersmanual,
and gullibloon.
Keywords: software-defined radio, sniffing, wide spectrum measurement of EM intensities, practical investigations of a brain equation, societal mapping.

Derek Holzer [US/DE]
Derek Holzer’s work focuses on capturing and transforming small, unnoticed sounds from various natural and urban locations, networked collaboration strategies, experiments in improvisational sound, self-made electronics and on the use of free software such as Pure-Data.
Keywords: drawn sound, optoelectronic synthesis, systems for collaboration, more open than source, life outside the box

Martin Howse [UK/DE]
Martin Howse operates within the fields of discourse, speculative hardware (environmental data in open physical systems), code (an examination of layers of abstraction), free software and the situational (performances and interventions).
Keywords: resonance, relativity and wave-length in space and architecture for varying wave phenomena, measurement and mapping of electromagnetic(EM) field strength intensities as archaeological conceit

Martin Kuentz [DE]
Martin Kuentz (Unkuentz) is a Berlin based freelance artist. He founded the Salon Bruit, a concert series on improvised, electroacoustic and noise music, and has been involved in the Dienstbar series, Transmitting Object Behaviour (T.O.B.), Berlin free radio campaign, Blind Operators, Unkuentz vs. Trodza and apostrov recordings.
Keywords: expansive kinetic constructivism, crashed kitchen sink and bath-tub chemistry, homemade fireworks, long-term transmissions

Rob Mullender [UK]
Rob Mullender is an artist and maker living and working in London, U.K. His current preoccupations mostly concern the possible inter-relationship between sound and light; in other words using one to help find out things about the other. This has proved to be an unexpectedly complicated and fertile subject, especially when seen as an artistic rather than a scientific or engineering pursuit.
Keywords: auditory cameras, photophonics, ultrasonics, Enigma machines, sonification-as-synthesis

Shintaro Miyazaki [CH/D/JP]
Shintaro Miyazaki is interested in the epistemology of software/hardware of consumer electronics. He works as a curator, media theorist or artist in Berlin and performed solo and with ensembles in Tokyo, Leipzig, Krakow, Palma de Mallorca, Frankfurt, Basel, Zürich and Berlin.
Keywords: epistemology, sonification of software/hardware processes, eavesdroping.

Julian Oliver [NZ/ES]
Julian Oliver has given numerous workshops and master classes in game-design, artistic game-development, object-oriented programming for artists, UNIX/Linux, virtual architecture, interface design,
augmented reality and open source development practices worldwide. In 1998 he established the artistic game-development collective, Select Parks.
Keywords: environmental steganography, Python code expansion, data forensics and augmented reality softwares

Yunchul Kim [KO/DE]
Yunchul Kim studied music composition in Seoul and media art in KHM Cologne, Germany. His work has been shown in Ars Electronica, Transmediale, NewYork digital salon and Medialab Madrid amongst many others. He has been living and working in Germany since 1999 and is a guest lecturer at the Merz Academy, Institute for New Media, Stuttgart.
Keywords: chaos elaboration, interface exploration, physical code trafficking, pataphysics, imaginary pathologies

Dorotha Walentynowicz [PL/NL]
Dorotha Walentynowicz is an artist and performer who works withphotography, video and sound, as well as modified game engines andother interactive media.
Keywords: exposure, manipulation and voluntary oppression in gaming,performative communications strategies, “black box” as camera obscura

Otto Roessler [DE]
Otto Roessler reveals the power and cruelty of the rationalist project as first invoked within a dream of Rene Descartes. Through elaboration of endophysics, a science of interiority, the world as interface is implemented within potential practical, scientific and artistic experiment.
Keywords: practical endophysics, discussion of mute sperm whale communication, impending technocratic disaster analysis

Danja Vassiliev [RU/NL]
From the middle of 90s, Danja Vassiliev has been actively engaged with internet, computer and digital based visual and installation art. His most recent research and works are concentrated around topics of digital networking, internet and stereotypes of the digital age.
Keywords: literal UNIX pipes, shared communications systems, terminal VJ, swarmed networks with traffic/person as information carrier

Valentina Vuksic [CH]
Valentina Vuksic explores a highly individual articulation of hard and software mediation; the processes in such intermediate space as action thus implying actors rendered audible through novel intrusion.
Keywords: exploration of computational process as actor/staged on physical substrate (audio) rendering, comparison of crash spectra

+ participants from the public selection:

Georg Holzmann
Jonathan Kemp
Lars Lundehave Hansen
Lindsay Brown
Shintaro Miyazaki
Verena Friedrich
Walter Langelaar
Will Scrimshaw

Now Playing

Brethren of the Free SpiritAll Things Are From Him, Through Him and In Him [2008]
Carlos GiffoniAdult Life [2008]
Deathspell OmegaMass Grave Aesthetics [2008]
Deathspell OmegaVeritas Diaboli Manet in Aeternum: Chaining the Katechon [2008]
Eliane RadigueKyema, Intermediate States [1992]
Ghäst tracks from split with Rape X[2008]
Hala StranaHeave the Gambrel Roof [2007]
James BlackshawLitany of Echoes [2008]
Kevin DrummComedy [2000]
KTLIV [2009]
One Tail, One HeadDemo [2008]
Paysage d’HiverKerker [2008][reiissue]
RorschachProtestant [1992]
VAGive Me Love: Songs of the Brokenhearted: Baghdad, 1925-1929 [2008 Honest jons]
VALiving is Hard: West African Music in Britain, 1927-1929 2xlp [2008 Honest Jons]
VASprigs of Time: 78s from the EMI Archive [2008 Honest Jons]
ZaimphMirror Images CDR [2005 Heavy Blossom]

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Black Trashhhhh! DJ set + PD workshop this weekend

Posted in Announcement on April 23rd, 2008 by admin

Black Trashhhhh! DJ set 28.04.08

Next Monday I’m DJing some FUCKING METAL for a noise show organized by my favorite Attention Deficit Disorder victim in Berlin, Pato.


[click pic for big]

28/04/08 Black Trashhhhhh!

* xxxxx/mh/others
* Stupidity
* Penelopex
* Ent
* Macumbista DJ

+ guests

Madame Claude
Lubbener Str. 19
Kreuzberg Berlin
UBahn Schlesiches Tor
19:00

PD Sensor Workshop 26.04.08


April 26th 2PM: AVR/HID Sensor Input into Pure Data with Derek Holzer & Martin Howse

We will continue last month’s investigation of quick and cheap ways of getting sensor input into the Pure Data programming environment, using either USB game controllers or ATmega8 microcontrollers and the HID (Human Interface Device) protocol. Participants should bring the AVR/HID boards and/or hacked joysticks from the previous workshop. Those who did not attend the previous workshop are welcome, and ready made sensor boards can be purchased as part of the participation fee. Please RSVP to m@1010.co.uk if you plan to attend, and indicate whether you will need a sensor input board for Saturday.

A few (!) sample sensors will be provided, but participants are encouraged to bring their own sensors (light, pressure, motion, etc…) for experimentation. The Pure Data programming environment will be used to get the sensor information into the computer and map it to different parameters, ranging from MIDI to direct control of audio or video.

Windows users should be aware that the possibilities for input on their systems may be more restricted. GNU/Linux and Mac OS X users should not expect any problems.

Some links for those interested:

http://1010.co.uk/avrhid.html (AVR/HID board documentation)
http://puredata.info/downloads (install PD-Extended 0.39 from here!)
http://www.sensorwiki.org/index.php/Main_Page (comprehensive list of
sensors for musical use)

—What to bring:

Essential:

1) Laptop running Linux, OS X or Windows (be advised that Windows users may have fewer possibilities)
2) Pure Data Extended 0.39 installed from: http://puredata.info/downloads (please mind that it is Extended and 0.39!!!!)
3) Soundcard (internal or external, quality a non-issue)
4) Headphones
5) EUR 10 participation fee (+ 8 euros if you need a sensor board)

Recommended/Suggested:

1) Sensors of any kind
2) USB game controller of any kind
3) Microphones or other sound inputs
4) Your own project ideas for discussion

xxxxx_workshops

A (more-or-less) weekly series of constructivist workshops emphasising making and connection within the field of the existent. Workshops led by field-expert practitioners extend over realms of code and embedded code, environmental code, noise, transmission and reception, and electromysticism. Workshops solely utilise free software and GNU toolbase.

xxxxx, pickledfeet, Linienstrasse 54, Berlin 10119

U2, Rosa-Luxemburg-Pl.
U8, Rosenthaler Pl.

Telephone: 3050187482.

http://pickledfeet.com

Other News: blackdronoisemetalove in Copenhagen

This past month I’ve been on the road quite a bit. First I went to Copenhagen to play a couple sets for the very cool folks at the Co-Lab Gallery with my friend Morten Skrøder. For the curious, I’ve posted some rough MP3s here, and I’ll be meeting Morten again in CPH on 5 May to do some more jamming and recording! Each recording is approx 25 min long…

Macumbista & Skroeder, blackdronoisemetalove I, Co-Lab Gallery Copenhagen, 22.03.08 (33 Mb)
Macumbista & Skroeder, blackdronoisemetalove II, Co-Lab Gallery Copenhagen, 22.03.08 (41 Mb)

Sorry, still waiting for photos… Listen for the part in the first set where the irate upstairs neighbor came down to bitch us out! The mics were next to the drinks, so you might also hear the occasional Kroner getting tossed in the box…

Other News: Pure Data in Croatia

Then I spent a crazy week on the Croatian island of Korcula to work on a beginner’s manual for the Pure Data software with Luka Princic and Adam Hyde (remotely). Results to be published soon at FLOSS Manuals. Here’s me, hard at work on my sunburn during one of the days we managed to escape the laptops…

Other News: Tuned City Performances

And for the next couple months I’ll be super-busy organizing the performance program for an event about sound and architecture called Tuned City, which will take place in Berlin from 1-5 July 2008. So far, we are very happy to be able to invite Randy H.Y. Yau & Scott Arford, Thomas Ankersmit & Antoine Chessex, BJ Nilsen & Chris Watson, Mark Bain, Staalplaat Sound System, Martin Howse, Jacob Kirkegaard, Leif E. Boman, Harold Schellinx, Lasse Marc Riek and many others… you can subscribe to the Tuned City news list via the website and get updates. Hope to see some of y’all there!

Now Reading

J.G. BallardWar Fever
Phillip K. DickThe Eye of the Sibyl: The Collected Stories of Phillip K. Dick Volume 5
Denis JohnsonTree of Smoke

Now Playing

Daniel MencheGlass Forest CD [Important Records]
Daniel MencheBodymelt LP [Important Records]
BJ Nilsen & StilluppsteypaPassing Out CD [Helen Scarsdale]
Dead Black ArmsLike the Night of Thunder and Rain MP3 [Archive.org]

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Tuned City/XXXXX/Club Transmediale

Posted in Announcement on January 23rd, 2008 by admin

Somehow, I seem to have stumbled into three different projects in the upcoming Club Transmediale festival, and I’d like to invite those of you coming to Berlin this weekend or next week to check them out.

The first is a preview weekend for an event on sound and architecture planned for July 2008 called Tuned City. For the first Club Transmediale weekend, we have a mini-conference at the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse on SAT 26/01, featuring artists, academics and urban scientists reflecting on the topic, as well as a “keynote” Q&A between Brandon LaBelle and Max Neuhaus. This event is meant as both a kickoff and a call for interested persons. Drop by if you’d like to talk with us!

* TUNED CITY CONFERENCE @ CTM *
* TUNED CITY WEBSITE *

On SUN 27/01 there will be a performance evening on the same theme at the Maria club that I co-curated, called Tuned Space, featuring Dallas Simpson, BJNilssen & Hildur Gudnadottir, Mattin, Daniel Menche and Mark Bain. The night should go from quiet minimal world of found objects and sounds through to the body- and building-crushing power of subsonic rumblings.

* TUNED SPACE @ CTM *

Then my “electroacoustic death metal” duo ABOMINATIONS (with Argentinian drummer Marcelo Aguirre) plays on the Dark Alloy night WEDS 30/01 alongside Wolves in the Throne Room, Utarm, Shit & Shine and Ives no. 1. Esoteric drones and non-linear distortion meet animalistic vocals and percussive brutality!

* DARK ALLOY @ CTM *
* ABOMINATIONS WEBSITE *

And during that whole week, I an co-coordinating the xxxxx-Workshops: [in]tolerance series at the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse. This series focuses on noise electronics and free software, emphasising making and connection within the field of the existent. Workshop leaders include Jessica Rylan, Alejandra Perez Nuñez, Frederik Olofsson, Martin Howse, Martin Kuentz and Andrei Smirnov, with whom I will conduct the Digital Theremin workshop. The workshops are long since full, but you can drop by the public presentations each night of the week at 18:00 from TUE 29/01 to SAT 02/02, with the final workshop performance taking place at 20:00 on SAT 02/02.

* XXXXX-WORKSHOPS: [IN] TOLERANCE *
* XXXXX/PICKLED FEET WEBSITE *

Hope to see you all in the coming weeks!

Now Playing

Bolz’nRiemen (unreleased)
Destructo SwarmbotsClear Light (Public Guilt)
Iannis XenakisIannis Xenakis (Edition RZ)
MagicicadaEveryone is Everyone (Public Guilt)
Various Artists- Untitled 3xCD (Underadar, Public Guilt, Epicene)
ZaïmphEmblem (W.M.O./R)
SkullflowerAbyssic Lowland Hiss (Heavy Blossom)
Tim HeckerAtlas 10″ (Audraglint)
Wolf EyesDog Jaw (Heresee)

Thanks to Pure for letting me plunder his CD collection over the holidays for many of these!

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xxxxx-Workshops: [in]tolerance @ Club Transmediale

Posted in Announcement on December 19th, 2007 by admin

Registration is now open for the xxxxx-Workshops I co-curated with Martin Howse. Some interesting local Berliner artists combined with special guests from Russia, the USA and Chile!

Check the website here for full details.

*****

xxxxx-workshops: [in]tolerance
29 Janaury – 2 February 2008
Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, Berlin

xxxxx-workshops: [in]tolerance presents a series of constructivist workshops specially programmed for the ClubTransmediale 2008 festival, emphasising making and connection within the field of the existent. Workshops are led by international, field-expert practitioners, extending over realms of environmental code, noise, signal transmission, reception, and electromysticism. The workshops will utilise household materials and chemistry, readily-available electronics components, free software and the GNU toolbase.

Over the course of five days, participants will have the opportunity to construct a set of various electronic audiovisual artifacts (being either code or hardware) with which a final presentation/performance will be made. In learning how to create complex sound and image generators from the most basic elements, the participants will explore liminal electronic experiences and intriguing phenomena where carefully-engineered borders and parameters are twisted and transgressed, producing unexpected results in performance.

Workshops:
29.1. NOISE_PRODUCE by Martin Howse (UK) & Martin Kunetz (DE)
30.1. ONE BIT MUSIC by Frederik Olofsson (SE)
31.1. DIGITAL THEREMIN WORKSHOP by Andrei Smirnov (RU) & Derek Holzer (US/NL)
01.2. CHAOS IN NODES AND NETWORKS by Jessica Rylan (US)
02.2. BASTARD NATURES by Alejandra Perez Nuñez (CL)

The series takes inspiration from and continues the development of the (semi)weekly xxxxx workshops held at the Pickled Feet space in Berlin over the last year. It is supported by Arduino.

Theme:
“…in the good old days of Shannon’s mathematical theory of information, the maximum of information coincided strangely with maximal unpredictability or noise…”
[Friedrich Kittler: There is no software]

Engineers and scientists are concerned with prediction and thus predictability. Inside black-boxed apparatus the faint markings of tolerance, deviations from a predictable scenario towards the encryption of noise, can well be observed by the wily artist. Technology is thus exposed as a material expressing a certain chaos, pure noise of all voices. In return, materiality and an artistic concern with the matter of technology allows for the entry of the unpredictable, environmental noise within an otherwise closed circuit or economy.

Registration:
xxxxx-workshops is open to anyone, from novice to experienced electronic artist. The workshops will be held in English. You can register for single workshops or for the whole series. In addition to the actual daily workshops, a free open work-area gives everyone opportunity to pursue projects begun in one of the workshops over the course of five days. The registration fee for a single workshop is 10.- EUR, the fee for the series of all five workshops is 30.- EUR.

For descriptions of the workshops and workshop leaders go to:
http://www.clubtransmediale.de/club-transmediale/xxxxx-workshops.html

You can register till January 14, 2008, by sending an email to: xxxxx@clubtransmediale.de

Please don’t forget to indicate which of the workshops you wish to attend.

xxxxx-workshops: [in]tolerance is curated by Martin Howse and Derek Holzer, and produced by Jan Rolf and Anke Eckardt for Club Transmediale.

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