The Human Body
The Human Body is an exploration of the living, active body. Designed using only Jasuto Pro for iPhone 3.0 and Max/MSP for Mac OS X, it is a unique journey through the innards of our active biology.
Albert Contreras 
fRICshen by Jim Phelps
fRICshen, for Rickenbacker 370 12-string electric guitar and electronics
The title refers to three things: friction (the obvious), the guitar for which it is written (RIC is a common “short” for Rickenbacker) and an essence of spirit (my interpretation of the Chinese word “shen”). The friction presents itself in two ways: juxtaposition of dramatically different musical sensibilities; the friction between the quintessential sound/performance style one might expect representing this particular guitar (for those who know something about this instrument and its glorious history) but which is not invoked in this piece, and the non-quintessential sound and style that is actually presented.
Black Allegheny by Evan X. Merz
Black Allegheny by Evan X. Merz
Black Allegheny is a meditation on the Allegheny Mountains in the winter. The Allegheny Mountains are a range in the Appalachian Mountains that runs through West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. This piece was written with a vision of the rolling, snow-covered Alleghenies in the Pittsburgh area.
Black Allegheny was assembled using swarm processes. For each section of the piece, sounds were organized on cartesian graphs. Then a virtual swarm was allowed to walk over each graph, triggering sounds as it crawled around.
A Night of Collaborative Sound
A diverse group of pieces and great turnout made for another big success at the Annex computer music concert. Our Graduate Assistant Evan Merz organized the event, which featured special guests Mark Popowitch and Michael Taylor. Other featured composers and/or performers included Natee Prasanpanich, Robert Anderson, Conor Mackey, Tim Moyers, Peter Veugeler, Kenneth Joseph, Aaron Vermedal, and Nathan and Matthew Edwards. Here are some pictures from rehearsal:
Evan Merz and Kenneth Joseph performing on piano and steelpan from Evan’s visual score.
Mark Popowitch and Alex Beach getting ready to rock
Evan busy at the board.
Congratulations to all involved!
‘2′ Concert on November 5
The Fall Annex Group Computer Music concert is approaching, and it looks to be a packed show.
It is on Thursday, November 5 at 8pm in the Northern Illinois University Recital Hall. Don’t miss it!
Seamus 2009 Blog Links
A group of students from the NIUCMS program visited Sweetwater for the SEAMUS 2009 event last summer. Both myself (Nathan Edwards) and Evan Merz were mentioned in the recent SEAMUS newsletter for our blogs about the event. Here are the direct links to my posts:
Intro
Tesla Coil Music (Including YouTube vids)
Displaced Resonance
WOUWHI Dance Interface
Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble
And be sure to check out Evan’s Computer Music Blog for his videos and posts on the event.
New Equipment in the Computer Music Studio
The tour page has been updated to include the latest equipment purchased for the program over the summer.
These additions include Intel Mac Pro computers, dual 23″ widescreen cinema displays, 25 and 49-key M-Audio Axiom MIDI controllers, and new software including Logic and Final Cut.
We have also been updated to the latest Pro Tools LE system, which includes the Digi-003 hardware unit with Pro Tools 8 software.
Becoming 3-2 by Evan X. Merz
The music and video in this piece were generated by a java program that I recently coded. The software uses some concepts borrowed from John Cage, but updates them with modern AI techniques. Specifically, I use Cage’s gamut, graph and chance techniques, as they were used in the third movement of the piano concerto, and after. Instead of using pure chance, however, I use artificial intelligence to control how the voices move around the graph. Swarm intelligence techniques allow each voice to follow other voices, or move away from them.