// update

Incoming

Currently scheduled: A new piece for sampled strings, some short Pixelmechanic solo sets at Neverzone & Noisy Nights, TR-I/O-FON supporting Machinefabriek, LLEAPP at the Bongo

MSO & Asimo

MSO played 10 shows in various configurations (Sean solo, Sean & me, me & Lauren, me & Sean & Lauren, me & Sean) to a total of c.8000 people over the weekend of 4/5th April, playing intro and outro slots to ASIMO the Honda Robot as part of the Edinburgh Science Festival.

Here's a nice shot of me & Lauren from this Flickr set

 

MSO Bowery Bums

MSO played it's most succesful gig to date (IMO anyway!) at new venue The Bowery. MSO consisted this time of me, Sean and Lauren. We've been practising more gestural and more rhythmic pieces and it showed.

 

I'd scaled down my rig to a Doepfer suitcase, Sean had his ASys rig and repaired Hinton modular (basically EMS), and Lauren found a Jen SX1000 on Gumtree.

The recording is a bit clipped but worth a listen!

Bupp!!

I was commissioned to produce a soundtoy by New Media Scotland & Lucy Keany for her Fools in Print imprint.

Here's the official blurb... "Created by Sound Designer and Composer Jules Rawlinson around themes of emergence, repetition and difference, Bupp!! scatters cropped and chopped vocal fragments onto a grid-based playspace. Through generative and interventionist gesture, in an act of co-creativity the listener becomes conductor, composer and performer of the piece."

The CD is launched on 1st April (of course!) and I'll post a link to the software after that

Monome at FOS / Minimum Fuss

Haven't updated the site for a while, and am really happy to say the De Montfort gig & talk went really well. Met some great people including John Richards & Chris Watson Threep & Vent Media's set was stunning and gave me plenty of ideas for MSO.

Here's some documentary evidence courtesy of Mike Blow's video mixing skills...

jr.mnm.fos210109 from pixelmechanic on Vimeo

Future Of Sound

Following on from my presentation / contribution to the Cybersonica AVLab (a few posts below) I've been invited to play and talk at Leicester's De Montford University as part of the Future Of Sound Tour with fellow AVLab-bers Mike Blow, Ryan Jordan and Steve Symons

Solo and Hold

My final live date of 2008 saw me play a solo interpretation of 'Sample & Hold' to a full Reid Hall tucked in among a programme of orchestral and chamber works created and played by members of Edinburgh University's Composers Orchestra. Since I was right at the back of the hall I soon forgot the audience was there and got lost in sound. It was great to play my take on 'electroacoustic improv' to a crossover crowd and the piece got a great reaction.

Sample & Hold (Solo, Live), 2008

Cybersonica AVLab

The day after Pole (who / which was great, btw) I made the long journey from Edinburgh to Brighton to participate in Cybersonica AVLab, a week-long residential creative & practical workshop exploring sound, moving image, art and technology. I was there to present my work with 'adaptable, minimalist interfaces' (aka Monome and Wacom). I had a great few days and met some fantastically friendly and productive people who make all sorts of sound and video art including wiimote driven vj apps and digital funfairs! Thanks very much to all involved, especially to Lewis Sykes and Daniel Jones (aka AdHoc) for bigging me up in the first place!

Watch the first 10 minutes of my presentation on YouTube

3 Pole Filter

I'm very excited to announce that I'm supporting Pole on 3rd November at Edinburgh's Voodoo Rooms as part of TR-I/O-FON with Mo-Seph and GungWho?

Behind The Light 2 (With Knobs On)

Monosynth Orchestra will be fronting at Edinburgh's Ark on Halloween, this time joined by composer Shiori Usui. We've got some new strategies and new modules!

Atrium Sample & Hold (Not So Slight Return)

In an attempt to produce a work of 'significant depth and duration', I offer you the latest performance of 'Sample and Hold' recorded binaurally as part of a new semester welcome concert.

Sample & Hold (Duet, Live), 2008

No longer just a 5 minute sketch, this is a lovingly crafted work for two players. For this performance Lauren Hayes aka The Laurel Tree kindly played the other part. There's even a score (of sorts)!

OSCemot-ronica

Despite the lack of updates/adverts I've played some good gigs recently at Forest, a solo modular set representing Monosynth Orchestra while Sean was away and a 4 way improvised Laptop bruiser with Mo-Seph, GungWho & Foss

I also managed to brick my iPhone for a day as I attempted to update to 2.0 firmware so that I could install OSCemote, a Lemur-style multitouch interface for iPhone

I've put together a basic max 5 patch to map OSC messages to multislider, matrixctrl, pictctrl etc...

Atrium Sample and Hold

Here's a short live sketch / composed improvisation of work in progress that will eventually be called 'Sample and Hold', chiefly because I'm live sampling and repurposing (via spectral scrubbing and buffer slicing) files triggered from a wacom graphics tablet

Sample & Hold (Live Sketch)

Thanks to Martin Parker for organising the informal airing!

Phantom Power

The Monosynth Orchestra Strikes Back was the theme for Grind Sight Open Eye. The founding trio (see post below) took titles from Sean's deck of Empire Strikes Back playing cards as inspiration for improvised tracks

Download some MSO videos from InfraRed

Interesting Work

Boiingg has finally been bounced (sorry!) from the Interesting Work links at Cycling 74. It was there for a while though. I've got a screenshot to prove it!

Boiingg to the Max(5)

Boiingg got a free facelift this morning courtesy of the kind folks at cycling74

I was a bit worried that I'd have to spend time resizing objects, but it looks so sexy I might have to start playing with it again!

The old look's on the left, view the new look and download the app at:

http://docs.monome.org/doku.php?
id=app:boiingg

 

Spectrum Festival, Edinburgh 20.04.08

I was kindly invited to play a laptop set at the biannual Spectrum Festival held at Edinburgh's Queens Hall in what was dubbed the 'Electroacoustic Attic'. Armed with Faderfox, Wacom tablet, Monome & my MSP toys, Max crashed about 5 minutes in, just as I was getting into my automaton groove

Luckily I was soundflowering the output into Gleetchlab which stayed up and despite losing my flow, I managed to get running again fairly quickly and based the set around live processing of some prepared modular synth improvisations, dusted with Wacom triggered drones, groans and tones

I was pleased to see it made The Scotsman, who described it as "Outré Electronica". Sadly there's no surviving audio document due to the crash... I didn't want to risk a streamed recording once I'd got things back up!

The Laurel Tree played a great set too!

Vimeo Video Vici

As MaxMSP enters a new age, I've put up the files that showcase the JS based interfaces that I built for my MSc final project. Never mind square number boxes, I've finally started to port them to Jitter using jit.gl.sketch etc. for fullfat goodness

See the JS & LCD based interfaces at http://www.vimeo.com/user450885

There's still some detective work to do regarding object dimensions, but the positioning has come together fairly easily

Monosynth Orchestra

The Monosynth Orchestra was initially founded by Sean Williams, Dave Meckin and myself as an open forum for onstage improvisation with analogue monosynths. After a couple of fun gigs at Edinburgh's Forest Cafe we set ourselves the task of performing Morton Subotnick's 'Sidewinder' (we even got his blessing!)

Bolstered by Owen Green, Lauren Hayes and Lin Zhang, with live visuals by Henrik Ekeus and sound projection/diffusion by Rachel Kellett, we performed the piece at Soundings Festival

Visit the Monosynth Orchestra website