sfemf 2011

the 12th annual san francisco electronic music festival took place on september 8 -11 in sfmoma and brava theater. it was the first time that sfmoma hosted one of the nights and it was amazing to have some amazing sounds in that space. 


one of the highlights of this year's festival was a tribute to max mathews. as you may already know we lost the father of computer music earlier this year. in sfemf marielle jakobsons and diane douglas played improv for olympiad using max's phaser filters.  max mathews' phaser filters create tuned resonances within any sound played through them., the way that a room can amplify certain frequencies depending on its shape. max loved to play these filters melodically to constantly shift the resonant space. he was also interested in harmonics for example, changing the tuning of his filters to quarter tones or complex chords.


from other new composers and media artists i was most fascinated by the music of cadet kuhne. her piece stora bioern is a collaboration with visual artist alba corral. the piece is  based on great bear constellation using a recursive algorithm to compose dynamics and structures. corral used processing to create visuals. since i am a fan of open source software, processing, i really enjoyed what she has done with it.  there are regularly processing workshops at gaffta if you are interested in learning more about the software. also cadets pulsing sound progressing in sync with the visuals were very fascinating.