chi 2013

it has been seven years since i have been to chi. but i finally went back this year. i was attending the doctoral consortium, which provides a great opportunity to get feedback on your thesis in an interdisciplinary workshop, under the guidance of a panel of distinguished researchers.  since i work in an audio research institution, i have great access to audio experts, but i don't get any feedback from hci community. we were about 15 doctoral students and 5 experts. as i presented my sonification work, i got very interesting advice on which aspects of my research i should better focus on the next stages of the project. i have been comparing the auditory perception with visual perception in most of my presentations. i usually bring up the fact that regarding temporal resolution and frequency range, the ear exceeds by far visual capabilities. e.g. movies show 24 frames/sec whereas the ear is capable of resolving temporal microstructures of a magnitude of a few milliseconds. and while we can hear pitches across 10 octaves (20hz - 20khz), we can only see one octave (400 -700nm). some of these arguments and more about sonification were not enough to convince the panel of experts at chi which was a great learning lesson for me to back up my arguments with more comparisons of visuals which is more familiar to the hci community.
it was overall a great experience and i also enjoyed the interactivity  exhibits. i look forward to the next years' chi in toronto, if my papers get accepted.

smc 2012

last week i took part in smc (sound and music computing) conference's summer school on product sound design in copenhagen. we had very interesting lectures on interaction design, sound design, and pure data. although i have some experience with all of them, this was a good way to get more insight in some aspects of them that i'm not usually involved in. especially learning more about pure data from a guru was amazing. moreover we had to work on a prototype using dul sensors and sennheiser headphones. we created an interactive interface to use head gestures to communicate. in order to do that we hooked up one of those dul sensors to the headphone to get the motion as input data,  communicating with pure data to map gestures to different sound parameters. for more details check out the project's websites. we would also post videos and sound samples of the demo shortly.
although the conference was in the suburbs and we didn't have much time for sight seeing, i tried to see some thing new every day after the conference. one of my favorite places was louisiana museum of modern art which is open till 10.00 pm and i could manage to see the magnificent exhibits there. the picture you see above is  a light and mirror installation by the japanese artist yoyoi kusama. i also enjoyed the magnificent statue park in the museum. louisiana museum is located at the see in a very green area. all the statues were from modern artists such as henry moore. the combination of rocks, glass, and metal  melts very well into the nature and is an amazing place to be at.

icad 2012

i attended icad (international conference on auditory display) this year in atlanta. i have participated in student think tank, sonification contest and also submitted an extended abstract with colleagues on what we have been doing from the beginning of my phd.
after a very long trip from graz to atlanta, i had a great day at student think tank. it was a great platform to share what i have been doing so far and getting feedback from sonification experts and other students in the field. also learning about other students' projects was mind blowing and gave me a much broader perspective.


a couple of projects that were very similar to mine but used a different approach were "visual and auditory representations of earthquake interactions" by chastity aiken at georgia tech. she produced animations with time-compressed sounds to demonstrate both immediate aftershocks and remotely triggered tremors related to the tohoku-oki, japan earthquacke. she used audification of seismic data which is not a new concept. recording of nearby earthquakes and tremors contain frequencies of up to 100 Hz, which are on the lower end of audible spectrum (20 - 20k Hz). one of the edification techniques she has used to represent such data is to play the spectrum in a faster speed up to 500 times faster (i.e. time compression). this also helps to go scientists to go through a larger amount of data through shorter time. the eq parameters are mapped to sound properties, and the voltage control oscillator is used to show low and high frequency components.

another related project was "climate variations: solar insolation, ecological, abundance and stable isotopes" by danny goddard. he also used audification. geological data is also huge and in order to find events he needs to go through millions of years of data within a couple of minutes. he created a data driven timbre tuning system. in order to describe the shape of the orbit he mapped eccentricity to pitch, mapped temperature to paying degree. (i.e. colder temperature to right channel, warmer to the left)he also used sine wave oscillators, mapped isotopes to pitch.

both of these projects are run by the domain scientists who are new to sonification field which makes it the total opposite of our approach. we try to integrate sonification into climate scientists' world. the advantage by their approach is that there's no cultural barrier, because they are the scientists who have found sonification interesting and trying to use it in their field. the only problem they have to solve is which sonification methodologies work best for them. on the other hand we have the problem other way around. we have to do systematic research to figure out what our users' needs are before even trying any sonifications.

i also got a lot of feedback about our sonification project.  i got praised for using a user centered design approach and not sonifying before knowing the users needs'. i also got a lot of feedback about how to do it efficiently and effectively to encourage users to make use of sonification within their workflow.

the second day i took part in two workshops, one was sonification using chuck and the other one was sonification using matlab. both were good workshops but they were too shirt to implement anything. we only went through the basic sonification capabilities of each tool. for the chuck workshop perry cook has put a  document together: course notes and code examples

from san francisco to graz

as you might have read in my other blog i have had a crazy time in the last couple of months relocating from the bay area to graz in austria. i joined the institute for electronic music and acoustics (iem) at the university of music and performing arts graz for the project sysson – a systematic procedure to develop sonifications.
the goal of sysson is the systematic development of sonifications – from finding sound metaphors and creating a ‘sound library’ to aesthetic/scientific evaluation and finally the sonification tool. the procedure is developed with and tested on data from climate science.
i have had my first weeks of work behind me and it has been a great experience working with such amazing and smart people. i'm busy working on a sonification project now for a conference but we keep on updating sysson's website and soundcloud account throughout the project. we would love to hearing your thoughts and comments on the project and the whole process.
in the meanwhile i might not have enough time to make a lot of music but at least i try to attend concerts organized by iem and engineered by iem's team and kug. university of music and performing arts has an amazing new house of music called mumuth. i was lucky that i could attend a concert at ligeti hall of mumuth on the first week i started my work. it was a performance of brice pauset's anima mundi. the acoustic of the building is wonderful and the sounds were clear and crisp. i also love the architecture of mumuth and it looks a lot more intriguing at night with colorful lights changing the color of the building every twenty seconds. it also looks like a glass and metal aquarium. i also look forward to attend the upcoming concerts at the cube in iem, which reminds me of the listening room at ccrma with 24 speakers.

soundcloud global meetup

if you haven't used soundcloud and you are a sound creator or listener, you are missing tons. soundcloud is a social platform to share sound, music, and any type of audio. you can record, upload, and share any sounds you capture from your surrounding to your musical creations or even if you want to have your own alternative radio, or even if you want to share a conversation. what i love about soundcloud is that the sound creators are not promoted depending on their recording label or sound studio, instead it's a social network that people listen to what ever sound they are more interested in from all over the world. if you are interested in adding your own features, soundcloud also has a fantastic api that you can add up your own plug-ins or apps.
good news for the users and non-users of soundcloud is that there will be a global soundcloud day this coming wednesday and there are soundcloud events all over the globe on that day. i helped with a fantastic group of soundclouders in san francisco to have one in our city. if you like to hear more about soundcloud or share your experience with it and meet some people who love sharing sounds or using soundcloud api, join us on wednesday october 5th 2011 7pm-10pm @ the summit, 780 valencia.

we will feature soundcloud user instillations and apps using the soundcloud api, and will be online on twitter under the #SCMeetupSF hash-tag, so you can join us even if you're not at the summit.

the poster of the event is generously created by max poynton.

transitions 2011

don't miss these two great concerts at ccrma. every year when new students come there's a transition concert to welcome them and let them hear what kind of sounds are made at ccrma and what are all the possibilities. bring your blankets and hang out in the ccrma courtyard in these two evenings of electronic music. there will be sixteen loudspeakers, four subwoofers, and twenty seven squirrels that live under the lawn.


TRANSITIONS 2011 - night 1: soundscapes under the stars
Wednesday, 9/28, 8pm, CCRMA courtyard
https://ccrma.stanford.edu/events/transitions-2011-night-1-acousmatic
Acousmatic music by John Chowning, Gilles Gobeil, Jonty Harrison,
Fernando Lopez-Lezcano, Ake Parmerud, Hans Tutschku, and Unknown!

TRANSITIONS 2011 - night 2: live electronic music
Thursday, 9/29, 8pm, CCRMA courtyard
https://ccrma.stanford.edu/events/transitions-2011-night-2-live-electronic-music
Music by Chris Carlson, Bjoern Erlach, Mark Applebaum, John Granzow&
Hongchan Choi, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano, Mike Rotondo&  Nick Kruge, Luke
Dahl, Locky, Cloud Veins.

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. 

rose is a rose is a rose is a rose

i'm not a literature expert to talk about getrude stein's writings, but i like them rhythmically and enjoy how she plays with phrases. also i respect her work as being a contemporary art collector. there are two amazing exhibits in san francisco now on her life, one at sfmoma, and one at contemporary jewish museum. in these exhibits, her works in literature and art, life and relationships, and even works of artists about her are exhibited.

one of my very favorite art works on these exhibits is deborah sperber's after picasso. this work is based on picasso's portrait of getrude stein which is at metropolitan museum of art in new york. what sperber has done with several classic pieces is amazing. she has recreated these classic art works by using thousands of spools of colored thread arranged in abstract patterns that pulled into focus when viewed through a circular device resampling a crystal ball. from a few feet away they look like vague, pixilated color but through the optical device you see the perfect reproduction of the painting of picasso.

another interesting installation in this exhibit is terry berlier's human tuning fork #4. i really enjoyed her pan lid gamelan when she exhibited it with us at somaarts. that was a very interactive piece that you could play gamelan on an array of pan lids mounted on the wall. the human tuning fork is less interactive but very interesting. there are circles of tiny speakers mounted on the wall, each representing one country in the world. each speaker is wired parallel to the other which means the whole system either works all together or not at all. a sound recording of getrude stein text is played by the speakers which is translated into several languages.

ccrma fall concert

is time for another amazing night at ccrma in the form of a cagean musiccircus. there are all kinds of computer music in the program: installations, live performances, iphone music, and tape pieces: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/events/ccrma-fall-concert-cagean-musicircus

i was very inspired by benoit mandelbrot recently. since he passed away about a month ago, i went back to my mathematical interests and thought of using fractal algorithms to generate sound. i know i'm not the first person thinking about it but it inspired me to create new sound textures. in case you are not familiar with fractal geometry and are not much into mathematics to read about it i recommend this great documentary: hunting the hidden dimension.

i will be performing the piece fractale at ccrma's listening room as part of the cagean musiccircus tomorrow night. the piece has two sections; in the first one i tried to use fractals in a more rhytmic fashion whereas in the second part i have taken a more melodic approach. also having the listening room to create multichannel music is inspiring.

treasure island music festival

last weekend we went to treasure island music festival. it was definitely very different from european versions of it. music-wise the first day was more beat music that i rather go to see and the second day mostly indie. i really enjoyed deadmou5's show. great visuals, entertaining, and some good beats. kruder and dorfmeister were also one of the reasons i went to the festival on sunday, but they lacked energy that day. i used to see them in flex in vienna almost every week, but they used to spin more drum and base than lounge music. their show was still good but didn't make me dance. another entertaining band that day was die antwort but not the austrian one, the south african one. their words were a bit too harsh but they were entertaining.

the festival was very well organized. there were shuttle buses all day long from sf to the festival and back, great view of the city from the island, and an an awesome silent disco for taking breaks from the crowd. you could listen to the dj's music over a headphone and dance or just chill out in the silence and see people dancing to the beats.

the chemical brothers

since i have been a fan of the chemical brothers for ages and i recently saw them live again i had to write a short post about them. when i first heard their exit planet dust album in late 90s i could not resist their beats. the first live show i saw them was in 2002 in vienna where they began with the amazing track it began in afrika ka ka! it seems that they were using a proper analog set; a couple of doepfer sequencers, a nord modular, machinedrum, monomachine and ... it was one of those mind blowing live shows that i could not stop thinking about for ages and they have never moved me as much as that show any more.

last time i saw them was very different. they made less industrial beats and more melodic tracks but it was again amazing in a different way. since 2008 they have been working with two amazing visual artists: adam smith and marcus lyall. these two artists have totally brought a fresh atmosphere to the chemical brothers' live shows. two weeks ago in oakland was also very similar to what i saw three years ago; still amazing but nothing new. check out my favorite track horsepower on vimeo.

slork spring concert

we are having the annual spring concert of slork tonight at 8.00 pm in dinkelspiel auditorium at stanford. the diversity of the slork members this time has made a very interesting combination of instruments and compositions which is a new and unique experience.

we are not playing any of the laptop orchestra classics such as drones, clix and chrystalis which i all love but has been performed too many times. all the pieces are brand new and also the implementations behind them.

my group has worked on a twitter piece. we have a python server that parses all the tweets related to a couple of hash-words (for example tonight will be #slork and #music) and makes trees of the tweets regarding their closeness in the number of words they have in common. then the server sends osc messages to chuck and processing where we sonify and visualize the tweets. the sonification of the tweets is more like an echo of each tweet arriving in the engine and we change the timbre, sound sequences, modes and tempo in real time.

the concept of the piece is to engage performers and audience in an interactive experience. during the concert slorkers will be tweeting on their slork machines and audience can tweet on their smart phones. if they want their tweets to be seen and heard they can use #slork, #music and #technology in the text of their tweet. if you can't make it to the concert, make sure you take part by tweeting.

there are also several other interesting compositions, from a "virtual headbang orchestra" and a "bell choir" to "sonification of the human brain waves".

slorktastik

we have a chamber concert tomorrow night at the knoll. we perform all new works for laptops, ipad, iphone; all instruments and pieces developed by the members of the stanford laptop orchestra.

we have made a shaker instrument that is controlled by the laptop's accelerometer. there are several gesture based instruments that sound amazing, some drum instruments and of course a reactipad(reactable for ipad.)

more details on the website:

https://ccrma.stanford.edu/events/stanford-laptop-orchestra-pres

modulations at soma arts

modulations is a yearly event organized by amazing ccrma community thanks to carr, sasha and every one. the event is a collection electronic music performances, sound installations, djs and interactive art. please join us tomorrow night at soma arts for this years modulations.

details about the event are posted on:

https://ccrma.stanford.edu/events/modulations-v2.2

http://blog.somarts.org/

work of women artist: barcmut + gray area

come and see us this thursday at gaffta (gray area foundation for the arts) at 7.00 pm.
there'll be julia ogrydziak, cheryl e. leonard, surabhi saraf and me presenting some of our recent works in computer music.
barcmut is a fantastic community of computer musicians and audio geeks in the bay area and i have learned a lot from the experienced people in this community. i'm glad that the event is in gaffta which is an amazing non profit gallery in tenderloin that brings a variety of digital art and culture together.

the political me

my mind has been very busy with all that has been going on in my birthplace in the last six months and it has been very sad to see how people are living under a brutal dictatorship. these days i have been more nostalgic because of the 30th anniversary of the dictatorship in iran and seeing how the government is celebrating 30 years of brutality by putting so many young students in prisons ...

i have a very diverse musical background. studied western classical music since childhood and never practiced persian radif music. one of my heroes was my cousin's violin professor who used to be the tehran symphony's conductor. professor heshmat sanjari has composed some masterpieces of persian symphonic music. one of them is "persian pictures". this was the first symphony i heard live in my life when i was a kid and it brings me back to my childhood. although my favorite movement "dance of dayereh" is a very happy one, it can make me dance or cry at the same time. i took a short excerpt of the theme of this movement and mixed a piece to commemorate students who have been demonstrating in iran in the last six months, who have been in prison and who have lost their lives ...

i also wanted to show my respect to the tehran symphony. i read this article in nyt and felt sorry for them having to represent a government that has been so harsh to them and to music for the last thirty years.

click on the political prisoner to listen to my piece.

inspired by trimpin

on weekend "trimpin: the sound of invention directed" by "peter esmonde" was screened in "red vic movie house" in san francisco. if you don't know trimpin, you should definitely watch this movie. he is an amazing inventor, engineer, sound and multimedia artist and sculptor. i am totally inspired after watching this movie and we are very fortunate in the bay area that he'll be at stanford next year to collaborate with sica(stanford institute for creativity & the arts).

steve reich at stanford

"steve reich" and "beryl korot" were at stanford last night. it was such an honor to see them in person and hearing their talk about their collaborative audio/visual works. reich is one of my favorite composers and i loved to see how modest he and his wife are and i enjoyed their sense of humor.

they mainly discussed "three tales" and "the cave". both works are from 90s. three tales shows concerns on new technology, cloning, wars and weapons ... you can either get the whole dvd or watch parts of it on a dvd of several modern pieces called ohm. unfortunately the video can't show the whole work since there were live performers and singers in addition to several screens of visuals in the live performance in 90s.

the cave is an interesting look at people from different religions. it's interesting to see how diverse the interpretations of different people about the same story could be.

mopho

mopho: stanford mobile phone orchestra had it's first performance of the year last night at ccrma. the variety of interfaces were amazing and it sounds great. comparing to last year when we had only a couple of instruments on iphone making some drone-like sounds; last night's instruments were very diverse and astounding. my favorite piece was vox aeterna by ge. he used human and augmented voices generated by auto-tune of i am t-pain. another interesting piece was nick's wind chimes where he used compass and microphone of iphone to control recorded sounds slowly evolving into surround sound.

another amazing performance was jieun's colorful gathering where she brought all performers together and they jammed on her multi-touch based instrument on iphone.
i uploaded some low quality videos of the event on youtube.

ccrma fall concert

we had an amazing experience at ccrma on thursday. it was in the character of a john cage musiccircus. the audience were encouraged to amble through the building with refreshments in hand and enjoy the performances and installations all over the building.

i had an installation in the listening room. this room is very special to me because i can take advantage of 16 speakers. speakers are in octagonal setup 92 inches apart in three vertical spaces around the room, above the room and under the room.

i had a a mixed media piece for 16 channels audio + text-based visuals + paper junkmail covering the hallway. my installation was called "junkmail" as a reaction to the fact that "it takes more than 100 million trees to produce the total volume of junk mail that arrives in american mailboxes each year.” this fact and a lot more on this topic can be found on forest ethics.

there were lots of good performances all over the building, inside and outside ccrma. some of the highlights were carr's lolfo. i also liked the amazing drones of sweat shop boys. i would upload a short video of my installation as soon as i have it but here a couple of pics for now.

a short video of the installation is available on youtube.