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/