io 0.0.1 beta++ is a machine improviser and musical automaton. This site documents performances (including audio recordings) with and by, and the construction of, io 0.0.1 beta++, and includes engineer’s reports on hardware and software, with occasional forays into theory.
io 0.0.1 beta++ (Blackrock Castle Observatory, Cork, May 26, 2010). Photo © 2010 Stephanie Hough.
io 0.0.1 beta++ (www.io001b.com) is an interactive, semiautonomous technological artifact that, in partnership with its human associates, performs a deliberately amplified staging of a socio-technical network—a network in which the primary protocol is improvisation. Together the cyborg ensemble explores the performance of identities, hybrids and relationships, and highlights the social agency of artifacts, and the social dimension of improvisation. Engineered by Han-earl Park, io 0.0.1 beta++ is a descendant, and significant re-construction, of his previous machine musicians, and it builds upon the work done with, and address some of the musical and practical problems of, these previous artifacts.
Standing as tall as a person, io 0.0.1 beta++ whimsically evokes a 1950s B-movie robot, constructed from ad-hoc components including plumbing, kitchenware and missile switches. It celebrates the material and corporeal; embracing the localized and embodied aspects of sociality, performance and improvisation.
Further information is available on the archived old site and my article, ‘In Conversation with an Automaton: Identities and Agency in a Heterogeneous Social and Musical Network’, published in the Leonardo Electronic Almanac.
The construction of io 0.0.1 beta++ has been made possible by the generous support of the Arts Council of Ireland.
‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) is available from SLAM Productions. [Details…]
personnel: io 0.0.1 beta++ (itself), Han-earl Park (guitar), Bruce Coates (alto and sopranino saxophones) and Franziska Schroeder (soprano saxophone).
© 2011 Han-earl Park.
℗ 2011 SLAM Productions.
