Murray Campbell – io 0.0.1 beta++

freedom, machine subjectivity and pseudo-science: twitter transcript

Han-earl Park — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 16:08:57 +0000

As a institutionally unaffiliated, part-time geek (and amateur anthropologist), I find the Computer Music tribes’ behavior fascinating. This is an unedited transcript of my observations from ImproTech Paris-New York 2012 : Improvisation & Technology series of events. My original observations came in the form of live tweets via @hanearlpark that spanned the performances on May 16, 2012 at the Roulette, and the ‘workshops’ (which I would describe as paper presentations or demonstrations) over the following two days at NYU and Columbia (the closing concert at Columbia gets a very short mention at the end).

I am writing a more humanly readable summary/expansion on some of these issues. I hope to have that article posted in the next few weeks, but in the meantime, for an alternative, complementary, critical take on the concert, see Melanie L. Marshall’s article on the ImproTech concert. I am indebted to @drmelmarshall, @tperkis, @piesaac, @jeffalbert and @weefuzzy for their twitterverse interactions that shaped my responses.

Twitter transcript (unedited)

Concert: Brooklyn, May 2012

Some thoughts from a technomusical concert coming up…

1. remind me to tell you about Joel Ryan’s story about politicking in computer music

2. wow. it’s like what turntableists did like three decades ago. #culturalborders

3. it’s the third time in two months I think, if you take away the electronics, there’s really fine ensemble there

4. funny how the iconoclasm and high mindedness is expressed by the uniformity of brand logos

5. almost feels more like a product demonstration than a concert performance #cantputmyfingeronit

6. Wasn’t this was more absurd/playful/questioning when Kagel did it?

7. How does one develops virtuosity w/ a trackpad/qwerty/lcd combo? Is virtuosity an impossibility?

8. Is it possible to develop a musical practice w/out a common practice notion of instramentalism?

9. What are the power implications of the sweaty saxophonist vs the effortless laptop?

10. Why is this more worthy of my attention in comparison to a NAMM show performance?

11. What would we do without cycles of fifth?

12. That really was terrible.

13. How often have you heard live electronic performance where you didn’t perceive the electronics as (primarily) reactive? #notacriticism

14. Why the ubiquity of the ramp envelope (the swell) in electronics? Are we fearful of sudden hits and cut outs?

15. …or does it perform the western romantic notion of the orchestra, with the centrality of the bowed strings?

16. While trip-hop and glitchcore explore the frayed edges of the artificial, why is so much Computer Music stuck w/ this?

17. …does the ‘natural’ (or the fear of the artificial) haunt the CM enterprise?

18. reminded of Park’s First Law of Live Electronics

19. is, say, a cello (always) already designed w/ the possibility of virtuosity? What does that mean for trackpads/qwerty/footswitches?

20. I am reminded of Richard’s talk about the need to spend time practicing—forging a kind of virtuosity and familiarity.

21. Anyone else feeling overfamiliar w/ the vocabulary of live video processing (in high art)?

22. …what is video processing? Is it a reductive, sculptural medium? Is it painterly?

23. …Is the emphasis on transformation, invention, or the magnification of what is already in the image?

24. Why don’t we hear the juxtaposition of the unamplified and the electronic more often? Again, is it the fear of the artificial?

25. Ask @tomerbe to tell you a story about GEL et al. and Bob Moog at ICMC

26. apologies for the lack of tweets, but that last performance was… fantastic. I could listen to RM all night.

27. The problem w/ percussion in European concert music is that you can _hear_ the (limits of its) notation (abstraction/schema).

28. this sounds like the CM we did when I was at the conservatory almost 15 years ago. Why the relative stasis in practice/sound?

29. …it would be wrong for me to repeat Bob Ostertag’s question… so I won’t

30. Reminded of Zappa’s rhetorical question of why anyone would want to see someon on stage press the PLAY button.

31. …also reminded of the old joke about the rock band that discovers their hit song by observing that it’s sh*t but at least it’s different

32. what is the effect when such simplistic notions of interaction are presented w/in the context of a shiny futuristic technotopia?

33. Problematic: I think this is great, and then realize that I have, as a listener, phased out the electronics.

34. In an improvisation, if a player is doing something systematic, detailed, & compelling, are you not obliged to meet them in that space?

35. Not convinced. Didn’t Ikue do this in the 90s w/ far more sophistication and humor?

36. Problematic musically, but I’m fascinated by this piece from an engineering standpoint. #theConstructorIsIn

37. Final thoughts: I only walk out of two performances, & I didn’t make my CM concert face, so that’s a lot better than most.

38. I always take my hat off to GEL. His post-Voyager pieces almost make me listen & forget my engineer’s hat.

38. See @drmelmarshall’s observations about gender. There’s a strong (perhaps self-defining) gender/race/class dynamic of CM.

39. …the dynamic is so strong that perhaps the only way you can continue to practice Computer Music is by ignoring the ideological…

40. …or perhaps the only people who continue practicing CM are those who are unaware of the ideological implications…

40. …or, more worrying, subscribe to certain gender/class/race ideologies.

41. …computers in so much CM the computer becomes assistive technology for the composer; further centralizing autocratic power…

42. …and power of definition.

addendum to tweet 29: Ostertag’s question. http://bobostertag.com/writings-articles-computer-music-sucks.htm #computermusic #politics #technology

43. following for a conversation w/ @drmelmarshall: is the anti-performance, anti-virtuosity stance of CM laptopiteers because…

44. …they identify as composer w/in the composer-performer hierarchy? To ‘perform’ in this context would be to identify w/ lower caste.

45. …studied anti-virtuosity similar to the ‘all mind’ of certain class of (white, male, bourgeois) academics as described by bell hooks.

Conference: New York, May 2012

Random thoughts from a technomusical conference coming up…

1. GEL: “creative machines” #expressiontoremember

2. GEL: improvisation ~ “process of social transformation”

3. I want to know more about imbuing machines w/ “integral subjectivity”. Let you know when I get a chance to corner GEL.

4. Never realized how much Richard’s playing resembles Sun Ra’s. #makingconnextions #aha

5. is this relational schema correct? tech knowledgepractical usemusical knowledge #epistemology #technoscience #music #culture

6. …do not (musical) technical objects (always) already (materially) embody musical knowledge?

7. …is not musical knowledge (always) already performed by the technical (in its construction, etc.)?

8. Is knowledge something that can be bound? Is it useful to think of (technical) knowledge in terms of intention?

9. …practice of close-reading & reverse-engineering suggests the link between intention and knowledge is a distraction, or fuzzy at best.

10. why the distrust of the regular beat?

11. Polish notation! #geeklove

12. reminds me of the ‘Free Jazz Bass Player’ simulator that I hacked in an afternoon. #isComputerMusicBeyondParody

13. Can musical be reduced to a series of BANGs. It’s not even a data type. #Max

14. Before asking the question of whether machines can improvise, should we ask if we can determine if we ourselves can improvise?

15. machine agency live on stage during a conference about machine agency. #revoltoftechnics

16. Is it useful to study #improvisation by drawing boundaries around it? thru definition? #ontology

17. …or would it be more illuminating to study #improvisation by its effects?

18. Ah, John Searle’s critique of hard AI. @weefuzzy will get this.

19. Is an algorithm an abstraction or representation of what a computer does, rather than (necessarily) what it _actually_ might be doing?

20. But Searle’s objection was partly a critique of lazy sizeism; there is no reason to believe that complexity/scale leads to intelligence?

21. Does no one else understand Searle’s critique?

22. Is the Western #Subject (as theorized/critiqued by #Foucault) holding us back in understanding the improvisative? #subjectivity

23. … #improvisation may offer alternative notions of #freedom, or relations, say, that have radical implications for the subject.

24. Searle’s critique actually nullifies the second stance: improvisation as an emergent property of a complex of algorithms. #duh

25. Do you ever see a paper title and wonder if they will address the ‘why we did this #research’ question? #academia #music

26. Apropos of nothing, the last transcription I did was Taylor’s Jitney… cured me of the need to do more perhaps.

27. Ever imagine if your, say, bugle or snare drum would be playable if it had even 1/10 of the latency of digital devices?

28. If gestures are the focal point of interaction/creation, why does one have to link it to novel sounds? #unaskedquestion

29. Pointless. #goingoutforair

30. 1 more thing: Searle’s critique was specifically of Hard AI’s dependence on simple, deterministic algorithms…

31. …it does not necessarily follow that it applies to other forms of computing (embodied robotics, neural networks, analog computation).

32. why the prefix ‘augmented’? what distinguishes it from, say, ‘cyber’? #nomenclature #artscatchphrases

33. Is #improvisation a tool? or is it a practice? process? method?

34. old question: is the notion of #mistake, flaw, right/wrong useful in discussing #improvisation?

35. Computer Music loves is acronyms & initialisms. #tradition #nomenclature #linguisticdetritus

36. …which I parodied w/ AMM (Automatic Morricone Machine-temporal morphologies) & io 0.0.1 bets++ (not an acronym). #linguisticdetritus

37. Interesting: first instance of a presentation dealing (pragmatically) w/ the issue of machine latency. #time #computation

38. …something that Bruce, @franzschroeder & I spent a lot of time, effort & (I hope) ingenuity addressing w/ io 0.0.1 beta++. #latency

39. Reminded of Risset’s advice about the importance of a Panic Button. #computermusic #liveelectronics

40. Why is on-screen feedback so important for these new #instruments? We don’t need flashing lights on the fingerboard. #interface

41. …despite our training, can we not trust our ears & bodies w/ these technologies? #instrument #technology #interface

42. …or is this an instance in which system #latency prevents reliable aural or tactile #feedback? #instrument #technique

43. Ask Joel Ryan to give you the incredibly detailed, rigorous meditation of The Slider.

44. Much of this is the realization of things we were klugily _attempting_ w/ archaic technology (8bit microcontrollers, MIDI) 10 yr ago…

45. …& would we have continued down that path had we known the results as they are realized now? #whatwasourmotivation #technodreams

46. Why are our technodreams just that little bit out of reach? Why are systems just one ‘feature’ short of what we desire?

47. …generally guitarists, say, do not wish if only the guitar frets spacing were wider in the middle register it would be perfect.

48. … #virtuosity becomes a #negotiation between the #technical, #physical & #physiological, not wishing extra limbs or laws of physics.

49. fascinating. people talk about Max (not the ‘program’, or ‘computer’) as the name of an entity. #linguisticdetritus #technics

50. Structured programming is not possible with Max. #discuss

51. In the middle of all this technomusical talk/presentation, get a real desire to hear @uitti2bows play. #realmusicianship

52. old joke: mathematicians’ results r precise, but study toy problems. engineers study real-world problems, but their results r approx…

53. …computer musicians, being neither engineer nor mathematician, study toy problems & fudge their results

54. yrs ago, Murray Campbell & I had a plan 2 present an entirely fabricated, counterfeit project, SimJazz: the desktop bebop simulator.

55. …some of that survives in the blurb at //www.busterandfriends.com/amm/ …anyway, maybe it’s time to revive that. #beyondparody

56. I live by my volume pedal, and I’d like to say that foot pedals definitely are _not_ and easy option. #feelstronglyaboutthis

57. interactive systems w/in a compositional frame? feels like @DoctorNerve or Clarence Barlow should be referenced in this presentation.

58. said this before: clamshell of laptop is designed to closeout the rest of the world. fine as your mobile office, but not as performance…

59. …Nic Collins said it’s like playing battleships. #laptop #music #performance #narcissism

60. borrow an expression from @matanaroberts: robotrane

61. anyone remember Matt Ingalls’ work with improvising automata? #youshoudlookthisupifyoudontknowit

62. fwiw, here’re my (old) experiments w/ generating #rhythm: //www.busterandfriends.com/hz/ #musicaltime #algorithm #robotics #automata

63. wonder if (notational) abstractions (quarter notes, triplets etc) are useful algorithmically. Perhaps there r computational shortcuts.

64. …perhaps we don’t generate rhythm w/ that notational abstraction. Maybe that abstraction is after the fact.

65. 1st presentation in which the entity is called ‘computer’ not Max? (‘computer’ is gendered male btw) #identity #gender #computermusic

66. presentation about this piece from last night: http://twitter.com/hanearlpark/status/202958935127359489

67. Reminds me of the AI music research based on #Jackendoff & #Lerdahl work on music cognition.

68. I remember Miller Puckette’s demonstration of tempo tracking in the mid 90s…

69. …algorithms are much more sophisticated now, but what we are doing w/ them seem not so different. #whathappened #technodreamsoftimespast

70. why are our dreams so durable? why the stasis in Computer Music? Ostertag’s question still haunts my mind. #technodreams

71. Is Rowe’s neat #dichotomy of the #instrument/player paradigm damaging 2 our ability 2 see alternative relations? #technology #music

72. thesis: instruments are not #neutral, they shape music. would it be wrong to respond w/ #duh

73. …but why frame this relation in negative terms? ‘constrain’

74. …#instruments are bound because we identify it, but is our #relationship constrained? #interface #cyborgs #music #virtuosity #technique

75. I’m done for today. #goingoutforair #goingtoseethesun

76. you know the discrepancy between an abstract & presentation that makes you think: this guy knows how to write grant app? #notacriticism

Conference: New York, May 2012

missed the morning session 2day which did sound more interesting (on paper). More random thoughts from a technomusical comference coming up…

0. …intermittent 3G connection, so this may not be exactly a live tweet…

1. Even the goofiest techno neologisms sound impressive w/ a French pronunciation. eg. acoumatique. #linguisticdetritus #randomactsofpoetry

2. Tenney’s Monster haunts the practice of Computer Music. #radicalreductionism #parameterization

3. isn’t a million miles away from Ikue Mori’s work (but that, as Ostertag pointed out, is not CM). #disciplinaryboundaries #policingborders

4. does #parameterization usefully describe musical processes? practices? in motion? #empiricism #reductionism

5. …what gets lost thru such #radicalreductionism? what gets lost from theorizing & constructing #music as discreet parameters? #empiricism

6. …I too struggle w/ Tenney’s Monster: it is attractive/compelling/‘intuitive’… but I fear what it may be bulldozing over alt. conceptions.

7. …what happens when such #radicalreductionism meets a practice such as #improvisation? #empiricism #parameterization

8. …under the #radicalreductionist gaze, what happens to a #practice that may embrace (& fueled by) unresolved #complexity & #contradiction?

9. Anyway, isn’t this what Barlow’s been doing for over two decades? #culturalamnesia

10. probabilistic behavior does solve the Infinite Slider problem, but I am unconvinced that musical performance is usefully parametric.

11. convinced that the listener & player components cannot be separate. #machinemusicianship #machinelistening #analysis #abstraction

12. …in real-time performance: listening does not create a reduction/analysis from which data is fed to the playing. #machinelistening

13. …as an improviser, u don’t translate input stream to a (notational) reduction before generating/modifying output… #machinelistening

14. …I/O is more closely tied together. or better, I/O is meshed in a complex, not-easily-reduced form. #improvisation #machinemusicianship

15. …almost like CM researchers took the simple beginners exercises as the model for how #improvisers practice their craft. #colonialism

16. Almost tempted to ask: why are you doing this? #nothelpful

17. didn’t get to ask my question: how is such a reduction/compression/cataloging of input data musical?

18. this afternoon, unlike yesterday, the entity is referred to as ‘we’ and ‘the system’. #nomenclature #machineidentity

19. …although a questioner referred to the entity as ‘he’. #gender #technology

20. #colonialism #appropriation #authorship had enough #goingouforair

21. Make a Computer Music Noise Here. #isComputerMusicBeyondParody

btw, if my live tweets stop, it’s prob. because my battery died. #doesanyonehaveausbchargerhandy

22. as a institutionally unaffiliated, part-time geek, I’m finding the CM tribes’ behavior fascinating. #amateuranthropology

23. this presentation is excellent. real scientist, real research. #myinnernerdishappy

24. “musicogenic seizure” #termtoremember #linguisticdetritus

25. trust a scientist to remind us how to do old fashioned algorithmic composition. #culturalamnesia

26. the researchers from the biggest Big Computer Music institute are amateurs compared to this guy. #realalgorithms #illuminatinguseoftech

27. …my faith in technomusical enterprises is revived. reminds me of my first fascinating encounter w/ algorithmic musicking.

28. now back to the rest :-/

29. idle thought: is it possible to use the same tech behind analog synth modeling to simulated analog computers?

30. fascinating idea: the theory of a #music is not understandable w/out physical practice. #raga

31. …but what happens when a system which makes sense physically is translated into a probability table? #embodiment #mind #body

32. it’s Break Like The Wind: Laptopiteers’ Edition #isComputerMusicBeyondParody

Concert: New York, May 2012

no live tweets from the concert tonight. Not enough power (well, strictly speaking, that should be energy s…ce pow…r is t… asu… t… ar… … ft…

final thought: when I started constructing improvising automata, I felt I was at the end of a long, illustrious but dying tradition…

…but now people seem to see themselves at the start of a wave. #whatishappening

anyway, re: the music, this would be much better w/out the computers. #neoludditism

current state 2012: human actors

Han-earl Park — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 03:45:20 +0000

I’ll be posting an article dealing with an aspect of the technical and theoretical construction and operation of a interactive musical automaton in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here’s an update on what some of the (human) actors in the io 0.0.1 beta++ network have been up to, and will be doing in the coming year.

Han-earl Park

Leaving Cork in the summer of 2011, Han-earl Park was resident in California for six months during which time he performed with Gino Robair, Tim Perkis, John Shiurba, Matt Ingalls, Scott R. Looney, Ted Byrnes and Kris Tiner, and as a guest of Gargantius Effect (Murray Campbell and Randy McKean). In December, Vicmod Records released Han-earl Park and Richard Scott’s ‘artillery’ (VMDL11).

Relocating to Brooklyn in December 2011, Park made his New York debut at the Roulette as part of the Silver Orchestra for Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith’s 70th birthday event presented by Interpretations. His first performances in 2012 was a duo with saxophonist-scholar Tracy McMullen at the Downtown Music Gallery, and with saxophonist-composer Catherine Sikora at The Brecht Forum.

2012 will see the release of Richard Barrett and Han-earl Park’s ‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) by Creative Sources Recordings. In addition to what he hopes will be a creative time in NY, he will be back in Europe in April/May performing as part of Numbers and Mathilde 253 (with Charles Hayward and Ian Smith), and, in October, Numbers will be performing across North America.

Bruce Coates

In addition to his continuing work with FrImp and Improvisation Birmingham, in April 2012, Bruce Coates performs/conducts as part of Birmingham Improvisers’ Orchestra: Migrations at Déda (Derby):

Using film, dance and performance art, Migration is created in response to the orchestra’s improvised soundtrack. The piece explores ideas about the movement and displacement of people—not only the political, economic and ecological factors, but also the human desire to find a place to belong.

More info…

Franziska Schroeder

In 2011, Franziska Schroeder, the theorist-practitioner, presented at Digital Resources in the Humanities and Arts conference (Ningbo) and performed at the International Computer Music Conference (Huddersfield).

In 2012, Schroeder will be taking on the Artistic Direction for the Sonorities Festival (Belfast), premiering a new work by Evan Parker commissioned by the PRS, running the Sonic Arts Research Centre’s Public Engagement Training for PhD students (‘Big Ears’), performing as part of Noise Quartet Concert (April), premiere of five new works by SARC PhD composers (May).

Forthcoming articles will include a book chapter, ‘Shifting Listening Identities—Towards a Fluidity of Form in Digital Music’, in Identity, Performance and Technology: Practices of empowerment, embodiment and technicity edited by S. Broadhurst and J. Machon (Palgrave Macmillan), and ‘Network[ed] Listening—Towards a de-centering of beings’ in Contemporary Music Review (Routledge).

CD available: io 0.0.1 beta++

Han-earl Park — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 22:57:21 +0000

Released as part of SLAM Productions’ August 2011 CD catalog: ‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) with Han-earl Park, Bruce Coates and Franziska Schroeder. [Slam Productions catalog page…]

[Get it from Slam Productions…]
[Get it from distributors/shops…] [Downtown Music Gallery…] [Jazzcds…] [Souffle Continu…] [Squidco…] [Wayside Music…]
[iTunes…] [eMusic…]

Note: downloads, in contrast to the physical CDs, do not include Sara Roberts’ liner notes.

description

We watch and listen carefully because we know we’re seeing a kind of manifesto in action. What is an automaton? A sketch, a material characterization of the ideas the inventor and the inventor’s culture have about some aspect of life, and how it could be. io and its kind are alternate beings born of ideas, decisions and choices. It is because io stands alone, an automaton, that the performance recorded on this CD not only is music, but is about music.

Sara Roberts (from the liner notes)

An extraordinary meeting between human and machine improvisers. Featuring the machine musician io 0.0.1 beta++ with guitarist Han-earl Park (Mathilde 253, Wadada Leo Smith) and saxophonists Bruce Coates (Birmingham Improvisers’ Orchestra, Paul Dunmall) and Franziska Schroeder (FAINT, Evan Parker), the recording is part critique and part playful exploration, both a boundary-breaking demonstration of socio-musical technologies and an ironic sci-fi parody.

Constructed by Han-earl Park, io 0.0.1 beta++ is a modern-day musical automaton. It is not an instrument to be played but a non-human artificial musician that performs alongside its human counterparts. io 0.0.1 beta++ represents a personal-political investigation of technology, interaction, improvisation and musicality. It whimsically evokes a 1950s B-movie robot—seemingly jerry-rigged, constructed from ad-hoc components including plumbing, kitchenware, speakers and missile switches—celebrating the material and corporeal.

The performances with this artificial musician highlight society’s entanglement with technology, demonstrate alternative modes of interfacing the musical and the technological, and illuminate the creative and improvisative processes in music. The performance is a radical and playful engagement with powerful and problematic dreams (and nightmares) of the artificial; a dream as old as the anthropology of robots.

With liner notes by the California-based interactive media artist Sara Roberts.

io 0.0.1 beta++ was constructed by Han-earl Park with funding from the Arts Council of Ireland, and with significant input and feedback from Bruce Coates, Franziska Schroeder, Murray Campbell, Sara Roberts and Phil Burk.

We would like to thank John Hough, Melanie L Marshall, Alex Fiennes, Kato Hideki, John Godfrey, Clair McSweeney, Riccardo Vallebella, Paul Everett, Mel Mercier, Kevin Terry and Stephanie Hough.

The recording preceded the performance at Blackrock Castle Observatory which was presented with funding from the Music Network Performance and Touring Award, and support from Blackrock Castle Observatory, the Castle Bar and Trattoria and the UCC Department of Music.

personnel

io 0.0.1 beta++ (itself), Han-earl Park (guitar), Bruce Coates (alto and sopranino saxophones) and Franziska Schroeder (soprano saxophone).

track listing

Pioneer: Variance (11:52); Pioneer: Dance (13:13); Ground-Based Telemetry (1:42); Discovery: Intermodulation (9:08); Discovery: Decay (5:08); 4G (0:59); Laplace: Perturbation (10:21); Laplace: Instability (3:08); Return Trajectory (8:24). Total duration: 63:57.

recording details

All music by Han-earl Park, Bruce Coates and Franziska Schroeder.

Tracks 1–5, 7 and 8 recorded May 25, and track 9 recorded May 26, 2010 at the Ó Riada Hall, UCC Department of Music, Cork. Track 6 recorded August 19 2010 at C-ALTO Labs, Cork.
Recorded and mixed by Han-earl Park.
Design and artwork by Han-earl Park.

about the performers

io 0.0.1 beta++ whimsically evokes a 1950s B-movie robot, constructed from ad-hoc components including plumbing, kitchenware and missile switches. Its celebrates the material and corporeal; embracing the localized and embodied aspects of sociality, performance and improvisation.

io 0.0.1 beta++ 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.

The construction of io 0.0.1 beta++ has been made possible by the generous support of the Arts Council of Ireland.

Improviser, guitarist and constructor Han-earl Park (박한얼) has been working within/from/around traditions of fuzzily idiomatic, on occasion experimental, mostly open improvised musics for over fifteen years, sometimes engineering theater, sometimes inventing ritual. He feels the gravitational pull of collaborative, multi-authored contexts, and has performed in clubs, theaters, art galleries, concert halls, and (ad-hoc) alternative spaces in Austria, Denmark, Germany, England, Ireland, The Netherlands, Scotland and the USA.

A constructor of low- and mid-tech electronic and software devices, and an occasional score-maker, he is interested in partial, and partially frustrating, context-specific artifacts; artifacts that amplify social relations and corporeal identities and agencies, and, in some instances, objects that obscure the location of the author.

He is part of Mathilde 253 with Charles Hayward and Ian Smith, is involved in collaborations with Bruce Coates, Franziska Schroeder, Alex Fiennes and Murray Campbell. Recent performances include Mathilde 253 with Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith; duo concerts with Paul Dunmall, and with Richard Barrett; trios with Matana Roberts and Mark Sanders, with Catherine Sikora and Ian Smith, and with Jin Sangtae and Jeffrey Weeter; as part of the Evan Parker-led 20-piece improvising ensemble; and the performance of Pauline Oliveros’ ‘Droniphonia’ alongside the composer. Park has also recently performed with Lol Coxhill, Pat Thomas, Corey Mwamba, Mark Trayle, Pedro Rebelo, Alexander Hawkins, Mike Hurley, Chick Lyall, Thomas Buckner and Kato Hideki. Festival appearances include Sonorities (Belfast), Sonic Acts (Amsterdam), dialogues festival (Edinburgh), VAIN Live Art (Oxford), and the Center for Experiments in Art, Information and Technology Festival (California). His recordings have been released by labels including SLAM Productions and DUNS Limited Edition.

Park founded Stet Lab, a monthly improvised music space in Cork, Ireland, and taught improvisation at the UCC Department of Music.

Bruce Coates has been heavily involved with free jazz, free improvisation and experimental music for more than 15 years. He has collaborated and performed with a long list of some of the best-known names in these areas. He is cofounder of the Birmingham Improvisers’ Orchestra, has a long standing working relationship in many different guises with guitarist Jamie Smith, a regular trio with David Ryan and bassist John Edwards and runs the monthly Birmingham FrImp night.

Recent collaborations have included regular performances with the saxophonist Paul Dunmall, appearing alongside Dunmall on his DUNS label (the only saxophonist to do so); the Paris-based Blackberry Orchestra led by Peter Corser and involving some of France’s best known improvisers including Denis Charolles and Guillaume Roy; and a CD with the Amsterdam based Mount Fuji Doom Jazz Corporation released on the Ad Noiseam label in 2007. Current ensembles include SCHH with Chris Hobbs, Mike Hurley and Walt Shaw; Magtal with Mark Sanders and Jonny Marks; and the performance art oriented Mutt with Marks and Shaw. His ever-growing eclectic list of collaborators also includes Tony Oxley, Lol Coxhill, Christian Wolff (performing alongside the composer at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London), Hilary Jeffrey, Phil Gibbs, Paul Rogers, Trevor Lines, John Coxon, Misterlee, Bong Ra, Simon Picard, Tony Bianco, Han-earl Park, Tony and Miles Levin and Tony Marsh.

Franziska Schroeder is a saxophonist and theorist. She received her saxophone training in Berlin and Australia and later from Marie-Bernadette Charrier / Conservatoire Supérieure in Bordeaux.

With her trio FAINT Schroeder released a CD of improvised and electroacoustic music in 2007 with Pedro Rebelo (piano and instrumental parasites) and Steven Davis (drums), and a second CD, both on the creative source label. Schroeder has performed with many international musicians including Pauline Oliveros, Stelarc, the Avatar Orchestra, Chris Brown, John Kenny, Tom Arthurs, Nuno Rebelo and Evan Parker.

She holds a PhD from the University of Edinburgh and has written for many international journals, including Leonardo, Organised Sound, Performance Research, Cambridge Publishing and Routledge. Her book “Re-situating Performance Within The Threshold: Performance practice understood through theories of embodiment” appeared in 2009. Schroeder also published a book on user-generated content for Cambridge Publishing Scholars in 2009.

Schroeder is on the development committee of NMSAT (Networked Music & SoundArt Timeline), and has been on the programming committee for the DRHA (Digital Resources in the Humanities and Arts) conference since 2009. She was the Program Chair for the DRHA 2010. Schroeder has been an AHRC Research Fellow and is now a Lecturer/RCUK Fellow at the School of Music and Sonic Arts in Belfast, where she coaches 3rd year recitalists and MA performance students.

Also available from SLAM Productions: Mathilde 253 (SLAMCD 528) [details…]

Performers: Charles Hayward (drums, percussion and melodica), Han-earl Park (guitar) and Ian Smith (trumpet and flugelhorn) plus Lol Coxhill (saxophone).

updates

07–16–11: add links to Downtown Music Gallery and Wayside Music.

08–04–11: add iTunes, eMusic and Amazon.

08–18–11: add Jazzcds to list of shops.

02–15–12: add Souffle Continu to list of shops.

03–28–12: add Squidco to list of shops.

acknowledgments: Human-Machine Improvisations (Cork, 2010)

Han-earl Park — Fri, 28 May 2010 10:53:36 +0000

Franziska Schroeder and io 0.0.1 beta++ (Ó Riada Hall, Cork, May 25, 2010)

Formal acknowledgments below, but my personal thanks to Clair and Riccardo for hosting this event, to Kevin for the behind-the-scenes help, to John Hough for answering requests for technical assistance, and to Stephanie for her visual skills. Special kudos to Melanie for supporting me through the highs and lows of prepping and running this venture, and to John Godfrey for being a partner in this enterprise.

And of course a big, big thanks to Bruce and Franziska for their skill, craft, intelligence and musicality. It wouldn’t have worked without them! If I take one thing from this event, it will be the pleasure of sitting comping, listening to two saxophonists demonstrating what it really means to interact in real-time.

Finally, I’d like to thank everyone who took time to come witness the results of the investigations into the nature of improvisation, music, technology and sociality.

Formal acknowledgments

We would like to thank Clair McSweeney, Riccardo Vallebella, Paul Everett, Mel Mercier, John Hough, Francis Heery, Kevin Terry, Stephanie Hough and Melanie L Marshall.

Presented with funding from the Music Network Performance and Touring Award and support from the Arts Council of Ireland, Blackrock Castle Observatory, the Castle Bar and Trattoria and the UCC School of Music.

io 0.0.1 beta++ was constructed with funding from the Arts Council of Ireland, and with input and feedback from Bruce Coates, Franziska Schroeder, Phil Burk, Sara Roberts and Murray Campbell.

iWife is a result of funding from the Arts Council of Ireland.