Here is Peter Bill’s rough cut of our performance at “the florence,” an old theater at the base of Smith Tower, that had lain dormant and empty for 14 years.

Bruce Bennett- sound mix, keyboards
Peter Bill – pixel pushing, live paint, source vids
Byron Diel- drums, sound mix
Vance Galloway- guitar, sound mix, tech coordination
Michael Zbyszynski- sax, flute, sound mix

and laralay- live paint, the guy from Big Lebowski on trombone, paul on bass clarinet, and and….

thanks again to Seth for the space!

(2005-6)

electronic music and sensor programming for Myra Melford
with Dawn Saito, Oguri, Stomu Takeishi, Cuong Vu, Michael Haberz, and Reinhard Ploesch

		photos of sensor grid
		photos of the electronics
		schematic of noise reduction circuit (pdf)

The sensor grid protoype is a 4′ square floor with microphones and sixteen infrared range sensors mounted inside, beneath round acrylic windows. Dancers dance on, beneath, and with the surface, and the sensors influence the electronic sound in real time.

(2004), with Hugh Livingston

for Macintosh G4 running Max/MSP, two microphones and 14-channel sound
installed at Edgemar, Santa Monica, CA
presented by Edgemar Installations, commissioned by Abby Sher

		Short video about sensors in LISTEN EDGEMAR (2.5 meg)
		notes by Michael Zbyszyński

reviews:

• Music for Parking Lots
  NY Arts, September/October 2004
• The Garage is Alive with the Sound of Music
  Los Angeles Times, 12 May 2004
• LISTEN EDGEMAR Debut
  Santa Monica Mirror, 12-18 May 2004
• New Music Box, 15 October 2004

2002, 21′ for violoncello and live electronics

First performance: April 2002, Smith Hall, Irvine

Commissioned and performed by Hugh Livingston, violoncelloSubsequent Performances: April 2002, EMF@ The Flea, New York September 2005, Sacramento New Music Festival, Frances Marie Uitti

2006, 20′ for video and tablet-driven live electronics with video by Anthony Discenza

News Cycle #2 is a live collaborative digital artwork consisting of reprocessed and interwoven excerpts from three 24-hour cable news networks. The raw material is 36 hours of news footage, 12 hours each from CNN, MSNBC and Fox news from one day in summer 2006. Each section of the piece represents a different compression of the day’s footage, exposing digital and analog artifacts inherent in the technical processes. The resultant sound from this footage is manipulated using a customized digitizing tablet to “draw” a score by extracting data from the video stream. The tablet is used to select specific scan lines from the piece, generating changing buffers that are subsequently convolved with either the audio content of the video, pink noise (in silent sections) or a mixture of the two.

Commissioned by The Getty Center and The Montalvo Arts Center.

This is binaurally encoded, so listen with headphones if you can.

My musical interests in Alone in a Crowded Room are twofold. Electronically, I am exploring macroscopic and microscopic processes in the time domain. At the same time, I am engaged with the physical reality of the alto flute and by extension, the flautist.

The long delay lines at the beginning of the piece are an example of macroscopic process; the technique has long been a part of compositional vocabulary from analogue tape loop to cannon at the unison. In this piece it creates the situation for an interior monologue between the player and himself. Concepts repeat, decay, and interact with one another, creating new layers of meaning with each recontextualization. As the piece progresses, microscopic process come to the foreground. The sound of the flute is broken into individual grains that gradually loose cohesion. The monologue branches out, as memories of the original performance split into fragments.