– 9/7/11: A gig in Paris at La Generale, “Laboratoire artistique, politique et social”. 14, avenue Parmentier Paris XIe, Métro Voltaire (facebook | lastfm)

– 11/7/11: A workshop+gig at the 2011 Libre Software Meeting in Stransbourg (event page | facebook | lastfm).

I’m going to play a new livecoded song called ‘Fjords‘. During the last days I’ve also finalized several little things that make livecoding with Impromptu faster (and easier, at least for me), which is good, so I’m aiming at making available those too in the coming days…

Btw I’ll try to take videos of the various performances, so stay tuned!        

[Update 11/7/11] Here’s a recording of the Paris gig:

Anna Meredith

Anna Meredith [homepage] is a composer and performer of electronic and acoustic music. Her acoustic material has been performed around the world by many leading orchestras and ensembles. She has been composer in residence with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and is currently the PRS/RPS Composer in the House with Sinfonia ViVA.

Nautilus by Anna Meredith

She came to public attention through her 2008 work froms for the BBC Last Night of the Proms and has since written another BBC Prom commission, her first opera (Tarantula in Petrol Blue – with libretto by Philip Ridley) and collaborated with the beatboxer Shlomo – writing the acclaimed Concerto for Beatboxer and Orchestra. Anna is also a judge for the BBC Young Musician of the Year, a mentor for Goldie for the TV show Classic Goldie and a frequent guest and commentator for the BBC Proms and other Radio 3 and 4 shows.

James Blake

James Blake [wikipedia | homepage | youtube]is a British electronic composer from London, UK. James began his final year at Goldsmiths in September 2009 studying popular music while recording songs in his bedroom. Blake attended The Latymer School and released his debut 12” “Air and Lack Thereof” on Hemlock Audio in July 2009. It was a firm favourite with Gilles Peterson from BBC Radio 1. James was invited to do a special mix on Gilles Peterson’s worldwide show which included an exclusive Mount Kimbie track. On 6 January 2011, Blake was announced as runner-up in BBC’s Sound of 2011 poll[1]. His self-titled debut album was released in the UK on 7 February 2011
a review here.

The performance the other night at the Purcell Room was magical: I found this video on youtube, it’s not very good but the sound is ok:

Tim Exile

http://www.timexile.co.uk/
I’ve never heard about this electronic artist [homepage] before – but the other day I saw his name on the Ether festival program and got interested, so I looked for some his stuff online. Well, it’s a pretty interesting character I must say! Real sorry to have missed his performance at Southbank. Definitely worth checking out his stuff.. he’s now also working with electronic instruments seller Native Instruments (eg check out ‘The Mouth‘ virtual instrument: video#1 and video#2.. very funny!).

Following a sell-out success in June 2010, Southbank Centre presents Stanley Kubrick’s seminal film 2001: A Space Odyssey with live music.
Conducted by André de Ridder, the enormous forces of Philharmonia Orchestra and Philharmonia Voices join together to perform the film’s extraordinary soundtrack, as live accompaniment to a screening in Royal Festival Hall.
Long recognised as one of the greatest science fiction films of all time, 2001 – A Space Odyssey is celebrated for its technological realism, its innovative Oscar-winning special effects and a bold use of music. The film brought worldwide fame to both Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra and the music of Gyorgy Ligeti; it also created one of cinema’s most memorable images as a spaceship floats serenely through space to the strains of Johann Strauss’ Blue Danube waltz.

Here’s an excerpt from last night’s performance:

Sounds and video together, instead, produce a fascinating effect: they convey a sense of simplicity and primordial intensity. Through the interaction of flashing lights, disturbing sounds from the technological world, and pure sine waves at extreme high and low frequencies what emerges is a complex pattern that made me wonder about the inner and mysterious workings of our minds.

Ikeda’s piece called Formula, below, is a good example of this kind of synesthesia-inspired digital art:

…

A nice article from Vivian Lee describes the approach of Ikeda in more details:

Musician and visual artist Ryoji Ikeda finds his inspiration in data, number arrangements, and the methods of math.

Ikeda’s minimalist electronic compositions blend sounds, focusing on specifics such as sine tones and frequencies at the most high and low in the range of human hearing—sound in its “raw” state. There are familiar sounds in his work, too: static from the radio, the skipping of scratched CDs, and a television that’s lost its signal.

Though Ikeda—who was born in Gifu, Japan, and currently lives and works in Paris—is a musician first, his mathematics-inspired video art is on the rise. Ikeda told the Japan Times that his inspirations come from “Most of the mathematicians in our modern history, especially Leibnitz, Cantor, Godel, Grothendieck.”

With modern mathematics in mind, Ikeda developed the idea of datamatics—a series of “experiments that explore the vast universe of data in the infinite between 0 and 1.” Datamatics first sprung up in 2006 but has been expanded into an hour-long show, weaving sound and video images. Ikeda manipulates these images in real time using custom-designed computer software as the audience looks onto the large screen projections. The data shown on screen is culled from records like NASA (including maps of solar systems) as well as from the Human Genome Project.

Along with datamatics, his ongoing dialogue with Harvard mathematician Benedict Gross—in which they explore the mathematical definitions of infinity—led to Ikeda’s data.tron series. In his “data.tron {3 SXGA + version},” pictured above, he creates an audiovisual installation—three floor-to-ceiling screens of data that physically overwhelms visitors with a staggering array of numbers.

Unlike artists who explore in one medium, Ikeda creates multimedia installations at the extremes of sound, light and mathematics. He fuses sound and image in an intensely physical experience, exploiting sound’s physical properties, exploring its relation with human perception, and revealing the aesthetic beauty of pure mathematics.

…

A list of other relevant articles can be found here

Some of the performances I liked:

[video]

[video]

[video]

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You’ll find many more cool audio&computing things by checking out the Princeton Sound Lab website [people | research | listen | learning | software | publications] !