THESADDJ.COM new media art and open source culture » Reports

Report: BEAM Festival, Uxbridge, UK

Marco Donnarumma — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 13:14:21 +0000

Here we go.
Beam festival was a great event, no doubts.
It’s a pity I couldn’t give you a glimpse of the festival sooner, I’ve been travelling all summer; today I woke up and thought “hey, I’ve got time now, I could finally publish a report of BEAM!”.

BEAM Festival main venue

BEAM was organized by Sarah Nicolls and her team at Brunel University. BEAM (consistently) stands for Brunel electronic and analog music, and the event was pretty much about it. Curiously enough the main venue was a building named after Antonin Artaud.
Whereas the hospitality of the organization was very good and informal (and I do appreciate that, specially for “academic” events), the strongest aspect though was an incredibly heterogeneous, yet top-notch line up.
BEAM managed to bring together some of the most advanced – both aesthetically and technically – live acts around Europe. Me and Christos Michalakos were awarded a bursary for “outstanding work”, respectively for the pieces Music for Flesh II and Frrriction, and got to perform in the main, awesome concert hall along with old and new friends. Among the others, the line up included Stelarc, Atau Tanaka and Adam Parkinson (CultureLab, Newcastle), Ryan Jordan (Noise=Noise, London), Dj Sniff and Alex Nowitz (STEIM, Amsterdam), Ben Knapp and his team (SARC, Ireland), Chikashi Miyama (ZKM, Germany), your writer and my colleague Christos (SLE, Edinburgh).

Stelarc | Prosthetic Head

Atau Tanaka & Adam Parkinson | 4Hands iPhone

Ryan Jordan | Channelling interferences

Dj Sniff

Alex Nowitz

Philip Jeck giving a live solo set just before the sleepover

Chikashi Miyama | Angry Sparrow

Marco Donnarumma | Music for Flesh II

Christos Michalakos | Frrriction

The performances program was complemented by an equally interesting array of audio installations, workshops and hands-on DIY sessions. Some good and original ideas were materialized in the labyrinth-like corridors of the Artaud building – such as the Stroviols project – and I gladly realized that the workshop were actually a pretty important aspect of the event, offering several hours a day of open sessions hosted by the practitioners present at the event.

Audio installation at BEAM

Aleks Kolkowski | A noise of strohviols

DIY workshop session at BEAM

STEIM crackle box

I’m sorry the pictures are not the best, I struggled a bit with the lighting at the main venue, but I hope you can imagine the lovely mood.
I highly recommend to keep an eye on this event, Sarah seems to be already working on the next edition and also accepting proposals… I’m personally very much looking forward to it!

Report: Pure Data Mini Con, Trinity College, Dublin

Marco Donnarumma — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 22:57:05 +0000

We really had great times in Dublin.
This Irish Pd mini con was a small event, but an excellent review of some works(in-progress) made in Pd. Above all it was a good chance to meet face to face other Pd developers, which sadly does not happen so often as it should.

Many thanks to Rich Duckworth for the efforts in putting the event together.

My presentation concentrated on the research project Xth Sense, a bio-sensing hardware/software framework for the application of muscle sounds to biophysical generation and control of music, video and responsive milieux. I also performed a related solo sonic piece titled “Music for Flesh II”, see more info here.

My highlights of the event were the presentation by Ricky Graham “Performance system in Pd” and the Data Structure Workshop by Joao Pais, an active Pd’r based in Berlin and author of the jmmmp library for Pd extended.

Richard presentation focused on a study of musical gesture; specifically Richard is working on a complex system for live electric guitar which is well described in the video below:

Joao is also author of Click Tracker, “a program designed for composers, conductors and instrumentalists working with modern music. The main goal of the software is to prepare a click track of any score, no matter how complex it is”. Find further info here.

And finally, my impressions of the event. Hope next year will bring another Pd Con in UK!
See bottom page for links to the webpages of the artists involved.

David Collier | Paper Polyrhythms in Pd

Richard Graham | Paper Live Performance System in Pd

Roger Gregg and Rich Duckworth | Trash - Timbre

Softday | Sean Taylor and Mikael Fernstrom

Marco Donnarumma | Music for Flesh II (Xth Sense technology)

Pd workshop | Emer Landers, Niamh Mahoney and Nicola O'Dwyer

Workshop Data Structures in Pd | Joao Pais | Graphic Score

Rich Duckworth: http://bluespetroleum.blogspot.com/
Richard Graham: http://rickygraham.com/
Joao Pais: http://code.google.com/p/clicktracker/
Mikael Fernstrom: http://www.idc.ul.ie/mikael/
Softday: http://www.softday.ie/

Report: Piksel Festival, Bergen, Norway 2010

Marco Donnarumma — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 14:08:21 +0000

Knipsu | Welcome

In November I had the great pleasure to take part in the Piksel Festival 2010. I presented the work Golden Shield Music, a sonification of IT censorship technologies during a talk focused on the current state of IT censorship techs.

Piksel “is an international event for artists and developers working with Free/Libre and Open Source technologies in artistic practice. Part workshop, part festival, it is organized in Bergen, Norway,and involves participants from more than a dozen countries exchanging ideas, coding, presenting art and software projects, doing workshops, performances and discussions on the aesthetics and politics of free technologies & art.”
I would also outline that Piksel is above all a living community, both on-line and off-line, as in the “real world”; this is probably what most made me feel close to the spirit of the festival because it recalls the same approach we foster at the Live Performers Meeting annual event.

So here you go with a brief and picture-ful report.

At first sight Bergen looks like the perfect Christmas postcard: snow, mountains, frozen lakes and small lovely houses. However once you get in the “pikseler” state of mind, the city start changing too. The reception and communal venue was located at the Knipsu; this was the first meeting point for all artists, the place where you want to go if you wish to get in touch with people, see old friends, buy some very interesting FLOSS gems or have lunch!
Knipsu was also the home of some of the guerrilla, low cost, sound/radio art installation by Julien Ottavi and Jenny Pickett, which nicely dispersed sounds around the city.

Knipsu

Knipsu | Piksel program and stuff

Knipsu | FLOSS gadgets

Dinner time

Sadly I arrived in Bergen only on Friday, so you’ll miss here pictures and words from the first day of the event.
On Saturday at about 11.00 the Exquisite Code team met up at Knipsu to plan their day out, writing, feeling, perceiving space and share their experiences and words.
“For the performance at Piksel 2010″ they executed “a new distributed parallel algorithm where the writers are dispersed around Bergen within and without the festival space. Analog lookup tables dictate the physical routing or dead-drop of text-chunks.” At night, at the end of their exploration “writing is made visible via periodic reading machine interrupt processes which rupture the pedestrian life-program flow” and a bottle of wine (?) helped us celebrating.

Exquisite Code | Live Art

Pikselers at Knipsu

In the same morning Alexandre Torres Porres hosted a workshop dedicated to Spectral Analysis and Processing in Pure Data.
The workshop was very interesting and stimulating; Alexandre prepared some beautiful patches and examples which nicely led participants through such quite complex topic.
Interesting, well planned and very useful in order to shed some light on a topic which is often not that easy to grasp.

Spectral Analysis and Processing in Pure Data | Alexandre Torres Porres

Following Alexandre workshop I presented a research about the actual state of IT censorship technologies and a related work of mine Golden Shield Music. Piksel team published a full video of the talk on their blip.tv channel. You might want to check it out here or you might find interesting to dedicate few minutes to the reading of the accurate report of my presentation by Regine Debatty for WE MAKE MONEY NOT ART.
Aymeric Mansoux, Dave Griffiths, Marloes de Valk then talked about Naked on Pluto, a brand new multi-player text adventure game they developed for Facebook, and which is spreading right now among our FB profiles. Really worth giving it a try and read more about it.
The first evening performance FRUIT+EMOTION=NOISE, is an audiovisual show by Oscar de Carmen and Victor Mazon which deploys a 3rd generation hardware “capable of processing into sound the energy contained in fruits and vegetables discarded by supermarkets, through an electrochemical reaction.”

Fruit+emotion=noise | Oscar de Carmen and Victor Mazon

At 21.00 Eleonora Oreggia aka Xname opened the formal night event at USF, the venue dedicated to live audiovisual concerts and presentations.
Eleonora performed Phantasmata, concisely described by the author as “Empiric noise-at-a-distance, electronic circuits, pulsating lights.” A truly scary experience in noise and lights. Inspiring.

USF | Bergen

Phantasmata Setup | Eleonora Oreggia

Phantasmata | Eleonora Oreggia

Last performance hosted by Cristiano Rosa can be described as an orgy of DIY tools, hacked toys and whatever can produce sounds. A nice set supported by Servando Barreiro’s live videos. The night ended with a party, some dancy music, some nice glitchy sounds and lods of people having good times. Live stop-motion animation by Alexandre Quessy’s ToonLoop constitued an interesting highlight of the night party.

ToonLoop | Alexandre Quessy

Sunday, the last day. The schedule was pretty busy, so after a couple of workshop in the morning three different presentations took place. First off one of my favourite artist Alejandra Perez aka El Pueblo de China talked about Cartografia Sonora Antartica, an audiovisual project about a travel to Antartica, underwater field recording and a critical observation about the role of water and its commercialization worldwide.
Next was Claudius Maximus a Pure Data guru among his other manifold skills, as many of you might already know. He presented the amazing RDEX project “an installation and performance piece that explores in an autonomous hyperspace mathematical model, searching for interesting emergent behaviour (life-alike, alife).”

RDEX | Claudius Maximus

The following talk demonstrated the potential of “CHEAP, FAT + OPEN: an open source platform for musical exploration, composition and performance” by Jacob Sikker Remin and Jakob Bak. “A combination of the old and new: the raw 8bit / chip tune approach combined with wireless connectivity, state of the art open source hardware, and expandability – gives us that FAT sound.”
Night performances were great. First was HYLICS by Ryan Jordan and Geraldine McEwan: a blast of noise, distorted violin and strobo light, which I believe deserve to be indicated as the best live act at Piksel along with Slub, a breathtaking live coding performance by Alex McLean and Dave Griffith. Then we had the RDEX performance, the strong and disrespectful poetry/noise concert Degenerative Illetrism by Joachim Montessieus, Dystophonia, a stop-motion audiovisual performance by Quessy and Matthews and finally UKI, a viral performance by Shu Lea Cheang with Martin Howse and live improvised soniscape by various artists participating to Piksel, including your reporter here; personally the UKI experience has had a strong impact. We performed in a group of 7/8 artists, we didn’t have any rehearsal before the gig and, although we knew each other, not all of us knew perfectly what to expect. Eventually the audience seemed to have really appreciate the piece, which is very satisfying if you think that the whole performance last 70 minutes. More than one hour of noise, drone, cuts, screams and viral videos. Thanks to Shu Lea for organizing such amazing event.

Cheap Fat and Open | Jacob Bak

Hylics | Ryan Jordan and Geraldine McEwan

Hylics | Geraldine McEwan

Degenerative Illetrism | Joachim Montessuis

UKI | Shu Lea Cheang with Martin Howse | Soniscape by various Piksel artists

I think there couldn’t possibly be any better closing for the Piksel Festival. After being submerged by 70′ noise sound wall, we all gathered at the hotel and spent the night over some drinks, saying goodbye to who had to leave and exchanging last ideas and some Brazilian music (Thanks Alexandre!!).
Overall, I have to say I was positively impressed by the quality of contents and projects presented at Piksel. It’s surely one of the place to be if you are one of us geek interested in technological freedom and constructive criticism. Besides Piksel gives a great overview about the current state of the art of the audiovisual and new media field, with a special highlight on all those kind of works which you will never happen to see in any other major festival around.
Thanks so much to Elisabeth and Gisle and all the other people involved in the event.
Next year, get your flight ticket ready for Norway!

Jesus er en venn

Piksel video report: Sonification of IT censorship technologies

Marco Donnarumma — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 15:43:12 +0000

Golden Shield Music | Photo We Make Money Not Art | Piksel

Piksel team just released a full video of my recent presentation in Norway for Piksel 2010.
The talk focused on the current state of IT censorship technologies and a related sonification work titled Golden Shield Music.

Piksel team published other videos related to the exhibition, performances and presentations hosted at Piksel 2010.
You’ll find many interesting projects on the Piksel blip.tv channel.

Among the other projects you will also find the full video of UKI – a viral performance by Shu Lea Cheang with Martin Howse.

Sonicscape with participation of Piksel10 artists Oscar Martin Correa, Marco Donnarumma, Joachim Montessuis, Alejandra Perez, Eleonora Oreggia, Julien Ottavi.

Piksel Festival: http://piksel.no

Publication: “Reviewing Netaudio Festival Berlin 2009″ is online now

Marco Donnarumma — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 16:56:50 +0000

I’m forwarding here a message from Netaudio Berlin Festival Staff. They have been putting together a series of publication about the last edition of the festival, including reports, ideas and articles from all participants.
Looks an interesting reading, I also contributed with a report of the event (previously published here) and some personal observations about net-labels’ music and such.
More info below.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear friend, musician, netlabelhead, netaudio enthusiast, creative mastermind, visual aesthete and free thinker…

We would like to inform you about a new publication on the website of Netaudio Berlin which is finally ready. (At least the texts… the layout is not perfect yet

This publication has developed from the idea to keep hold of some personal perspectives, interesting anecdotes and developed ideas – alongside with some theoretical thoughts – as an outcome of the festival. And analogue to the colorful mixture of participants in the festival, we were able to tie a turbulent bundle of texts in style, types and perspectives. Most of them are very friendly and full of (personal) enthusiasm, others are meant to increase and develop the content, framework and general setup of the festival.

http://www.netaudioberlin.de/publications/introduction_antina/

Find the table of contents here:

http://www.netaudioberlin.de/publications/

You might leave comments on the texts if you like – and we would really love to read your remarks, footnotes and opinions. We are curious about any of your comments.
I will answer your Emails – but it can take a while – because of my final episodes in pregnancy… For urgent requirements please contact Raimund ( raimund@netaudioberlin.de ).

We kindly ask you to spread the word on your websites, social networks and where ever you think it’s relevant.

Best greetings,

Antina Michels and the netaudio team

P.S.: If you are still interested to purchase a Netaudio Book (“Netlabels - Soziale Netze On- & Offline”), please let me know. More info:
http://antinamichels.de/wordpress/?page_id=2

Check the article about the research and outcome in English in this publication:
http://www.netaudioberlin.de/publications/netaudio-scene-article_antina/

–

Netaudio Festival Berlin 2009
Antina Michels
Festival Management

Listen: High-Spheres, Participatory Soundscape Concert @ Re-New Festival, 2010

Marco Donnarumma — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 21:04:31 +0000

High Spheres - Marco Donnarumma - Re-new Festival 2010

I just uploaded an excerpt from 6 channels open air participatory soundscape concert “High Spheres” hosted at Re-new Festival, Copenhagen in May 2010.
The concert – performed by the audience and managed by an autonomous responsive system developed in Pd – took place for the opening of the festival and last around 40mins, with a late night reprise.

High-Spheres – Participatory Soundscape Concert 2010 by Marco Donnarumma

Further info about the project:
http://marcodonnarumma.com/works/high-spheres/

You might want to check the report with festival highlights here.

Report Pikslaverk Festival 2010, Pixelache Network, Iceland

Marco Donnarumma — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 22:33:13 +0000

Pikslaverk Festival | Iceland | 2010

In May I’ve been invited to Pikslaverk Festival in Reykjavik, Iceland, to present my work Golden Shield Music, a multi-channel generative sonification of IT censorship.
Pikslaverk is the Icelandic branch of the Pixelache Network which operates worldwide thanks to several organizations such as the almighty Piksel and its community.
Yes, I know, it’s probably very late for a report, but come on… better later than never.
Although I was really looking forward to my Icelandic journey, the arrival in Reykjavik was slightly weird. I was stopped and checked at the border by the local police for about 30′, with no explicit reason. I did not have anything illegal with me, fortunately. However after this warm welcome I suddenly faced an awful and hostile weather which did not help me rescuing the excitement.

Hostile weather | Iceland | 2010

Later on all my worries disappeared: I reached our lovely accommodation and eventually met long time friend Servando Barreiro along with the other international artists hosted for the event.
Once relaxed, chilled and excited again, I joined the group at the Reykjavik Art Museum for the first session of lectures.
The bad weather were still hiding the beauty of the city, but the modern, formal and cozy mood of the museum positively surprised me.

Reykjavik Art Museum | Pikslaverk Festival | Iceland | 2010

While Servando was setting up his performance for the opening of the festival, I got my chance to meet the organizers of the event and have a chat in the shiny library of the museum.
Margrét Elísabet Ólafsdóttir is an exquisite person and an excellent host, she’s also a curator working with digital and critical media. Aki Asgeirsson is a talented experimental composer and organizer for the Raflost festival. Curiously enough, we had already met a week before in Copenhagen as he have performed a concert at the Re-new Festival.

Servando Barreiro | Pikslaverk Festival | Iceland | 2010

Margrét Elisabet Olafsdottir & Aki Asgeirsson | Pikslaverk Festival | Iceland | 2010

Eventually Margrét formally opened the event and lectures started. Pall Thayer presented his Microcodes, “very small code-based artworks. Each one is a fully contained work of art. The conceptual meaning of each piece is revealed through a combination of the title, the code and the results of running them on a computer”. I had already viewed the work on-line, but the talk revealed some specific and interesting aspects of the research along with many practical examples. Make sure you check his website.
Then Servando performed an audiovisual self-destructive concert and the night ended with the hyper-fast and tense meta-talk by Goodiepal. I think I can’t really explain his presentation, probably any explanation won’t even make justice to the performance he made, but just think about 20mins of the fastest and most chaotic talk you can imagine, fill it with some real pragmatical and cynical considerations about modern electronic music as we know it and mix it with the exhibition of self-promoting hand-crafted gadgets such as toy-shaped vinyls, fake (?) theoretical handbooks and other lovely, weird objects.

Pall Thayer | Microcodes | Pikslaverk Festival | Iceland | 2010

Servando Barreiro | Pikslaverk Festival | Iceland | 2010

Goodiepal | Meta-talk | Pikslaverk Festival | Iceland | 2010

The day after we all met again at the Museum Hall for another session of lectures. Presentations were mostly focused on software “art” and a critical approach to the digital media in its widest conception. Martin Howse talked about his research projects amongst which I’d like to mention the brilliant Island2 “a free software application which creates a semi-permanent, isolated island in the computer’s memory”. I presented the Golden Shield Music project and I have to thank the audience and the other artists who outlined few criticism which I didn’t faced before, questioning the “liveness” of the generative system and proposing a theoretically endless accumulation of data instead of a static analysis of pre-recorded figures.
Next was Linda Hilfling who introduced a “TV-program in its literary meaning – a software executing local-tv-transmissions, where the code of the programme critically reflects on the premises of participatory media itself.” (I stole this quote from http://www.observatori.com/pages/ob.php?anim=0&lang=en&tid=3). Finally Rafael Hidalgo closed the session presenting his Personal Weather Sensation, a multimedia project researching the interaction between the weather and human feelings, aiming at the creation of a sonic reactive environment controlled by the variations of weather conditions in specific place around the world.

Marco Donnarumma | Pikslaverk Festival | Iceland | 2010 | Photo by Ser_

Linda Hilfling | Radical TV Democracy | Pikslaverk Festival | Iceland | 2010

Eventually we headed at the Reykjavik Academy of Fine Arts to attend the presentation by Juan Parra and the exhibition of student’s final projects included in the Raflost program.
The walk was amazing: 20/30 mins wandering along the open sea surrounded by most likely the widest sky I’ve ever seen.

Sky above us | Iceland | 2010

Servando Barreiro entering the Academy of Fine Arts | Iceland | 2010

Artwork? | Academy of Fine Arts | Iceland | 2010

The night after PIkslaverk was officially closed with few hours of live performances including myself and I C::ntr::l Nature audiovisual improvisational concert, Juan Parra quadriphonic concert, Martinka Bobrikova and Oscar de Carmen and some other interesting performances.
The following party ended in the morning and I exploited the industrial set of the location to make some improvised strictly geeky and conceptual mapping projections over the whole building structure using the latest mapping module for FLxER, free vjing and multimedia mixing software.

Setting up the venue for the closing night | Pikslaverk Festival | Iceland | 2010

Performance | Pikslaverk Festival | Iceland | 2010

Mapping projections with FLxER | Pikslaverk Festival | Iceland | 2010

We all couldn’t leave Iceland without seeing the legendary landscape around the island, so we rented a van and spent the whole final day driving around incredible views and alien scapes. Well, this would deserve another whole post, but… hey, I won’t describe my holiday!
I want to thank the organization of the event, Margrét and Aki, the other artists that shared with me such a great times in Reykjavik. I wish to come back soon on this awesome island.

Martin Howse staring at the geysir | Iceland | 2010

Report Pure Data Workshop at Electron Club, CCA, Glasgow

Marco Donnarumma — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 22:27:01 +0000

About three weeks ago me and Ioann Maria held a two days, free Pure Data workshop at Electron Club.
I gave an introduction of the graphical programming framework of Pd, audio and video real-time processing libraries and their possible applications, Ioann showed her DIY HRM – heart rate monitor – and eventually explained how to use Arduino in combination with Pd.
We had great times with folks in Glasgow and we are going to gather again this week for our second Pure Data Scots Users MeetUp. Come and join us if you’re around, the meeting is open to beginners, practitioners, passionates whoever might be interested in spending few hours chatting, patching and making some noise.

I’d like to thank Simon Yull for his support in the organization of the workshop, the CCA staff for their help and all the people who showed up.
Here you are some photos.

Live Media Updates June

Marco Donnarumma — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 11:21:23 +0000

Brand-new issue of the on-line newsletter brought to you by thesaddj.com; new media and open source related art works, events and people.

Tags: openlab, piksel, re-new festival, mapping festival, arduino, content, live performers meeting, net art, online performance.
Read it here http://www.thesaddj.com/newsletter/june10/index.html.

Re-New Digital Art Festival Report

Marco Donnarumma — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 12:41:12 +0000

Just after my audiovisual concert at Mapping Festival I flight to Copenhagen for Re-New Digital Arts Festival, a mostly sound art-focused four days annual event.
The overall quality of the selected works was impressive and the organization was unexceptionable.
Once unpacked my stuff at the hotel I had a lovely walk through Copenhagen and shortly reached Huset i Magstraede, the main location of the event which is nicely located in the old center of the Danish city.

Bad Religion Still Alive! | Copenhagen | 2010

I didn’t even had the time to sit down and connect my laptop I immediately noticed a guy working with an Arduino box, that’s how I got to know brasilian digital artist Henrique Roscoe aka HOL and his interactive creature “Shy”. Henrique is a lovely person and talented guy, he also organizes the FAD festival in Belo Horizonte, Brasil.

HOL | Shy | Re-New Festival 2010

One hour later I started setting up the participative concert and interactive sound installation “High Spheres”. Thanks to the kind support of sound technician and the organizers everything went smoothly and in a couple of hours the setup was ready. My work was programmed for the opening of the festival, I spent thus last hour modifying the Pure Data patch to adapt it to the open air environment in front of Huset.

Marco Donnarumma | High Spheres | Re-New Festival 2010

Great timing, great weather, great location. I was also quite happy to use for the first time in public my brand new multi-channel sound card. A powerful Focusrite Saffire Pro40, 20 I/O, 8 Pre-amplified I/O and a lot of quality components. Worked like a charm.
Around 19.00 audience started to gather in the main garden and the participative concert could start.
Audience was really excited about the work and I gladly noticed how children and elderly people were equally interested and attracted by the improvised sound interaction provided by my self-designed system. A local TV operator was there too shooting the concert.

Marco Donnarumma | High Spheres | Re-New Festival 2010

Personally the most interesting aspect of this work is to see how different people relate to sound. You know, children were posing and screaming without caring too much about what kind of sounds they could produce, some of the participants were really curious and started looking around for different objects to use, some of them were really shy and were almost hiding while producing tiny silent sounds, some people was totally seduced by the collective interaction, some others were just trying to get loud. This is probably what the work is about, a collective improvisation, a almost unaware group ritual, during which every single individuals is connected to each other in reaction chain.

I should surely mention few other works.
Ryo Ikeshiro presented “Pulse Cubes” an interactive installation based on tiny greatly-designed black cubes tracking. The user can set the cubes in patterns over a white table as their position generates granular and organic sounds in real-time.

Ryo Ikeshiro | Pulse Cubes | Re-New Festival 2010

The main Huset hall was animated by “He” a music-drawing installation by New York based artists Hsin Yi Chien and Laewoo Kang. A beautifully crafted drawing machine was setup with a luminance tracking system – developed in Processing – which translated calligraphy into music.

Hsin Yi Chien Laewoo Kang | He | Re-New Festival 2010

Last but not least the amazing installation “Intrinsic” by York based artist Angie Atmadjaja and presented at Re-New by Michael Cheung. The work is based on the sound phenomena known as Standing Waves.
I warmly reccomend to check the work’s website here.

Angie Atmadjaja | Intrinsic | Re-New Festival 2010

Great event and stunning works. Special thanks to Lars Graugaard and Anne Bogh for their beautiful hospitality and great work.

Live Performers Meeting 2010 First Pics Online

Marco Donnarumma — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 13:56:26 +0000

We would like to thank all of you for participating in LPM 2010, also this year your contribution has been fundamental to the excellent success of the meeting.
We are collecting videos and pictures of the event to start working on the next LPM 2011 edition. Some pics are online now!

http://www.liveperformersmeeting.net/2010/en/gallery/

3.0 audio visual excerpt of I C::ntr::l Nature

Marco Donnarumma — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:02:31 +0000

Some time ago I published this new, brief excerpt of the final version of the audiovisual concert I C::ntr::l Nature. See the video below.

The performance is based on the self-designed software C::NTR::L, developed in the Pure Data graphical environment and available for download here. Performance was recorded live at roBOT Festival September 2009 in Bologna, Italy, camera by Carlotta Piccinini - Visual_Lab.

I C::ntr::l Nature v. 3 excerpts – augmented bass guitar improvisation 2009 from Marco Donnarumma aka TheSAD on Vimeo.

Pure Data for Live Media workshop Cagliari Conservatory

Marco Donnarumma — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 22:32:24 +0000

Just came back from a three days in-depth workshop at Pierluigi da Palestrina Conservatory in Cagliari, Italy. This time the course focused on dataflow practices for Live Media.
The course has been organized by Spaziomusica Association during the annual festival Music in Touch, which every year creates new connections among traditional musical composition and new technologies featuring concerts and installation projects by established composers and new media professionals.
The atmosphere in Cagliari was cozy and warm. We could enjoy an early spring, a shiny sun and almost 20 degrees.

Participants were MA students of the Electronic Music, Music and New Technology and Electroacoustic Music courses. They were extremely interested in Pure Data and dataflow techniques, although for most of them it was the first direct approach with a graphical programming environment. After a brief audiovisual review of some interesting works ranging from live performances to experimental videos, we started with the basic of Pd, building simple processes in order to give a clear idea of real-time data processing.
Then I slightly forced them to get their hands dirty with some real-time video processing and few common idioms for audio synthesis and manipulation. I used the term “forced” because I did not give them any ready patch, but explaining step-by-step simple processes we built together useful examples.

Their responsiveness was awesome and with my great satisfaction we went through the main topics of the course pretty fast. In the end we also had time to have a chat about network data exchange, i.e. OSC, wi-fi server and client communication protocols, and later on few participants were already having fun exchanging data through the conservatory network or talking to a Monome.

In the end I made a brief talk explaining the most typical setup for live audiovisual performance and how to implement all the techniques we just learned into an actual audiovisual concert; single player with a musical instrument controlling MIDI and/or OSC hardware, two players exchanging audio and video data over a network and a quintet including different instruments, a server machine receiving and organizing data coming from few clients, creating feedback interactions among each player of the group.

On the first night I also had the chance to attend to an amazing concert of a traditional choir from Sardinia. Apart from the breathtaking location – S. Saturnino’s church – the experience of listening to a live performance of this kind is something unbelievable. The strength of their five voices, the incredible harmony they were able to create was something I can’t describe. Perhaps I felt the same feelings when for the first time I had the chance to listen an organ playing in a cathedral. Your body physically “feels” the sound, the acoustic energy in all its force.

I have to say I really enjoyed my time in Cagliari, probably I was missing a beautiful sky and a “normal” temperature, but for sure the wonderful hospitality of few friends played the most important role. Thus I have to say thank you to the Signorafranca guys and Riccardo, and Fabrizio Caglia for the excellent organization of the course. Hope to come back soon to Sardinia and maybe see some works of my students…

Kuoyàh London mastering session

Marco Donnarumma — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:31:26 +0000

Two days ago I went to London to hook up with dj Oslek – owner at Frijsfo Beats, Uk – and Sully for the mastering session of my upcoming vinyl Ep. The work will be published under my second moniker “Kuoyàh”, kind of secret alterego producing futuristic bass music. Check some tunes here http://www.soundcloud.com/kuoyah.
Thus I had the chance to spend few hours in the excellent mastering studio at Air Studios, Hampstead.

Sound engineer Matt Colton made a brilliant job and you can imagine the great pleasure one feels while sitting in a professional studio surrounded by powerful analog machines, hyper quality – huge – studio monitors and good friends. I must say I still dream about this TAD studio monitors.

We were supposed to cut the vinyl right there, unfortunately due to a temporary issue we couldn’t, but I had the chance to take a closer look to the cutting equipment.

The release should be out in the records shop in March, so keep an eye on it. More infos will follow soon.
Tracklist:
A1_Angels Dub
A2_Asia
B1_Soldiers
B2_Angels Sully Remix

Take a listen to the unmastered tracks on my soundcloud profile http://soundcloud.com/kuoyah. You will also find some unreleased material. If you use soundcloud feel free to add me, I think it is a lovely network for musicians.

Other links:
http://frijsfo.com/
http://www.myspace.com/kuoyah
http://www.myspace.com/sullysg6

Pd workshop and Live performance @ AHAcktitude

Marco Donnarumma — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:28:08 +0000

I have been away from the blog for a while now, my apologies. January became definitely busy since its first day and I didn’t have time to proper dedicate myself to writing. Let’s also say I deserved few holidays…

Then let’s start where we left.

It’s December 2009 and I’m flying to Milan to participate to “AHAcktitude ’09, the second collective meeting of the aha@ecn.org mailing list community, one of the lists hosted by the historical independent server Isole Nella Rete (Islands in the Net), and funding element of the networking project AHA:Activism-Hacking-Artivism.
By adopting the same strategy as Hackmeetings, AHAcktitude is organised and managed directly by the participants who can propose and share seminars or projects via the aha@lists.ecn.org list. AHAcktitude began as a space for dialogue and sharing, with the purpose of learning and spreading practices and knowledge in a free environment.” via AHA website.
I contributed to the event holding a Pd workshop at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts together with Luca Carrubba – Husk and Eleonora Oreggia – xname – we presented our self-designed sofware for audiovideo processing ans streaming (C::NTR::L, Qeve and Virtual Entity) and I also had the chance to perform the latest version of ‘I C::ntr::l Nature’ alongside with Otolab and MSST (Glerm Soares, Ricardo Brazileiro and Husk).

The programme of the event was full of contents and activities, panels and workshops, you can get a glimpse here.

Report PureData workshop AgitMedia Italy

Marco Donnarumma — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:01:01 +0000

I just came back from Brescia where I held a two-days PureData workshop. Our class featured 16 students from North Italy and for almost all of them was the first time they get their hands dirty with a graphical programming environment.
I introduced the Pd language, therefore we went through an introduction to sound creation with sonic dataflow processes.

The most interesting aspect of the workshop has been to open up the student’s minds to the unknown field of free creation. Some of them were already doing music and few experiments in sound with proprietary softwares, but none of them was actually aware of the potential of a free environment for sound design and music production and the completely different approach it requires.

Their reactions has been diverse, but in general most of them were pretty excited about the idea to be – so unexpectedly – free to practically draw on a canvas the ideas they had in their mind. One becomes aware that he doesn’t have to do what Ableton or Reason tell one can do, instead one can take over these closed paths and re-think from scratch his own concept of “creation”.

These two days were only the first half of the whole workshop we planned together with Husk (Italian Pd developer and hacktivist). On 5 and 6 December he’s going to introduce the Pd video libraries, i.e. GEM, PDP and Gridflow. In the end of the four days participants should have a basic, solid knowledge about Pd environment and hopefully some of them will bring forward the project they started during the course.

Special thanks to Davide Anni and Anna Guzzi (Ualuba Association and LABA) for their awesome hospitality and their great efforts in making this workshop happen. Unfortunately most of the italian educational institutions still seems to be allarmingly blind towards open/free tools for artistic creation, even though they are nowadays commonly used by many artists in different fields of research. I hope someone “up there” will finally open his eyes from now on, setting italian students free to learn.

Netaudio Festival 2009 Report

Marco Donnarumma — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:05:12 +0000

All pictures by Joanna M. Stacewicz, thank you!

Berlin. Wonderful as always.

I visited again the city 3 weeks ago to play the audiovisual concert ‘I C::ntr::l Nature’ - selected for the day program of Netaudio Festival.

I went there together with Joanna M. Stacewicz for few days and we had the chance to live one of the (probably) last days of full warm sun before the winter.

Our expectations about Netaudio Festival were pretty high… probably too high. Wait… i’m not talking about the organization but about the musical offer.
The event was really well organized and it was clear the amount of efforts the staff had to face in order to make everything work. I want to thank all the staff for making this happen. People were great and we all had nice times, but the only thing that i found unsatisfactory was the line-up policy of the event.

Probably i just wasn’t considering the complete spectrum of a “netaudio-only” event. The line-up was almost completely dedicated to dance live acts (or dj sets), dancy electronica, dancy idm, dancy dubstep, techno, and some live pop bands.

Don’t misunderstand me… i like to dance, but i largely prefer to discover new sounds, new approaches to music, innovative reflections of sounds and technology.

This actually made me think a lot about Netaudio scene and how I relate myself to it. Why do i listen to free music? Because it’s free – free as in beer? Because i don’t want to spend my money for music?
No, i don’t think so. Probably i listen to free music ’cause i seek for an added value that can somehow guarantee a different approach to music composition, and hearing experience.
Probably i would like to see a Netaudio festival dedicated to music free as in freedom. The freedom to create music and sounds that are going beyond my everyday perception of techno-glitch, pop-kraut-rock, hip-top raggae dance-hall. Music is much more than this, music is not only something to have fun with, but i believe it is a relevant aspect of our everyday learning process, so that it doesn’t have to be undervalued.

Anyway, excluding my personal complains, I happily performed the 3rd version of the audiovisual concert for augmented bass guitar and butterfly and introduced the free software C::NTR::L. Thanks Georg – from Pure Data mailing list – for dropping by!

We had the pleasure to meet many old friends after quite a time. The almighty Dr.Nojoke was there (thanks for hosting us and being our light in Berlin!) – he played a really interesting live set under the moniker Trioon together with the common friend Servando Barreiro and JLab - and the omnipresent Visual Berlin collective was contributing to the event with quality live visual shows by Flux, Fred, Oigovisiones, E-Gruppe, Pixelnoizz, Yagama.

We had also the chance to get to know Fernando Fonseca (Public Spaces) who played one of the most interesting acts in whole the festival. A weird coincidence made me play exactly before his set, thus we met and found out many common ideas. Finally we had also the time to go out for dinner altogether and release our minds from too high thoughts hanging around Kreuzberg for 40′ looking for a place where to eat.
Actually i’m forgetting about another interesting project developed by Netaudio organization: The Berlin Wall of Sound. People were invited to record field sounds around the Berlin Wall to create a Berlin Wall sound map. The map was physically available as touch screen installation inside the main room of the venue ( http://www.netaudioberlin.de/berlin-wall-of-sound/ ).

All in all i’m glad to have participated and contributed to this event. All critics and doubts expressed in this article don’t have to be perceived as a provocation, not at all. I only try to stimulate constructive discussions and thoughts, since this is what we are here for…
Should i sit all the day long mesmerizing myself thinking how beautiful is life?

Nahh… that’s not for me. Please, feel free to write few lines about your idea of free music and whatever could be related to it. I definitely wish to know your opinion and keep on the conversation.

Report roBOT Festival 2009 Bologna

Marco Donnarumma — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 18:11:48 +0000

Thanks Bologna!
I had definitely great days in there. The roBOT festival – organized by Shape Association – took place at Palazzo Re Enzo – Bologna – one of the most beautiful ancient building in Bologna and probably in whole Italy.

Look at the ‘Sala del Podestà’ picture below to get a glimpse about the rest of the building. Something awesome.
The festival is more clubbing oriented, but since this year they established a call for works located in the experimental audiovisual field.
That’s how i got to participate alongside with Ape5+Eraser, EricaIlCane, Saul Saguatti, Teatrino Elettrico and Pixelnoizz.
I could enjoy a warm and quiet atmosphere and nice chats with the technical staff (in the picture).
You know? one of the best thing that can happen to an artist going to perform somewhere is to get in touch with professional, friendly technicians who understand his needs… and that’s what has happened.

On Wednesday, the opening was reserved to Carl Craig and his SHAPE project. Highly acclaimed musical project connecting and blending techno and classical musical languages. On Thursday has started the experimental section of roBOT with the first three performances including me, Pixelnoizz and EricaIlCane.
I made a shorter performance, trying to understand how to relate with the space of the huge concert hall. It hasn’t been easy to understand how to play in such a space, where the sound jump from one side of the roof to another, like playing in a big Gothic church.
EricaIlCane and his crew has showed ‘Piove, Governo Ladro’ an evocative imagery, sometimes more decorative sometimes more dreamy. Playing inside of a semi-transparent box they have spread some interesting noise with four audio channels surrounding the installation.

In between on Friday i had the chance to get to know the american artist John Duncan. Incredibly he was holding an informal meeting with some young artists at the same place where i’ve been hosted (Nosadella.2 – residency for artists and curator).
So i participate to the meeting with him and Melissa Pasut and in the end we spent the night together with a lovely dinner and other friend Elisa DelPrete. It’s useless to say it has been an inspiring meeting.

Finally on Saturday I’ve met a lot of old friends and I’ve also met for the first time the Italian artists Ape5 and Eraser. They proposed their latest performance ‘Future sounds like Past Toys’ mixing the ethereal music of Eraser (heavy circuit bending on old toys) with a glitch visual imagery provided by Ape5.

Then i repeated my performance ‘I C::ntr::l Nature’ - audiovisual improvisation for augmented electric bass guitar, butterfly and self-designed software C::NTR::L, Pure Data based - and i have to say it has been one of the best performance I’ve ever made since I’m traveling around with this project.
I was feeling this kind of emotive tension who often push a creative mind to get out his best.
The sound was finally as i wish it would have been and a lot of people showed up to attend to the concert.
I’m usually really critic towards my concerts but this time I’ve felt something too good around, maybe the presence of many friends, maybe the great location, maybe the proper astral plane connections… anyway the show was strong and impressive.

My friend Carlotta Piccinini from Visuallab has been so kind to shoot almost all the performance with an excellent camera, so be patient and expect a new video reel from the performance.

After the performances (including also Byetone who was performing at my same time, I would have loved to attend) everybody has moved to the Link for the last club night of the festival. Nice time in there supporting old good friends Vj Hash and Sapo during their vj set, and around 5am everybody has jumped in the car driving back home.

Once again Sunday has come and I’ve taken the last tour around the city, sitting in a park and enjoying the last rays of sun – because in Milan the rain was waiting for me.
I end the report with this picture: a public park in Bologna dedicated to the 11st September 2001.
I’ve the maximum respect for that event (and also a lot of doubts and anxiety), but could you tell me why in Italy we should dedicate a park to this date???
Sorry but i cannot agree with that.

Thanks to all the people from roBOT staff – Marcella, Federica and all the technical staff – and thanks also to all the people who showed up for my concert. It means a lot to me, especially here in Italy.

Pure Data Convention ’09 Live Recordings

Marco Donnarumma — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 14:53:55 +0000

I’m really glad to share with you the live recording of my most recent audiovisual concert I C::ntr::l Nature at Pure Data Convention 2009, Sao Paulo, Brasil. The only sonic source is my bass guitar augmented by the self-designed software C::NTR::L v.1.3.

Many thanks to Henrique Iwao for his efforts during the convention and for being so patient to record and order (all?) the performances at Pd Con.

You can listen to the concert with the player below. If you want to download it for free check my download page.

TheSAD – I C::ntr::l Nature Live @ Pure Data Convention 23-07-09 by TheSAD

Besides you may be interested in visiting the unofficial archive of Pd Convention performances at this address http://sussurro.musica.ufrj.br/pdcon09/material.html.
All the material is kindly hosted by sussurro.musica.ufrj.br – Biblioteca Musical Digital do Laboratório de Música e Tecnologia da Escola de Música da UFRJ.

Live Media Updates Sept09

Marco Donnarumma — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 08:34:14 +0000

I just created kind of online newsletter where to keep you updated about upcoming events and where to collect all the articles from the past months, if you feel like you lost something.

So feel free to enjoy http://www.thesaddj.com/newsletter/sept09/index.html

This page does not substitute the normal newsletter you receive once every two months, but is just a less invasive way to inform more people about what is going in the lab.

Thanks!

Report Pd Convention 09, Sao Paulo

Marco Donnarumma — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:47:21 +0000

Online the pictures from the third international Pure data Convention in Sao Paulo, Brasil, where i performed the audiovisual piece ‘I C::ntr::l Nature’ and presented the free, open source software C::NTR::L – Pd-based.

Much thanks to Alexandre, Paloma, Cristiano, Palm, Cybelle and all the staff for the big efforts to make this happen. Great experience for all of us and relevant effort to enhance the free culture in Brasil.

Check the gallery here: ../pics

More infos: www.pdcon.org

Report S-Block Festival

Marco Donnarumma — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 19:20:26 +0000

Here you are with a bit of delay the report about S-Block Festival.
The event has been organized by Plattform fuer aktuelle Musik and it took place at Interventionsraum in the very heart of Stuttgart. It has been my second time in the city and also this time i had the pleasure to enjoy a good dose of high quality experimental music.

Antenna Research opened the event with their concrete concert based on antennas and old radio. Pure noise eclectism and sane irony deadful mixture!

I definetely love spending days in Germany at experimental music events ’cause i always see things that i’m sure i won’t be able to see anywhere else. Don’t know if it’s all about my “mith” of Germany, but i can assure the”experimental” matter there has really a deep sense and clear imprint. Maybe it’s all about originality and the way to express it…

Coming next we had the DuoB – free, improvisational jazz duet from United States. They provided a huge concert, impossible to describe it, but just imagine 1.5 hour of free improvisation on drums (played in every way you can imagine) and double-bass, supported by impervious and theatrical readings by Pedro Cofrè from Chile.

We didn’t have the time to recover our mind from the intuitional free reading/jazz of DuoB, and Christine Sehnaoui started her solo performance/radical improvisation at saxophone. She’s one of the most professional improvisers i’ve ever seen playing live, i highly suggest to check her work. Great presence on stage and awesome confidence with her instrument.

On the second day of the event, after having a beautiful breakfast with the other artists, we reached again the venue for another session. This time Ezramo opened the night… It has been a lovely experience, from subtle mystic moments to ethnic derivations and electroacoustic breackdowns.

Following we had Experimentelles Musiktheater: „The International Besetztzeichen“. An experimental theater/live noise piece for three actors, performed by Oliver Prechtl and Philipp Golm (Stuttgart). Unfortunately i didn’t get any picture of their show.
I had the hard duty to close the festival with the audiovisual work “I C::ntr::l Nature” - solo piece for augmented bass guitar and self-designed software C::NTR::L. It has been a pleasure to play in front of the many people came to see the performance. The tiny and cosy venue of the festival was overloaded of people all around me… lovin’ it!

Thanks Stuttgart and thanks once again to Ezramo and Wendelin Buechler who organized such an inspirational event, and good luck guys for your future projects!

LINKS:
http://www.thesaddj.com/s-block-festival-advanced-music-and-live-audiovisual-art/
http://www.thesaddj.com/icontrolnature
http://interventionsraum.de/sblockfestival.html
http://interventionsraum.de
http://www.myspace.com/maxexperimentell

Report Pure Data Workshop, Gotland University, Sweden

Marco Donnarumma — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 19:16:29 +0000

Here you are the photo report from the Pure Data workshop i held with Deftoo at Gotland University, Institute for Technology, Art and New Media in Sweden.

It has been an intensive experience, 10 participants, 2 days, 16 hours and a lot of lab sessions.

I had the pleasure to show the potential and the basic dataflow strategies of Pure Data to the professors of the wellknown swedish Game Development & Design department, infact the workshop was focused on real-time audiovisual processing for Game Development and Narrative Media.

Special thanks to Iwona Hrynczenko for organization and to UlfBen for additional pictures

Click here to see the photo gallery: http://www.thesaddj.com/pics/

Report Ausklang Festival

Marco Donnarumma — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:04:44 +0000

Here i am, after a long stop. Many unexpected events didn’t allow me to keep on writing continuosly.
So i had the pleasure to spend few days in Hamburg in the end of the 2008 to take part in the annual Ausklang festival. The festival is the reference meeting point for the local experimental scene. Every year some representative artists from the Hamburg scene plus two foreigners artists play their shows at Hoerbar, an old cinema out of use, recycled in a unique way by the organizators. The Hoerbar is one of this cultural spaces that are slowly disappearing in Europe.
They organize concerts every week and a real community of artists and passionate of experimental music and media is living and sharing ideas and ispirations in a familiar and warm atmosphere. totally out of any kind business mentality, but only focusing on the pure passion for the sound. I remember some places like that in Italy a long long time ago, some old memories which makes me nostalgic.

During the Ausklang Festival you can also enjoy and taste one of the best experimental music collection i’ve ever seen out there, thanks to some kind guys running their own music distribution service. They come at Hoerbar and build there this unique exhibition of incredibly rare materials, cassettes, cd, minitapes, dvd, minicd … you’ll find there every kind of support you can imagine, and every kind of experimental music you have always dreamed of. I was embarassed for two days cause i didn’t know what to buy,… i would have bought everything!!

The line-up of the festival show an excellent quality. Many different approaches to experimental music made this festival a little but amazing showcase of arts.

Trautonia Capra (voce, synth, gothic electronics)

Napalmed (historical free-jazz, noise, harshcore duo from Czech Rep.)

Felix Kubin (Futuristic experimental pop musik from Hamburg)

Unfortunately i wasn’t able to make pictures of his show. He created a nice atmosphere with his hyper-delicate electronic music and a live score of an ancient black&white movie.

On the second day…

The SAD (nowave/visual/noise free audiovisual improvisation from Italy)

Bruno&Michelle are smiling (hironic high-speed pop from Hamburg)

Asmus Tietchens (Electronic music, soundscape)

Special thanks to Stefan and Robert at Hoerbar for taking care of me and to Kera&Andrè from Incite!! great times in Hamburg thanks to you all…

more infos: http://www.hoerbar-ev.de/en/

C::NTR::L live AV physical computing

Marco Donnarumma — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 10:34:48 +0000

C::NTR::L AV augmented bass guitar improvisation from TheSAD on Vimeo.

Live action of audiovisual improvisation.
This work is performed with the electric bass guitar and the custom-made software C::NTR::L, Human-Computer Interface for physical computing i developed in Pure Data.
This was the first time i test the version 1.0 of C::NTR::L (feat. audiovideo modules and efx triggered in real-time by your partiture), and i can say it seems it works pretty good.
But please, share your ideas about it…im trying to develop the software for public use (also for no-pd’r).
for more infos about the soft please visit thesaddj.com/icontrolnature or send me a message here.
I’m not so happy of the compression of Vimeo, a better quality video can be found here:
thesad.blip.tv

Report Cinesthesy 1.0

Marco Donnarumma — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 15:51:11 +0000

Via: Cinesthesy Blog

SATI

Petite scène – installation Eile (Yroyto)

Démolécularisation (project singe)

Etichettadiscografica

REP

THE SAD

Olivier Moreau (Directeur Adjoint Centre Rebérioux), Yroyto (Directeur Artistique)

Présentation de Digital HipHop – création avec les jeunes du quartier avec le vidéaste Jesse Lucas et la cie de danse Masala

EILE (Yroyto)

CINEMASSAKER

OTOLAB

INCITE/

RAFAEL

Entre deux performances.

Yroyto – coordinateur des Pixels Transversaux

SOLU&ARBOL

Amélie Dessaux

Gildas & Yroyto (préparation du streaming)

BOULEZ REPUBLIC GRAND ENSEMBLE

Présentation du Monome avec Iduun

IDUUN

WORKSHOP RESOLUME 3

JUSTE ALICE 02

Présentation Codanova

Report Lisbon gigs

Marco Donnarumma — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 12:52:00 +0000

Arrive on the 9th night at Lisbon airport expecting 4 full days of audiovisual, friends and wonderful landscape. Coming back almost straight from Puerto Rico seminary, it was really natural to catch a lot of similarities between S.Juan and Lisbon. Both cities so colourful, so slow and amazingly submerged by the sun.

I met there my friend Paky, Marisa and Nuno. Paky plays live video in our audiovisual performance Too Many Pests and Marisa and Nuno are working with live visual too under the name Uninvited Screw Vjs – http://www.myspace.com/uninvitedscrewvjs.
Didn’t have so much time to visit the city, on the 10th we had our first show at O Seculo for the last take of InterAcção, monthly review about audiovisual live performance organized by the super kind and energyful Elsa Vieira – Roguewaves.net.

O Seculo is a cool location situated near the Bairro Alto in Lisbon. The place is set up with 7 projectors, nice sound system and a familiar atmosphere: chairs, tables and sofa.
Few people there watching our show, but good and relaxed atmosphere. In the end talking with Paky we recognized that was probably the best performance we made with TMP project.
I will always remember the ugly climb coming back from O Seculo with all the hardware, believe me!

The day after we had the second show at Crew Hassan, great squatt-cooperativa cultural in the center of Lisbon. The place looks like a big house set up with bar, sofas all around, a room for live show and dj/vj sets, chill out room and many funny people & objects. After an interesting conference about architecture and society we played again Too Many Pests. Set up on the floor, big projection in front of us and more people interested in the work.

They told me that the show was catching their attention because of the cool union between my aggressive electronic tunes and the massive antisocial video flow of Mr. Paki.
Nice to know… After the performance we finally had great times all toghether with Uninvited Screw Vjs playing live video jam session on two projectors giving body to the funky selection of Dj Sly.

The last two days were the most relaxing. Hanging around the city, eating well, going to clubs. Well done!
My last cool memories are about this wonderful terrace which overtop the city of Lisbon. An amazing open view of the buildings and the estuario… check this and imagine a super strong wind blowing in your hairs… amazing.

You can check all the pictures of these fou days in the European Tour 2008 gallery, click here.
Soulful thanks to Marisa, Nuno, Elsa and all the other people who made us enjoy this brief but colourful journey to Lisbon..
dois bolas?

Video&Pics report of LPM 2008, Roma

Marco Donnarumma — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 13:41:05 +0000

Here you are… now on-line video&pics report of this 5th edition of LPM – Live Performers Meeting, the broadest meeting in Italy focused on audiovideo live performance and live videos.

Location Ex Mattatoio, Roma.
Organized by FLxER team.

257 artists from 21 different countries, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, France, Germany, Turkey, Argentina, Japan, Lithuania, Guatemala, Sweden, Algeria, Austria, Switzerland playing 142 show and performances

LPM videos&Pics Official Gallery
Hope you enjoy!

Video Report The !S.A.D! live@Cox18, Milano

Marco Donnarumma — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 19:06:20 +0000

Here you are a video report of my liveset at Cox18 (Milano) at the event called Resistance Beats hosted by Microplatform, w/ Leleprox, Blackbeat and Timelapses.
The Cox18 staff is the author of this interesting clip shooted with a web-cam sticked on my midi controller and mixed in real-time with live video mixing. Audio is recorded live.
Thanks guys! cool work!..

Report Max.Experimentell #5

Marco Donnarumma — Sun, 25 May 2008 10:01:37 +0000

Arrive in Stuttgart quiet early in the afternoon. Meet up with Ezramo (Alessandra Eramo), take the metro and arrive at Atelierhaus. A lovely building in Stuttgart fit with atelier of different artists. Meet Wendelin Büchler and all toghether we go to have a kebab and a beer.
This is how started my two days experience at Max.Experimentell, monthly review about experimental music, noise, live improvising and multimedia in Stuttgart & Ludwigsburg (DE) who have already hosted such great musicians as Gino Robair (US), Polvere (IT).
On the first night of this 5th edition of the review Ezramo&Büchler duo invited me and others german artists at their atelier in Stuttgart to have a jam session all night long. The atmosphere was great…

The !S.A.D! – bass, live electronics
Ezramo – Vocal, live electronics
Wendelin Büchler – Guitar, live electronics
Michael Jotter – Undefined phonetic objects
Jörg Koch – Bass, live electronics
plus more guests…

All in a circle we played toghether improvised soundscapes, sound texture, music for several hours, and a close, hyper-interested public has contribute to create a familiar, but warm and professional situation. Soon i should be able to upload the live recordings from that night.
The day after was even better…

We moved to Ludwigsburg, a small nice town really close to Stuttgart, and after a semi-italian breakfast and some stimulating and passionate conversations we arrived to Max.Strasse, wonderful bar and exhibition space in Maxstrasse eins in Ludwigsburg.
I started to setup everything for my audiovisual improvising performance I C::ntr::l Nature in the gallery, and after a while arrived also Jörg Koch, Barbara and Mark Kysela, great improvised music trio from Stuttgart.

At nine and a half the show began!
Kysela&Jörg Koch trio let us taste their sound research at the borders between noise-music, spoken words, concrete poetry and Wintermächen. For me it was one of the best concerts i’ve ever seen. A great tension during all the liveset, sonic gestures, real-time processing of prepared harp, saxophone and objects, plus a great and brilliant auto-irony.
Not a simple performance but they made it human, funny and intensive… public was amazed.

Then it’s my turn!
I was a bit anxious about this performance cause public was totally formed by experienced artists and also ’cause i had to fix some technical problems due to my last performance in Paris at Vision(‘R)Sonic.
In the end i sitted on the floor, among my bass, laptop and sound objects and all the people came to sit close to me. The space was great and contribute in a relevant way to the success of the performance. After few minutes of uncertainty i started to feel the positive tension grow in me and in the public’s eyes and i started to C::ntr::l my butterflies.
Half an hour later people was clapping hands in one of the warmest way that i have ever felt arond my gigs. I explained the whole project around I C::ntr::l Nature, the custom made software i want to publish for free and so on, and people get so interested!
When i finished my brief speech people was so excited that i was asked to play some more music… so i abandoned myself to an intimate, noisy and melancholic introspection…

After i ended the performance four, five people (among them Rue- german musician) came to me asking more infos about the project and we had some really constructive conversations… it was such a great satisfaction for me, and i learned a lot from the words that were flowing that night.
In the end we had some more beers, exchanged Max and PD patches with Jörg Koch, connected people with Kyselas, Ezramo, Wendelin and myself, talked a bit more with Joanna, the amazing person who also run Max.Strasse and finally got home for my last night in Stuttgart.

Special thanks to all the people who made this days amazing… i think it was one of the best situation i will remember… professionality, humanity, good feelings and a lot of ideas.

Links:
www.myspace.com/maxexperimentell
www.maxstrasse1.de

www.kyselas.de
www.elektrominibarklingelton.de
www.joergkoch.de