auckland

auckland

Vitamin-S - improvised music in Auckland

http://www.vitamin-s.co.nz/about.php

What is Vitamin-S?

Vitamin-S was devised as a place where those interested in 'improvised music' could meet, perform, listen to and discuss, and generally interact with, all aspects of this complex and largely misunderstood art form. As improvisation is the most widely practised of genres, it may be necessary to define two main forms:

::: location:

20060205 Auckland drive

Ever been on a drive where the countryside is so beautiful it's hard to pick the most beautiful part of it. I took some video - the collage doesn't do the day justice but perhaps gives some idea. There was so much to look at I had to choose some of the finer details to concentrate on.

This video was created in eZedia QTI for Windows. I'm trying out the software - you can add interactive components but for this example I didn't. I just left it simple. There's a limit to 5 objects on the trial version as well so I couldn't fit any more objects in without going over save/export limit! The only thing I don't like about it is that I need to host the videos locally (at least all together on another site of mine) instead of using a remote site such as archive.org. Which means if I use this technique again, I'll need to use smaller video files and loop them. Hopefully this doesn't make my site go over bandwidth - it's only a very small webspace. Oh well. See how it goes.

::: location:

Happy Birthday fireworks

Auckland's SKYTOWER turned 10 today so they turned on the fireworks this evening.
Happy Birthday Darren :)



Happy Birthday fireworks 01/02/2006

click on the image to goto the video player page

::: category:

::: location:

Auckland skyline

Auckland's summer skyline was amazing over the city this evening. The camera doesn't do the colours justice!


Auckland city skyline 29/01/2006

click on the image to goto the video player page

::: category:

Peter Rehberg, Rosy Parlane and Lovely Midget performance - Auckland

Alt.music is an ongoing series of events, regularly bringing a vital injection of contemporary sound art from around the world to Auckland. Peter Rehberg's performance is the first of these shows, which will take place several times a year. Founded by Auckland gallery Artspace, Alt.music began as an international festival of experimental music and sound art in 2001, followed by successive festivals in 2002 and 2004. Previous Alt.Music artists include Pan Sonic, Tetuzi Akiyama, Jon Rose, Voice Crack, Sachiko M, Francisco Lopez, Pierre Bastien, Oren Ambarchi, Alan Licht Richard Nunns and the Dead C. Read more or visit http://www.artspace.org.nz for more details

::: location:

colours of Auckland countryside


Colours of Auckland Countryside

click on the image to goto the video player page

I've been spending the Christmas break learning more about interactive quicktime, max/msp and isadora for creating music and video and publishing them on the net. Below is the first piece I've created. I went a bit overboard on the effects in Isadora but it's an original piece and I learnt from it so I'm happy with it overall from a learning experience point of view.

How I created it:
- first I took videos with my dvd camera
- then I used DVDx to convert the .vob files to mpeg2 files which quicktime could open. when I installed winamp a couple of weeks ago, I noticed it can display video now also, though strangely, sometimes the winamp videos were upside down whilst they played correctly orientated in quicktime. (perhaps I used strange setting whilst encoding?)
- then I imported the video into isadora, and patched up a storm whilst trying out some of the effects
- I can only save 5sec clips from isadora as I'm using the trial version whilst I work out if I'll use it regularly in future. I'm hoping to learn how to do similar tasks in jitter (max component) as I'll have more control of what I'm doing, even though it's very quick and easy to get things done in isadora without having to know the code. still yet to decide on this.
- once I had the processed video clips, I opened them in quicktime again and joined them together - hence the rough edits
- then I made a couple of text tracks in quicktime and added these in. I tried out the eZediaQTI app whilst learning about the text tracks but decided on doing them manually in quicktime and editing the controls with notepad.
- next, I opened the gps data music patch I made in max/msp and ran it with the soundwalk recordings I made the other week whilst at Mission Beach in Auckland. unfortunately, the mic was picking up a lot of noise from the wind blowing past the mic pickup so there's a lot of distortion. I filtered some of this out in audacity and flattened the audio into one track.
- then I added the audio track to the video with text quicktime movie
- then uploaded the finished piece to archive.org using ourmedia and viewed source on the movie's ourmedia page & copied the quicktime player code here

well, I'm sure there's a quicker way of doing it! which requires less processing and time, but this was an exercise in creating an original piece from start to finish. as you can tell, I'm not a designer or very good programmer either, but I'm happy to finish number one. here's hoping the subsequent efforts will improve and be done more efficiently. I could have used the original unprocessed videos but they seemed a little plain. need to find the right balance I guess..

here's a screen shot of the isadora patch:

TransAcoustic Festival held in Auckland this weeked (8th-11th December 2005)

The TransAcoustic Festival was held in Auckland, New Zealand this weeked, starting on Thursday 8th and finishing up tonight, Sunday 11th December. I missed the Thursday/Friday performances due to a bad memory and thinking the festival was actually on next weekend. I went along to the seminars at the Art Gallery and the Saturday night performances at the Kenneth Myers Centre in central Auckland. Tonight is the closing night, with final video screenings being held at Odeon Lounge in Mt Eden. The festival delved into themes of sound, light and synaesthetic experiences using mediums such as experimental music & film. Artists from Australia (Brisbane & Melbourne) and New Zealand performed. Many of the performers are part of the experimental and new media mail list communities, aus_noise, empyre, audio foundation and ada.

here's an email thread from aus_noise mail list - I posted the photos then a reply to some questions with details about the gigs.

===========================================================================================

hey lloyd, yeah the photos are mostly setup and the tables after the performances. it was dark for the actual performances and my cameraphone isn't the best in full light let alone no light so not many crowd shots I'm afraid. I probably should have taken my proper camera or video but am never sure if people allow it or not.

I only made it to the Saturday shows - there were two sessions at the Art Gallery in the afternoon and three performances in the evening.

here's some of the notes I took (apologies if I heard things incorrectly & they're not coherent)
stella brennan spoke about her paper "Visual Musak - from Lava Lamp to Screensaver" - she spoke of some historical experimental cinema performances; some entries in the "Expanded Cinema" book by Gene Youngblood (intro by R.Buckminster Fuller); highlighted some examples of World Fair/Expo art including the "Labyrinth" large scale film projection in 1977 (projecting film vertically rather than horizontally) and the early beginnings of IMAX cinema and the people involved in it; "animated sound" project; telefunken project cd; of "connecting to ideas of all enveloping environments"; chemical brothers film clip "...landscape responding to your emotion"

or, if you have time, take a listen to it via this site:
http://www.archive.org/details-db.php?mediatype=audio&identifier=2005121...
(not the best audio quality either I'm afraid) I believe there'll be a video of the seminars available for better representation of them. (I just record things to listen to them again later, so don't worry about the quality too much I'm afraid)

Robin Fox was really interesting - he spoke about his work with oscilloscopes/cro's (you're probably already familiar with this?) - he feeds the inputs with harsh sounds often using nyquist foldover frequencies & using a library of sounds created in max/msp. I've used cro's before at work measuring tv signals but haven't got them to make beautiful animated images such as he was getting out of it. I heard everyone really enjoyed the performance the night before (I missed it unfortunately). one of the physicists in the class was really animated during the talk and had comments/questions afterwards. he also spoke of John Rose's perspective/observations on laptop performance in relation to virtuosity and limitations of human performers (hopefully I have this correct) - when an audience watches an instrumentalist perform they have certain preconceptions about what sounds should be heard and how good they think they could be, which are then sometimes surpassed, hence the performer becomes a virtuoso. but with a laptop/computer performer, because there are no limitations on the possibilities the computer brings to the equation it is harder for people to relate to the performance as much as watching a traditional imstrumentalist. he also showed the external controllers he uses with max/msp. and spoke of experimental cinema using oscilloscopes in the 1960s (Mary Ellen Bute). experiments of Ron Pellegrino who created still images from an oscilloscope, but who didn't like the sounds used to create them. then he spoke about "sound to shape" and synesthetic relationships of images and music and some of his mother's experiences with synesthesia. and 3d, immersive environments "looking into sounds". and finally he spoke a bit about the lasers he's been working with lately and some of the safety aspects involved.

http://msp.sfsu.edu/Instructors/rey/synesth.html is one site which has more info on some of these things.

in the evening there were performances by The Professionals, Adam Willets and Abject Leader.

The Professionals were up first - they make sounds from photo-sensitive devices. the photos of polystyrene boxes with the breadboards & circuitry are from their performance. they also fed back sound into the video on a couple of monitors, though I wasn't sure if this was part of their performance until towards the end when the constant blue light started getting affected by the sounds into the stripey video similar to Botborg performances I've seen in the past (at electrofringe this year). I couldn't see exactly what they were doing as I was sitting behind the other benches, but I could see a torch being shone onto the boxes and sounds corresponding to the flashing light and then chirpy noises sounding when a lighter was lit. it was good to see they'd gone through the whole creative process and made the devices which they then used to make the sounds.

Adam Willets was up next. he had solar powered (well, desk lamp powered this night) 'robots' housed in clear plastic christmas decoration balls, one of which was resting on a saucer which was in turn sitting on the strings of a guitar (actually, I think it was a guitar - I was too busy looking at the bots to notice the stringed instrument). the other was placed on tinfoil on the bench. there was a camera projected on the screen so we could have a better view of what was going on. the bots twitched and flipped themselves under the light. at first I thought it was due to the sound as well, but I asked him afterwards, and they move due to the light. but the motion of the bot on the saucer made scratchy sounds on the saucer, and vibrated the strings underneath to create the sounds which then went through the pedals etc.

Abject Leader were last up. I really liked the films and watching Sally change the film & filters and feed the film through the reels (sorry if I have her name wrong) was like watching a dance alongside the film as she reached from one to the other to add a filter here or adjust a lens or piece of film there. the music was really nice too - it matched the visuals really well. I wasn't sure if the music and film were interacting with each other, as I couldn't see how they'd done this from my seat if it was, & I always like to know how things work. so I asked but they were two separate parts of the performance, apart from hearing the film projector as a backdrop to the projections, which worked in well with the music.

I couldn't make the sunday night or thurs/friday night performances, so sorry I missed the Botborg/Robin Fox performances, but I met a couple of nice Aucklanders there who made me feel welcome and mentioned they'd enjoyed the previous performances and said that it was cool how many different perspectives had been brought to the festival based on it's theme.

http://www.transacoustic.org.nz/ has the artists bios and programme if u haven't seen it already.

- Hide quoted text -

[original email - email addresses & names removed]

On 12/12/05, lb wrote:

--- Kath wrote:

> hey guys, thanks to those on aus_noise for
> performing at the TransAcoustic
> Festival in Auckland over the weekend. I went along
> last night and really
> enjoyed the performances, as well as the seminars in
> the afternoon. I have
> some photos from the sat night performance uploaded
> - unfortunately I only
> had my cameraphone so the quality isn't that great
> but u get the idea.
>
>
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aliak_com/tags/transacoustic/

Hey Kath,

thanks for the photos - though it looks like a
performance rather empty of perfomers - did you shoot
the setup or were there very few people? Can you
comment on the aussie contigents performances (Abject
Leader, Botborg, Robin Fox)?

chrs
][oyd

aus-------------------------------------
noise-----------------------------------
diary-----------------------------------

++++++++
BRISBANE
++++++++
Thursday 15 December 2005
Judith Wright Centre, Rehearsal Room (level 4)
420 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane
MUJI
Rare solo sets from Scott Sinclair and Joel Stern.
+++++
Saturday 17 December, 8pm
Rob Curvengen
G55
Dada-Meinhof
Hetleveiker
Exploded Cinema
Other Theory @ The Globe
Brunswick St. Fortitude Valley (outside train station)
$7/$5
+++++
Monday 19 December 2005
Judith Wright Centre, Performance Space
420 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane
MUJI2
Trio -
Scott Sinclair (modified guitar, electronics)
Joel Stern (feedback instruments)
Adam Park (prepared tape loops)
+++++
27.01.06 + 28.01.06
OPENFRAME - Room40
Peter Rehberg, Anasten, Michael Rodgers,
abjectleader's 'noh cinema' and much more.
Brisbane Powerhouse's Rooftop Terrace from 8pm.
28.01.06
+++++

Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aus_noise/

================================================================================================
links mentioned in this blog entry:

http://www.transacoustic.org.nz/

http://www.vasulka.org/Kitchen/PDF_ExpandedCinema/ExpandedCinema.html

http://www.archive.org/download/20051210_auckland_transacoustic_festival...

No Border No Boundaries Photo Art Exhibition & Workshop

This is a unique opportunity for practicing camera artists, senior level photography students, teachers, recent graduates and those with an established body of camera based work to gain first hand insight into up to the minute international currents in the art and project based photography world. The exhibition and workshop will be held at AUT University, School of Art and Design, January 19, 20, 21st 2006

Auckland Hip Hop Summit - videos

Auckland Hip Hop Summit 2005 The 2005 Auckland Hip Hop Summit was held 7-8th October at Auckland's Town Hall and Aotea Square. I caught a bit of the grafitti wall being painted on Saturday afternoon, and some of the "Disrupt the Floor" breakdancing heats. The finals and MC gigs were held Saturday night but unfortunately I couldn't attend. Congratulations to the Blackout crew for winning the competition - I heard it was a great battle between Step Kingz and Blackout. Check out some of the videos of the heats via the links below - be warned, some of the files are quite large!

Save the links and open in Real Player (Windows) to stream the videos instead of downloading. I'm trying out different file formats - some are are divX AVI and the others are DivX6. Any comments welcome on which format work best on your system..

Auckland Hip Hop Summit 2005 - 09
Disrupt the Floor semi-finals
Time Bandits (Hamilton) (LHS) vs Blackout (The Mount) (RHS)
Blackout went through to the finals
(33Mb) (divx6 fomat) (00:07:29)
http://www.archive.org/download/auckland_hip_hop_summit_2005_09/auckland...

Auckland Hip Hop Summit 2005 - 08
Disrupt the Floor breakdancing comp - Popping battle
Elijah (LHS) vs Big Spell (RHS)
(33Mb) (divx6 fomat) (00:07:01)
http://www.archive.org/download/auckland_hip_hop_summit_2005_08_divx6/au...

Auckland Hip Hop Summit 2005 - 07
Disrupt the Floor breakdancing comp semi-finals
Step Kingz (Wellington) (LHS) vs Faith City Rockers (Auckland) (RHS)
Step Kingz go through to the finals
(175Mb) (avi format) (00:08:36)
http://www.archive.org/download/auckland_hip_hop_summit_2005_07/auckland...

Auckland Hip Hop Summit 2005 - 06
Disrupt the Floor breakdancing heats
Time Bandits (foreground) vs Questionable tekneek (background)
(133Mb) (AVI format) (00:08:48)
http://www.archive.org/download/auckland_hip_hop_summit_2005_06/auckland...

Auckland Hip Hop Summit 2005 - 05
Disrupt the Floor breakdancing heats
Blackout (foreground) vs Back Breakers (background)
(133Mb) (AVI format) (00:08:41)
http://www.archive.org/download/auckland_hip_hop_summit_2005_05/auckland...

Auckland Hip Hop Summit 2005 - 04
Disrupt the Floor heats
Stepkingz (Wellington) (LHS) vs Faith City Rockers (Auckland) (RHS) (part 2)
(20Mb) (avi format) (00:00:53)
http://www.archive.org/download/auckland_hip_hop_summit_2005_04/auckland...

Auckland Hip Hop Summit 2005 - 03
Disrupt the Floor heats
Stepkingz (Wellington) (LHS) vs Faith City Rockers (Auckland) (RHS) (part 1)
(23Mb) (avi format) (00:01:05)
http://www.archive.org/download/auckland_hip_hop_summit_2005_03/auckland...

Auckland Hip Hop Summit 2005 - 02
the view in Aotea Square showing grafitti wall being painted - graf characters
(9.1Mb) (avi format) (00:00:34)
http://www.archive.org/download/auckland_hip_hop_summit_2005_02/auckland...

Auckland Hip Hop Summit 2005 - 01
the view outside showing grafitti wall being painted by New Zealand artists
(2.3Mb) (avi format) (00:00:04)
http://www.archive.org/download/auckland_hip_hop_summit_2005_1-01_0-04/a...

or visit the source files via the links below:
http://www.archive.org/download/auckland_hip_hop_summit_2005_1-01_0-04
http://www.archive.org/details/auckland_hip_hop_summit_2005_0
http://www.archive.org/details/auckland_hip_hop_summit_2005_02
http://www.archive.org/details/auckland_hip_hop_summit_2005_03
http://www.archive.org/details/auckland_hip_hop_summit_2005_04
http://www.archive.org/details/auckland_hip_hop_summit_2005_05
http://www.archive.org/details/auckland_hip_hop_summit_2005_06
http://www.archive.org/details/auckland_hip_hop_summit_2005_07
http://www.archive.org/details/auckland_hip_hop_summit_2005_08_divx6
http://www.archive.org/details/auckland_hip_hop_summit_2005_09

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