(Grinstead 128 is in the inside hallway going north from the foyer to Hart Recital Hall.)
- Johanna Devaney, Daniel McKemie, Alexander Morgan • PYAMPACT: A SCORE-AUDIO ALIGNMENT TOOLKIT FOR PERFORMANCE DATA ESTIMATION AND MULTI-MODAL PROCESSING • Mono • 20+5
- Alexandria Smith • Building a Body of Work through Queer Feminist Co-Composing • Stereo • 20+5
- Seth Andrew Davis • A Cybernetic Approach • Cybsersyn, improvisation, and the development of artificial agents • Stereo • 20+5
- Varun Kishore • These Weird Objects • Fragments and Narrative Organization in Oneohtrix Point Never’s ‘Freaky Eyes’ • Stereo • 20+5
- John Thompson • Live coding in Strudel • A browser-based javascript approach • Stereo • 50
************************
PYAMPACT: A SCORE-AUDIO ALIGNMENT TOOLKIT FOR PERFORMANCE DATA ESTIMATION AND MULTI-MODAL PROCESSING
Johanna Devaney, Daniel McKemie, Alexander Morgan
pyAMPACT (Python-based Automatic Music Performance Analysis and Comparison Toolkit) links symbolic and au- dio music representations to facilitate score-informed es- timation of performance data in audio as well as gen- eral linking of symbolic and audio music representations with a variety of annotations. pyAMPACT can read a range of symbolic formats and can output note-linked au- dio descriptors/performance data into MEI-formatted files. The audio analysis uses score alignment to calculate time- frequency regions of importance for each note in the sym- bolic representation from which to estimate a range of pa- rameters. These include tuning-, dynamics-, and timbre- related performance descriptors, with timing-related infor- mation available from the score alignment. Beyond perfor- mance data estimation, pyAMPACT also facilitates multi- modal investigations through its infrastructure for linking symbolic representations and annotations to audio.
Daniel McKemie is a composer, percussionist, electronic musician, researcher, and arranger based in New York City. His current work includes using techniques rooted in Music Information Retrieval in analyzing the nature of timbre and using such data in creative settings. He also focuses on utilizing the internet and browser technology to realize a more accessible platform for multimedia art. Daniel is currently pursuing his MS in Computer Science and Health Informatics at Brooklyn College, where he works in Professor Johanna Devaney’s Laboaratory for Music and Audio Understanding (LUMAA) as a graduate assistant. His music has been performed in Europe, Asia, South America, and Australia; and his research on computer music and web-based audio/composition techniques has been presented and published internationally in conferences such as the Korean Electro-acoustic Music Society, the Australasian Computer Music Association, the International Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research, the Society of Electro-acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS), and Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC), among others.
Daniel also develops new ways of interfacing handmade circuitry, modular synthesizers, and embedded systems to various softwares both new and old. This recent work has allowed for complex, interactive performance environments to emerge, in which software generates compositional processes and actions in the form of analog signals sent to the hardware, and software that can analyze said signals from the hardware to determine musical behaviors.
His teachers have included Morton Subotnick, Roscoe Mitchell, William Winant, and Pauline Oliveros; and has provided music for and worked with a number of different artists and companies in various capacities including: The New York Deaf Theatre, Larry Polansky, Funsch Dance Experience, Ryan Ross Smith, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, The Montreal-Toronto Art Orchestra, Christian Wolff, Bob Ostertag, and Steve Schick.
************************
Building a Body of Work through Queer Feminist Co-Composing
Alexandria Smith
Caroline Louise Miller and Alexandria Smith have been building a body of work that explores eco and bio themes through a queer feminist lens for the past seven years. In this research presentation, we will discuss the co-compositional and improvisational process that we developed through making Spelunking (2018-19), Lechuguilla (2019), and Oxyluciferin (2024-25). We will outline our creative practices and how they intersect over many years of collaboration, how we choose bio and ecological themes and how they intersect with queer theory and feminist science and technology studies, our process for co-composing interactive musical systems, and how these sound through the pieces listed above. Topics include speculative sonic structures that amplify the non-human; scientific research, collaborative research, and understanding of scientific systems; radical empathy with and embodiment through the exploration of sound; making space with live electronics and precomposed/improvisatory environments; co-composing from different musical backgrounds; and navigating systems for making.
Caroline Louise Miller (they/them) is a US composer based in Portland, Oregon. Common themes addressed in their work include affect, ecology, labor politics, tactility, materiality of media, dreams, and hidden dimensions of reality or history, often within dreamlike musical spaces that thread field recordings, shimmering textures, and romantic melodic lines through harsh noise and clattering dissonances. They have enjoyed wide-ranging collaborations, including works for musical theater, short film, contemporary chamber ensemble, installation, acousmatic fixed media, field recording, improvisation, and jazz big band. Collaborations have most recently included funding through Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble, Sonic Matter Festival, Alarm Will Sound/Matt Marks Impact Fund, SPLICE Ensemble, Chamber Music America, Guerilla Opera, Transient Canvas, Ensemble Adapter, and others. Their music is performed nationally and internationally. Caroline is currently Assistant Professor of Sonic Arts at Portland State University, where they teach courses including electronic music composition, songwriting, studio production, and music for visual media. http://www.carolinelouisemiller.com/
Alexandria Smith is a multimedia artist, audio engineer, scholar, and educator who enjoys working at the intersection of all these disciplines. Her research focuses on integrating critical-making methods into instrument design and creating interactive musical systems, installations, and instruments. She also builds wearable instruments that incorporate biofeedback and sensor technology to explore embodiment and listening. Her work has been presented at conferences such as AES, ICMC, SEAMUS, and MoxSonic, and published in Arcana Musicians on Music X. Alexandria’s work has been presented at the Stone NYC, FONT Festival West, VI Semana Internacional de Improvisación, and at the NienteForte Concert Series. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Music at the Georgia Institute of Technology where leads the Interactive Music, Performance, Audio, and Creative Technologies Lab and teaches courses in creative technologies, interactive music, history and repertoire, and recording. alexandriasmithmusic.com
************************
A Cybernetic Approach
Cybsersyn, improvisation, and the development of artificial agents
Seth Andrew Davis
This paper details the development and current progress of Cybersyn, an interactive improvising machine developed in Ableton. The system utilizes a variety of objects in Ableton, Max/MSP, Max For Live, and a variety of VST’s. The system is made up of 50+ voices ranging from orchestral and acoustic instruments, synthesized sounds, and drum machines, that interact directly with a human agent in performance.The paper details the development along with the author’s current collaborations with the system, interactions with other performers, and the development of interdisciplinary work the author and the system have engaged in together in collaboration. Cybersyn sits within a tradition of interactive music systems that look to expand the scope of human-computer interaction into a more holistic and collaborative relationship. Cybersyn is developed around a cybernetic approach of listening, response, feedback and interaction of human and computer agents in which both participants create together while maintaining freedom, autonomy and independence. As AI systems develop, become more independent, while also participating in creative collaboration, these systems raise questions of agency, interaction, and authorship. While there is a lot of current debate in fear of the developments around AI, there is a well-spring of creative possibilities that shouldn’t be ignored but explored to see what we can learn about not only computational creativity but ourselves. The ghost in the machine is not to be confused or conflated with the mystification or misunderstanding of computational systems internal workings, but rather should be seen as an event that happens at the moment of interaction of humans with machines and the possibilities waiting to be discovered. This should lead us to demystify and provide clarity of the internal workings of these systems and machines.
Seth Andrew Davis is a performer, composer, improviser, technologist, and educator from the Kansas City area. Davis is involved in the improvised music/free improvisation, experimental, and electronic music scenes in Kansas City. Davis’ music runs the gamut of compositions for orchestral and chamber ensembles, performances with free-jazz/free improvised music ensembles and large groups, solo performance, collaborations with dancers and video artists, and the design and collaboration of autonomous and interactive artificial life agents and 3D environments.
************************
These Weird Objects
Fragments and Narrative Organization in Oneohtrix Point Never’s ‘Freaky Eyes’
Varun Kishore
Daniel Lopatin aka Oneohtrix Point Never describes his approach to his 2015 album Garden of Delete as “hypergrunge . . . a tactic for taking a history that consists of many different ideas and doing something formally idiosyncratic with them”. In “Freaky Eyes”, Lopatin’s use of samples and the structures he builds around them, combining more familiar musical ideas with acousmatic approaches, affirm his disbelief “in the sanctity of fixed narratives” and his “love of form”, which, when combined with his penchant for inventing fictional conceptual frameworks for his albums, brings to mind Stefano Ercolino’s The Maximalist Novel, particularly his ideas regarding fragment-based narrative structures in literature.
What does analyzing “Freaky Eyes” through both musical and literary lenses reveal about Oneohtrix Point Never’s approach to form and structure? What is the role of the “fragment” or sample in the larger narrative? In what ways does OPN select, combine, or transition between recognizable musical phrases and more experimental elements of sound design or acousmatic composition? How does his interest in “obfuscation” and “confusing the ear” manifest itself in his treatment of rhythm and syncopation and his use of synthesized vocals? To what degree are his technical approaches discernible, and how does his treatment of sonically disparate materials relate to his need for “a twistedness . . . an anxiety in the beauty”?
Varun Kishore is a guitarist and composer from Kolkata, India. His work explores interdisciplinary approaches to music technology, literature, and the audiovisual, with a focus on designing frameworks for composition and improvisation to investigate what he sees as the ‘apocalyptic’ nature of creative practice. Varun’s recent work has been performed by the Tokyo Gen’on Project, Popebama, and Hypercube, and has been presented at SEAMUS, the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, the South Bend Museum of Art, Performing Media Festival, and Earth Day Art Model. His current areas of interest include drone and experimental electronic music, metal studies, maximalism, digital instrument and interface design, alternative notation, and video. Varun is a graduate of the University of West London (BMus Popular Music Performance, 2012) and Goldsmiths, University of London (MMus Creative Practice, 2019). He is currently a PhD student in the Composition & Computer Technologies program at the University of Virginia.
************************
Live coding in Strudel
A browser-based javascript approach
John Thompson
In the Fall of 2024, I taught a live coding course. Part of the preparation for this was to consider the most appropriate path for getting students involved immediately, conveniently, but still providing a high ceiling for the myriad possibilities. I think this workshop would be interested for a variety of people interested in the possibilities of live coding, but perhaps unsure of which pool to dip their toes into.
John Thompson teaches, composes and conducts research in the areas of computer music and music technology. He currently directs the Music Technology program at Georgia Southern University where he is Professor of Music. He has a continuing interest in interdisciplinary studies, and seeks to highlight and follow new paths in music.