The mystery of the music in the brain is far from being understood. Through his career and while exploring brain music interfaces, quantum computing, cognition and biocomputers, Eduardo Reck Miranda take us into a field of possibilities for the future (of) music. Unlocking new opportunities and crossing boundaries of medical science and arts, we here discuss why music technology offers (again) new perspectives for music composition.
Eduardo Reck Miranda / Interview by Luca Forcucci – January 2023 / Berlin
Eduardo Reck Miranda’s distinctive music is informed by his unique background as an Artificial Intelligence (AI) scientist and classically trained composer. He is internationally known for his research in neurotechnology for music and is championing investigation into quantum computing for musical creativity. Eduardo was a research scientist in the evolution of language group at Sony CSL Paris. He is a professor at the University of Plymouth, UK, where he leads the Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research (ICCMR). Currently, he is working with Quantinuum to develop applications of quantum computing in music. His opera ‘Lampedusa’, composed with sonification of subatomic particle collisions and live-electronics was premiered by BBC Singers.
The journey takes us from the 1980’s USA to Japan and 1990’s Berlin. Music stories emerges from Merzbow, Zbigniew Karkowski and ear plugs, Amsterdam squats, Aphex Twin’s influence to the great tradition of counterpoint reborn as disco in Germany. How shared technology and evolution of music relates to culture ? What it means spatializing music and inclusivity in The CUBE at Virginia Tech with a festival created around Afrofuturism and immersive music ? As a composer Eric Lyon talks about pushing the boundaries further and interstices in music, like for example composing for a violin duo, with String Noise, accidents in the process and nuclear wars, random encounters, rewriting the Bad Brains’ music and the intemporal in the arts.
Eric Lyon / Interview by Luca Forcucci – May 2022 / Berlin – Blacksburg / Part 1Eric Lyon/ Interview by Luca Forcucci – May 2022 / Berlin – Blacksburg / Part 2
Eric Lyon is a composer and audio researcher focused on digital interventions, post-hierarchies, high-density loudspeaker arrays, and the inspiration of performer-based creativity. His publicly released audio software includes “FFTease” and “LyonPotpourri.” He is the author of “Designing Audio Objects for Max/MSP and Pd,” a guidebook for writing audio DSP code for live performance. In 2015-16, Lyon architected both the Spatial Music Workshop and Cube Fest at Virginia Tech to support the work of other artists working with high-density loudspeaker arrays. Lyon’s creative work has been recognized with a ZKM Giga-Hertz prize, MUSLAB award, the League ISCM World Music Days competition, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Lyon teaches in the School of Performing Arts at Virginia Tech, and is a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology.
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France Jobin has a long career in experimental music. She introduces her works as related to the sonic and architecture, and how she developed works inspired and informed by quantum physics, including the challenges induced by art and science collaborations
France Jobin / Interview by Luca Forcucci – November 2021 / Berlin – MontréalPicture : Bruno Destombes Photographe
Biography
“This album seems to mark a shifting in Jobin’s sound, one that departs from the strictly ultra-minimal ethos she’s known for, and I for one am excited to hear where this goes.
Darren McClure Intrication, No. Toneshift (December 2018)
“We detect imperceptible subsurface discolourations, brief dissipations of energy across the harmonic flawlessness, a few dynamic weaknesses and slight distortions in an otherwise rather narcotic flux. It’s sorrow-inducing, brain-quietening, and profoundly individual.
Massimo Ricci Death is perfection, everything else is relative EMEGO 276 Touching Extremes (July 2020)
France Jobin is a sound / installation / artist, composer and curator residing in Montreal, Canada. Her audio art can be qualified as “sound-sculpture”, revealing a minimalist approach to complex sound environments where analog and digital intersect. Her installations express a parallel path, incorporating both musical and visual elements inspired by the architecture of physical spaces. Her works can be “experienced” in a variety of unconventional spaces and new technology festivals across Canada, the United States, South America, South Africa, Europe, Australia, Japan and South Corea. Since 2009, her focus has been related to Quantum mechanics. Many of her projects are inspired by theories related to topics such as vacuum decay, string theory and more recently, what she feels to be the most perplexing phenomenon in the world of the quantum , entanglement resulting in a first presentation, Entanglement A/V, with visual artist Markus Heckmann, which delves into the realms of quantum physics premiered at Mutek Mtl 2021.
In November 2019, she presented her first modular concert (Buchla 100) at the Ernst Krenek Institute in Austria. Jobin has created solo recordings for Editions Mego(AT), No-ware (CL-DE), Silent Records (USA), popmuzik records (JP), bake/ staalplaat (NL), ROOM40 (AU), nvo (AT), DER (US), ATAK (JP), murmur records (JP), Baskaru (FR) and the prestigious LINE label (US). Jobin’s sound art is also part of countless compilation albums, notably on the ATAK (JP), bremsstrahlung (US), Mutek (CA), murmur records (JP), and/oar (US), tsuku boshi (FR), everest records (CH), and Contour Editions (US) labels. She is also featured in the influential book and recording, Extract, Portraits of Soundartists (book + 2 cd), released on the nonvisualobjects label (AT). The collaborative album ligne, created with sound artist Tomas Phillips, was released on the ATAK label (JP) and her recent collaboration with acclaimed artist Richard Chartier, DUO, is released on the mAtter label in Japan.
DUO A/V premiered at Mutek Mtl 2019 with sound artist Richard Chartier and visual artist Markus Heckmann and was presented at the Precxte festival in South Corea. Her installations and screenings have been shown internationally at museums and festivals. Her work P Orbital released on LINE (Valence, LINE054) was presented in the context of ESCUCHAS, a first sound art exhibit for the Museum of Modern Art in Medellin, Colombia. P Orbital was also presented at CONTEXT-ing / Listening as CONTEXT at the Miami Art Fair in Florida, Call &Response, London Uk as well as at the Haunted formalism exhibit in LA curated by Volume. An invitation to the AIR Artist-In-Residence program in Krems, Austria enabled her to create und transit, a sound installation set in the MinoritenKirche cloister in Stein (AT) and und transit.03 has been presented in the sound art exhibit “Dock” at the Ancien Palais de Justice in Lièges, Belgium.
Her two ongoing collaborations with visual artist Cédrick Eymenier (FR) have resulted in EVENT HORIZON, an audio/video piece, and The Answer, a movie, with the soundtrack by France Jobin and Stephan Mathieu. EVENT HORIZON was screened in Paris (2010), at the Venezuela Biennale in Merida state (2010) and was performed live at the Torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles (2010) and ISEA RUHR 2010 (DE). The Answer was screened at IAC, Villeurbanne, France in March – May 2016. In 2011, Jobin was one of five international artists selected to present her sound installation, Entre-Deux, in the new media exhibit Data/Fields, curated by Richard Chartier at Artisphere in the Washington, DC area, along with Ryoji Ikeda, Mark Fell, Caleb Coppock, and Andy Graydon. Her proposition received critical acclaim from the national press. Entre-Deux was presented at N38E13 in Palermo, Sicily (2017). She premiered the audio visual performance of “intrication” at Mutek AR 2018 with the Argentinian visual duo prifma. Her audio visual collaboration: “Mirror Neurons” with sound artist Fabio Perletta (IT) and xx+xy visuals (IT) was screened as a world premiere at A x S / ak-sis / FESTIVAL 2014 | CURIOSITY as part of the Synergetica Screening in Los Angeles in September 2014. In October 2015, France was invited to take part in an artist residency at EMPAC (Troy,NY) which resulted in the creation of a new light sound work entitled 4.35 – R0 – 413, a collaboration with Alena Samoray, lighting designer.
Her latest installations, ‘Inter/sperse’ and ‘Entre/temps’ both premiered in Italy. ‘Inter/sperse’ is a site specific installation created in the context of an international residency organized by Museolaboratorio, LUX and farmacia901. It opened May 27 2017 at Museolaboratorio, Città Sant’Angelo Italy. ‘Entre/temps’ is a site specific installation commissioned by Enzo De Leonibus, artistic director of the EaRrEtMeI festival which opened in Palena, Itally, June 4 2017.
She has also participated in numerous music and new technology festivals such as Mutek (Montreal, 2001, 2004 – 2009, 2014, 2017, 2019 AR 2018), Festival Novas Frequencies (Rio, Brazil, 2019) Prectxe (South Korea, 2019), Interference (Austin, 2019), Suoni Per Il Popolo (Montreal 2019), EM15 (Montreal 2014), EMPAC (US 2011, 2015), roBOT 8 (Italy 2015) Angelica Festival (Italy 2016), Portobeseno (Italy 2014), Interferenze – Liminaria (Italy 2014), Flussi Media Arts Festival (Italy 2014), FIMAV, SEND + RECEIVE (Winnipeg, 2003, 2005), Club Transmediale (Berlin, 2004), Shut up and Listen (Vienna, 2009), ISEA RUHR 2010 (Germany), the surface tension tour (Japan, 2012) and the Symétrie tour (Japan 2016).
“immersound” is a concert event/philosophy concept initiated by Jobin, which proposes the creation of a dedicated listening environment by focusing on the physical comfort of the audience within a specifically designed space. The premise of “immersound” is to seek out/explore new perceptions in and experiences of the listening process by pushing the notion of “immersion” to its possible limits. She created and produced “immersound” from 2011 to 2015 at Oboro in Montreal.
She was a finalist at the Sonic Arts Awards 2014 (IT) in the Sonic Research category. In January 2013, the Conseil québécois de la musique (CQM) awarded the prestigious Opus Prize for Concert of the year to France Jobin for her concert at AKOUSMA 8.
Jobin’s work continues to evolve as technologies enable her to create new environments. France Jobin is published by Touch Music/Fairwood Music UK Ltd
Maria Mannone describes the links between her professional backgrounds as physicist, musician, composer, conductor, and how it inspired her to define links between proportions found in nature, and mathematics toward music and the visual arts. This includes projects exploring sonification, a method to render data audible, in the medical domain.
Maria Mannone / Interview by Luca Forcucci – November 2021 / Berlin – Palermo
Maria Mannone is a theoretical physicist and composer. She gained her MSc in Theoretical Physics and three masters in Piano, Composition and Orchestral Conducting in Italy, her Master 2 ATIAM at IRCAM-UPMC Paris VI Sorbonne, and her Ph.D. in Composition in the US, at the University of Minnesota. Her interdisciplinary research deals with music, mathematics, and forms of nature. She invented the “CubeHarmonic”, a new musical instrument based on the Rubik’s cube. She is currently postdoctoral researcher at the University of Palermo and “subject expert” at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Her most recent books are “Mathematics, Nature, Art” and “Simmetrie fra Matematica e Musica” (Palermo University Press).
The power of the voice (s) allied with poetry and (deep) listening are perhaps ways to deal with urgent terrestrial and human problems caused to the biosphere, which have been urgent for a long time now.
The work is a sonic collage, like a surrealist poem based on podcasts conducted since 2018 and available at www.ubqtlab.org. The platform engages with interdisciplinary and transnational collaborations in an attempt to decolonize knowledge. It proposes a unique combination of fields, such as ritual studies, anthropology, phenomenology, cognitive science, technology, poetry and the sonic arts, and allows for the mechanisms of listening and questions about phenomenal consciousness to be addressed from a sonic perspective by fusing theoretical writing with sonic artworks as research-creation. It also counterbalances a dominant visual and Western, techno-scientific perspective.
Luca Forcucci (CH/IT): Distinguished artist and scholar. His research observes the perceptive properties and the field of possibilities of the first-person experience, which is explored as an artwork. Forcucci is interested in perception, subjectivity and consciousness. His installations, performances, electroacoustic compositions, photography and texts have been exhibited worldwide on a regular basis. Since 2009, he has collaborated with scientists in the field of cognitive science. He is particularly fascinated by visual mental imagery and the sonic imagination to explore the conceptual idea of the sonic architecture. www.lucaforcucci.com
Credits
With the voices of Jocy de Oliveira (BR), JIll Scott (AU), Pamela Z (US), Jorge Antunes (BR), Stanley Moss (US), Phill Niblock (US), Matt Black (UK), Paulo Bruscky (BR), Eduardo Kac (BR)
During this interview, Matt Black drive us into more than 30 years of music, activism, ecology, internet, vw bus, pirate tv, Max Headroom, kissfm, london best dj’s, pirate radio, warehouses, encoders, turning Radiohead to electronic, Zen Delay, Vjamm Pro software and more. Black also discuss his latest album, and his experiences in the township of Khayelitsha in Cape Town, South Africa, or recording with the drummer Tony Allen and leading to a collaboration with the The Watts Prophets.
Matt Black / Interview by Luca Forcucci – May 2021 / Bellinzona – London
Matt Black is half of legendary DJ duo and multimedia pop group Coldcut, formed in 1987, and founders of Ninja Tune, the UK label. In 2020 Ninja Tune celebrated 30 years as one of the world’s leading electronic music labels and a beacon for the independent music spirit. In 2017 Coldcut celebrated 30 years in electronic music with a string of gigs releases and special projects. A new album ‘Keleketla’ was released July 2020 to ‘universal acclaim’ (Metacritic).
Matt is known for innovations in DJing, remixing, mashup, VJing, software, digital art and multimedia. Over 34 years as part of Coldcut he has combined cutting edge artistic expression with positive activist themes in such pieces as Journeys by DJ, The Only Way is Up, People Hold On, Stop This Crazy Thing, Timber, Panopticon, Re:volution, Energy Union, Walk a Mile, True Skool, and many more. Coldcut have worked with a wild range of artists, activists and other groups and luminaries eg Steve Reich, James Brown, Mark E Smith, Queen Latifah, Jello Biafra, Saul Williams, Robert Owens, Lisa Stansfield, Crass, Roots Manuva, Lee Scratch Perry, Adrian Sherwood, Tony Allen, Joe Armon-Jones, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, the RCA, Greenpeace, and Avaaz.
In 2011 Matt designed the iOS app Ninja Jamm, Ninja Tune’s first music app which has had over 600,000 downloads; in Feb 2020 the new advanced version Jamm Pro was released. Matt uses his software to perform, lecture, and give workshops on audiovisual art, technology and music- so people can use these tools for their own art and music. In 2017, 2 more apps he designed were released: Pixi a visual synth, and Robbery a satirical video game. Midivolve, a music software collaboration with Ableton was released July 2017. The Zen Delay hardware unit released 2019 is also his co-creation and was rated as one of the top effects of the decade by Music Tech.
At Splice festival 2017 Matt showcased his experiments with Style Transfer, a cutting edge new style of visual processing using AI techniques. For his AV show, done in conjunction with his wife filmmaker Dinaz Stafford, Jamm triggers visual clips so every sound has a matching visual.
Matt collaborated with artist Wolfgang Buttress (the Hive, Kew) for BEAM AV installation Glastonbury 2019. In lockdown 2020 Matt revived PirateTV the netcasting project he started in 1998, and is currently doing AV shows via Twitch.
Matt’s stated ambition is to ‘create positive art, music and spiritual technology to blow the minds of the entire planet and advance cooperative strategies’. He continues to gig, lecture, DJ, VJ, record, make films, develop software and bridge the worlds of technology, club culture, art and activism.
During this interview we discussed ideas around embodiment, re-embodiment, kimospheres, atmospheres, technology and issues related to the practice of Johannes Birringer as a choreographer, director and professor of performance technologies. His publications have taken up important issues surrounding the body and technologies, theatre, dance, and choreography. Birringer underlines the pivotal moment when he attended a Pina Bausch performance, as a young student, and how it affected and redirected his career. Other figures like Stelarc haunt this discussion. With the DAP-Lab he has created numerous stage works, installations and short films. Recent research, conducted in Texas in 2019, explores underground space and caves and how they are linked to deep listening methodologies proposed by Pauline Oliveros.
Johannes Birringer / Interview by Luca Forcucci – October 20th 2020 / Genova-London
Johannes Birringer is a choreographer/media artist and co-director of DAP-Lab at Brunel University where he is a Professor of Performance Technologies. He also directs the Houston-based AlienNation Co. and is the founder of the Interaktionslabor (http://interaktionslabor.de). He has created numerous dance-theatre works, films and video installations that have been shown in Europe, the Americas, China, and Japan. DAP-Lab’s “Suna no Onna” was featured at festivals in London; the mixed-reality installation “UKIYO” went on European tour in 2010. The dance opera “for the time being [Victory over the Sun]” premiered at Sadler’s Wells (2014). DAP-Lab’s most recent dance installations, “kimospheres” III-VI (2016-2019) explore the convergence of physical-sensory and augmented VR spaces, and were shown in Madrid, Paris, London and Durban, SA. The dance performance “Mourning for a dead moon” (December 2019) addresses the climate crisis. His books include “Media and Performance,” “Performance on the Edge,” “Performance, Technology & Science,” “Dance and ChoreoMania,” “Tanz der Dinge/Things that Dance,” and a new book, “Kinetic Atmospheres: Performance and Immersion” (Routledge) that probes the implications of environmental immersion and mixed reality digital architectures.
Eleonora Oreggia / Interview by Luca Forcucci – June 22nd 2020 / Berlin-London
xname is the digital identity of media artist, performer and composer Eleonora Oreggia, originally from Milan and currently based in London. She creates performances and interactive installations using light, sound, dust and self-made sensor-driven synthesizers. Her music features elements of techno, ambient drone and industrial. In 2013 she has been selected by the Barbican to represent the artist Marchel Duchamp in the digital era. Her artworks, consisting of audiovisual pieces, software, sculptures, interactive installations and live performances, have received several prizes and awards and have been consistently shown in institutes, museums, galleries and festivals over Europe, UK, Asia and America – and over the Net. A Design alumna from renown Dutch post-academic institute Jan van Eyck Academie, Eleonora has also obtained an MPhil in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths College, a PhD in Media & Arts Technology from Queen Mary University, and a Laurea (summa cum Laude) in DAMS (Drama, Art and Music Studies) from University of Bologna, IT. She is the founder of Nebularosa Records – a label promoting music and musicians who challenge established production practices. http://xname.cc http://xname.cc/rebus http://nebularosa.net
Not only her work spans over more than 50 years and englobes music composition, performance, theatre and sound installations, but she also has worked with the biggest names in the field, like Stravinsky, Berio, Cage, Stockhausen, just to name a few. Here she comes back on the stories of these unique encounters, and also how she firstly brought this kind of music to Brazil.
Jocy de Oliveira / Interview by Luca Forcucci – August 7nd 2019 / Berlin-Rio de Janeiro
Jocy de Oliveira has been involved as a composer/author in a variety of media since the early 1960s utilizing acoustic and electronic instruments, music-theatre, installations, texts, graphics, video, and audiences in an approach to an organic development of performance/composition works.
Her operas were released on 6 DVDs
distributed by NAXOS Video Library. Her most recent work is a cinematic
opera Liquid Voices – A história de Mathilda Segalescu is a feature film
in process of finalization and distribution to International Film
Festivals in 2019.
Author of five books published in Brazil, France and the USA, Jocy de Oliveira recently launched Dialogue with Letters,
published by SESI SP, 2014, which was acclaimed by the media and
received the most important literature prize in Brazil – Jabuti
Literature First Prize, 2015. This same year the French edition of this
book was very successfully launched in Paris by Editions Honoré Champion
as part of the Sorbonne musicology collection. In 2016 the book was
selected as finalist for the Premio Rio de Literatura. In 2018 a book Leituras de Jocy coordinated
by Rodrigo Cicchelli and Manoel Correa do Lago was released by Editora
SESI SP compiling analyses and reflections from 27 authors on her work.
FLIP – the most important Brazilian International literature Festival
held in Paraty July, 2018 focused on her works and honored her during
its opening and two other different presentations.
She was honored with the invitation to write a chapter on Stravinsky ‘s new book – Abécédaire Stravinsky, organized by the Stravinsky Foundation and being published by Éditions La Baconnière, Genève 2018/2019.
She received a number of grants and awards, such as Guggenheim Foundation (2005) Rockefeller Foundation (1983 and 2007), Bogliasco Foundation (2004 and 2016), CAPS (New York Council on the Arts), besides Vitae and Rioarte Foundations in Brazil. She was elected a life member of the Academia Brasileira de Musica, holds a Master of Arts degree (1968) from Washington University, St. Louis, USA and received an Honorary Doctorate from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 2016.
In Portuguese
Pioneira no desenvolvimento de um trabalho multimídia no Brasil envolvendo música, teatro, instalações, texto e vídeo, é a primeira entre os compositores nacionais a compor e dirigir suas óperas buscando reformular o formato convencional operístico.
Suas peças tem sido apresentadas em teatros e
festivais como Berliner Festspiele, Haus der Kulturen der Welt , Hebbel
Theater em Berlim, StaadtsTheater – Darmstadt, Bayerischer Rudfunk –
Munique, Festivals Dresdner Tage der Zeitgenössischen Musik – Desden,
Expo 2000 Hannover, Ludwigshafen Opera Festival, Salzburg Festival –
Aspekte, Hayden Planetarium, Carnegie Hall, Brooklyn Academy – em New
York, New Music America Festivals, Miami Planetarium, Bellas Artes –
Mexico, Teatro Avenida, Buenos Aires, Orquesta Sinfonica del Sodre,
Uruguai, Orquesta Sinfônica Nacional de Cuba, Radio France – Paris,
Gaudeamus e Gulbenkian Foundations, Chengdu University – China. No
Brasil, suas obras têm sido apresentadas anualmente em diversos teatros e
festivais incluindo os Theatros Municipal de São Paulo e do Rio de
Janeiro e em diferentes capitais.
Como compositora e pianista, gravou 25 discos
no Brasil, Inglaterra, EUA, Alemanha, Itália e no México; registrou nos
EUA e no Brasil a obra pianística de Olivier Messiaen (selo NAXOS).
Oito de suas óperas multimídias foram gravadas em DVDs distribuídos pela
NAXOS Video Library e pelo SESC, SP.
u(bqt)lab 