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
The Italian
director Federico Fellini’s movies were based on his own dreams, and as part of a Jungian psychotherapy with the psychoanalyst Ernst Bernhard.
In the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The American author Philip
K. Dick questions realities and perspectives from the machines in a dystopian
science fiction novel.
It seems that the (virtual, augmented and mixed) contemporaneous realities are about to join the fiction. The main question for the current talk observes the different typologies of realities, being in dreams, pathological, from machines or computers. This will be explored through the work and research of an artist and a neuroscientist.
Michael Gaebler / Cognitive Neuroscientist
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in the Neurology Department’s Mind-Body-Emotion group and the MindBrainBody Institute.
Biography
Michael Gaebler studied cognitive and neurosciences in Osnabrück,
Montreal, Paris, and London, before he completed his PhD at the
Charité/Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. In his research at the Max Planck
Institute in Leipzig, he investigates how mental processes (i.e., thinking and
feeling) are neurophysiologically realized. To this end, he also combines
virtual reality with measurements of brain activity.
Abstract
The mind is situated, that is, mental phenomena depend on an organism’s interaction with the environment. I will discuss why virtual reality (VR) can help the cognitive and brain sciences and present own projects, in which we use VR in neuroscientific and clinical investigations. I will also mention previous work with depersonalization-derealization disorder patients, for whom the real world feels unreal or dream-like.
Mert Akbal / Artist and Researcher in Neuroscience
Saarbrücken Art School and Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in the Neurology Department’s Mind-Body-Emotion group and the MindBrainBody Institute.
Biography
Mert Akbal explores as a cognitive artist phenomena from
cognitive science field. He teaches and researches in two institutions:
Academy of Fine Arts Saar in Saarbruecken and Max Planck Institute for Human
Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Berlin. His works are presented on diverse
platforms such as by ZKM in Karlsruhe, Prix D’Arts Robert Schuman, Kunstmuseum
Stuttgart, Kunsverein Ulm, Amber Art and Technology Festival in Istanbul, IEEE
in Boston, ISEA 2016 in Hong Kong and ISEA 2018 in Durban.
Abstract
I follow my curiosity to observe, understand and question
cognition and consciousness through visual art. I aim to reproduce dream
image and experience in artistic media in order to explore them as models of
conscious experience. I will present some of my current works at the
intersection of art and science.
The artist evokes is journey into photography, films and music, and the technology he used over the years for each discipline. Moreover, he talks about his loft in New York where concert of ‘new’ music took place through Experimental Intermedia organization.
Phill Niblock / Interview by Luca Forcucci – May 21st 2018 / Berlin
Phill Niblock (b. 1933, USA) is an artist whose fifty-year career spans minimalist and experimental music, film and photography. Since 1985, he has served as director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York with a branch in Ghent, and curator of the foundation’s record label XI. Known for his thick, loud drones of music, Niblock’s signature sound is filled with microtones of instrumental timbres that generate many other tones in the performance space. In 2013, his diverse artistic career was the subject of a retrospective realised in partnership between Circuit (Contemporary Art Centre Lausanne) and Musée de l’Elysée. The following year Niblock was honoured with the prestigious Foundation for Contemporary Arts John Cage Award.
u(bqt)lab 