The Gelkies will be at the Hannah Maclure Gallery in Dundee as part of the “Word Games” exhibit with Gayle Meikle. The opening is tonight at 6pm, and the show continues until July 17th. Here is the text that will accompany the piece:
The Gelkie is a strange and mythical creature, whose very existence was in doubt until recently. Native to Scotland, the Hannah Maclure Centre is delighted to present these highly endangered specimens in something resembling their natural habitat. Researchers are still puzzling over their mating habits, but what is clear is that male and female Gelkies must form pairs in order to communicate in their peculiar language of light and sound. A solitary Gelkie is a sad sight indeed, unable to express the slightest noise. But while they naturally form couples, scientists are perplexed by their tendency to spend most of their lives arguing. With time, and your support, Gelkies can flourish throughout Scotland. Please contact the Scottish Gelkie Appreciation Society (SGAS) for information about how you can help these remarkable creatures.
Posted 1 year, 2 months ago at 2:01 pm. Add a comment
The Maker Faire was absolutely incredible for all sorts of reasons, not the least being meeting all sorts of brilliant people working on amazing projects. I brought my camera along to San Francisco with the aim of interviewing some of the other musical Makers. These videos are now on CreateDigitalMusic, but I thought I would post them here too.
First up, Elly Jessop, a Masters Student at the uber-cool MIT Media Lab, and her Vocal Augmentation and Manipulation Prosthesis (VAMP):
Next, Barry Threw from Keith McMillan Instruments shows off the K-Bow (and accompanying software) for extending stringed instrument performance into the digital realm:
And finally, the amazing Moldover and his totally bonkers Syncomasher:
Posted 1 year, 2 months ago at 2:38 pm. Add a comment
Last week I was sorry to miss the amazing sounding Unique Beats festival of electronic music here in Edinburgh. I was able to make a few short appearances via video, though! Here is the first video I made for them, a tutorial explaining how I made the Wii BeatLooper in MaxMSP:
The Wii BeatLooper, which I showed off a couple of days ago in this video, is now available for download! Click here to download the standalone application for Mac OS X, as well as some free samples, a pdf that explains connecting the Wii remote to your computer, and the Max/MSP patches for anyone who wants to play around!
Posted 1 year, 3 months ago at 10:34 pm. Add a comment
Here’s a little demo video of me playing around with a synth I finished building this weekend. It has just three knobs (whose function I don’t really understand) and it sounds crazy cool!
This project, like the Jam Jar, was inspired by a tutorial on hackaday.com. All of this synth building will eventually culminate in an interactive installation called “Don’t Talk Back”. More on that later…
Posted 1 year, 5 months ago at 11:50 pm. 4 comments
On the 28th of January 2009, Dundee United and Glasgow Celtic battled to a 0-0 tie in the semi-final of the CIS Scottish League Cup. The game thus went to penalty kicks.
Celtic won, but not before every player on both teams (including the goalies) took shots in what must have been one of the most epic penalty shootouts in Scottish (if not world) football history.
Watching the coverage I was struck by how the camera angles were always very similar for each penalty. I edited the footage and layered each of these similar camera angles on top of one another to create a composite version of the shootout, compressing the 24 shots into one. The angles were all different lengths, so sometimes you only see one or two layers, and occasionally you see many. I did a similar process with the sound, although I wasn’t quite as rigid, as you will hear.
Posted 1 year, 6 months ago at 7:42 am. 2 comments
Here’s a track I made the other day…I took a recording of “Wild Goose Chase” played by the incredible fiddler Clyde Davenport and edited two little sections out.
I then imported those samples into Ableton and layered them all together, using follow actions to randomize the way they were layered and played back. This created a sort of Steve Reich phasing effect, except with the added fun of randomness.
I’ll be playing some music tomorrow night at the Filmhouse in Edinburgh. My friends Pete Vilk and Roxana Pope have included me in their Gol project, so I’ll be playing some keyboards and doing plenty of live sampling, Max/MSP trickery, and general sonic mayhem! We’ve been rehearsing a lot lately and it sounds great, a mix of electronic, acoustic, Iranian traditional music, improvisation, and heavy beats. The show is part of the Edinburgh Iranian Festival, which features great films, music, art, and a really nice logo.
We’ve got some more shows coming up, including one very special one that all of you in the internets will be able to watch, so check back soon for more details.
In the mean time, I’ll be headed to London on Monday, for a very excitinginterview! Who ever said I was “French-born”? I often find that people assume that your citizenship is the same as your birthplace…
Posted 1 year, 7 months ago at 5:36 am. Add a comment
It looks like a video of mine will be shown in Glasgow next week…
As we speak is an artists video screening night in Glasgow dedicated to the promotion of new contemporary video works. The next one will take place on January the 20th 2009 in Stereo, Renfield Lane (behind Central Station). Free entry.
To celebrate, here is the video that will be shown, for those of you who can’t make it (including me, unfortunately!). It’s called “Darkness”, and it’s a strange abstract sci-fi short story about what would happen on a planet where sound and light do not act in the same way they do on Earth.
The concept of a planet where light and sound are reversed is an idea I’ve had for a while…it has some pretty interesting implications, and I find it generally fascinating to think that light is made up of vibrations, just like sound, but that those vibrations are so fast that we can’t hear them. That has always seemed rather arbitrary to me, and I love to think about what life would be like if we had evolved to hear the frequency band that we now perceive as light. Even more fascinating, perhaps, is the idea that everything is made of vibrations anyway, as illustrated by string theory.
But I’m getting out of my depth! Back to the video…whilst sketching out the concept for “Darkness” I wrote a short story and made an image to explore the ideas. The short story eventually turned into the narrative for the movie, and you can see that image here:
Posted 1 year, 7 months ago at 5:45 am. Add a comment
It was shown at the Edinburgh College of Art degree show 2008. Imagine it projected into a totally blackened room.
Doing the sound design was loads of fun – Lucy and I agreed very quickly on the sound aesthetic we were after, which makes everything easier! I found much of the source material on archive.org, which is a fantastic place to look for copyright-free sound and video.
Posted 2 years, 1 month ago at 9:09 am. Add a comment
The Amazing Rolo is sound designer, musician, and digital artist Yann Seznec. He is based in Edinburgh, and is currently guest lecturer at the University of Abertay Dundee, where he recently completed the Digital Media Arts Residency. He specializes in interactive installations, ragtime piano, Wii music software, and sound art.
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