HEXAGON was a collaborative performance piece which sought to use the ideas of non-hierarchies,  interactivity, and emergence to create and perform music.

We want to create the experience a music performance as a non-hierarchy.  Performances now create the image of a DJ or Rock-god, elevated on a stage, with the focus of an entire room upon them.  We will invert this, placing the audience at the center, and surrounding them with musicians on the same level.  It will be a fluid environment, the audience is free to move around the space, and look upon the musicians as well as each other.

In designing the performance space we imagine a system where the performers respond in music to each other as well as the audience, and is for the most part fixed.  The sound spreads dependent on the location of the musician, so the experience of an audience member changes as they move through the space.  There will be no chairs to allow them to move around freely.  For these performances acoustic guitars will be used, but the future performances can potentially include voice, or local amplifiers.

The music is made inspired from the dynamics of cellular automata.  For each update there is a simple rule that determines the output given the input of the neighboring states.  To abstract this concept and apply it to the performance of multiple musicians, we create simple scripts, a concept from improvisational acting.  Scripts include playing only one one note with random rhythms, playing one note with the same rhythm, playing any note with the same rhythm, sliding upward in rhythm, etc.  In the rehearsals the performers sit in a circle facing the center, to easily see one another, and scripts are listed.  The scripts are performed once or a few times,  and reflections are written to consider what the effects are in terms of the degree to which the script promotes musician interaction, how fluid it feels, and any other emotions it brings up.   These scripts  are metaphorically equivalent to the cellular automata update rules, in that the musicians would use the other musicians as input and the rule to determine what to play.  The reflections written are a record of the emergent properties of the scripts carried out by each of the musicians.

For the first performances we will use acoustic guitars because they are portable and do not require speakers.  A composition will be made from considering the reflections from the scripts and this will be performed live.  Since the music is generative, no two performances will be the same, but all of the patterns will be fixed.

The performances were carried out in Spring 2009 at Milepost 5 and Coffee Break.

A talk I gave at the December 2009 Research Club brunch at Tribute Gallery on applying ideas of complexity to creative projects.  Applications of complex systems ideas in the projects HEXAGON and PDX I Love You are described in the presentation.  The talks were limited to five minutes each, and a transcript is included below.

Brunch #1 / Lecture #3 / Kawandeep Virdee Talks About Complexity from Research Club on Vimeo.

Imagine the city covered in hearts on Valentine’s Day.  So many people love this city, and here is a way to express that love.   On Valentine’s Day, anyone walking alone in the city may see a heart poking out from a corner, and perhaps a smile will creep on their lips.  A heart that is not commercial, a heart placed not for a single person, but for anyone who walks by.  We want to give a medium for people, to encourage them to freely express their affection through this simple symbol, and re-conceive the purpose of Valentine’s Day, as not a huge commercial endeavor, but a chance to just show anyone- maybe even a city- you love them.

This was a collaborative project organized with Jason Edward Davis in Portland, OR.  We organized a booth in the Love show to spread the idea and materials, and on the night of February 13th, 2009 we placed hearts around the city with dozens of Portlanders.  The following are the notes preceding the project, and documentation of its progress.

Concepts

Ephemeral art is essential in this project because the intention does not involve littering or graffiti.  Creating hearts that are biodegradable, or will come out in the rain is essential.  Possible mediums include chalk, newspaper, construction paper, powder, and natural materials like sticks, dirt, or stones.

While exploring East Berlin, one can’t help but notice the wealth of street art.  Its all around, and after wandering a few days in that city I felt the dialogue the artists had with the city dwellers.  Walking in the city, daydreaming, thinking about different things, and these artists’ works would penetrate my thoughts.  The street art is for the public, and its free to view.  Its a similar dialogue and notion of art free for all that PDX I Love you seeks.

The intention is to cover as much of the city as possible with hearts.  This is a large scale project, and in order to meet that scale we take into account the concepts of networks and how information and action flows through them.  In order to scale to the size of the city, the execution is from the bottom up.  We offer simple guidelines, without any core structure, to allow groups to grow organically.  There is the option to meet at the love show, or to message us to find groups.  With groups forming anywhere, and without reinforcing certain locations, it becomes possible to have hearts emerge all around the city without having a single individual put each one up.

Documentation

The messages sent out and development of the project was maintained on pdxiloveyou.blogspot.com

Soon after spreading the word of the project began, the curator of the Portland Love Show, Ben Pink, welcomed PDX I Love you into the show.  We set up a booth there where we spread the message and also materials to heart the city.

On Valentine’s Day and for weeks after it was fun to look out for hearts and hear about hearts that were seen around town.  For the most part the project was incredibly fulfilling because of its general uplifting outlook and giving nature.  People became inspired about the idea, and we were excited by enthusiastic responses.

A film by Shawn Patrick Higgins, Andrew Kurtz and myself created initially for the Deep Leap microcinema night of films relating to sacred geometry.  Soon after Shawn approached me about the topic I met Rachel Zuses, a sacred geometrist.  She was excited about the interview and we were excited to further explore the topic for the film with someone who passionately studies and teaches sacred geometry.

We are curious about how far sacred geometry extends beyond the platonic solids and euclidean forms, how it is conceived of as the architecture of the universe, how sacred geometrists see sacred geometry influencing their lives, and to what extent sacred geometry affects people who are unaware of it.

What initially sparked my interest in this topic was attending the masks showing at Launchpad Gallery and talking to Jeff Betz about his masks and their relationship with the ideas of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung.  Many of the masks evoked a sense of facets of the self as represented in the unconscious; one gets a feeling that each could be an image of an intense emotional state or  developmental event within.  One of the feelings that struck me upon going to India was the spirituality and meaning which pervaded the environment, with spiritual symbols everywhere, and meaning attached to details all around: a garland on a tree branch, candles, patterns, images of gods and goddesses.  You walk into a store, or up to a food stand, and you will see a statue of a deity, you will see an altar.

Symbolic meaning and becoming shone through vividly in Betz’ masks and we discussed how that degree of meaning and connection to the unconscious isn’t as present within our culture.  Jung mentions in Man and his Symbols that this detachment separates our culture from our unconscious since the symbols which express the bubbling unconscious of a society and thus produce meaning are repressed.

However, just because the images of gods or other spiritual symbols are not as present in our society does not mean that our unconscious is not expressed in our culture.  Through what framework could the collective unconscious be expressed?  It became apparent upon learning more of sacred geometry that it could to some extent fulfill such a role.   The “gods” in our culture could be platonic ideals and a focus on rationality and meaning in that dimension expressed through the geometry of our architecture.  Such geometry laden with meaning could be a subtle expression of our collective unconscious.

interview with a sacred geometrist. from Shawn Patrick Higgins on Vimeo.

The film “Interview with a Sacred Geometrist” will be shown on December 15th as part of the Deep Leap Microcinema Sacred Geometries screening starting at 7:30 pm at the Waypost, 3120 North Williams Avenue, Portland, OR.

I love you and you love me, times infinity

I created a GIF animation for the show The GIF Economy by Weird Fiction .  You can click the above image to see the animation.

Here is an excerpt from Rhizome:

Denizens of the World Wide Web are implored to reanimate dead media and revive retrograde knowledge structures; deploying anomalous information and thereby accelerating GIF speciation. The GIF is your passport to the immortal realms of mythology mash-ups and off-modern memes. Remember: overexposure to cine-molecular glitch scapes (GIF animations and their kin) may lead to as of yet unknown climes of panopticonscious surrender.

The GIF Economy begins on December 3rd at 6pm at Tractor 328 NW Broadway #114 Portland, OR 97209 and is up until December 18th.

Update March, 19th 2010

The animation will be featured in the 8 Bits Per Pixel show at MEME gallery.  All of the fun GIF animations can be seen here.

8 Bits Per Pixel will show from March 25th – 27th at MEME gallery 55 Norfolk Street, Cambridge, MA 02139. The closing event will be on March 27th from 7 to 10pm.

Tom Cramer - Scent

I am excited to create music for the Tom Cramer opening downtown at Floyds for First Thursday.  When I first saw the pieces I thought of a lot of the multiscale phenomena that occurs within complex systems.

For example, an individual ant alone will not last very long.  Even 100 ants will not be able to sustain themselves for very long.  However you take 1000 ants, or even 10,000 and a collective intelligence emerges. I had previously discussed many of these ideas in terms of non-hierarchical performance with Gary Wiseman when we collaborated on HEXAGON last spring, and he is curating this opening.

In Cramer’s works there is a homogeneity from a distance, with small variations, but as one gets closer it becomes evident that the immense number of simple patterns are all unique, slightly different.  To respond to this idea I created many simple synthesizers each controlled by a separate random arpeggiator and varied the rates, as well as other qualities of the sound.  Each individual sound is simple, and though their placement in pitch-space and time is random, a smoothness emerges as the complexity of the music increases i.e. as the rate of each arpegiattor increases, or as the notes begin to sonically merge within one other.

I will perform this music live in order to respond to the environment, Cramer’s work, and those wandering into the coffee shop to look at the art.

A sample of what may play at the opening:

Thanks Erik Carter and Mariah Maines for additional vocals.

The opening is on December 3rd from 6pm-9pm at Floyd’s in Old Town: 118 NW Couch St Portland, OR 97209

Documenation: emergence_voice parts I, II, and III

The following three tracks are from the Tom Cramer opening at Floyd’s. When listening to the pieces it is important to note that the tracks were created for the environment of the opening- so they would be accompanied by conversations, voices, and in a space one could move through. These recordings are the sounds alone, so they do not include the more social-interactive aspect that was present during the show.

Part I was recorded live. Part II was recorded before the show and played during intermission. Part III was recorded live. All together it is about two hours and 45 minutes long.

part I:
part II:
part III:

The music was created using a generative process. The following is a simple schematic of the way the sounds were set up.

A diagram of how the sounds were created

Five synthesizers and three voices were mapped to a keyboard notes D, E, F#, G, A, B, C. The voices were recorded live, without any manipulation in the mapping. An arpeggiator selected a note randomly. During the live performance the rate and resolution of the arpeggiator were affected, as well as the reverb, filter, pitch and ASDR of the synth and voice tracks.

Complex systems have multiple levels (scales) of activity. With the ant metaphor mentioned in the earlier post, there is the scale of an individual ant, and then there is the scale of the collective of ants. The individual ant appears to be moving randomly, but the collective of ants seems to move with purpose. From the complex systems perspective, a designer of a complex system must be aware of these levels and choose carefully what will be controlled and what will be left alone. If each of the individual ants were controlled externally and coerced to a certain action, it is unlikely that the same degree of complex collective intelligence would develop.

For this piece I chose to represent these concepts by what would be controlled live, and what was left to chance. I chose to leave the exact note choices in time to chance by defining the pitch-set to be P = {D, E, F#, G, A, B, C}, and leaving to chance the way in which these pitches would be arranged in space. Since the notes were chosen randomly, it is unlikely that any two performances of the piece will be exactly the same.

I chose to directly control the aspects of timbre, amplification, and effects of the sound live. This changed the quality of the sound. I also chose to control the rate at which the random notes were chosen, so the arpeggiator could be sped up to produce notes at a faster rate, or slowed down, to produce notes more slowly.

In retrospect the show as a whole felt very successful. It was exciting to be playing in the dynamic environment of a coffee shop during an opening, and especially to meet Tom Cramer at the end of the show. He enjoyed the music immensely, and so it definitely felt like a successful collaboration between artist, musician and curator.

Photos by Shawn Patrick Higgins