Music One Participates In: From Stage to Street to Pocket
Digital music has undergone fundamental shifts – it has gone real time, it has become interactive, it has become miniaturized, and completely democratized. Mapping out his personal trajectory during this time, renowned artist and researcher Atau Tanaka presents a lecture/performance looking at broader evolutions in the field of digital music with sensors, networks, and mobility. He addresses not only technological changes, but changes that bring about shifts in musical approaches. Form factors change, analogue is reconciled with digital, and new directions in Open Source and DIY culture continue to challenge our assumptions on what it means to be an artist, composer, performer, participant, in these evolving musical/technological landscapes.
Le Loup, Lifting, Myogram
The concert performance is for performer and the Myo bio-electrical interface as musical instrument. The instrument captures electromyogram (EMG) signals reflecting muscle tension. Live sound synthesis software programmed by the composer creates mappings that shape and sculpt sound parameters, filtering, granularizing, distorting electronic sounds in ways not possible with conventional interfaces. The system renders as musical instrument the performer’s own body, allowing him to articulate sound through concentrated gesture. The sources are natural and synthetic sounds, and sounds of the body.
Lecture-performance
Date
3 Dec
Time
19:00-20:00
Venue
De Nieuwe Regentes
Grote Zaal
Module
Performance
Links
Website
BIO
Atau Tanaka (UK/US) bridges the fields of experimental music, media art, and scientific research in embodied human-computer interaction. He is widely known for his pioneering works for sensor-based instruments and bio-signals, mobile infrastructures, and democratized digital forms. His first inspirations came upon meeting John Cage during his Norton Lectures at Harvard. Atau then studied at CCRMA Stanford, and conducted research in Paris at IRCAM, Centre Pompidou. He formed Sensorband with Zbigniew Karkowski and Edwin van der Heide and then worked in Japan, performing with Merzbow, Otomo, and KK Null. He re-staged Cage’s Variations VII with Matt Wand and :zoviet*france:. His work has been presented at NTT/ICC Tokyo, Ars Electronica, ZKM, Transmediale, Eyebeam, Wood Street Gallery, SFMOMA, and the Southbank Centre, and has had CD releases on labels such as Sub Rosa, Bip-hop, Caipirinha Music, Touch/Ash, Sonoris, Sirr-ecords. He has been researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratory Paris and Artistic Co-Director of STEIM. He is Professor of Media Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London.