Clavier à lumières

The clavier à lumières (keyboard with lights), or tastiéra per luce, as it appears in the score, was a musical instrument invented by Alexander Scriabin for use in his work Prometheus: Poem of Fire. However, only one version of this instrument was constructed, for the performance of Prometheus: Poem of Fire in New York in 1915.[1] The instrument was supposed to be a keyboard, with notes corresponding to colors as given by Scriabin's synesthetic system, specified in the score [2], though it's doubted that Scriabin was a synesthete [3] [4].
The "Luce" part is notated on a treble staff with two parts, one proceeding on the circle of fifths during the piece, the other following the tonal centre of the music.
Scriabin assigned the following colors to the following key areas:



When the notes are ordered by the circle of fifths, the colours are in order of a spectrum, which some scholars believe indicates[dubious – discuss] that he did not experience the physiological condition of synesthesia, and that it was a thought out system that was influenced by his theosophic readings and based on Sir Isaac Newton's Optics:


Scriabin was a friend of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who was also a synesthete. Scriabin's assignments of colours to keys was not the same as Rimsky-Korsakov's perceptions, which is not an indication that Scriabin was not a synesthete as all synesthetes perceive different associations. Scriabin was also heavily influenced by Theosophy, which had its own different system of associating colors and pitches (in essence going up the visible spectrum from C to B chromatically, rather than by fifths).
WIKI

Visual Music

Visual music, sometimes called "colour music", refers to the use of musical structures in visual imagery, which can also include silent films or silent Lumia work. It also refers to methods or devices which can translate sounds or music into a related visual presentation. An expanded definition may include the translation of music to painting; this was the original definition of the term, as coined by Roger Fry in 1912 to describe the work of Kandinsky.[1]

Visual music also refers to systems which convert music or sound directly into visual forms, such as film, video or computer graphics, by means of a mechanical instrument, an artist's interpretation, or a computer. The reverse is applicable also, literally converting images to sound by drawn objects and figures on a film's soundtrack. Filmmakers working in this latter tradition include Oskar Fischinger (Ornament Sound Experiments), Norman McLaren, and many contemporary artists. Visual music overlaps to some degree with the history of abstract film, though not all Visual music is abstract. There are a variety of definitions of visual music, particularly as the field continues to expand. In some recent writing, usually in the fine art world, Visual Music is often confused with or defined as synaesthesia, though historically this has never been a definition of Visual Music. Visual music has also been defined as a form of intermedia.

Since ancient times artists have longed to create with moving lights a music for the eye comparable to the effects of sound for the ear. – Dr. William Moritz, the best-known historian of visual music writing in English, his speciality being the work of Oskar Fischinger.

Sometimes also called "color music," the history of this tradition includes many experiments with color organs. Artist or inventors "built instruments, usually called 'color organs,' that would display modulated colored light in some kind of fluid fashion comparable to music."[2] Several different definitions of color music exist; one is that color music is generally formless projections of colored light. Some scholars and writers have used the term color music interchangeably with visual music.

The construction of instruments to perform visual music live, as with sonic music, has been a continuous concern of this art. Color organs, while related, form an earlier tradition extending as early as the eighteenth century with the Jesuit Louis Bertrand Castel building an occular harpsichord in the 1730s (visited by Georg Philipp Telemann, who composed for it). Other prominent color organ artist-inventors include: A. Wallace Rimington, Bainbridge Bishop, Thomas Wilfred, Charles Dockum and Mary Hallock-Greenewalt.

Lumia

Lumia is the term coined by 20th Century Artist Thomas Wilfred to refer to art created from light.

Lumia as conceived, was a self contained and silent art, not to be combined with music or dance. Wilfred, being a pragmatist, would occasionally experiment or collaborate with other artists and disciplines (most notably for a performance with Maestro Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Symphony at Carnegie Hall)

Though Wilfred intended the term to refer to any art created using light, but its use was never widely adopted. Contemporary use of the term by artists is mostly artists creating works utilizing Wilfred's visual vocabulary.

Lumia is distinguished mostly by its amorphous spindly moving forms.

WIKI

More Cymatics

Cymatics (from Greek: κῦμα "wave"), also known as modal phenomena, is the study of visible sound and vibration, typically on the surface of a plate, diaphragm, or membrane. Directly visualizing vibrations involves using sound to excite media often in the form of particles, pastes, and liquids.
wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymatics

Cymatics - Bringing Matter To Life With Sound

Oblique Strategies

ahahahha
After an hour of trying to find online a working version of the oblique strategies game ( http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/oblique/oblique.html ), my first card was the number 120, the second one was the number 35, and it said:

1."Take a break"
2."Do nothing for as long as possible"

I will obey!

(ups... Sam did gave us some working links... I didn't read the brief :P )
Working link:
http://www.joshharrison.net/oblique-strategies/

3."Find a safe part and use it as an anchor"

I have the game now installed on my computer and the next ones will be:

4."When is it for?
5."Discover your formula and abandon them"

(ok. maybe I should stop being curious and start working)

Poster for: Eggshell Clangwave Oscillator System Looking Quiet

Final poster
(in collaboration with Zuleika)


my first proposal

Simon Larbalestier

Sometimes we forget...

Runa Islam and Mark Leckey

Runa Islam

Runa Islam makes film and video installations that use overlapping layers of narrative to explore notions of truth and fiction, subjectivity and authorship. Islam installs her films in architectural configurations, frequently presenting them across two or three screens as a framing device. Her work aims to blur the distinctions between film and sculpture, art and cinema, and encourages a range of interpretations from viewers.

Early works often emerged from her interest in well-known passages of avant-garde film. Tuin (1998), for example, recreates a moment from Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film Martha (1973) and in Scale 1/16 inch = 1 foot (2003), the artist re-stages the film in the 1960s Brutalist car park featured in the cult film Get Carter (1971). In more recent work, Islam often takes a single visual motif as her point of departure, such as a woman distractedly spinning a ring in Dead Time (2000), a girl turning towards the camera and then vanishing in Turn (Gaze of Orpheus) (1998), a group of rickshaw drivers instructed by the artist to sit and do nothing in First Day of Spring (2005), or a cable car receding from its port in Time Lines (2005). From these initial images, she intertwines a range of visual and conceptual languages, combining analytical and experimental sequences to create beguilingly open-ended works. In her most recent work, Conditional Probability (2006), Islam has worked with an inner city school, recruiting the pupils to act in a series of interrelated mise-en-scènes.
WHITECUBE

Mark Leckey

He is a British artist, working with collage art, music and video. His found art and found footage pieces span several videos, most notably Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999) and Industrial Lights and Magic (2008), for which he won the 2008 Turner Prize.

Mark Leckey's video work has as its subject the "tawdry but somehow romantic elegance of certain aspects of British culture,"[2] He likes the idea of letting “culture use you as an instrument.”[1] but adds that the pretentiousness that artists sometimes fall into is destructive to the artistic process: “What gets in the way is being too clever, or worrying about how something is going to function, or where it's going to be. When you start thinking of something as art, you're fucked: you're never going to advance."
WIKI




"I don't want a gallery. I want a TV show."

turner prize

Some sentences WIP

Work in progress post.
I want to gather a few thoughts, turn it into some sentences/expressions, and print ot big! Some statements that I find important for my work.

starting:
To listen is to participate
I'm the audience and I'm the artist
I want to be a turner prize
Video karaoke
Calling the birds
recreate reinterpret
interpreter eeeinprrrtt reinterpret
What do you do when you are listening to music?
Are you listening?
What will happen to the telephone box?
design is not art
say that on youtube
your space is my tube
reworking traces others leave behind
bum! music bam! sound
bum bum bum bam bam
tshiky tshiky bum tshiky tshiky bam bam
ARE YOU LISTENING!
your silence is too loud
a temple of music
My turntable is my instrument. I play it loud and I play it well.
click share share share like like like
google it
send a message instead share cancel
my task in not a grind, I have internet
I'm louder than music, louder than sound, louder than silence
noisy silence coming from me

To listen is to create

I've heard Enrico David today saying: to listen is to create.
No access to the videos so far... Can't contextualize it very well. Bad memory.
(Final room at Turner Prize exhibition, Tate Britain.)

Why is he not making videos?

Mr Fogg's Pop-up shop

Oxford's solo electronica Artist Mr Fogg will open his own pop-up shop, named 'Fogg Shop', in Central London for 4 days just before Christmas. He will sell only CDs, T-shirts, badges and other Mr Fogg merchandise, while also performing throughout the day and night.

Mr Fogg says:

"It's about creating a little Mr Fogg world just off one of London's busiest streets - seeing my logo in amongst the McDonalds and Starbucks. But it's also about putting music back on the high street. Just about the only place you can buy physical records now is your local supermarket along with the pizzas and frozen peas - this is an attempt to create an opportunity for people to interact with music in a slightly more creative environment."

The shop is on 16 Manette Street (off Charing Cross Road) opposite the historic music locale Denmark Street and right next to the venue The Borderline. It will open for 4 days - December 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th from mid-day everyday and will close "when it's obvious that we should".



http://mrfogg.co.uk/

Youtube killed the TV star

Video killed the radio star helpline

Video killed the radio star cover

YYY video

Change Player Size Watch this video in a new window English Karaoke, ABBA, Thank you for the music

Old Rare New

There is nothing quite like the feeling of thumbing through LP after LP in a dusty old record shop, only to stumble upon some hidden treasure, new obsession or forgotten love. Old Rare New: The Independent Record Shop is a homage to the holy places of music collecting, complete with their particular anecdotes, peculiar characters, and unique environments.
There is nothing quite like walking into a strange little record store in a town far from home and finding a record you've been after for so long, you didnt even remember you wanted it until you flipped through the bin and saw it. There is no similar charge available online, and it can't be gotten from a CD. It is something unique to vinyl and little stores and the people who live to breathe their air.'
Byron Coley

Eggshell Clangwave Oscillator Graphic System Looking Quiet

Synesthesia is a neurological condition in which additional senses apply to other types of sensory perception. For example, in grapheme synesthesia, letters or numbers are perceived as inherently coloured. The word Synesthesia comes from the greek words for ’sensation’ and ‘together’. In this case the group that will be together is MA Graphics at Camberwell, and the sensation will be that provided by our second exhibition.

In order to name the show, a group of us got together in that hotbed of creativity, Funky Munky, and put a simple system into practice using a combination of chance and choice, to generate the title.

The first step was to think of a long list of words associated with each of the senses, sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. Some words were more tenuous than others, but eventually all were satisfied we had a good amount of around 20 in each category.

All were put into a hat and given a good stir. Then we went around the table picking them out one by one, and placing them in sets of two, three, and four, to make possible combinations.

Several interesting and amusing titles were created that were considered for a while, many were so outright bad that they could be rejected immediately. The most successful not to make the cut was ‘morning mist feedback’. (Marcus really liked 'Instense limon fingers' as well)

In the end we were left with a group of two or three word combinations that seemed to good to lose. With a little arguing and rearranging, and the addition of the word ‘graphic’ we had our title.

(original post by Paul Hardman here )

Teengirl Fantasy

"We were driving all night on tour to New York at some point this past spring in a car that had an old box of cassettes that had been passed down from our friend Ted. The stereo + windshield wipers didn't work, so we were just listening to tapes on a portable radio driving through the rain.... we found this one unmarked black cassette that had an incredible mix on it. The listening experience was so euphoric that we later ended up sampling two of the songs on it to write 'Hollywood Hils' and 'Love Don't Live Here'. We didn't initially write these songs with the intention of one being an A-side or B-side, or of them sharing a unified theme, but after recording the demos we realized that this was going to be our heartbreak 12". Both tracks in their own ways are about tears on the dancefloor, about being happy and sad about the world at the same time while dancing in a group of people who most likely feel the same way as you.

The artwork for the single was made by our friends Camilla Padgit-Coles and Hilary Zarabi-Azam (Hilary's voice also appears on 'Hollywood Hils', hence the name of the track). Together they hand made 100 covers, each one different and unique."

While the record release party was a smashing success, the Dutch declined to purchase a single copy of the record. Since there is no accounting for taste, I am now offering them for sale to the public. Email dickmoverecords@gmail.com if you are interested in such things. To celebrate the release please enjoy the Hollywood Hils EP, also featuring the original demos for the two songs.

Ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, Teengirl Fantasy.

Recording Angel again

The city is no place for listening to records. Half the time one as to use them as shields against other people's sounds. Music becomes a substitute for silence. (In the country, music is the fulfillment of silence.) One does not freely choose when to listen, or even what to listen to, since the trespassing bass of a neighbor's rock, rap or disco records can be countered only by its like. (...)
Even in a quiet apartment, one is somehow aware of a hundred competing time structures the business day, the schedules of radio and television, the neighbors' lifestyles and their music. (...) Stravinsky called music 'the sole domain in which man realizes the present'. But living in the present is (contrary to vulgar opinion) nearly impossible in a modern city, which will always hungers for the future and eats the past. One reason for headphones among city dwellers is the sense they give that one escaped the city's voracity, because one is inside the music. The desire to be inside a record is made graphic by the desert island fantasy.

THE RECORDING ANGEL, Ceremonies of a Solitary, Evan Eisenberg

Karaoke on films: Lost in translation

Lost in Translation


A video of the karaoke scene when Bill Murray sings Bryan Ferry song "More than This"; but with the original song...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG3PoWKMnsE

Karaoke online

Karaoke on computers and the Internet

Since 2003, much software has been released for hosting karaoke shows and playing karaoke songs on a personal computer. Instead of having to carry around hundreds of CD-Gs or laserdiscs, KJs can "rip" their entire libraries onto their hard drives and play the songs and lyrics from there.
Additionally, new software permits singers to sing and listen to one another over the Internet.

http://www.karaokedirect.co.uk/

"Create Your Own Custom
Proburn Karaoke Disc Make
my Karaoke disc now Click Here!

Our brand new Ultimate
KDX3000
is the perfect karaoke player that puts you in the limelight. With the
ability to record both your singing and the backing music to MP3 files saved
on a USB flash drive you can show the world your talents by uploading the
files to YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Bebo or even just email them to friends
and family. You can also pop a normal music CD in the player and have it
convert the tracks on the disc to MP3 files too. You can also playback files
stored on USB or SD cards which saves you time burning your own CDs."

Karen Eng

http://www.youtube.com/user/KarenEng#p/u/0/sNNz9dM6340

Karen talking to youtube

video responses:







text comments:

axestone9999 (3 days ago) S
I'm not sure I got that... you say your video was doubled?

commentater1 (5 days ago)
there is an x surrounding my "upload video" button and it wont let me click it :'(

BigJimW10 (1 week ago)
My entire channel was deleted from YouTube for no reason. Probably because of some of my videos were not up to the snuff of YouTube, And I had to made the new one I have now.
So your problem is not an isolated one. YouTube is really crap since Google took over and sold out to corporate bastards.
Trust me, YouTube sucks. :(

KarenEng (1 week ago)
@BigJimW10 You sure got that right Jim! Youtube is not nearly as wonderful as when I started almost 3 years ago!
I made my own video sharing site to answer to this.

Twitter song

Colcut and Hexstatic, Timber

thanks Paul

Playing together

The Alphabet by David Lynch

Karaoke in North Korea

North Korea's security agency has ordered the shutdown of karaoke bars and Internet cafes, saying they are a threat to society, a South Korean newspaper reported Wednesday.

Refugees from the reclusive state say such outlets are largely located in the northern region that borders China and are frequented by merchants involved in cross-border ... See Morebusiness rather than ordinary citizens.

The North's Ministry of People's Security said in a directive that all karaoke bars, video-screening rooms and Internet cafes operating without state authorization must shut immediately, the Dong-A Ilbo newspaper said.

Tenacious D: Tribute

interpreter/reinterpret/compose/recompose/put together

Interpreter

from Latin interpretari (“‘to explain, expound, understand’”), from interpres (“‘agent, translator’”)

Noun
1. One who listens to a speaker in one language and relates that utterance to the audience in a different language. Contrasted with translator.

Wei Li had to interpret the whole speech, and they didn't even give her any study materials beforehand.

2. (figuratively) One who explains something, such as an art exhibit.
3. (computing) A program which executes another program written in a programming language other than machine code.

Alphagram
eeeinprrrtt


Reinterpret
to reinterpret (third-person singular simple present reinterprets, present participle reinterpreting, simple past and past participle reinterpreted)

1. To interpret again.
If you look at it that way, you can reinterpret all the old evidence so that it supports the new theory.

Verb 1. reinterpret - interpret from a different viewpoint
re-explain
rede, interpret - give an interpretation or explanation to
2. reinterpret - assign a new or different meaning to
construe, interpret, see - make sense of; assign a meaning to; "What message do you see in this letter?"; "How do you interpret his behavior?"

Alphagram
eeeinprrrtt


Compose
–verb (used with object)
1. to make or form by combining things, parts, or elements: He composed his speech from many research notes.
2. to be or constitute a part or element of: a rich sauce composed of many ingredients.
3. to make up or form the basis of: Style composes the essence of good writing.
4. to put or dispose in proper form or order: to compose laws into a coherent system.
5. Art. to organize the parts or elements of (a picture or the like).
6. to create (a musical, literary, or choreographic work).
7. to end or settle (a quarrel, dispute, etc.): The union and management composed their differences.
8. to bring (oneself, one's mind, etc.) to a condition of calmness, repose, etc.; calm; quiet.
9. Printing.
a. to set (type).
b. to set type for (an article, book, etc.).
–verb (used without object)
10. to engage in composition, esp. musical composition.
11. to enter into composition; fall into an arrangement: a scene that composes well.


Recompose
1. To compose again; reorganize or rearrange.
2. To restore to composure; calm.


Put Together
To construct; create: put together a new bookcase; put together a tax package.
(from wikipedia, and other online dictionaries)

Shadowplay

javascript:void(0)

She's lost control

Love will tear us apart