Ixi-Jammin’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jimmy, James, Sol and I were Ixi-Quarks jamming today!!!
First time I’ve ever used a laptop as a musical instrument in an improvised manner. Was a lot of fun it has to be said.
Ixi-Quarks is a SuperCollider patch that on first impression looks more like MaxMSP because it is a little more user-friendly from the outset than SuperCollider. Although I’ve had quite a few glitches, all in all it is a fun piece of software and you have to test the boundaries of these things with experimentation.

Main things I’ve experimented with so far are the Predator instrument, the SoundScratcher and the Grainbox. I’m finding combining several instruments and effects to be the best way to experiment, although I’ve not quite got the hang of it all I must say.

I think our jam went pretty well, I’m convinced there is much more to learn, we were all too busy listening to the sounds we were creating to understand and react to what each of us were doing. I think as long as we’re not too ambitious with our project, or too conventional, I think we could make something awesome. Another fun addition to my week, Ixi-Band Jam!

Dr Joyce Shintani

We were given an hour presentation on digital music in media arts by Joyce Shintani, which combined some of her past work and dissertations with her reflections on three digital arts festivals which have all taken place this year and then analysis of what this means, in her personal opinion I am keen to stress, for the aesthetics of digital music in media arts.

Some interesting points were raised within her presentation, although I found despite her classical conductor background, she made more reference to the art than the pieces of music which accompanied the art, for instance there was a segment on one of the festivals (note to self, take notes next time) which consisted of a room that was clearly designed specifically for art, but there also happened to be purpose-made music in the background and as I’m not an art student I don’t like to comment on what I think of art because I feel it is unjust of me to judge something I don’t understand, in the same way that I would immediately defend music which I like, or which is of great importance to the either the industry or the history of music, for example anytime somebody tells me Radiohead are depressing, they will definitely get an earful!!
Having said all that I understand music beyond the westernised notion that all things must be structured and constraint by the laws of westernised classical and popular music, and have made ambient unstructured music in the past, not that I mean to sound arrogant or as though I know everything because I don’t, so I feel Shintani was not justifying the purpose of the music, or even trying to highlight reasons why she feels it is music, which I found frustrating, especially as there were people in the room who do not believe that anything can be called music.

However there were a few cool videos in her presentation, this being my favourite, made in Barcelona as a local community project.

Julio Lucio – “Sound Walk”

More Digital Music in Media Arts @http://shintanis.blogspot.com/