Panel Discussion – Concerts ZKM Cube & Lecture Hall 28.9
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Graphic Interfaces for Notation Conference Symposium – Panel Discussion – Concerts ZKM Cube & Lecture Hall 28.9.–29.9.2018 Table of Contents Program Overview 3 Preface 7 Abstracts 8 Program notes 21 Biographies 27 Installation N-Polytope 36 Upcoming Events 38 Symposium Admission Free Installations Admission Free Concerts Entry 10,– / 7,– Free Entry For Participating Artists/Speakers Friday Symposium Session I 14:00 Lecture Hall –18:00 14:00 Cyrille Delhaye Composing by drawing with UPIC: land- marks, archives and traces of composers 15:00 Alain Després The 1980s: UPIC is less than ten years old 16:00 Guy Médigue The Early Days of UPIC 17:00 François-Bernard Mâche UPIC upside down 18:00 Break 19:00– 20:00 Access to installation N-Polytope Concert I 20:00 Cube Julian Scordato Constellations 2014, for graphic sequencer and electronics Vision II 2012, for graphic sequencer and electronics Engi 2017, for graphic sequencer and electronics Julio Estrada eua’on 1980, for UPIC (fixed media version) Marcin Pietruszewski /s v/ 2018 for synthetic voice and computer generated pluriphonic sound François-Bernard Mâche Tithon 1989, fixed media 3 Saturday Symposium Session II 10:00 Lecture Hall –13:00 10:00 Julian Scordato Graphic scores from UPIC to IanniX 11:00 Mark Pilkington Current 9 – Audiovisual Composition 12:00 Chikashi Miyama Developing software for audiovisual interaction 13:00 Break Symposium Session III 14:00 Lecture Hall –18:00 14:00 Marcin Pietruszewski Formalising form across multiple temporal scales 14:30 Julio Estrada The Listening Hand video presen tation 15:30 Rodolphe Bourotte UPISketch: Renewal of an Old Idea & Sharon Kanach 16:30 Panel Discussion (Presentation: Ludger Brümmer) 18:00 Break 19:00– 20:00 Access to installation N-Polytope 4 Concert II 20:00 Cube Chikashi Miyama Piano Chimera 2008, video Strokes 2018, UA, audiovisual performance Modulations 2013/18, for interactive multimediasystem Mark Pilkington Current 9 2018, audiovisual performance Lamaload A /V 2017, audiovisual composition (8 channels) Wilfried Jentzsch Paysages Y 757 2014, fixed media Alexej Wieber Klanggewebe 2018, live electronics Friday – Saturday 14:00 20:00 Installations by Chikashi Miyama, Rodolphe Bourotte & Sharon Kanach 5 Ludger Brümmer Preface This symposium is intended to explore current approaches and contem- porary trends in the field of graphic notation for parameter generation in music as well as the historical importance of the “UPIC” system used by composers for their creations. When the “UPIC” (Unité Polyagogique Informatique de CEMAMu, Centre d’Études de Mathématique et Au- tomatique Musicales) was developed by composer Iannis Xenakis in the 1970s a completely new technical interface was born on the founda- tions of the idea of notation. Using the tablet interface, composers for the first time could control musical parameters, waveforms and entire works directly on an electronic tablet while the computer was converting them into sound in real time. Drawing thereby becomes the vehicle of both the micro- and macrostructure of a musical work. The revolution in graphic composition triggered by Xenakis and supported by other estab- lished computer musicians such as Jean-Claude Risset or Curtis Roads continues forty years later thanks to modern computer programs, such as the graphic open source sequencer “IanniX” and “HighC” and lately “UPISketch”. Artists as well as musicologists will resituate the “UPIC” in the following days in both a historical and cultural context and also discuss the state of the art in the field of electroacoustic sonifications of graphic notations in lectures, a panel discussion and concerts present- ing works created with “UPIC” or similar approaches. The symposium will also serve to prepare a book publication planned for 2019 by the editors Sharon Kanach of the Centre Iannis Xenakis (CIX) and by Ludger Brümmer of the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe. Along with the symposium one incarnation of the UPIC is shown in the exhibition “100 Meisterwerke” as well as an interpretation of Xenakis’ “Polytopes” in the ZKM Subspace called “N-Polytope” accessible from 19:00–20:00 on Friday and Saturday. The “UPIC – Graphic Interfaces for Notation Conference” is organized in cooperation with Centre Iannis Xenakis and funded within the framework of the “Interfaces” project supported by the Creative Europe program of the EU. 7 Abstracts Symposium Session I 14:00–18:00 Cyrille Delhaye Composing by drawing with UPIC: land- marks, archives and traces of composers Very early on, Iannis Xenakis intuited that a machine could assist musi- cal composition through drawing. The first prototype, which he named UPIC, was created in 1977, at CEMAMu, the Paris research center he cre- ated. In 1985, the Ateliers UPIC were founded in Paris – an association to promote activities around this “drawing board for music”. Since then, well over a hundred composers have composed using this tool, and an updated version for tablets and smartphones was released by the Centre Iannis Xenakis in 2018: UPISketch. After a sketch of the genesis of the UPIC and some of the collaborations it has generated, the valorization activities for the CIX archives will be outlined – respecting the interna- tional standards of open archives, and partnership with the Centre na- tional de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). 9 Alain Després The 1980s: UPIC is less than ten years old The presentation is divided into two parts. The first part “Towards a Ped- agogy of Creativity” focuses on the choices made by the developer team, in agreement with Xenakis, during their efforts to transform UPIC into an effective tool, which anyone can use to develop creativity. Alain Després explains how groups of children, teenagers and adults – artists, dancers, musicians or not, people working at companies, stay-at-home mothers, visually impaired people, and others – have used UPIC to test their skills: creating elements of their music, creating sound objects, combining them, making them evolve, imagining listening, listening in order to ver- ify, adjusting, and combining these elements at a higher level until they produce a macro-form. In other words, composing. In the second part of the presentation “The First Steps around the World” Després will discuss the history of UPIC: its early stages – the first public appearances, first workshops, master classes, journeys, and concerts – between 1979 and 1990. 10 Guy Médigue The Early Days of UPIC At the beginning of 1976, Iannis Xenakis was looking for a professional computer engineer to analyze and implement the first version of UPIC. Guy Médigue had eleven years of experience, and the CEMAMu hired him in March 1976. During his lecture, Médigue will describe the context of hardware and computer music at that time, and what exactly his contri- bution was. His lecture is divided into the following six parts: the history of UPIC, different acoustic examples, the ideas Iannis Xenakis wanted implemented, as well as various constraints, followed by the first version (UPIC A), and finally: users and events. 11 François-Bernard Mâche UPIC upside down François-Bernard Mâche will talk about the debuts of UPIC, graphic syn- thesis and musical computing from 1966 to 1989. Technical testimonies on his normal or inverse use of the first UPIC in “Hypérion” (1987) and “Tithon” (1989) will be discussed. Mâche reflects on the advantages and risks of musical computing for a composer, in particular with regard to sampling. He will use the comparison and discuss that UPIC has a similar technological impact on notation history as the renewals in the ars nova subitlior around 1400. François-Bernard Mâche will also reflect on the use of natural models compared with the traditional approach of “music as language”, in connection with a certain modern reappraisal of humanism. 12 Abstracts Symposium Session II 10:00–13:00 Symposium Session III 14:00–18:00 Julian Scordato Graphic scores from UPIC to IanniX Democratization, technological innovation, and multimodality are key el- ements in the development and implementation of features in tools for graphic notation. In this context, the transition from the first UPIC to the latest version of IanniX shows a proliferation of functionalities, typolo- gies, and applications of graphic scores for music, sound, and beyond. These aspects will be discussed, with supporting examples and details of specific creative processes, in order to outline a perspective on cur- rent usages. 14 Mark Pilkington Current 9 – Audiovisual Composition Mark Pilkington will discuss his compositional approaches of working with audiovisual media to create electroacoustic music. Primarily focus- ing on the composition “Current 9”, which integrates non-representa- tional imagery with electronic sounds, through the development of an interactive performance platform. The concept of “Current 9” is to com- bine hand drawn sketches and computer generated forms to form an interactive graphic score in motion. The talk outlines the similarities of movement, identity, and space shared by audio and visual media. These entities form the basis for the creation of visual music through the appli- ance of interdisciplinary methodologies, to establish morphological be- haviours across audiovisual events. “Current 9” is inspired by the work of the early avant-garde kinetic filmmakers, which linked music and pic- torial harmony; as well as by the compositional work of late Greek-French composer Iannis Xenakis (1921–2001), and the UPIC system. 15 Chikashi Miyama Developing software for audiovisual inter- action This presentation addresses various issues of computer-based graph- ical notation systems – such as rendering algorithms, playheads, and three dimensionality – from the perspective of a software developer. It introduces notated scores, interactive installations, and software tool- kits developed and being developed by various programmers, including the speaker. These issues are not merely technical details. They are of- ten deeply related to the creative interaction between an artist and a computer- based tool, and have significant impact on the experience of computer-based art pieces.