Gazira Babelli coming to Window

Pioneering Second life performer, sculptor, and general cause of mayhem, Gazira Babelli will be staging a work at Window in the first week of June. One of the earliest artists working in this virtual space, Babelli has consistently pushed the limits of art in SL - from the grotesque distortions caused by hitting terminal velocity in COME.TO.HEAVEN. to the world-crashing, lag inducing cyber terrorism of Grey Goo.

Notable European contemporary arts/new media blog We Make Money Not Art recently featured a review of Babellis show at the Fabio Paris gallery in Brescia, Italy, as well as the iMAL in Brussels. The Window exhibition, entitled "Olym Pong" features a new work designed and coded specifically for the show, and will be interacted with by SL performance group, "Second Front", as well as available On Site, giving visitors to the opening a chance to engage with it.

In Pictures: Newcall gallery launch

Newcall gallery launched officially last night with the opening of Martyn Reynolds and Marnie Slater. "No Letting Go, No Holding Back" featured a readymade Mercedes A class banner by Reynolds, which seemed to continue his habit of acquiring large objects from stores and manufacturers (Reynolds previous show at Window featured a treadmill, road bike, and growing lamp from an array of sponsors). Slater's offering consisted of a dual channel project, an awkward series of bodily positions and poses mimicked by either performer. Amateur in an endearing way, the lo-res video balanced the commercial slickness of the Mercedes piece.


Behind the scenes, Newcall is an interesting exercise in reappropriating a space. Originally built at least two decades ago, the open air foyer and ground floors were designed to be a commercial mall, but failed almost instantly. The surrounding area of Newton is strongly industrial and has been for a number of years, and the combination of lack of foot traffic and parking meant the death knell for the original intent. Instead a handful of small businesses catering to office workers fill the void: a post office, a small cafe, a print shop. With it's conversion, Newcall joins the ranks of others such as the Jensen Gallery in Newmarket. Leaving the central city for a bigger, more industrial space, the gallery is quite obviously a converted parking garage, maintaining the hard lines, concrete, and ramps from it's past life.


Newcall continues in the same fashion, rejecting some aspects of it's past while embracing others. The fluorescent panel lighting and dark tinted glass stay. The carpet is (quite literally) ripped out. Walls are created over broken walls, ceiling panels removed for art hanging, vinyl glazing placed over windows blurs studio interiors while letting light in. The main entrance, a large double door affair, is rejected completely. Instead the deck is opened up and a set of stairs direct from a service entrance becomes the entry point.

Johnny Chang tonight at Window from 6 - 7

Johnny Chang will be performing a short selection of pieces from his London and Los Angeles compositions in conjunction with a field recording work via radios by Sonya Lacey tonight at Window from 6 - 7pm.

The event kicks off a three-day stint for Johnny at Window, as he'll be conducting less formal performances from 3 - 5pm on Wednesday and Thursday, activating the space with a range of sounds, from delicate amplified paper and dried vegetation to pure tones and field recordings.

Tonight, Tuesday, February 26, 6 - 7pm
Window, General Library Foyer, 5 Alfred Street, Auckland

Seance for Nam June Paik in Christchurch this weekend

“I use technology in order to hate it more properly” Nam June Paik

As part of the ADA Symposium this weekend, Daniel Agnihotri-Clarke presents Séance for Nam June Paik, a screening and performance event featuring Disasteradio, Naomi Lamb, Emil McAvoy & Damian Stewart, Bronwyn Smith, Nathan Thompson, Dell McLeod, Andrew Clifford, Morgan Barnard, and Dan Untitled. Widely regarded as the father of video art, "digital artworks by Aotearoa/New Zealanders will be presented in a new project: to channel (and negotiate with) the spirit of the late Korean artist’s practice".

Saturday 23 February 2008
8pm, SOFA Gallery Basement, Christchurch Arts Centre.
$15/10 or Free Entry with Tending Networks: ADA Symposium Registration

Reciprocity work from Emil McAvoy and Damian Stewart, and Disasteradio.

Powersound at Te Tuhi

Te Tuhi's foyer space reverberated with drones, clattering sticks, and plucked tones on Friday as it played host to a sound and dance performance for James McCarthy's Powersound+. A "sonic wall drawing", Powersound takes the form of a bridge of wires at various tensions, with pickups for amplification. Joining him was members from Auckland's experimental music community Vitamin S, including: Kristian Larsen, Zoe Drayton, Paul Buckton, and Andrew McMillan. The group successfully flowed through a number of phases, from Drew's initial harplike 'activation' of the instrument, through harsh guitar scraping, Dada-like play, and a rich harmonic tone on the verge of feedback to close.


Kristian throws sticks at James in some sort of fishing-baseball hybrid.


Zoe provides noise and soundscapes via a laptop.


James sets up a made instrument of wooden posts at various lengths.

Monolake/Robert Henke 2008

(Editor's note: from guest contributor Melody Watson)
Almost exactly four years after his last memorable performance in Auckland, Robert Henke (otherwise known as Monolake) graces our New Zealand shores once again.

Those of you who went to that 2003 gig will know that it was one to remember, one that people still talk about even now. This year’s performance promises to be no different.

Monolake has been an integral part of the minimal techno scene in Berlin since the early 1990’s and had releases on the groundbreaking label “Chain Reaction” before starting to release music on his on label “ Imbalance Computer Music”


Monolake describes his music thus: “I create music people can dance to, music people want to experience also with their bodies, massive rhythmical structures, temporary sonic architecture with carefully choosen textures, shimmering details, constantly breathing and pulsating objects in time. …Music in which is nothing is static and which wants to exist as a state rather then a story, music which is the result of an intense occupation with detail and which still leaves enough room for interpretation. Music which improves if played loud over giant speaker stacks. Those works are released under the project name Monolake and usually labelled techno, minimal, electro or dub.” He has performed as Monolake a number of times at various prestigious festivals such as Mutek in Montreal (www.mutek.ca) and Transmediale (www.transmediale.de).


Robert has also been involved with a very interesting collaboration with various producers over the world. This is called “Atlantic Waves” and it comprises Robert jamming in real-time with such people as Deadbeat (aka Scott Monteith) and Torsten Proefrock who is associated with the Basic Channel label. He has performed this in such places as the Tate modern and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. I was lucky enough to catch this when I was in Berlin, with Robert jamming with Deadbeat in New York. It sounded really great, and you could also see what was happening due to the interface being projected.

Yet another project (this Robert Henke is a busy boy!) revolves around the use of buddha machines. Here’s what online music magazine Gridface said about Layering Buddha: “Here the lovable FM3 Buddha Machine is his source. The result is a gorgeous ambient album of echoes and crescendos. At times the pieces are soothing (“Layer 001”), other times they are tense and immense (“Layer 002”). The incredible heft of these sounds is a result of Henke’s recording process. Henke used a state-of-the-art A/D converter to record information up to 48 kHz, allowing him to pitch the recordings down to reveal previously inaudible data.”

Robert describes his Layering Buddha performance as “music that needs attention and focus, that slowly builds up intricate and fragile structures, morphing timbres constructed of millions of microscopic sonic particles, cathedrals of filtered noises, dynamic and dramatic processes that grab the listener and throws them into a new state, or music that is almost invisible, floating around like air, music that grows when performed live using multiple channels of audio“. Layering Buddha was awarded an Honorary Mention in the Digital Music category at the 2007 Prix Ars Electronica competition.


Catch Robert Henke perform his Layering Buddha piece in a six channel surround sound environment on the 26th of February at 10/12 Customs St. He will be joined by Rosy Parlane (who releases on Touch), Nigel Wright (who releases on CMR ) and Rose. The performance starts at 8pm and costs $20 ($15 for AF members)

You can also catch Robert performing as Monolake at Coherent the Saturday before (the 23rd). He will be joined by local DJ’s Miles Kuen, Melody and Darin King as well as Wilberforce who will be playing a live dubstep set. This event will start at 10pm and will cost $20 on the door.

In Pictures: Johnny Chang at Gus Fisher

Quicktake: Billy Apple at Auckland Art Gallery

Billy Apple staged a sound performance at the Auckland Art Gallery yesterday afternoon, filling the usually tranquil Albert Park area with roars and smoke from the "The Billy Apple Historic Racing Collection" - a series of classic British grand prix bikes like the 1962 Norton Manx 500cc, once raced by innovative cycle designer John Britten. Reconfiguring the traditional gallery circuit of Kitchener and Lorne streets as a conceptual track, Apple had notable riders deliver their 20 minute sonic barrage in the 'pit'. Apple has a long engagement with sound in previous works, such as Severe Tropical Storm at Window, in which an extended 'soundtrack' was composed from data sourced from a fateful voyage on a freight liner. The usual generic throttle sounds were replaced with a range of throaty roars, pops, and piercing buzzes - demonstrating different attributes of each bike, and reinforcing the artist's statement that "the difference between the AJS and Norton is like the difference between a trumpet and a trombone."

Code snippet: Simple sound visualisation

While United Visual Artists produce ambitious, mammoth installations for artists like the Chemical Brothers (shown above), you can respond to music and sound with some simple Flash code.

With the advent of version 9 of the software, Adobe has introduced a spectrograph tool, capable of reading and responding to the various EQ changes in a song. This enables rich feedback - scripts for example could show deep purple for base heavy techno, and a light pink line for a high-pitched opera sonata. Programmers have responded with an array of experiments, sound toys, and visualisers like the ones from this competition on The Flash Blog.

The only problem is that live sound, either from a microphone or the input on a computer, doesn't have this ability. Programmers are restricted to responding to basic volume changes, which although simple, can still be compelling. From a dozen lines of code....

// construct mic object
import flash.events.ActivityEvent;
import flash.events.StatusEvent;
import flash.media.Microphone;
var mic:Microphone = Microphone.getMicrophone();

// setup mic parameters
mic.gain = 60;
mic.rate = 11;
mic.setUseEchoSuppression(true);
mic.setLoopBack(true);
mic.setSilenceLevel(0, 10000);

// respond to mic volume
function showVolume(e:Event):void {
ring.scaleX=mic.activityLevel/100;
ring.scaleY=mic.activityLevel/100;
}

// run this every frame
addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, showVolume);

....To more complex examples using extensions such as open-source 3d project Papervision:

Quicktake: Compact Listen CD Release

An absorbing sound emanated from Cross St Studios in Auckland on Friday night, heard by the lucky bunch who attended the CD release of Compact Listen, from the label CLaudia.

The launch included a night of performances from three of the groups included on the CD compilation, which surveys some of New Zealand's recent audio explorers.

Praise be to Tim Coster and Nigel Wright who were first up. They lulled their audience with a perfect parabola of noise, a nice complement to sipping shared beers and sitting on a cushion.


Nigel Wright and Tim Coster.
(Apologies to the artists for poor sound in the recording)

Rosy Parlane also produced some wonderfully complicated sounds from his laptop, his music is like wine that gets discussed in terms of its full bodies and citrusy tangs. Yum.

Sweetcakes--an ensemble of three wooden percussive instruments, a drum kit and a laptop--came together to produce a sound that had an air of a 1960s after dinner improv session, plus laptop, although sadly without the visible or audible enjoyment associated, providing an eclectic cap to the night.

Quicktake: Adam Willetts at Whammy Bar

Artist/musician Adam Willetts performed a solo set last night at Auckland's Whammy Bar, moving seamlessly from aggressive, glitch based feedback to melodic pulses and back again. Kneeling shaman-like on the floor, Willetts managed to avoid the cold, impersonal performances of 'laptop' sets where movement is limited to mouseclicks and knob twiddling. Instead, with the typical barrage of wires and effects pedals were a pair of wireless white objects not usually used with music - Wiimotes. Because the Nintendo Wii controllers use accelerometers/gyroscopes, they're sensitive to shaking, tilting and panning, and have been hooked up as MIDI controllers by enterprising glitch kids, allowing musicians to control sonic waves as easily as gamers hit virtual tennis balls. The controllers made for a much more compelling, physical performance as Willetts literally shook out shock waves of noise and bent wrists to overdrive tones. Unfortunately Willetts was the standout of the night, the lineup moving awkwardly from improvised noise and glitch based soundscapes to a Loretta Lynn-like singer songwriter before ending with The Terminals, who cranked through a set of oldskool punk numbers in the spirit of the Sex Pistols.

Note: Photo shown not from performance, although setup was similar.

Second Life and UpStage walkthroughs tonight

The team who run UpStage, which we've blogged about here in the past, are conducting a walkthrough tonight at 9pm New Zealand time. Just click here at the appropriate time to view the performance and be stepped through some of the features of the virtual performance software. If you'd like to be more involved as a participant, just e-mail them for a guest login.


On a related note, programmer and blog member Luke Duncalfe and myself will be taking a tour through some art projects, galleries, and islands in Second Life at around 7pm New Zealand time. Like to join? Signup for Second Life, login, then click here to teleport to Ars Virtua where we'll be meeting. We hope to visit a sound piece by Edo Autopoiesis titled "Resonating with Wind", Sabine Stonebender's Installation at Zero Point in Kelham , DanCoyote Antonelli's Arts & Letters Installation, and some scripted architecture (video shown above).

Quick take: Phil Dadson and Rosy Parlane at Starkwhite

New Zealand sound artist Phil Dadson, and London-based soundscape musician Rosy Parlane performed at Stark White last night to a full house. The pairing was a good one - active versus passive, old skool versus new. Dadson roamed around the room, slamming away on metallic coils, dropping chains and pumping bellows of organs furiously. Parlane was consumer and filter - recording and looping Dadsons efforts, building up soundscapes of drones, glitches, adding Vangelis-like synths into the mix.

The performance worked best when the distinction between the two grew less - one of the high points occured when Dadson placed a simple $2 fan against taut wires, producing a pulsating percussive backbeat. The ability to replay loops from 10 minutes ago created a much more complex, wholistic piece than Dadson could have performed solo. Unfortunately it's all too easy to create monstrous, piercing tones with a laptop, and Parlane overpowered the piece at times, obscuring whole passages of Dadson's sensitive reed organ work.

Note: images of Parlane and Dadson shown were not taken from performance

Playing the Players: Subverting gameplay

Players login to a games server, spawn and start purchasing semi-automatic weapons and grenades in preparation for the standoff. They're playing Counter-strike, a now dated game that retains a diehard group of fans years on. They swap tips: turn graphics down to up your framerate, fire machine guns in short bursts to increase accuracy - anything to give them an edge in this hardcore FPS (first person shooter) featuring terrorist/counter terrorist squads. But some players have different ideas.

Recipe for Heart Stand-in by A.M.S.

1. Ask the members of your Counter-Strike team, (must be at least 14), Counter-Terrorist or Terrorist, to stand in a large, low, flat open area in the game that can be viewed from above.
2. Arrange everyone to stand in the shape of a heart. Do not move or return fire.
3. On all player chat send out the message repeatedly: "Love and Peace"
4. Retain position stoicly.

Terms for this type of behaviour are as wide ranging as the 'interventions' themselves - griefing, meta-games, performance. Wikipedia states that, "In this meta-game, there are no rules of engagement, and the objective is to make someone else miserable." Microsoft shifts the definition of griefer to being "plain cyberbullies" and perceives the behaviour and the players as purely negative; "ne'er-do-wells".

Projects like Velvet Strike (mentioned above) use political reasoning to justify their actions, launching into a treatise on Post 911 America, violence, realism, and the shooter genre. Some players want to test others, like Sims blocking paths for other sims. Others use this behaviour to explore gameplay and systems. One player of the experimental narrative game Facade explains. "The first time I played Facade, a friend who was with me asked, 'So, how are you going to play first time through?' 'I’m gonna break this f***er,' I replied."

Lisa Galarneau, member of the GamesLab at the University of Waikato, sees this behaviour as positive, experimental catharsis, saying "....how often do we get to see what happens when we are jerks to others? One of my hypotheses is that there is not so much a griefer archetype, so much as there are people who play at griefing just to see what happens when they do." Her article entitled "Is it really so bad to be bad?" elaborates: "Isn't it better to take out my aggressions in some PvP (editor: Player versus Player) rather than beating my wife or kids, or pulling someone out of their car and beating the bejeezus out of them when they cut me off in traffic? The world is a horrible, frustrating place. Where else is that anger going to go?"

Show and Tell: Web-based performance

A small Japanese girl in traditional kimono steps onto the stage and begins a countdown. 3....2....1, before executing a perfect backflip onto a white box. Another performer responds by repositioning a second box in front of her. The first performer is the Second Life avatar of Markus, an artist based in Munich, the second is Mark, a RL (real life) artist based in Auckland. While this scenario is currently fictional, it's a potential for a show at Window sometime this year.

Changing technology means it's actually relatively easy to create this type of scenario. The onstage performer can see the virtual performer projected behind him with a basic computer logged onto Second Life. The virtual performer can see the action in the gallery via a cheap webcam which streams video to a page online.

It's this augmented reality aspect of Second Life which is rich with possibilities. There are dedicated performance groups, like SecondFront, which stage recreations of fluxus actions, or flamboyant, over the top events: cars are lit on fire, screenshots get LOL captions, members fly around a tower shouting lines and lines of Babelised text chatter. But there's a certain lack of subtlety and awareness there, which becomes apparent when you look at more thoughtful alternatives like Eva and Franco Mattes re-enacting of Beuys, 7000 Oaks, or the quirky, slightly alienated video pieces by Markus Kleine-Vehn (mentioned above), both practicing in other disciplines.

Locally, Marcia Lyons of the Digital Media Design section of Victoria, has plans to launch their programme in-world sometime in the next few months. This should provide some opportunities for collaborations, either in performance, world or object building, or just experiments in this relatively recent space.


Also around town is UpStage, a "web-based venue for live performance" project co-ordinated by Helen Varley Jamieson. She's just announced a series of performances using the online framework, based on themes ranging from childrens stories to virtual sex, big brother paranoia to air guitar.

And while the lo-res avatars and bandwidth limitations mean the platform is literally a little jagged around the edges, UpStage seems to provide a good degree of freedom and personalisation. It also stresses openness - audience members ("chatter" in UpStage lingo) can easily watch and contribute live feedback, albeit in a less overt fashion that the speech of performers ("players").

I've invited Helen to the group and also asked about the regular viewing/participation times that UpStage sets up, every first Wednesday of the month. So if you're interested, there might be an opportunity shortly to get involved or experiment with the platform.