11/18: Musical robots
This evening Asbjørn Blokkum Flø, Hans Wilmers and Koka Nikoladze presented their own work with computerized acoustic sound objects. The seminar was informative, varied, fun and ended with a performance by Kokas Solenoid Orchestra. There were refreshments and social activities.
Robotics in art has existed in many forms over the years and of today’s active and well-known performers we find Trimpin, Zimoun and composer Peter Ablinger. At the bottom of this page you will find many links to works, from various periods and genres.
The two presentations approached the topic computerized (=self-play or robotic) musical instruments and sound objects in quite different ways. Asbjørn and Hans presented artistic concepts and technological solutions in working with sound installation, and went deeper into Doppelganger (2014) and the articles “The Intrinsic Value of Timbre in Doppelganger” and “Doppelganger: A solenoid-based large scale sound installation.” Koka presented his own research process and manufacture of self-playing instruments, sound objects and controllers. He has been on a tireless knowledge chase through experiments, debugging, testing and excavation; this evening he demonstrated what he had hitherto comed up with. This was an evening focused on mechanics, acoustics and physical modeling in work with sound objects. Koka filled a crowded Forum with self-playing objects during the concert. We did live-streaming of the seminar to a selected crowd, and hope to use what we learned to bring later events to a bigger audience.
Asbjørn Blokkum Flø is a composer, sound artist, musician and a Norwegian pioneer in computerized sound sculpture. He works as a teacher and programmer at Notam beside his own artistic activities.
Hans Wilmers is a developer of innovative electronics and have played a major role in many of Notam’s projects. Examples are the fixed installation part of Camille Norment’s Rapture (2015) and Reunion 2012 (Video here).
Koka Nikoladze is a multi talented composer and sound artist. His ideas is far-reaching, and the ability to realize concepts for processing of audio – technology, instruments, music and performance- as well as the willingness to share knowledge is quite exceptional. He often uses video to convey his work. Through the Norwegian culture council’s aspirant programme, he spent a year at Notam and developed during this short period loads of own works and utilities, as well as assisting Notam with technical and artistic tasks. Examples of own work from this period is The infinite ? sample sampler, Sound stencil 0.1 and Infinitely sustained sounds. He was otherwise active in the developing of technology for Ståle Stenslie’s Voice catcher (2014) and Knut Olaf Sunde’s Comfort music (2015).
Video of Doppelganger (2014) here.
Videos showing some of Kokas works here.
Other musical and artistic examples:
George Antheil: Ballet Mecanique (1923-1924)
Alvin Lucier: Music for Solo Performer (1965)
Conlon Nancorrow: Study For Player Piano No. 37
György Ligeti: Continuum, Poème Symphonique
Pat Metheny: Orchestrion
Björk: Biophilia
Aphex Twin: Computer controlled acoustic instruments
Squarepusher: / Z Machines: Music For Robots
Peter Ablinger: Deus Cantando (God, Singing) (2009)
Pedro Reyes: Disarm (2013)
Trailer for documentary on Trimpin, The Sound of Invention (2009)