Music
Aurora – OSEC #3
The Aurora is an open source midi mixer with built in audio reactive lights created by Matt Aldrich, Mike Garbus and Maro Sciacchitano. The mixer is designed to integrate with an existing midi based sequencer and to allow the user to interact with audio using a physical controller, bringing a physical element to electronic music performance. The Aurora doesn’t actually mix the audio signals instead its a midi controller packaged in mixer to provide a physical interface for digitally controlling music, creating a more tangible experience for both the performer and audience. Read more
Arduinome – OSEC #2
The Arduinome is an open source controller based on the Monome design, which was developed by the Arduino Monome Project, now FlipMu. It’s functionally the same as the Monome, but the big plus/minus, depending on your point of view, is that you have to put it together yourself.
The controller
The controller is essentially a square box with 64 back lit rubber buttons that can be programmed to do whatever you want. The most obvious use is to use the buttons as a step sequencer, but there are some interesting lateral-thinking approaches to the controller. My favorite has to be Boiingg. It’s a fun implementation for the controller and a great use of the LEDs to show that duration between notes is due to the bouncing lights. Read more
Open Source Electronic Controller #1 :: Introduction
I’m really interested in the Open Source Hardware (OSHW) phenomenon that’s grown off the back of the FLOSS movement. There’s a great spirit of collaboration in the air in general at the moment and some really interesting devices are being developed and their designs released. It’s amazing that the people taking the time and effort to create interesting hardware then release the plans for free to the world at large. The most prominent device to date is probably the Arduino, but there are lots of other different devices for different applications available. Where open source is really getting interesting is the area of personal fabrication with open source 3D printers like the the Makebot available, and affordable, and with the Lasersaur laser cutter currently under development. It’s going to be interesting to see what the future holds in terms of OSHW. Read more
Dublin Laptop Orchestra with This is how we fly
A video by Myles O’Reilly of last week’s Dublin Laptop Orchestra gig at Smock Alley with This is how we fly and Donal Dineen.
Floor It promo
Check out the promo for the Floor It show in the Dublin Fringe.
Floor It from Sean Byrne on Vimeo.
FLOOR IT: Sound is a physical thing and it touches you softly.
Tickets €14/12 from fringefest.com or 1850 374 643
Disclaimer: The show organisers can not guarantee the presence of any kites or people wearing t-shirts at any of the shows.
No kites were harmed in the making of this video.
Irish Composition Summer School
It’s been 2 weeks since I finished a week of composing and recording as part of the Irish Composition Summer School. In the mean time I’ve had some time to take stock of the course and wanted to give a summary of my experience. The goal of the course is to compose a piece of music during the duration and have it played and recorded by a professional musicians in the final two days. This gives you 8 days to write a piece of music that will be played by professionals, a pretty scary task. Before starting the course I’d done some composition for college assignments and a bit of song writing but nothing too major, this was to be my my first major leap into the world of composition.
Floor It :: Dublin Fringe Show
Great news the Dublin Fringe festival has been announced, ta da, and most importantly as part of the Dublin Fringe there is a quirky little event called Floor It. The whole show has been put together by a group of mavericks kept going with nothing more than spit and determination, with a budget that would even make Greece wince. For any of you too lazy to click on the link here’s the summary of what’s going down at the Floor It shows: Read more
Video: You Are Here
Our everyday journeys in time, through time, over time. Our everyday journeys through space, over space, in space. Synchronicity, incidence, coincidence, harmony, you, me, disorder, here, now, there, together, apart, later, before, here, now, here. Breathing the here and now, here and now….in Dublin, in a day.
You are here explores our ideas of place and our daily experiences of our environment through the simultaneous viewing of 3 routes through the city. It’s a rhythmic video, juxtaposing image rhythms at one time across the triptych with each third of the screen taking a rhythmic sequence from the music. The eye is to be engaged as much as the ear in working out the poly-rhythm the three screens create. Gradual transformation of all three screens to red and green at the conclusion. It was premiered at the Kerry Film Festival October 2011.
You are here was a experimental audio-visual film produced and directed by David Collier and Saramai Leech.