VIX Sound+Light+Motion

The first day at the EMPAC Lab with a group of very creative individuals from all over the globe. Two dancers from Australia, a computer science student from Italy, a dancer from South Korea, a Second Life theatre company member from England, various American citizens and myself, the lone Canadian.

My arduino boards did arrive in the mail today, so I am looking forward to developing that direction. The facilities and staff here are magnificent, giving us a level of technical support and available equipment that exceeds my expectations in every way. More photos and posts to come. This will be an exciting exploration for all of us.

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Music and Spoken Word – Improvised, Intense and Infused with fun!

A variety of spoken word artistry provided by:
Max Kala
France Perras
Alice Hamilton
Eric Wyness
T Crane
Music provided by Paul Plimley, piano+guitar; Tommy Babin, upright bass; Phil Emerson, guitar and Victoria Gibson, notebook+vocals.

This event is part of a new summer festival presented by Visions Ouest Productions:
Un nouveau Rendez-vous d’été / A new Summer Rendez-vous
L’ÉTHÉÂTRE 2010

Jeudi 12 Août / Thurs. August 12, 2010

à/at
Auditorium Jules-Verne, Vancouver
5445 Baillie Street, Vancouver (at 37th Avenue, between Oak & Cambie,
close to Van Dusen Botanical Gardens). Skytrain Station 41st. Free parking.

20h00

Tickets : $16 presale online until 6 pm/ Prévente jusqu’à 18h00 ce soir
www.rendez-vousvancouver.com
or $18 at the door

There are two more nights of the festival featuring:
Friday August 13, 8 pm:
Screening of (English subt.) – L’ENFANT PRODIGE / THE CHILD PRODIGY Luc Dionne
Admission: $10 Tickets sold online
Bande-annonce / trailer <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3a3UkDD5gs>

Saturday August 14 – THE CLOSING NIGHT
Screening of PICHÉ, ENTRE CIEL ET TERRE / PICHÉ: THE LANDING OF A MAN
(English subt.) – Sylvain Archambeault
Admission: $10 Tickets sold online
Bande-annonce/ <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAPUeWCaS38&feature=related>
trailer

Followed at 10 pm by L’ÉTHÉÂTROPICAL with DJ Marc Fournier
Une célébration de l’été et un au-revoir à tous les artistes et bénévoles
qui ont participé à L’ÉTHÉÂTRE.

I will miss the extremely fun after party because I will be in New York city.

So you have to come to my show if you want to see me before I go.

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My first trip to NYC ever — so everyone — tell me

WHAT SHOULD I DO IN NYC?

I am making a list – unfortunately I am just going to miss some of the best events I have found. I am posting them anyway. I wish I had known about the gamelan performance!

I will also visit Providence, RI for a day or so at the end of August 30-31. I will miss the bonfires on Aug 29th.

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Lincoln Centre Out-of-Doors Festival

Kronos Quartet with Gamelan Galak Tika; Friday 13 August 2010 at 6:00pm;Broadway Plaza; New York; August 13; 6:00: Gamelan Galak Tika: Kecak workshop and Belaganjur (marching gamelan)
Broadway Plaza; Fri August 13; 7:30; Kronos Quartet with Gamelan Galak Tika; Kenge Kenge; Damrosch Park Bandshell

Larry Harlow’s La Raza Latina, A Salsa Suite (New York Premiere) Conducted by Larry Harlow, starring Rubén Blades, with guest vocalist Adonis Puentes + Bobby Sanabria Big Band; Saturday, August 14 at 7:30; Damrosch Park Bandshell

‘In Other People’s Skins’ Interactive, Multimedia Exhibition to be Displayed at Cathedral of St. John the Divine – The exhibition is free and open to the public. It will be on view at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine through August 31, 2010. For more information, please visit www.stjohndivine.org.

Solo dance performances by international butoh artists. Dance by Mari Osani. Dates: 28 & 29 August; Time: 8 p.m.; Cost: $18 for adults; $15 for NYBK students, students with valid ID and seniors. + LECTURES/INTERVIEWS 24 August at 7:30 pm: Mari Osanai interview with Ximena Garnica. CAVE | 58 GRAND STREET, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK 11211 | 347.838.4677 | info@caveartspace.org |

Summer Stage

The Charlie Parker Jazz Festival :

McCOY TYNER, JASON MORAN AND THE BANDWAGON, THE JD ALLEN TRIO and REVIVE DA LIVE: CHARLIE PARKER REVISTED; Part of the NYC Revolutions series

Marcus Garvey Park, Manhattan
Saturday, August 28
3:00 – 7:00 p.m.

JIMMY SCOTT, VIJAY IYER, THE COOKERS and CATHERINE RUSSELL

Tompkins Square Park, Manhattan
Sunday, August 29
3:00 – 7:00 p.m.

HERE 145 Sixth Ave. (enter on Dominick Street one block south of Spring), NY, NY 10013 – check back

Meer Festival, Sunday afternoon from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm for lakeside music at the Charles A. Dana Discovery Center in Central Park’s beautiful northern end. August 29: Cocomama (Cuban Salsa) + September 5: Sounds of Deliverance (Gospel)

Jazzmobile, a concert in a park every day in summer

MoMA is open late every Thursday in July and August, with live music presented in two sets, at 5:30 and 7:00 p.m., in the Sculpture Garden.
MoMA PS1′s historic Warm Up music series begins July 3 and will take place every Saturday through September 4, from 2:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Hudson River Park’s Pier 84 (44th Street), the perfect site for you to take in a sunset and the sounds of an eclectic mix of bands that perform everything from bluegrass and Americana to jazz, cumbia and funk. Concerts begin at 6pm. Get directions to Pier 84.

Other Dimensions in Music – Monday, September 6, 2010  at 8:00pm - All Ages with Daniel Carter-reeds, Roy Campbell-trumpet, William Parker-bass, Charles Down-drums and

Fay Victor -voice.  The Local 269 (map) 269 E. Houston @ Suffolk Street.

Harvestworks, 596 Broadway, Suite 602, (between Houston and Prince Streets in SoHo) New York, NY 10012

[Sep 11] KonicLab/Barcelona: Gesture Following with Max/MSP

The Official Guide to NYC

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Guru Mandala -- Victoria Gibson

EMPAC — Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media & Performing Arts Center

My application to attend the summer intensive workshop has been accepted. August will find me in New York at one of the most advanced media arts centres in the world learning sophisticated control technologies. This workshop is intensive, going from 10am-10pm for 7 days on campus in residency.

LIVE.MEDIA + PERFORMANCE.LAB

8/16 – 8/22

The workshop addresses emerging and professional art practitioners, scientists, researchers, and students from different backgrounds in performance and new media committed to sharing their interest in developing a deeper understanding of composing work focused on real time, interactive or time-based experiences and multidisciplinary collaborative processes (video, sound processing, projection design, lighting, choreography and directing).

This workshop will assist me in realizing my Immersive Environment Instrument (IEI) and possibly lead to collaborations with other media artists that attend. An opportunity that has come along at exactly the right time to help me create my vision requires some pre-production consideration.

A Macbook Pro looms in my future, but I will still try to program and control my sensor array with Ubuntu.

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Now I have chosen to go with Photoshelter to host some of  my galleries, I will be uploading more events that I have photographed. Now I have completed the Canadian League of Composers event that occurred at the Western Front back in January. See my progress on my Photoshelter  homepage here.

Soon I will have other galleries hosted. I realized after I started this account that I could easily host this level of  photo storage and slideshow view on my own site. So here is a slide show of the Canadian Composers I photographed in January. If you are pictured and you would like a copy, please contact me. You are welcome to copy the image off the site but please credit me if you use it professionally. Most of these photos are untouched and would benefit from an application of graphic design skills. I am willing to trade or accept an honourarium for the work.

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I attended several events during the Vancouver 2010 Cultrual Olympiad and my friend Paul played with Phil Emerson and Tommy Babin in the trio, “String Stories”. The light was very tricky and I am still getting used to my new 50mm 1.8 lens. My Nikon D50 did the best it could in my hands and this is the result. I learned a lot from taking these photos, but they still preserve some great moments.

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One of the other really cool shows was Umalali, a group I had connected with at the 2009 Folk Music Festival. I have yet to obtain permission to post images from this concert, but here are the pictorial  examples of Olympic Security – Belize style.

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Have to get back to music now.

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Everywhere is Vancouver there is evidence that the Olympics are here. From the eternally crowded transit to the spotlights lighting the night sky, this party for the world cannot be ignored.

Paul and I went to see Laurie Anderson last night at The Playhouse, playing at the same time next door at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre was Neil Young with rumours of Lou Reed being in the group. As we walked to our ticketed event, we passed pavillions with free shows going on continuously.

There is so much going on, it is hard to choose what to see. So far, I have participated in Sonic Genome with Anthony Braxton, attended Yaletown Live on my way to see the ticketed event Sound Gallery at the Roundhouse, danced to the sound and light of the Drum & Light festival hosted by John Kosrud and Hard Rubber Orchestra and walked past really long line-ups into other pavillions.

Friday, Feb.19, at 8pm I will attend Marathonologue, a fusion of Javanese gamelan, Scots highland bagpipes and Japanese Taiko drumming. This is Michael O’Neill’s full-length performance piece, which also features Alexanra Dulic and Ken Newby contributing their visual projections. There has been a dominant theme of visual projections as there are large led and flat screens everywhere you look.I will add photos to this post, but now I have to go to work.

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UniverCity Net - digital art by Victoria Gibson

Research into the Immersive Environment Instrument (IEI) continues and this post is about the visual surround aspect of the presentation. For background information on this project click here. There are lots of links to examples, but none I have the right to re-post. My digital artwork, UniversityNet, has become a kind of logo for the IEI, so I post it to break up the text heaviness of research.

My goal is to bring the cinematic experience of film into live performance within a virtual reality simulation. Exploring a non-linear narrative that references three time periods — past, present and future, to construct a communication that is open to individual interpretation. Resonating with an audience on an emotional level, the performer improvises each show as a unique construct. Using a sensor array, events are triggered with dance-like motions that communicate emotional intention through gesture.

The University of California,  Santa Barbara is the host institution for the AlloSphere, an incredible facility designed by Dr. JoAnn Kuchera-Morin.  Dr. JoAnn Kuchera Morin assembled a team that included world renowned architect, Robert Venturi, to design and construct this feat of engineering. She talks about her work on TED with a really interesting video.

In 2000 she began the creation, design, and development of a Digital Media Center within the California Nanosystems Institute. The culmination of her design is the Allosphere Research Laboratory, a three-story metal sphere inside an echo-free cube, designed for immersive, interactive scientific and artistic investigation of multi-dimensional data sets. She serves as Director of the Allosphere Research Laboratory and Center.  . — XMedia Lab

There is a lot of interesting research in Santa Barbara that may apply to the construction of the Immersive Environment Instrument, but it is not portable and it was designed to facilitate research, not performance. There is no room for an audience, but compositions could be shown on video as seen on the TED site. The challenge would be to translate as much of the effect of this multi-million dollar facility into a portable touring show.

Many of the elements of the IEI have been used in performance before, as the idea of surround sound has been in use since the introduction generally credited to Stockhausen. The idea of surround video has been used by a collective, Workspace Unlimited, among others. Their example, Hybrid Space 360, is really interesting because it has already been presented at EMPAC – Experimental Media and performing arts Center Rensselaer in New York, 2008. There are photos on their site, but as it in Flash, you have to navigate yourself, click on projects to view the data . . .  I cannot even link directly.

Their interesting concept is of an interactive installation, not a performer controlled environment. The Immersive Environment Instrument will tour with Victoria Gibson in Girl Can Dream, the first composition for the instrument. Later, other musicians will be invited to join Victoria to expand the sensor array and integrate other personality styles.

A lot of recent development in software has made still photos panoramic and there are even very inexpensive point and shoot cameras that offer the ability to select the nodes (nodes are individual photos — see Wikipedia) required to stitch together photos in this way. With the proper viewer, an on-line panorama can be achieved. See the Apple VR site for examples of Quicktime panoramas (plug-in required) .

Ubuntu Users — The most promising thread in this area seems to be freepv not found in a repository by Synaptic yet. Build instructions on the site.

Anyone with the quicktime plug-in can view movies made of panoramic photos on this company’s site — Studio 360. These examples are not the photo itself, but a movie of the panoramic photo.

The concept of surround video is tricky, so I propose to set up separate nodes, the same way panoramic photos are really separate photos. This will also give me more flexibility in using lights to soften the edges of each node to aid in blending or to use the nodes a unique, distinct images. I do not expect surround video to be available soon as large studios are having enough of a challenge with Imax, Omnimax and conventional 3D films.  I think that it is more cost effective and realistic to project each node independently and let the instrument create a Cinematic Virtual Reality (CVR) illusion. Cinematic Virtual Reality is a term I created for the visual component to the Immersive Environment Instrument.

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It is the time of year when all of Vancouver becomes culturally categorized by which films they have seen or are about to see at the Vancouver International Film Festival. For a list of where the cool kids are going, see my daughter’s blog, Dreampepper.

The big news for me was that the film about Trimpin was going to be screened and there was a talk with the artist and the film creator, Peter Esmonde on Friday at 5:00pm. The name of the film is “Trimpin, The Sound of Invention“, a very apt titleconsidering the wonderful sonic projects Trimpin has created over the years. I went to see my friend Trimpin and the director/producer of the film, Peter Esmonde,  at Pacific Cinematique.

The talk was really informative as I had no idea the Trimpin has collaborated so closely with Conlon Nancarrow, the master of player piano composition. When the film excerpt showed how Trimpin had saved Conlon’s work so it could be enjoyed by future generations I was amazed. I found this photo of Trimpin (foreground left)  and Conlon (right) and I linked to the Minnesota Public Radio site to show it to you.

Re-posted from Minnesota Public Radio Site

(continue reading…)

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UniverCity Net – digital art by Victoria Gibson

As an Integrated Media Artist, I have many project ideas that I am constantly working on. My most recent project proposals have been seeking support to develop a new instrument for me to play in performance. My current goal is to develop a performance instrument that works using gesture control and sensors to create an alternative reality environment.

Although my core training is in music, I have studied dance and motion and have spent years of my life in on-stage performance as a musician. In my recent presentations, I have played computer based instruments and I realize that a lot of the impact of musical presentation is about the gesture of producing the sound.

If I am to continue to use the computer as a performance instrument, I need to develop a controller that responds to dance-like movements. The vision of being able to focus physical energy through dance and control audio and visual elements was crystallized into my need for an Immersive Environment Instrument (IEI). (continue reading…)

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Podcast (girl_can_dream): Download

Third Podcast in the Girl Can Dream Series

The previous two podcasts were about my heritage music, gospel and blues.  This third one features some of the work I do using the computer and effects. All the music in this series is written and performed by me, Victoria Gibson, and I have imposed the limitation that I be able to perform it in a live solo concert. I am playing with a computer in one of these examples, but I still count it as a solo work.

The title, “Echoes of You Far Away” comes from the memories of the interesting people that I spent time with this summer who are far away now. The style is a recollection of the naturally echoing space called “The Cistern Chapel” that I speak about in the podcast audio.

In May, I met Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster and David Gamper, the trio known as The Deep Listening Band, in Port Townsend. This ensemble first recorded in the cistern 20 years ago and many sound artists have followed them down the narrow entrance to experience the 45 second reverb since then.  My mission was to document the 20 year anniversary return of the Deep Listening Band to The Cistern Chapel located nearby in Fort Worden with video and photos and to assist with the audio recording.

I journeyed to the location on my Yamaha FJ1200 motorcycle loaded down with all the required gear.

The video and photos that were taken of the band may be released by The Deep Listening Institute as a DVD or on their website, but I am giving a preview of the photos I took of the Cistern Chapel.  I do not include any photos of the band as some of them may be used in the commercial release and we have not finalized the details. The audio was recorded by Jonas Braasch, a colleague of Pauline’s from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, School of Architecture, Architectural Acoustics Program who is a fine saxophone player. The audio of my experiments was recorded by me using my Zoom H4.

This slideshow gallery includes photos of my trip and some of the cistern itself. It was very dark under the ground and the feeling in the place was unique.

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Thank You.

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