Projects
In this page I will share info on my past, current and planned projects.
Live electronics from a performativity perspective
February 1st 2011 I started my postdoctoral project entitled Live electronics from a performativity perspective running until summer 2014. The project is closely related to Performativity; Art, Communication and Knowledge Formation , a new interdisciplinary focus area at the Faculty of Humanities. Throgh this project I hope to gain an increased understanding of the interrelationships between performer, musical instrument, audience and context/situation in performances of live electronic music. Thus far, the project embraces two collaborative projects. One is the Voice Meetings project with Tone Åse, the other is a collaboration with Robert Wechsler linked to his MotionComposer project, involving the development of interactive sound environment for disabled people. The project will end january 2014.
The Tower Block - Post Mortem
Fall 2010 I will be involved as a sound designer in the art/research project "The Tower Block - Post Mortem" ("Høyblokka - post mortem" in Norwegian). See hoyblokka.no and Høyblokka on Facebook for info on the project (pages are in Norwegian).
Experiencing Voices in Electroacoustic Music
This is my PhD project which I have worked on in the period november 2003 to november 2009. It was made possible with a fellowship that I was granted from the Faculty of Humanities at NTNU. The thesis was defended May 7th in Trondheim and is available from libraries at universities and conservatories in Norway.
Download an electronic version of the thesis.
Abstract
This dissertation presents a framework for describing and understanding the experience of voices in acousmatic electroacoustic music and related genres. The framework is developed with a phenomenological basis, where the author’s own listening experience has been the main object of study. One component of the framework has been to group aspects that potentially can be attended to into experiential domains based on some common feature, relationship or function. Four vocal experiential domains related to the voice are presented along with three domains not directly related to the voice. For each of these domains, a set of concepts are introduced allowing for qualification and description of features of the experience. The second component of the framework, the maximal-minimal model, is partly described through these domains. This model presents maximal and minimal voice as loosely defined poles constituting end points on a continuum on which experienced voices can be localized. Here, maximal voice, which parallels the informative and clearly articulated speaking voice dominant in the radio medium, is described as the converging fulfillment of seven premises. These premises are seen as partly interconnected conditions related to particular aspects or features of the experience of voice. At the other end of the continuum, minimal voice is defined as a boundary zone between voice and non-voice, a zone which is related to the negative fulfilment of the seven premises. A number of factors are presented that potentially can affect an evaluation of experiences according to the premises, along with musical excerpts that exemplifies different evaluation categories along the continuum. Finally, the two frameworks are applied in an evaluation and description of the author’s experience of Paul Lansky’s Six Fantasies on a Poem by Thomas Campion.
The thesis can be downloaded here.
Advisors
Ass. professor Dr.Art Carl Haakon Waadeland
Professor Dr.Art Rolf-Inge Godøy (co-supervisor)
Committee
Professor Simon Emmerson (De Montfort University, Leicester),
Assistant Professor Anastasia Georgaki (University of Athens),
Assistant Professor Hroar Klempe (NTNU)
Sound examples
All sound examples without copyright restrictions from the thesis are presented here. For the remaining examples, I will refer to the printed version of the thesis.
Ex 6-3 Cleaver speech - increasing rate towards noise mode
Ex 7-1 Vowels without and with microfluctuations
Ex 10-1 No masking due to frequency separation
Ex 10-2 Masking due to activation overlap
Ex 10-3 Tail masking from heavy reverberation
Ex 10-5 Bi-directional masking
Ex 11-1 Seven superimposed vowel sequences transposed with 5hz difference
Ex 11.2: Vocal sound with detuned partial
Ex 11-3 Vocal sound with partial in separate channel
Ex 11-4 Vocal sound with delayed partials
Ex 11-6 Vocal sound with FM partials
Ex 11-7 Four superimposed transposed voices
Ex 12-7 SFM - Recombined words, no accompaniment
Ex 12-7 SFM - Recombined words, no accompaniment
Ex 12-8 SFM - Phrases with different affective content - AF focus
Ex 12-9 SFM - Phrases with different identities
Ex 12-10 SFM - Information density - minimal noise mode
Ex 12-11 SFM Extreme low speed articulation
Ex 12-12 SFM Continuous transformation - increasing naturalness
Ex 12-13 SFM Technological artifacts
Ex 12-14 SFM Spatial motion - varying presence
Ex 12-16 SFM Gradually increasing feature salience
Ex 12-17 SFM Gradually lowered masking
Ex 12-18 SFM Lower to higher stream integration
Six Fantasies Machine
The SFM instrument is a tool developed in csound for producing a range of sounds similar to those found in Paul Lansky’s classic computer music composition Six Fantasies on a Poem by Thomas Campion. The instrument has eight LPC voices playing one of 21 vocal phrases. It also has possibilites of using a bank of 9 double comb filters or band pass filters. The instrument can save sound files for further processing. SFM was developed on csound 5.10 on win, but should in principle run on Mac. I will make a special version for the Mac if there are several requests for it.
SFM sound examples
SFM sound example 1: But still - imitation of phrase from her voice
SFM sound example 2: Lovely Formes Do Flowe - imitation of phrase from her voice
SFM sound example 3: Rose Cheeked Lawra - imitation of phrase from her presence
SFM sound example 4: And thy Beawties Birth - imitation of phrase from her presence
SFM sound example 5: Lovely Formes Do Flowe - imitation of phrase from her presence
SFM sound example 6: Purely Loving - imitation of phrase from her reflection
SFM sound example 7: But still - imitation of phrase from her reflection
SFM sound example 8: But still - imitation of phrase from her song
SFM sound example 9: Ever Perfect - imitation of phrase from her song
SFM sound example 10: Short etude composed from sounds generated by SFM
SFM - Simplified flow chart
Voice Meetings (Stemmemøter) - collaborative project
This project aims at developing and investigating a live-electronic performance with voice and technology as central elements, combining artistic and experiential research perspectives. The project has started out from a performance developed around Åse's personal childhood memories, exploring the territories between straightforward narration, singing and experimental soundmaking, all dressed in multilayered sonic textures derived from sampled vocal material. By presenting the live performance for several audience groups, and collecting their responses through multiple methods, the project attempts at gaining an increased understanding of the experiential processes of different audiences, thereby giving Åse guidelines in the artistic process usually not attainable for performing artists.
Participants
Tone Åse, vocal performance artist and researcher, NTNU
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Andreas Bergsland, researcher, NTNU
