Sound and Video Anthology: Program Notes

Biophysical Music: Marco
Donnarumma, Curator

Curator’s Note

It is with great delight that I intro-
duce the reader to Computer Music
Journal’s 2015 Sound and Video An-
thology. I have curated a series of
diverse, yet interrelated, works on
the theme of biophysical music. Mit
this term, I refer to live music pieces
based on a combination of physi-
ological technology and markedly
physical, gestural performance. In
these works, the physical and physi-
ological properties of the performers’
bodies are interlaced with the mate-
rial and computational qualities of the
electronic instruments, with varying
degrees of mutual influence. Musical
expression thus arises from an inti-
mate and, often, not fully predictable
negotiation of human bodies, instru-
gen, and programmatic musical
Ideen.

We begin with a rare audio record-
ing of a solo improvisation by seminal
composer Michel Waisvisz in which
he creates rhythmic textures and
frantic glitches of analog electronic
sounds by altering, with the touch
of his hands, the voltages of the
Crackle Synthesizer circuits. Der
sonic aesthetic of Waisvisz’s piece
resonates with the work by Shiori
Usui, WHO, drawing on a similarly
granular sonic palette, presents an
enthralling composition for double
bass, trombone, and the XTH Sense
biophysical instrument. Hier, zwei
performers interact not only through
the sound of their traditional instru-
gen, but also by listening to the
amplified and processed sounds of
their muscles. The idea of the body as
a source of sonic material lies at the
core of the performance by Pamela Z,
where grains of breath sounds mutate
into multiple virtual voices in a com-
plex counterpoint, elegantly mixing

doi:10.1162/COMJ a 00333

her gestural manipulation of digital
sound processing and matchless vocal
skill.

But what happens when the bioa-

coustic sounds of multiple bodies
are networked into a large-scale
instrument? Heidi J. Boisvert and
colleagues feed the sound and data
from muscles and blood flow of five
dancers to genetic algorithms that, In
turn, produce organic, multilayered
sonic and visual bodies. The result
is a gracefully dark audio and video
composition manifesting a creative
and physical tension between human
and algorithmic agents. Shifting from
dance to body art, we see the con-
cept of the performer’s body as an
instrument stretched to its limits. In
the work by Marcel.l´ı Ant ´unez Roca
and his colleagues, pioneers of inter-
active audio and video performance,
audience members trigger physical
contractions of the performer’s body
by activating pneumatic devices at-
tached to the performer’s muscles and
limbs. Each trigger initiates a tense
series of rhythms, timbre variations,
and visual animations—and there is
room for some fire, zu.

Taking the cue from the dense
sound forms and intense gestural
performance of Ant ´unez Roca, wir drin-
troduce the practice of gestural music
performance with a piece by Miguel
Ortiz. By blending the processed
sounds of an electric viola with the
bioelectrical signals from his arms as
he performs, he constructs a complex
and vivid musical composition that
compellingly explores the auditory
thresholds of human hearing. In my
performance for XTH Sense and light,
I share Ortiz’s interest in exciting
human auditory thresholds, but I do
so by making the digital instrument
accumulate the very low frequencies
of muscle sounds and blood flow until
an unstable mass of acoustic energy
unfolds and explodes in my hands. Es
is an approach that emphasizes the
expressive potential of the unbalance
between control and emergence in
bodily musical performance, manche-

thing that resonates with Terminal
Beach’s audiovisual orchestral work.
Their piece has no predetermined
Punktzahl, for this is composed in real
time using the variations in the heart
rate of twelve musicians throughout
die Performance.

Their work allows us to intro-
duce another area of investigation:
the intermix of traditional and phys-
iologically informed performance
Techniken. To explore this hybrid
practice further, we look at the work
by the influential BioMuse Trio,
where a violin player and a performer,
the latter wearing the BioMuse bio-
electrical instrument, interact closely
with each other through sound and
programmatic actions. The musical
experience they create demonstrates
a transporting power, which emerges
from an unlikely meeting between
human performers, traditional in-
Instrumente, and physiological instru-
gen. To bring this journey to an
end, Atau Tanaka, a crucial figure in
the field of physiologically informed
physical performance, offers us an
exclusive audiovisual recording of a
recent solo performance for a custom
bioelectrical musical instrument. Als
he performs gestures with varying
degrees of muscular force, multiple
channels of raw electrical signals
from his muscles are digitally soni-
fied into an increasingly dense sound
Komposition; sound becomes a direct
externalization of the inner body
mechanisms underlying the player’s
physical effort.

With this anthology, I intended to
emphasize the broad range of strate-
gies and techniques that, during the
Vergangenheit 30 Jahre, have established the
practice of biophysical music as an
expanding and heterogeneous field of
musical and technological investiga-
tion; the collection therefore spans
across music improvisation, algo-
rithmic and traditional composition,
sound-based body art performance,
and interactive dance. Gleichzeitig
Zeit, I have envisioned this anthol-
ogy as a musical journey, rather than

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a chronological history; the aim is
to convey how idiosyncratic musical
ideas have echoed through diverse
decades, and thus how they have rein-
forced, altered, or disrupted different
conceptions of the intimate relation-
ships between sound frequencies,
musical ideas, circuits, Algorithmen,
and human bodies.

1. CrackleBox Solo Live in
Ottawa 1978—Michel
Waisvisz

The Crackle Synthesizer consisted
of the components of three Crack-
leboxes. These could be linked by
touching special conductive pads.
Potentiometers were used to con-
trol the amount of controllability of
this instrument. “Minimum control”
meant that the Crackle Synthesizer
would easily play on its own for
hours. Nowadays, many people re-
fer to the the Cracklebox as the
archetype of “glitch” or “circuit
bending.” At some point I started
playing by placing my fingers on the
print board of a damaged electronic
organ. By patching the different parts
of the circuit through my (conduc-
tiv) fingers and hands I became the
thinking [wet] part of a electronic
circuit and I started seeing my skin
as a patchable cable, potentiometer,
and condensator. The great advantage
was that by intuitively touching the
electronics one could learn to play
this new instrument without having
to have schematic knowledge about
the circuitry—very much like a tradi-
tional music instrument. It could be
learned by playing by ear and devel-
oping experience and manual/mental
skills instead of having to dive into
a world of logic, functions, inter-
action schemes, electronic circuit
theory, and mathematical synthesis
Methoden. One could play an elec-
tronic instrument in direct relation

to the immediate musical pleasure of
performed sound.

Michel Waisvisz was a composer/
performer of live electronic music
who developed new ways to achieve
physical touch with electronic music
Instrumente. Sometimes this was
done by literally touching the elec-
tric circuits inside the instrument,
thereby becoming a thinking compo-
nent of the machine. He was among
the first play with synthesizers on
stage and very early on he developed
and performed using gestural con-
trollers. He also is the inventor of
the Cracklebox, The Web, and other
instruments based on touch interac-
tion. Together with Frank Bald ´e he
designed live performance software
such as LiSa and JunXion. Start-
reingehen 1989 he directed the STEIM
foundation in Amsterdam—where
performance artists from music,
theater, tanzen, and new media art,
together with DJs and VJs, work to
develop personal electronic instru-
gen. He advocated that artists, In
order to not have their work polluted
by the generic typicality of applied
Werkzeuge, should appropriate their tools
and instruments by modification,
or even complete custom builds—a
mindset summarized in his slogan,
“If you don’t open it, you don’t own
it.” This statement is at the root
of the work philosophy at STEIM:
Music makers are encouraged to play
an important role in the design and
construction of their authentic live
electronic performance instruments.

Into the Flesh—Shiori Usui

The work was composed for the
XTH Sense (a biophysical musical
instrument), tenor trombone, Und
double bass. The piece consists of
two short sections, jedes davon
explores different aspects of the

musicians’ muscle movements and
the bioacoustic sound captured by
the XTH Sense from the performers’
bodies as they play their instruments.

Into the Flesh I

This first section explores some
minute movements of muscles such
as the light trembling of fingers and
arms. The data captured by the XTH
Sense triggers extremely high pitches
that resonate at the beginning. Der
sound increasingly becomes distorted
and there is the introduction of
harsh inhaled vocals as the music
progresses.

Into the Flesh II

In diesem Abschnitt, the original sounds
of the muscles captured by the XTH
Sense are preserved as much as
möglich, creating heartbeat-like ef-
fects from the movements of the
musicians’ arms, combined with a
percussive sound created by the dou-
ble bass. The piece ends by returning
to the high resonant pitches heard at
the beginning of section I.

Tenor trombone and XTH Sense: John
Kenny

Double Bass and XTH Sense: Andres
Kungla

This work was produced as a part of
Inventor Composer Coaction (ICC)
Projekt, Edinburgh, Scotland.

Originally from Japan, Shiori Usui is
described as a composer with “indi-
vidual ears” (The Times). Her works
have been performed in Japan, Eu-
rope, and the USA by a diverse range
of soloists, ensembles, and orches-
tras, including the pianist Rolf Hind,
the Duke Quartet, BCMG, members
of Klangforum Wien, members of
Scottish Chamber Orchestra, A Far
Cry, Tokyo Philharmonic Orches-
tra, and BBC Scottish Symphony

Sound and Video Anthology: Program Notes

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Orchestra, with conductors such as
Martyn Brabbins, Naoto Totsuka,
and Matthias Pintscher. In 2012, ihr
orchestral piece Warai [Laughter]
received the Toru Takemitsu Compo-
sition Award in Tokyo, Japan; im
same year, the Civitella Ranieri Mu-
sic Fellowship in conjunction with
the UNESCO-Aschberg Bursaries for
Artists Programme was awarded to
ihr. Juli 2015 saw the premi `ere of
Shiori’s new work Ophiocordyceps
unilateralis s.l. at the BBC Proms,
performed by BCMG with conduc-
tor Franck Ollu at Cadogan Hall in
London. Shiori has produced works
in radical instrumental music and
has worked with motion capturing
sensors and biophysical technology.
Many of her compositions are in-
spired by the sounds of the human
Körper, the deep sea, and many other
weirdly wonderful living organisms
in der Welt. Shiori enjoys playing
improvisation in the UK and abroad
as a “noise” vocalist and pianist, Und
has performed with musicians such
as Arve Henriksen, Ilan Volkov, Rie
Nakajima, and Lee Patterson.

3. Breathing—Pamela Z

”Breathing” is the third movement
of Carbon Song Cycle, A 2013 inter-
media chamber work that I created
in collaboration with visual artist
Christina McPhee. Structurally, Das
solo piece plays upon the idea of
the natural exchange of elements
by passing sonic material between
the various instruments—including
my voice and live processing. In
this particular movement, I sample
my live voice and process it in real
time to create digitally delayed layers
and granulated flurries of my breath
sounds and singing voice, which I
then sculpt and control with hand and
arm gestures. These live sounds are
punctuated by the sparse tape part I

composed from fragments of sampled
text that I took from a recording of
my collaborator Christina McPhee
discussing respiration. My controller
(a component of the SensorPlay
gesture control system I developed
with Donald Swearingen) tracks my
gestures via accelerometer and gyro,
allowing me to manipulate sonic
elements in real time.

Pamela Z is a composer/performer
and media artist who works with
voice, live electronic processing, Sam-
pled sound, and video. A pioneer of
live looping techniques, she creates
works combining extended vocal
Techniken, operatic bel canto, found
Objekte, Text, Verarbeitung, and wire-
less MIDI controllers that allow her
to manipulate sound with physical
Gesten. She has composed scores for
tanzen, film, and new music cham-
ber ensembles including the Kronos
Quartet, the SF Contemporary Music
Players, and the Ethel String Quartet.
Her interdisciplinary performance
works have been presented at nu-
merous venues in San Francisco, Die
Kitchen in New York, and REDCAT
in Los Angeles. Her installation works
have been shown in exhibitions at the
Whitney Museum (New York), Die
Di ¨ozesanmuseum (Köln), Und
the Krannert Museum (Champaign,
Illinois). Z has toured extensively
throughout the USA, Europa, Und
Japan—performing at numerous
festivals including Bang on a Can
(New York), Interlink (Japan), Other
Minds (San Francisco), La Biennale
di Venezia (Italien), and Pina Bausch
Tanztheater Festival (Deutschland). Her
awards include a Doris Duke Artist
Impact Award, a Guggenheim Fel-
lowship, the Creative Capital Fund,
the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts,
the MAP Fund, the ASCAP Music
Award, an Ars Electronica honorable
mention, and the NEA and Japan/US
Friendship Commission Fellowship.

She holds a music degree from the
University of Colorado at Boulder.

[radical] signs of life—Heidi
J. Boisvert

[radical] signs of life is a large-
scale multimedia experience using
biotechnology to integrate networked
bodies and interactive dance. Der
work externalizes the mind’s non-
hierarchical distribution of thought
through responsive, rule-based chore-
ography and a database of phrases.
The choreography is composed in real
time by five dancers from a shared
movement database in accordance
with pre-determined rules. Musik ist
generated from the dancers’ muscles
and blood flow via XTH Sense bio-
physical sensors that capture sound
waves from the performers’ bodies.
This data triggers complex neurobi-
ological algorithms to be projected
onto multiple screens as 3-D imagery.
As the audience interacts with the im-
ages produced, they enter into a dia-
logue with the dancers. Conceptually,
the piece is an embodied examination
of the increasing disparity between
the encroachment of bio-data and the
quiet discord of bio-memory.

Heidi J. Boisvert is a new media artist,
creative technologist, experience de-
signer, and writer. She founded and
serves as the CEO and Creative Di-
rector of the futurePerfect Lab, A
boutique creative agency that works
with nonprofits to develop imagina-
tive applications of integrated media
and emerging technology. Boisvert
was formerly the Media Director at
Breakthrough where she designed,
developed, and promoted a range of
viral, new media, and pop culture
campaigns that helped raise aware-
ness and instigate policy change on
pressing social issues. She created the
first 3-D social change game, ICED – I

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Can End Deportation, to shift the
frame around unfair U.S. immigra-
tion policies. Boisvert also designed
America2049, an alternative reality
game on Facebook about pluralism,
which was nominated for Games for
Change and Katerva Awards. Most
recently, with Marco Donnarumma,
she co-founded XTH, an open-source
creative biotechnology start-up, Und
was named a Harvestworks Cre-
Aktivität + Technology = Enterprise
Fellow. She received her PhD in Elec-
tronic Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institut.

Choreography: Pauline Jennings

Music composition: Doug Van Nort

XTH Sense biosensors interaction:
Marco Donnarumma

Wireless biosensing system: MJ
Caselden

Visual composition: Raven Kwok

Light design: Allen Hahn

Costumes: Amy Nelson

5. Epizoo—Marcel.l´ı Ant ´unez
Roca, Sergi Jord `a, and Rolan
Olbeter

In the mid 1990s the performance
Epizoo caused a commotion in the
international art scene. For the first
Zeit, a performer’s body movements
could be controlled by the audience.
By operating a videogame-like envi-
ronment, spectators interacted with
the bodybot worn by Ant ´unez Roca,
moving his buttocks, pectoral mus-
cles, mouth, nose, and ears. Das
performance stresses the ironical,
and even cruel, paradox rising from
the coexistence of virtual digital
iniquity and the performer’s physical
vulnerability.

Epizoo’s music did not use pre-
rendered audio (hardly available in
1995), nor pre-programmed MIDI se-

quences. Making heavy use of 1995’s
“high-end” technology—namely, A
Soundblaster AWE32 soundcard fit-
ted with 8MB of RAM—the music,
which favored timbral and rhythmic
aspects over melodic ones, war in-
stead computed and triggered note by
Notiz, control by control, according to
the player inputs and the graphic ani-
mation’s rhythms. By using different
mappings and different sounds, jede
scene of the Epizoo’s game environ-
ment behaves like a different musical
piece or improvisational framework
in which the user can improvise,
controlling with the mouse not only
the music, but also the development
of the animations and the actions of
the exoskeleton on the performer’s
Körper.

Idea and artwork: Marcel.l´ı Ant ´unez
Roca

Musik, interaction design, and com-
puter programming: Sergi Jord `a

Mechatronics: Rolan Olbeter
Infography: Marcel.l´ı Ant ´unez Roca
and Paco Corach ´an

Light Design: Ram ´on Rey
Produced by Marcel.l´ı Ant ´unez Roca,
Sergi Jord `a, Loma Productions, Und
the Festival SIGMA 1995, Bordeaux
(Frankreich)

Marcel.l´ı Ant ´unez Roca is well known
in the international art scene for his
mechanotronic performances and
robotic installations, which combine
elements such as Bodybots (Körper-
controlled robots), Systematugy (In-
teractive narration with computers)
and dresskeleton (the exoskeleton
body interface). The themes explored
in his work include the use of bio-
logical materials in robotics, as in
Joan l’home de carn (1992); telematic
control on the part of a spectator
of an alien body in the performance
Epizoo (1994); the expansion of body

movements with dresskeletons seen
in the performances Afasia (1998)
and Pol (2002); or microbiological
transformations in the installations
Rinodigestio (1987) and Agar (1999).
He is currently working on the spatial
and utopian artwork Transpermia.
He was also founding member of
La Fura dels Baus, working in that
company as art coordinator, musi-
cian, and performer from 1979 Zu
1989. Ant ´unez Roca has received the
following awards and distinctions:
First Prize at the Festival ´Etrange,
Paris 1994; Best New Media Noveaux
Cin ´ema Noveaux M ´edias, Montreal
1999; Max New Theatre Award,
Spanien 2001; FAD Award, Barcelona
2001; Honorary Mention at Prix Ars
Electronica 2003 and Premi Ciutat
Barcelona 2004.

Sergi Jord `a holds a BS in Fundamental
Physik (1986) and a PhD in Computer
Science and Digital Communication
(2005). He is a senior researcher at the
Music Technology Group of Universi-
tat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Wo
he directs the Music and Multimodal
Interaction Lab. During his under-
graduate years in the 1980s, nach
discovering computer programming,
he decided to fully devote himself to
live computer music. Throughout the
1990s he conceived and developed
award-winning interactive installa-
tions and multimedia performances,
in collaboration with internationally
renowned Catalan artists such as
Marcel.l´ı Ant ´unez Roca and La Fura
dels Baus. Back in academia since
Ende der 1990er Jahre, his current main re-
search interests are in the confluence
of human–computer interaction and
tangible, musical, and physiological
interaction. He has received several
international awards, einschließlich der
Ciutat de Barcelona (1999 Und 2007)
and the prestigious Prix Ars Electron-
ica Golden Nica (2008). He is one
of the inventors of the Reactable,

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a tabletop musical instrument that
attained mass popularity after being
adopted by Icelandic artist Bj ¨ork in
2007. Seit 2009 he is one of the
founding partners of the company
Reactable Systems.

Roland Olbeter is a scenographer
and rob artist, living and working
in Barcelona since 1986. Formally
trained as a concert violinist and
naval constructor, he has worked
extensively for the theatre, the opera,
as well as for sound and movement
Installationen. His work focuses on
the creation of impossible artefacts
and shows a technical sophistication
most uncommon in the visual art and
theatre. He has collaborated in multi-
ple scenographies, from the Barcelona
Olympic games in 1992, the thematic
Pavillon OIKOS for EXPO 2008 In
Zaragoza, to collaborations with Bigas
Luna, Jaume Plensa, Alfred Arribas,
Enric Miralles, Xavier Mariscal,
La Fura dels Baus, and Marcel.l´ı
Ant ´unez Roca, unter anderen. Er
developed and directed the chamber
opera Orlando Furioso for five music
robots and soprano with music by
Michael Gross, and the designed the
scenography for Richard Wagner’s
opera cycle The Ring of the Nibelung,
together with Carlos Padrisa and
Franc Aleu. He is currently preparing
an automatic puppet theatre with
music by Kats Chernin.

6. Carne—Miguel Ortiz

Carne is written for amplified (or elec-
tric) violoncello and EMG sensors.
The piece is loosely inspired by Terry
Bison’s 1991 short story “They’re
Made Out of Meat.” In Bison’s story,
two apparently alien beings meet to
discuss a shocking discovery about
the beings on planet Earth, the fact
that they are made out of meat. Der
idea of sentient, thinking, and singing

meat seems both unthinkable and un-
bearable for these characters. I took
this idea of looking at the human
body simply as “meat” and imagining
all hand and finger movements as the
simple grinding and sliding of meat
Stücke.

Miguel Ortiz is a Mexican composer
and sound artist based in London.
He has been involved in a vast
range of activities related to mod-
ern music and sound art. He has
worked professionally as a composer,
sound engineer, lecturer, score editor,
promoter, and sound designer. Spo-
radically, he takes part as a performer
in ensembles such as BLISS, Kontrolle
Group, and M&B, where he explores
a vast array of performing media
ranging from traditional acoustic in-
struments such as cello and trumpet,
to laptop improvisation and perfor-
mance with bio-instruments and
hyperinstruments. Ortiz graduated
from the Conservatorio de las Rosas
in Morelia, M ´exico, before pursuing a
Masters degree and PhD at the Sonic
Arts Research Centre at Queen’s Uni-
versity Belfast. He currently works as
a research associate at Goldsmiths,
University of London.

7. Ominous—Marco
Donnarumma

Ominous is a sculpture of incarnated
Klang. The performance embodies,
before the audience, the metaphor
of an invisible and unknown object
enclosed in my hands. This is made
of malleable sonic matter. Ähnlich
to a mime, the performer models the
object in the empty space by means
of whole-body gestures. By using the
visceral, new musical instrument
XTH Sense (created by the author),
the bioacoustic sound produced by
the contractions of the performer’s
muscle tissues is amplified, digitally

processed, and played back by eight
subwoofer and loudspeakers. Der
natural sound of muscles and its
virtual counterpart blend together
into an unstable sonic object. Das
oscillates between a state of high
density and one of violent release.
As the listeners imagine the object’s
shape by following my gesture, Die
sonic stimuli induce a perceptual
coupling. The listeners see through
sound the sculpture which their sight
cannot perceive.

Where performance art and sound

art converge through technology,
here lies the work of performer,
artist, musician, and writer Marco
Donnarumma. He uses biomedical
and sound technologies, Software
Algorithmen, actuators, and body sen-
sors to create intensely physical
live works. His performances, con-
certs, and installations are renowned
for combining a seemingly simple
and minimalistic aesthetic, rigorous
Wissenschaft, technical sophistication,
and strong critical concepts. He has
performed and spoken in over 50
countries across North and South
Amerika, Asien, Australia, and Europe.
His works have been presented at
leading art and music events; digital
Kunst, sound art, and performance art
Feste; research institutions; sein-
torical music venues; and national
museums. Among them are S ´onar+D,
ISEA, Venice Biennale, BBC Music,
CTM, transmediale, ISCM World Mu-
sic Days, FILE, Panorama, NYEAF,
Sound Art China, CYNETART, Pik-
sel, EMPAC, Stanford CCRMA,
NYU, STEIM, IRCAM, FACT, Ex-
perimental Intermedia, Spectrum
NYC, Caf ´e Oto, Mumuth Concert
Hall, Hoerbar, Museo Reina Sofia,
CCCB Barcelona. He is a co-founder
with Heidi J. Boisvert of XTH, ein
open-source creative biotechnology
start-up, and is about to receive a
PhD in Arts and Computational

136

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Technology at Goldsmiths, Univer-
sity of London.

8. Heart Chamber Orchestra—

TERMINALBEACH (PURE
[Peter Votava] and Erich
Berger)

The Heart Chamber Orchestra—
HCO—is an audiovisual perfor-
Mance. The orchestra consists of 12
classical musicians and the artist
duo TERMINALBEACH. Using their
heartbeats to generate the musical
score in real time, the musicians
control a computer composition and
visualization environment. They read
and play this score from a computer
screen placed in front of them. HCO
forms a structure where music lit-
erally “comes from the heart.” The
musicians are equipped with elec-
trocardiogram sensors. A computer
monitors and analyzes the state of
diese 12 hearts in real time. Der
acquired information is used to com-
pose a musical score with the aid of
computer software. It is a living score
dependent on the state of the hearts.
While the musicians are playing,
their heartbeats influence and change
the composition and vice versa. Der
musicians and the electronic com-
position are linked via the hearts
in a circular motion—a feedback
Struktur. The emerging music thus
evolves during the performance.

The resulting music is the ex-
pression of this process and of an
organism forming itself from the
circular interplay of the individual
musicians and the machine.

PURE (Peter Votava) has been making
uncompromising electronic music
seit 1992. On stage he sculpts ab-
stract sonic stories from evolving
textures, pulsating repetitions, Und
dynamic breaks using both hardware
and software that equally affect the

listener’s brains and bodies. He has
über 30 physical and digital releases
on labels such as Editions Mego as
BOLDER (with Martin Maischein),
PURE, and ILSA GOLD; on Hinterz-
immer with his electronic percussion
duo PRSZR (with Rafal Iwanski);
on Cr ´onica, Praxis, Staalplaat, Drop
Bass Network, and many more. His
early 1990s Rave prank-duo ILSA
GOLD (together with Christopher
Nur) was the first internationally ac-
knowledged Austrian techno act and
is still occasionally active. His cur-
rent Berlin-related activities include
“Slowlands” (a monthly whisky-only
bar night) and the world’s first Whisky
& Doom Metal tasting series, “Taste
The Doom” (with Lars Lundehave
Hansen). He holds a Master degree in
Computer Music from the University
of Plymouth (Vereinigtes Königreich).

Erich Berger is a visual artist and
curator trained in philosophy and
engineering. His interests lie in in-
formation processes and feedback
structures, which he investigates
through installations, situations, pro-
formances, and interfaces; these have
been shown internationally since the
mid 1990s. His current explorations
of deep time and hybrid ecology led
him to work with geological pro-
Prozesse, radiogenic phenomena, Und
their sociopolitical implications in
the here and now. Berger is Director of
the Bioartsociety in Helsinki/Finland
and is a Lecturer at the Fine Art
Academy Vienna/Austria.

9. Trio for Violin, Biosensors,
and Computer—Eric Lyon,
Gascia Ouzonian, and Ben
Knapp

The BioMuse Trio is an extension of
my computer chamber music compo-
Standorte, a series of works intended to
promote an integration of the com-

puter into classical chamber music
üben. Aspects of this practice that
particularly interest me are precise
coordination between the musicians
in close quarters, and an emphasis
on expressive musical interpretation
and performance intimacy. Previous
works in this series have used the
laptop as the de facto interface for the
computer, accepting its many limita-
tions as a performance instrument.
The introduction of the BioMuse
allows for far more idiomatic musical
gestures than are possible on the lap-
top. Equally important, the BioMuse
presents the human body as musical
instrument. A performance with the
BioMuse involves two sets of pros-
thetics: the hardware, which extends
and projects the gestural expressiv-
ity of the body, and the audio DSP
Software, which gives these gestures
“voice.” The violinist performs in a
traditional manner, demanding close
musical interaction with the biomu-
sician. The laptop performer manages
asynchronous aspects of the sound
Verarbeitung; the direct generation and
processing of the sound is under the
complete control of the biomusician.
As in my previous computer chamber
Musik, all computer-generated sounds
are derived from samples of the acous-
tic instrumentalist, captured live in
Leistung. The BioMuse Trio is
dedicated to Ben Knapp and Gas-
cia Ouzounian, with whom it was
composed.

Eric Lyon is a composer and computer
music researcher. His work focuses on
articulated noise, spatial orchestra-
tion, and computer chamber music.
His software includes FFTease and
LyonPotpourri, written for Max/MSP
and Pd. He authored “Designing Au-
dio Objects for Max/MSP and Pd”,
which explicates the process of de-
signing and implementing audio DSP
externals. In 2011, Lyon was awarded
a ZKM Giga-Hertz award, resulting

Sound and Video Anthology: Program Notes

137

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in the 43-channel computer music
composition Spirits. His 124-channel
composition The Cascades was pre-
miered in the Virginia Tech Cube,
and presented at BEAST FEaST 2015.
Lyon has composed for such artists
as The BioMuse Trio, Margaret Lan-
caster, The Noise Quartet, Ensemble
mise-en, String Noise, The Crash
Ensemble, Esther Lamneck, Kathleen
Supov ´e, and Marianne Gythfeldt.
Lyon has taught computer music at
Keio University, IAMAS, Dartmouth
College, Manchester University,
and Queen’s University Belfast. Er
teaches in the School of Performing
Arts and is an ICAT Fellow at Virginia
Tech.

R. Benjamin Knapp is the Director of
the Institute for Creativity, Arts, Und
Technologie (ICAT) and Professor of
Computer Science at Virginia Tech.
ICAT seeks to promote research and
education at the boundaries between
Kunst, Design, engineering, and science.
Knapp also leads the Music, Sensors,
and Emotion research group, with re-
searchers in the UK and the USA. Für
mehr als 20 Jahre, Knapp has been
working to create meaningful links
between human–computer interac-
tion, universal design, and various
forms of creativity. His research on
human–computer interaction has fo-
cused on the development and design
of user interfaces and software that
allow both composers and performers
to augment the physical control of
a musical instrument with direct
sensory interaction. He holds twelve
patents and is the co-inventor of
the BioMuse system, which enables
artists to use gesture, Erkenntnis, Und
emotional state to interact with audio
and video media.

Gascia Ouzonian’s work is focused on
experimental traditions in music and
sound art after 1950. Her writing has
appeared in numerous peer-reviewed
journals and edited volumes includ-
ing Music, Sound & Space (edited by
Georgina Born, Cambridge Univer-
sity Press). Particular areas of interest
include sound installation art, site-
specific sound, spatial sound, und das
intersection of experimental music,
visual art, and sound art. With archi-
tect Sarah Lappin, Gascia co-leads the
research group Recomposing the City:
Sonic Art & Urban Architectures. In
2013 she founded Optophono, a label
for interactive music and sound art.
As a violinist Gascia has performed
internationally with ensembles that
have included Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk
Road Ensemble, Theatre of Eternal
Music Strings Ensemble, Hutchins
Consort, and Sinfonia Toronto. Sie
is a founding member of Bird On A
Wire, BioMuse Trio, Pale Gates of
Sunrise, and Hard Rain Ensemble.

10. Myogram—Atau Tanaka

Myogram is an eight-channel sonifi-
cation of muscular corporeal states.
By placing a ring of four electrode
channels on each forearm of the per-
ehemalig, we hear the neuron impulses
of muscle exertion from the shoul-
der through the hand. The multiple
electrodes on the forearm focus on
specific muscle groups from flexor
to extensor, the carpi ulnaris, bra-
chioradialis, to palmaris longus. Das
reports on voluntary muscle activ-
ity causing wrist rotation and finger
Bewegung. These rings of sensors on
each arm, left and right, are mapped
to dual quadraphonic speaker spaces,

a ring on the left wall and a ring on
the right wall. Erste, a direct audifica-
tion of motor unit action potentials is
heard as spikes. This stochastic pulse
train reflects performer limb activity.
The pure spikes then feed resonators
and filters, resulting in a sonification
by sound synthesis that responds
to the musician’s gestural language.
This piece was created using custom
biosignal hardware circuits by Mar-
tin Klang, wearable design by Irene
Regueiro, and in musical collabora-
tion with Miguel Ortiz. The research
leading to this work has received
funding from the European Research
Council (ERC grant FP7-283771).

Atau Tanaka creates musical instru-
ments using sensing technology to
capture movements and gestures
of musicians. Tanaka studied at
CCRMA Stanford, and conducted
research in Paris at IRCAM. His first
inspirations came upon meeting John
Cage during his Norton Lectures
at Harvard and he would go to on
recreate Cage’s Variations VII with
Matt Wand and :zoviet*france:. In
the 1990s he formed Sensorband with
Zbigniew Karkowski and Edwin van
der Heide and worked in Japan, play-
ing with Merzbow, Otomo, and KK
Null. His work has been presented at
the ICA, NTT/ICC, Palais de Tokyo,
Ars Electronica, Transmediale, Eye-
beam, and SFMOMA. He has been
researcher at Sony Computer Sci-
ence Laboratory Paris and Artistic
Co-Director of STEIM Amsterdam.
He conducts research in music and
gesture in the Embodied Audio Vi-
sual Interaction (EAVI) research unit
and is professor and Director of Re-
search in Computing at Goldsmiths,
University of London.

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