Video: Instant Knoll

Title: iICEsCcRrEeAaMm

1998 [8:06]

iICEsCcRrEeAaMm is a beta, er.. I mean alpha version of a new multichannel tape piece I'm still working on. As in the software world, Marketing informs me that in future versions bugs will be squashed and new features will be added for the benefit of all listeners. "iscream" refers to the origin of most of the concrete sound materials used in the piece. Screams and various other utterances from all of Chris Chafe's kids were digitally recorded in all their chilling and quite upsetting beauty. They were latter digitally fed into the "grani" sample grinder, a granular synthesis instrument developed by the composer. "ICECREAM" refers to the reward the kids (and myself) got after the screaming studio session. The piece was composed in the digital domain using Bill Schottstaedt's Common Lisp Music. Many software instruments and quite a few other samples of real world sounds made their way into the bitstream.

Link: http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~nando/

Title: El Nino

Length: 8 mins.

A two-screen video installation with sound, accompanied live by music by Chris Chafe.

Title: Bird Death

Length: 2:02

Written in a fit of insanity, this collage of bird calls draws influences from the Night of the Undead film and other zombie horror flicks.

Title: Graveshift

choreography by Kristen Glennon, Barbara Javors

raindrop dancers:

Kristen Glennon Barbara Javors Scott Marlowe Brazie Mata Bevin Mraw

voice performance: Barbara Javors

Through a rain-streaked cafe window, surveillance of a street scene is digitally transformed into a fluid chaos comprised of paranoia, ghostly figures, and alterations of reality. Echoes of a forgotten song float above the milieu, now gaining, now loosing coherence. It is an image plagued by distortion, but this distortion emerges from quietness and recedes once again into the same.

Graveshift was conceived as a cross-discipline collaboration including video, music, and live dance.

Link: http://www.stanford.edu/~bloland/

Title: Small Fish

"Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin, but a grin without a cat! Its the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life." Bewilderment similar to that of Alice in Wonderland will be expressed by anyone attempting to concisely describe the CD-ROM bearing the subtitle "Chamber Music" by Kiyoshi Furukawa and Masaki Fujihata. The normal arrangement foresees musicians, instruments, and a score that records a composer's musical intentions. With a view to making chamber music, four string instrument players might meet up, unpack their instruments, place sheet music on the stands, and proceed to play a string quartet. Whereas Small Fish players slide the silver disk into their computer and immediately discover a topsy-turvy world. The music is not coaxed from the instruments but performed upon a score which was specially designed by Fujihata and varies according to the music produced. And while composer Furukawa has specified merely timbres and their potential combination, the player is expected to compose the music - and the latter turns out differently every time.

- Heike Staff

Links: Furukawa, small fish

Title: unlabelled

Length: 4 min.

Link: http://ccrma-www.stanford.edu/~sbacker/220b/hw3.htm

Project directed by Chris Chafe and Gregory Niemeyer

CG Images by Gregory Niemeyer and Christine Liu
CGI Character Design by Lorenzo Wang
Story written by Gregory Niemeyer

Organum is a playground for anticipated changes, adaptations and evolutions of the human body. Organum is a collection of ideas and projects by a collection of people sometimes called Network Character.

Links: Organum Site, Gregory Niemeyer, Chris Chafe

Title: Wings of Autumn

Music by Raymond Scott

Length: 8 min.

Title: Duet for Theremin and Synths

Length: 8 min.

Musical:
The eerie sound of the theremin is backed by computer synths and percussion. Most of my music is based around improvisation and this piece is no exception. I start with some pre-composed percussion and synth tracks and develop the music from there.

Technical:
The "guitar" is actually a custom built theremin, the first electronic instrument. Two brass plates control pitch and volume by detecting body capacitance. The raw theremin sound is processed by software (Ableton Live). The keyboard controls software MIDI synths in Live. MIDI percussion can be altered in real-time depending on how the improvisation develops.

Title: Improvisation for Dancers and DelMatic

Length: 10 min.

Musical:
An improvised collaboration for dancers and a MIDI-keyboard-controlled computer instrument called the DelMatic.

Technical:
The computer instrument used in this piece utilizes nothing but a set of delay lines with variable delay length and feedback coefficients. Audio input is written into delay lines and read back in real time, while the keyboardist manipulates delay parameters in response to the performance material. Audio input is transformed into textural material, whose pitch is determined by input from the keyboard. In essence, this is real-time wavetable synthesis with live input as the wavetable material.

Title: Live Video

Title: 5:3

Length: 10 min.

Link: www.markapplebaum.com

5:3 was composed for [sic]--the Stanford Improvisation Collective. It involves 8 cracklebox players and 2 amplified dice rollers. The dice rollers throw 4- and 8-sided dice which control the display of 8 colored, laminated cards. The cards--while saying nothing about what music the cracklebox players should play--instruct them on meta-performance matters: when to play, where to face, when to move or be stationary, etc.

Members of [sic]:

Anna Coburn Carolyn Chen Erik Ulman Sam Adams Max Citron Michael Feldman Jesse Fox Brennan Rego Gabe Turow Aaron Cohn