Charles Martin

My friends and I in Ensemble Evolution had a great idea for our Piteå Percussion Repertoire Festival: “Let’s record ALL of the seminars and concerts!! We can just use the little camcorders from the school service centre.”

The result? About 140GB of messed up AVCHD MTS files and separate audio recordings. There are lots of problems with doing this much recording with these kind of cameras but for now I have a reasonable workflow for making something useful out of all the mess!

Problem 1 – capturing from the camera

If you can plug the camera directly into a computer, iMovie or Final Cut Pro (7) can usually import all of the recordings which takes a LONG time. In our case, we used three cameras which needed to be returned so I copied the contents of their hard drives onto my external drive to deal with later. As it turns out, iMovie won’t import from the copied file systems and FCP will sometimes using Log and Transfer. One of the three cameras worked with FCP and the other two were no good. So I had to do something else!!

Problem 2 – joining split MTS files

If you dive into the file system of the Sony cameras I was using, you find lots of huge .MTS files. These are the videos saved in AVCHD format! Unfortunately, each recording was split up into 2.12GB chunks… (FAT32 maximum filesize attack… hurr durr). Luckily, you can join them together using “cat” in terminal.

compy:STREAM charles$ cat 00000.MTS 00001.MTS 00002.MTS > joined.MTS

(It’s easy to see where each scene ends, because the last chunk has a filesize of less than 2.12GB.)

Now, MTS chunks are back together as they were meant to be and they can be played back in VLC if you want to check them out. BUT, they won’t play in Quicktime so you can’t import them to iMovie or FCP the way they are.

Problem 3 – fixing AVCHD for Quicktime

The MTS files are a perfectly normal video format (H.264 with AC3 sound) but Quicktime doesn’t know what to do with them. I use Remux (free) to repackage the MTS files into an mp4 file with AAC audio (since I’m replacing the audio later anyway…).

It’s not exactly quick to use remux on a 12GB file, but it’s a lot faster than transcoding into mp4 using Handbrake.

After remuxing the file you can play it in Quicktime and import into iMovie FCP or anything else easily! YAY!

Lots of the finished videos are going up on our Vimeo page now!

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Posterous exporter for Toto

2011-07-13T10:44:00.001+10:00

I’ve been experimenting a bit with a cute blogging engine called Toto and wanted to migrate my Posterous posts so I wrote a little script in Ruby to download them all and format them in a Toto-appropriate way.

This script uses the posterous gem just to retrieve each post and put it in a YAML text file that Toto can understand. At the moment there are a few problems…

Since YAML uses “:” as a control character I had to remove any colons from titles and replaced them with dashes… I wonder if there’s a way to preserve them so that the text files are still human-readable?
The posterous gem only seems to get one page of posts at a time since my blog has 19 pages, I just ran my downloading method for each one.

Anyway, here’s the script! Maybe someone will chime in and tell me all the things I’m doing wrong.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby  require 'posterous' require 'toto'  Posterous.config = { 'username'  => 'username', 'password'  => 'password', 'api_token' => 'api_token' }  include Posterous  @site = Site.primary  Dir.chdir( "~/src/posterousparser" )  def saveposts(pagenumber = 0) @site.posts(:page => pagenumber).each do |e| timestamp = e.display_date yyyy = timestamp[0..3] mm = timestamp[5..6] dd = timestamp[8..9]  title = e.title.gsub(":", "-") slug = title.strip.slugize filename = "#{yyyy}-#{mm}-#{dd}-#{slug}.txt"  puts "Writing #{filename}...\n"  file = File.new("#{filename}", "w") file.puts "---\n" file.puts "title: #{title}\n" file.puts "author: #{e.user["display_name"]}" file.puts "date: #{dd}/#{mm}/#{yyyy}\n" file.puts "timestamp: #{e.display_date}\n"  file.print "tags: "  e.tags.each do |a| file.print "#{a["name"]} " end  file.puts "\n\n" file.puts "#{e.body_full}\n" file.puts "\n" file.close  end end  puts "Downloading posts now!"  for i in 1..19 do saveposts(i) end

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cool things at NIME2011

2011-06-30T15:50:00.001+10:00

I went to NIME2011 in Oslo a few weeks ago, it was a really fun opportunity to catch up with some contacts in computer music and interactive media and to see what’s going on in the research world at the moment. Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of things that stuck in my mind

Satellite CCRMA.

Two CCRMA-lites (Edgar Berdahl and Wendy Ju) presented their ideas about using [Beagleboard][beagleboard] (tiny computers on a board) to teach interface design. Broadly, they thought that the longevity of DIY music interfaces and other physical-computing projects is really held back by being tethered to a computer that is often used for other tasks. Their answer is to add a Beagleboard to the Arduinos they already use to create a self-contained system for running sensors, making and processing sounds and even doing video output and computer vision.

I was kind of skeptical about the idea until their talk… the thing which really got me was they’ve setup a Linux distribution for the Beagleboard which can run Pd patches or any other common computer music language. It seems like they’ve really got the whole process for setting up the board with a patch worked out and there were a few projects in the demo sessions from their class.

Now it’s just a matter of time before I crack and buy one of those boards…

I realised watching their talk that CCRMA is really a special place for this kind of stuff to happen and develop REALLY quickly. The two presenters clearly have a lot of passion for making it happen and must have put a huge amount of work into getting the kinks out of their system, the institution supports them figuring it all out and by the time NIME rolls around they’ve taught one class using this technology and are preparing a new version for the summer course and next semester’s students. I think it’s very rare in this field to have a place where this stuff can proceed so rapidly… great teachers, supportive institution and lots of students to test it on.

HIDUINO – MIDI enabled firmware for Arduino UNO

Some really cool work here. They’ve written a firmware for the Arduino UNO so that it can work as a driverless MIDI interface (and maybe one day to send OSC as well through network over USB!!). This will make a big difference in the quality of work that Arduino hackers can produce. It totally sucks to mess around with software to convert serial to MIDI, much easier and more elegant to go straight to the useful protocol (yes, often MIDI is more useful that OSC…).

“The Shells” by Alex Nowitz

A really compelling performance by this guy who sings and controls a computer using handheld controllers in the STEIM “The Hands” style. The controllers themselves had a really cute stand that also had a tiny display connected to his Mac Mini (offstage). It’s bizarre and embarrassing how refreshing it is to see people really getting deep into interface design that doesn’t require a laptop on stage… just moving the mac mini offstage and having a tiny display makes a huge difference to the potential for stage presence.

Sergi Jordà

Sergi Jordà (of Reactable fame) gave a great keynote presentation discussing his career in art, HCI and now product design. One comment he made about Reactable that struck me was (something like) “after the first paper, we haven’t been to NIME, because we’ve been focussing on making the product better, not creating new interfaces to write papers about”. From what I can see, NIME gets a huge number of papers about prototype style interfaces, instruments and performances and many fewer papers about really mature, successful and high quality projects. I think there’s probably an interesting story to tell about how a research project Reactable becomes a system that you can ship off to a museum and trust that it will actually work when set up by an amateur.

I also noticed that his earlier work in cross-artform performance with networked interfaces and interactive elements was kind of similar to my own work with Last Man to Die. Except his was CRAZY SCARY.

Strike on Stage

Chi-Hsia and I gave a demo of our Strike on Stage system which is about a year old now. I was actually a bit surprised by how good the reception was, lots of people asking about the details and interested in how the performance works. I thought that the NIME crowd might have been a bit fickle about older presentations especially since we actually performed the piece at NIME2010 in Sydney. I think the demo is actually MORE fulfilling than more prestigious paper presentations because you can physically and musically explain design decisions and how everything works.

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Inuksuit rehearsal

2011-06-25T11:01:00.001+10:00

Played JLA Inuksuit at the national gallery at Dawn! -4C = frosty.

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Speaker noise instrument

2011-05-29T07:45:00.001+10:00

IMG_0712.MOV Watch on Posterous

I went to Nicholas Collins' "hardware hacking" workshop at NIME2011. It was SO FUN.

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some thoughts on grants

2011-05-16T03:49:00.001+10:00

Some thoughts about grant writing and funding…

About more than just chasing money

Writing grants and applications is an opportunity to clarify the concept of your work before going to the trouble of creating and presenting it to an audience.

Usually you have to:

explain your goal
explain the steps to get there
explain why you can achieve those steps
work out a realistic budget

Good grant applications ask you specific questions to help you drill down to actionable steps and demand that the budget is set out in a standard way. Bad applications ask crazy airy fairy questions and let you slip by without nailing down a budget, specific goals or steps. I hate bad applications.

Grant writing and the real world

As it turns out, all this application writing actually trains you to create better projects and how to pitch them. Out in the big, bad, world, there are times when you need to pitch ideas without the comforting framework of an application. The same rules apply, you need to explain a clear goal and show how you can achieve it with a realistic budget.

When grants go wrong.

I think there are two big camps for funding rounds: those where 20% or 30% of applicants are funded and those where only one or two are funded out of many.

In the first case, you mainly lose by not selling your project well enough. With hindsight I can see some of my rejected applications had one or more of:

bad/boring concept
too broad scope (better to break into sub projects and apply for funding for only one)
bad argument that I could achieve the result

In the second case it’s possible to lose for no reason but the preference of the funding board, if they have five great projects but only one grant, they just have to choose whichever they like better or whichever is a better match to the aesthetic goals of their organisation. So, you can lose despite having an amazing application. It sucks.

I think best comfort here is to see that there are always more opportunities for project ideas to come to life and sometimes you can’t see them until the application is written and you have a clear idea of the parameters of the project. Rather than think “there’s always next year”, think about where else this idea could go, even outside the world of formal funding applications.

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How Fitting is Fitter's Workshop?

2011-05-15T22:15:00.001+10:00

A bit of controversy on the blargs recently about "Fitter's Workshop", an antique building in Canberra (the controversy being whether the ACT Government should turn it into a facility for printmakers or into a concert venue). I've been out of town for a while, so I don't know all the details of the latest flare up, but I'm going to share the thoughts that I've had since last year. Basically I'm not sure that Fitter's Workshop is all that fitting as a concert venue anyway. I've had a number of extremely rewarding concert experiences there and it's true it has an beautiful resonant acoustic (great for performances of choral and brass works with lots of long mellifluous tones). But there are downsides from a concert perspective. It has no chairs, stage or lights, so all of these things have to be trucked in at great effort and expense. It's difficult to load instruments and equipment since there's no road connected to the dock at the back. The HUGE windows mean that it's bright and uncomfortable to read music or see instruments during the day (especially in winter when the sun is low) and freezing cold at night. There's no box office, or easy access to toilets or kitchens for catering. There's not much within walking distance to grab dinner before or after a concert (except the lovely glassworks café). All of these problems would need to be addressed permanently in order to make it a more "professional" concert venue. Of course, these problems can be overcome in an ad hoc way for some projects - the CIMF achieves great results by having concert series (economy of scale), and harnessing hard work of dedicated performers and organisers around Canberra to lug all of the equipment in and make the whole show happen (I was proud to be involved in 2009 and 2010 and carried many chairs and instruments). But I think that concert venues and music festivals are different beasts. Supposing Fitter's Workshop became a pro venue, equivalent in support infrastructure to Llewellyn hall or the Street Theatre, the cost of hiring it would probably make it LESS desirable to festivals like CIMF. Plus, it would be in competition to the other excellent venues across the water and many other venues with real permanent concert facilities around town. Personally, I wouldn't hire the Fitter's Workshop for the kind of one-off or short run performances I organise. The acoustic is all wrong for me and the lack of infrastructure is too hard and expensive for me to overcome. For me, the Fitter's Workshop doesn't fit at all.

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Crowdfunding musical projects

2011-05-14T05:14:00.001+10:00

I've been thinking a bit about "crowd funding" recently since some good friends were successful in using Kickstarter to fund their commissioning project for percussion music. Kickstarter is for US residents only but I see that there's an similar product called http://www.pozible.com.au/ available for Australians.

Is there something "new" going on in crowd funding? I guess the new thing is the "all or nothing" approach, where Kickstarter or whatever website holds on to your backer's money until the project has 100% of the required funding, otherwise it is returned after the call is over. The idea being that the entrepreneurs are never in the position of doing a project with only 80% of the funding (not so much fun...) and the backers don't see their money going into projects that fail through a lack of funds.

The other "new" thing I guess is that the websites have all the right social media hooks so that entrepreneurs can make their projects visible to all their friends on Facebook.

Is this useful for people like me? Can it help fund crazy performance/installations and pay me to work on them?

Most of the kickstarter projects that I see on the blogs area actually presales of things.... design books, arduino shields, touch screen writing doodads and CDs. In many of these cases they're actually only funding the LAST stage of the project, i.e. the doodad has already been conceived, designed and prototyped, they've already been out to the doodad factory and decided that they need to sell 5000 doodads to do a production run, so they just need to go ahead and do that in their Kickstarter, and everyone who backs them for the price a doodad will get one after they're produced.

Craigmod wrote a great analysis of his Kickstarter experience which goes exactly like this http://craigmod.com/journal/kickstartup/

In all of these presale cases there's actually multiple steps for the whole and usually in the Kickstarter projects the cost of the early steps was "free", i.e. somebody gave up all there free time to make it happen. This is probably not a recipe for a sustainable business unless the final stage makes a LOT of money, i.e. enough to pay for all the time you gave away at the start. For making doodads, maybe it is if your doodad can go into further production after the initial run. For making contemporary art it's probably not.

-----

Usually my projects go something like this:

(creative development, research) ---> development ---> production ---> performance

I think that crowd-funding works best for the final stage, where you can offer something like a CD or a concert ticket to the backers. In general, it's easier to convince backers when there's a clear line to a tangible outcome. Asking someone to give me money to develop a work that *might* be produced and performed later down the track is always going to be a hard sell.

And this is exactly what the design book writers, doodad makers and CD recorders know intuitively and implement in their calls for funding.

-----

Craigmod makes a point that I think is interesting: "people don't mind paying $50 or more for a project they love"

Since all the backers above $65 received a copy of the design book Craigmod was printing, I'm not very surprised about this. $65 is inexpensive for a beautifully produced book and obviously people don't mind spending $50 or more on it, these are the same people who love and buy all those other crazy expensive design books.

I think the real lesson is (common sense alert...) "the thing you're preselling should be sold for around it's normal value" or probably a little bit cheaper, since the whole idea is asking people to PRE pay for it.

Anyway, some thoughts, I'll elaborate later on.

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Black hole

2011-04-21T03:40:00.001+10:00

Black box @ studio Acusticum. Now...

IMG_0628.MOV Watch on Posterous

--Charles

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iOS networked metronome proof of concept

2011-04-05T21:22:00.001+10:00

Somebody asked me whether it was possible to have a metronome synchronised between a bunch of iPhones... it turns out it is!

I made this little demo with Pd and RjDj, the computer controls the tempo and sends a message on each beat to the iOS devices which beep and flash a visual cue accordingly.

It works pretty well, but there are a few problems that I'd have to address in making it ready for a performance... first of all, it's annoying to set up the IP of each iOS device in Pd, but the netsend object doesn't seem to support UDP broadcast. Secondly, there's some occasional problems with latency messing up the nice steady rhythm on the devices. Experience tells me this could get worse in a performance venue with lots of wires and walls and things to mess up the Wifi signal. I'm sure I could think of something to fix it.

I wonder if it would be better to make a production version as a native iOS app? RjDj is probably easiest from a distribution standpoint, but it's a complex app to accomplish a simple task...

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performance process is iterative!

2011-03-28T03:11:00.001+11:00

I've been thinking about the whole process of creating a performance (from nothing or from a composition) and what has really worked in the projects I've been involved in.

I used to think that the process would be something like:

0. Create (or get a composition)
1. Rehearse
2. Performance
3. Performance
4. ….

and so on, where each performance gets better each time until you're awesome.
Now I actually think that it's more like this:

0. Create opportunity and concept
1. Development and Rehearsal
2. Performance(s) and Feedback
3. goto 0.

This whole process actually needs to be repeated for the performance to grow! After a performance or a series of them, I need to step back and reevaluate the work from the ground up and give myself the opportunity to weed out things that sucked and change A LOT of the conceptual work if necessary.

I think that the extra words in my new process reflects how I've changed since finishing university in 2009 (also since teaming up with visual artist). At uni, the opportunities for creating works were always obvious, a recital, a thesis, etc. In the non-academic world, you have to make your own and the concept for a performance project is significant to how an audience will react to it. "Percussion Recital" is a label, not a name.

Feedback is another huge thing which has changed since I left uni in Canberra. Feedback in a class is usually from an expert in the same field as you. Feedback outside of school is either from a lay audience or from an expert in a different field from you (i.e. I've often had dramaturges or visual artists talking to me about my musical performances). Sometimes it's hard to listen to these opinions because they might not see that you made certain decisions because of the musical/historical context or tradition that you belong to. I think it's SUPER important to try REALLY hard to understand what they are saying for exactly the same reason.

PS, for me, development and rehearsal are kind of the same thing, rehearsing a work informs how it is composed and so I can't expect to nail down a composition before rehearsals start.

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what do emerging percussionists do?

2011-03-28T01:32:00.001+11:00

Since our repertoire festival, I've been thinking about what the role of a percussionist should be after they've left university. I remember something that Eugene Ughetti (Speak Percussion) said when describing his own move from the academic to professional world:
"there's only so many Reich retrospectives you can do"

That comment brought some clarity for me between the role of music schools and of musicians. Music schools are often called "Conservatories" for good reason, they conserve the music of the recent and distant past and use it as a tool to educate musicians of the future. One unfortunate thing is that lots of talented young percussionists are tricked into thinking that the music school life of playing mainly classic works and a few "new music" projects should be the same as what they do afterwards.
I think that this is totally wrong.

Once you leave music school, new music is everything. Even when playing classic repertoire, it needs to be treated as "new music" so that you can have an original mark on it.

No one needs to hear a wannabe Nexus, So, Amadinda, Kroumata, Synergy, etc, playing the same repertoire these groups have been playing for years, the only chance for emerging independent percussionists to be sustainable is to create their own music, work with emerging composers, or to have super creative reimaginings of existing repertoire.

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getting started in Computer Music and Percussion

2011-03-27T10:19:00.001+11:00

Getting started with percussion and computer music.

During our Piteå Percussion Repertoire Festival last week, a couple of people asked me about the best way to get started with computer music and percussion. It got me thinking a bit so here's what I think

One of the problems is that beginners are confused between the tools and the sounds they're actually interested in composing with. In this field, sounds are interesting and musicians find it pretty easy to decide what sounds they like and don't like, the tools are boring and often hard to get use. The first step in making music with computers isn't to spend a lot on Max/MSP and then spend months learning how to use it. You can get a really satisfying result by using easily available and accessible tools and by focussing on sounds straight away!

Step 1: record, and compose with sound files.

First of all, forget programming for now. The most fun thing to begin with is recording and playing back different sounds together. Go download the free version of Ableton Live, record some improvisations or environmental sounds or anything with a Zoom recorder and play with layering the sounds, looping different sections and using effects.

Here's an exercise to make a "Music for Airports" style ambient improvisation: Record a few improvisations on different instruments, maybe about 4 minutes in length each. Choose one scale for the melodic instruments so that they work together. Maybe add in some city sounds or something. Put the files in Ableton Live and set them to loop, but make sure that they have different lengths. Since the loops never match up, the sound will be endlessly unique. Press play and play along on any instrument. Voila! You're doing computer music and percussion. Maybe you could make a composition by choosing groups of sounds that work together and triggering each group to start together at different points in the piece. You can map keys on the keyboard to the 'play' button on clips and you can just about push a key on a laptop keyboard with a mallet or stick.

(PS, you can also sort of do this in Garage Band, but it's not quite as fun as using Ableton Live)

But that's not all there is to computer music....

Step 2: processing live sounds

This is where things get a little bit more complication, you will need a reasonable microphone and a way to plug it into the computer.

Assuming you have all of this, open up Ableton live, setup an audio track to record from the microphone input, set "Monitor" to "In" so that the microphone sound comes out your headphones and then drag audio effects from the "Live Devices" pane. Live has tonnes of really fun effects and because the interface makes it pretty intuitive to fiddle with the settings and make sounds that you like.

Again, you can some stuff like this in Garageband as well, but it's not quite as fun. Go ahead and try it anyway if all you have is Garageband!

Step 3: interactivity…. computer listening and vision….

Here is where it gets complicated. It's possible using special software to have the computer listen for specific pitches or for percussive attacks through a microphone and react in different ways. This is how compositions like "Music for Snare Drum and Computer" by Cort Lippe really start to get interesting. You can also use special software to watch a performer through a camera and react in different ways to their movements.

To use these techniques you basically need to build your own computer programs, either in text based languages (Supercollider, C++, Processing, etc), or in a graphical programming environment (Max/MSP/Jitter, Pd/Gem, Isadora).

The process of starting to understand any of these languages and then creating programs with them to make meaningful art is kind of serious especially if you haven't had any experience in computer programming! That's not to say that it's not possible, it will just take time and patience.

There are a few approaches for getting into this really hard stuff… the first is just to figure it out yourself using internet resources (of which there are many). Secondly, enrol in a Music Technology or Interactive Media or Sound Art or whatever course if your at university. Many schools now offer courses in making art and music with Processing, Max/MSP, Pd or some other programming language.

The third option is to team up with someone who can work on the programming side of things. As far as I'm aware, this is the traditional approach at big institutions like IRCAM and STEIM, i.e. musicians and artists teamed with programmer and technicians to make cool things! Perhaps you could organise some kind of artistic residency with a switched on programmer make your own cool projects!

More later.

(PS, my favourite book for getting started with computer music is "Computer Music with Examples in SuperCollider" by David Michael Cottle. The first 50 pages are about general computer music concepts (no programming) and are excellent reading for anyone, after that the book is about how make music with SuperCollider and he explains it really well. Great book but only available in PDF by emailing the author.

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Best thing ever! Espresso with lemon juice!

2011-03-22T22:53:00.001+11:00

THIS IS CRAZY.

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Ice Hotel

2011-02-28T05:28:00.001+11:00

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On Saturday we rented a car and drove to the Ice Hotel at Jukkasjärvi. Adventure!

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mini documentary

2011-02-06T00:59:00.001+11:00

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Aurora at Acusticum

2011-02-01T09:17:00.001+11:00

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Piteå Ice River Walk

2011-01-23T10:12:00.001+11:00

today Chrissy and I went for a walk to the river and, to our surprise, there were lots of people hanging out skating, sledding, snowmobiling and even cycling on the ice. we walked to town and sat in the snow to have a picnic. fun! Finally a few hours of proper sun today. Yay!

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<3

2011-01-19T07:44:00.001+11:00

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<3

2011-01-19T07:43:00.001+11:00

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More Versailles

2010-12-30T20:26:00.001+11:00

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Snowy Versailles

2010-12-30T07:59:00.001+11:00

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Paris - we went to the top of the eiffel tower!

2010-12-30T07:54:00.001+11:00

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christina was soooo scared.

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Paris, day of shopping and walking

2010-12-30T07:48:00.001+11:00

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Paris, Sacre Coeur and Montmartre

2010-12-28T09:13:00.001+11:00

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Paris walking

2010-12-28T09:06:00.001+11:00

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Paris night Pompidou

2010-12-28T09:03:00.001+11:00

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Paris night walk

2010-12-28T08:59:00.001+11:00

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Paris Hotel Room view

2010-12-27T08:25:00.001+11:00

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Paris: Shakespeare and Company / Notre Dame

2010-12-27T08:20:00.001+11:00

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-Charles

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Paris, Fondation Cartier d'Art Contemporain

2010-12-27T08:11:00.001+11:00

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Went to this: http://fondation.cartier.com/
Saw a great exhibition! Moebius-Trans-Forme

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Moebius-Trans-Forme @ Fondation Cartier d'Art Contemporain

2010-12-27T08:05:00.001+11:00

Fondation.cartier.com

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Paris, Antique market morning

2010-12-27T08:04:00.001+11:00

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-Charles

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Oh no mummies!

2010-12-25T08:37:00.001+11:00

Keep me awake at night!

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Snowy Paris

2010-12-25T08:36:00.001+11:00

Outside the Louvre.

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Paris - Louvre

2010-12-25T08:32:00.001+11:00

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Time to visit the Louvre! (I want to go back!)

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Paris, République

2010-12-24T09:12:00.001+11:00

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Centre Pompidou

2010-12-24T09:06:00.001+11:00

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Art

2010-12-24T08:59:00.001+11:00

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Visit to Notre Dame. Rainy!

2010-12-23T08:35:00.001+11:00

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It got all rainy this afternoon! We went to visit Notre dame, but it got too rainy to take good photos or do anything! How annoying. (still had fun)

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Untitled

2010-12-23T08:23:00.001+11:00

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-Charles

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Paris holiday day 1!

2010-12-22T07:19:00.001+11:00

Finally we got to Paris, unfortunately, we had to get up at 4:30 to make the early flight, but we really made it. First on the agenda: awesome fun times! We walked around Champs Elysses and the Eiffel Tower. Then we got cold and tired so we went home!

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Emergency Stockholm holiday

2010-12-22T07:14:00.001+11:00

Had to stay in Stockholm for two nights due to EUROPE SNOW CHAOS. We had fun anyway!! Visited Anders and family on Sunday evening and walked around Stockholm on Monday. The Christmas market at Gamla Stan was fun. Yay Stockholm!

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Christmas party.

2010-12-19T04:01:00.001+11:00

First, deep snow. Second! Making a snow man starting with Jake as the man. Third! Carol singing!!

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--Charles

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chrissy is in snowy Piteå!

2010-12-19T03:46:00.001+11:00

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yay Chrissy is here!
Unfortunately, it is extremely snowy. Makes it hard to walk around.

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Piteå Musikhögskolan Julkonsert

2010-12-19T03:09:00.001+11:00

We were in a Christmas concert!! For a few weeks every year, sleigh bells are the most important percussion instrument.

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i have a new hat!

2010-12-16T09:57:00.001+11:00

Snug.

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composing day

2010-12-15T03:37:00.001+11:00

Played through some of Jake's ideas today.

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piteå walk

2010-12-12T06:53:00.001+11:00

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i am in christmas

2010-12-12T06:51:00.001+11:00

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Snowy Piteå Photo Walk

2010-12-08T06:30:00.001+11:00

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Network performance setup for LMTD

2010-12-04T07:14:00.001+11:00

I'm playing in LMTD at CCAS, Canberra tomorrow! This is my setup. Not the best room, but it works ok!

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Composer's Concert

2010-11-30T07:05:00.001+11:00

I played in a concert of the school's composition student's work. Fun!

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Gísli3.pdf (732 KB)

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Short Paris trip...

2010-11-29T10:46:00.001+11:00

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Upgrade

2010-11-24T10:24:00.001+11:00

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My resistance to cold has increased!

I'm like an anti cold never getting cold guy!

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Snowy forest.

2010-11-24T10:21:00.001+11:00

Snow sticks to trees in an interesting way.

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Review: Julmust

2010-11-24T05:19:00.001+11:00

The other day when I went down to ICA to get some food, I saw two girls from Ankars walk in to the shop, each pick up a bottle of Julmust and a block of chocolate and that's it, pay and leave.

So I decided to try this magical meal in a bottle.

As it turns out it's basically cola with fruity and spicy flavors. The name means Christmas juice and I guess that's why Santa is on the bottle.

Warning! Julmust and chocolate is not a balanced diet!!

Review: it's kind of delicious but smells a bit weird.

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Helping out at recording class!

2010-11-23T01:58:00.001+11:00

I helped out with a recording class in the Acusticum! I played bits of memory of the woods and Rebonds B for them! Lots of fun to play in the hall!!

--Charles

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It's getting dark and snowy...

2010-11-20T09:22:00.001+11:00

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Back in Piteå.

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Cubes @ Acusticum

2010-11-17T23:30:00.001+11:00

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@SAS lounge CPH.

2010-11-16T01:07:00.001+11:00

Espresso time. Trying to convince myself it's afternoon, not morning. Flight changed so another hour to wait.

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Chicago photoshoot at Northewestern university.

2010-11-15T13:02:00.001+11:00

Drove up to Northwestern for no reason but the view. Observe the results!

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-Charles

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US Army traditional dress drum corps.

2010-11-15T13:01:00.003+11:00

these guys are awesome.

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Swexican concert aftermath

2010-11-15T13:01:00.001+11:00

it's me!

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A few bad photos of PASIC.

2010-11-15T12:59:00.001+11:00

sorry! They're so bad!!!

featuring, ensemble 64.8 from Alaska (awesome). Exhibit hall action and a r(sub)3. A crazy improvisation band. Didn't see many great images at the conference.... Bad lighting, crazy busyness... Etc.... (sorry). I'll make up for it by taking more photos of Piteå this week.

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-Charles

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At PASIC now.

2010-11-11T11:23:00.001+11:00

At PASIC now. The socializing begins. Gosh! So many people!

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Sweet home Chicago

2010-11-09T18:10:00.001+11:00

> > > >

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Chicago bean

2010-11-09T18:05:00.001+11:00

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This sculpture is super cool. Beautiful, seamless reflection plus an interesting shape. Crazy photo is the view from underneath it. As you walk around the world twists like a kaleidoscope. Amazing! Ps, I am in these photos! It's like Where's Wally.

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Got to Chicago

2010-11-08T12:54:00.001+11:00

Woo! Time for cheap food!

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Surreal late night walk in Stockholm

2010-11-05T21:10:00.001+11:00

Came to Stockholm to work with Anders, Everisto and Rolf. I hacked together a little video mixer in oF for their concert at PASIC. After late dinner and listening at Anders' place I walked home to my hotel. Stockholm streets are quiet and surreal even during the day. But especially late at night. Stylish shop keepers leave their lights on so you can see their cool stuff. See below.

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Concerts with Anders Åstrand, Dave Samuels and Evaristo Aguilar

2010-11-04T03:24:00.001+11:00

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Last weekend, Ensemble Evolution and I played some concerts with Anders and Dave in Stockholm and Piteå. Fun!

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More Stockholm Tourism

2010-11-04T03:20:00.001+11:00

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I had a really fun time walking around Stockholm with Ensemble Evolution + Anna. We went to two museums - the East Asian museum where they had a terracotta warrior exhibit (pretty super cool), and the Vasa museum which houses a ship that sank in 1698 and was salvaged almost complete in the 50s. Interesting story - they built it and it just sank as soon as it was launched, turns out they didn't know how to build a ship with two gun decks properly.

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Stockholm Friday

2010-11-01T08:48:00.001+11:00

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Stockholm Saturday

2010-11-01T08:47:00.001+11:00

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Stockholm iPhone scenes.

2010-10-31T19:17:00.001+11:00

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Choosing mallets at Capitol

2010-10-30T22:42:00.001+11:00

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Stockholm trip!

2010-10-30T22:15:00.001+11:00

Stockholm is fun!

Ensemble Evolution + Anna is in Stockholm for a concert with Anders Åstrand an Dace Samuels. The venue was Capitol, a theatre run by Kroumata (the percussion ensemble). The theatre is labyrinthine and entirely full of percussion instruments. Bizarre strata of percussion through history. We want to be interns there so we can sort it out and play with all the cool toys!

We spent a lot of time yesterday walking around Stockholm. Pretty city! But the streets can be a bit quiet. Södermalm is my favorite area due to high proportions of Hipster clothes and design shops. So cool.

Went to a vintage second hand shop run by two Swedish versions of Yvonne. I guess their work day begins with dressups, using various layers of leotards, tutus, wedding dresses and 80s sneakers.

Today we're going to some museums! Museum time!

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Icy

2010-10-24T09:14:00.001+11:00

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The water is starting to freeze over.

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Views of Piteå

2010-10-21T19:00:00.001+11:00

Including - the concert hall (Acusticum) with it's strange spire thing + my friends Maria and Jake. Some roads, houses and the ocean!

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new Piteå apartment.

2010-10-21T18:58:00.001+11:00

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Home sweet home.

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Piteå cooking!

2010-10-21T18:57:00.001+11:00

Achievement for the day was to gather the necessary items for cooking dinner and having a bathroom. Headed down to one of two big supermarkets in town, I chose the one called "Coop" rather than "ICA", which is about 30 minutes walk. Had to limit myself to absolute necessities since I had to carry it all home!

I bought:

1 bathroom mat

1 shower curtain

8 AA batteries

1 electric jug

microfiber cleaning cloths

self soaping dishwashing sponge thing

Nice teabags

Nice instant coffee

Pasta

2 x instant noodles

nice pasta sauce

beef mince (I think it's beef?)

frozen vegetables

salt

biscuits

gladwrap

shampoo

laundry powder

tissues

and some other stuff I can't remember.

Then, since I had all the ikea cooking stuff, I should be able to make dinner right?

Wrong.

Since I'm in sweden you have to make dinner the Ikea way, i.e. Step 1 is "Build your saucepans", so I had to build and wash all the saucepans etc (see photos).

Luckily the Ikea kit came with a colander and a big pasta spoon thing otherwise I would have been in serious trouble.

Anyway, dinner was successful.

Wondering what other stuff I need? Probably some more varied food, and fruit, etc, but I like keeping it simple. There's waay more room in the fridge than in the rest of the kitchen and there's particularly heaps of room in the freezer, so I can keep lots of frozen stuff on hand.

Is a microwave necessary? Particularly for defrosting meat, cooking frozen vegetables, reheating yesterday's food? I wonder how much one is. I think they have them at Coop as well.

Next thing I really need are:

Proper sheets -- as much as I love my (Christina's) sleeping bag sheet, I should probably buy regular ones that are easier to wash. Coop has them, but I don't know the words for different sheet forms (i.e. pillow, fitted, regular..) and it was too hard last night to work it out.

Dustpan and brush - Coop didn't seem to have them

Microfibre mop thing - my whole flat has a lino floor which is still dirty. I made a valient attempt with one of my microfibre cloths, but a mop thing would be waay easier. Need the dustpan first.

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Sweden Living Part 1

2010-10-20T08:25:00.001+11:00

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I had an awesome day with my awesome new friends Maria and Jake! Awesome.

I arrived from a long flight, checked out the school of music at Piteå, bought a Swedish sim card, got my apartment keys, went to an international student dinner AND, Maria had gave me a set of living things that they bought for international students. Yay stuff! Now I can have a glass of water because I HAVE A GLASS.

Tomorrow: Scenes of Piteå.

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Now: PER. Later: ARN

2010-10-18T18:04:00.001+11:00

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Last morning at CNR.

2010-10-18T14:24:00.001+11:00

Not a rockstar after today!

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CNR Cafe, Northbridge, Perth

2010-10-15T15:41:00.001+11:00

Best espresso ever.

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Bakery - Perth, Zho

2010-10-13T20:31:00.001+11:00

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Last Man to Die: Perth Overview

2010-10-11T17:43:00.001+11:00

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LMTD Blue Room Overview hb.mp4 (9699 KB)

A little video.

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Wireless Actor Arduino for LMTD.

2010-10-09T05:20:00.001+11:00

At NIME someone asked if I had tried using Xbee with my wearable Arduino setup for Last Man to Die. I hadn't then, but after today.... now I have!

I bought the Xbee starter set from sparkfun after failed attempts to get a WiFi shield to speak OSC and tonight was our first show with an unwired actor. It really made a huge difference to the performance, Hanna's movement was immediately more free and interesting.

The setup is Wii nunchuck + buzzing motors + LEDs --> Arduino --> xBee ~~ xBee --> USB xBee explorer (Serial interface) --> processing --> OSC --> LMTD!

I had a bit of a false start with this idea by overthinking the xBees and trying to use the xBee library for Processing. Maybe this is really for the xBee 2.5 or something... I have the cheapest ones and they work just fine with the serial library and no special treatment in my point to point setup.

This is waay more complicated that using a wire... Mainly because we need a whole computer just to run Processing. My next plan is to use ANOTHER Arduino to receive the xBee signals, translate to OSC and send over an Ethernet cable which would be quite elegant.

I can see an Arduino Pro Mini in my future... The ultimate minimal arduino! So cool!

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Camera 1 and Camera 2

2010-10-07T14:35:00.001+11:00

(Corner Café, Northbridge, Perth)...

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Perth

2010-10-04T02:59:00.001+11:00

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LMTD at Blue Room

2010-10-01T01:47:00.001+10:00

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Last Man to Die - Setup at the Blue Room

2010-09-27T12:57:00.001+10:00

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Spending a few days building our installation and fixing our programs at the Blue Room. It's the first time in ages that Benjamin and I have been able to talk about our programming interactions and adjust them on the spot. It's so much faster working on stuff when you're in the same room!

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