#cnmat

Alice is a machine for thinking: a virtual chamber for repose and contemplation. It mashes 3D animation, motion-captured ballet and music improvised live in the VR world, and then recaptured and placed in the bodies of music avatars who deform to that same music.  It feeds-back the virtual and the live, blending them together in a liminal, uncanny mix.

The work consists of 2 parallel representations, coinciding in a single exhibition space.  The first is a three-channel high-definition movie projected on three walls. It is a 3D animation rendered anamorphically as a panoramic expanse.  The second is a VR surround environment mapped into the same physical space, built out as Vive VR.  The dual spaces exist simultaneously though each is a construction of different epoques from the art history of representations: the age of capture and the analog camera and the current digital age.  Hart has conceived of this doubling as liminal, a construction made possible through the “queering” of space and likens it to the technology theorist Donna Haraway’s notion of the Cyborg as first described in her 1983 Manifesto, where the writer imagined a Utopian future in which advanced bio-technologies would liberate human culture from the constraints of traditional gender binaries. As liminal, Alice constructs all of VR as a paradigmatic philosopher's hut, an uncanny mix of Wittgenstein and his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and Alice in Wonderland with its inverted logic.

Alice is a 3 channel XR piece, created for exhibition with a Vive VR environment.  This excerpted 4-minute version was produced for The Transfer "Download," curated by Kelani Nichole, for a special presentation at Christie’s Rockefeller Plaza in conjunction with their ART + TECH Summit on AI from June 25–28, 2019.

Music by  Danielle DeGruttola Choreography and Captured Dancing: Kristina Isabelle Audio Mix by Edmund Campion Editing by Meredith Leich

2016 has not been a good year for our musical heroes. And we have just lost one more, Don Buchla.

[Photo by Michael Zelner]

Don Buchla was producing his first synthesizers about the same time that Robert Moog released his earliest models. But he took a very different approach, eschewing keyboards and other traditional interfaces to make a truly radical instrument. This led to some describing “East Coast” and “West Coast” schools of synthesizers – something that we at CatSynth largely reject. But there are nonetheless characteristics that set apart Bucvla’s instruments, such as the use of metal plates as controls; the ubiquitous use of low pass gates (LPGs) as sound units; the crispier/crunchier sound compared to Moog-inspired synths; and the visual beauty and oddness of the instruments. Indeed, they have appeared on CatSynth many times – follow this link to see a few.

In addition to his synthesizers, Buchla also created numerous controllers, such as the Thunder, Lightning, and Marimba Lumina. Indeed, I was introduced to Buchla’s instruments and the man himself through David Wessel at CNMAT, who used the Thunder extensively in his performances. My personal memories of the two of them together mostly revolve around the wine-and-beer-fueled gatherings after formal events at CNMAT, ICMC conferences or elsewhere. They would talk endlessly but anyone else could chime in, and occasionally Don and I would have a sidebar, less often of a technical nature than lamenting strictures in one institution or another, or non-musical scientific concepts. Overall, however, he was often a laconic presence, off in a corner or just off frame, but then fully engaged when the moment arrived.

[Buchla sighting at Roger Linn’s NAMM booth in 2015]

It was rare to see him perform. I did get a chance to do so at the

Berkeley composer/improviser/perfomer concert on April 20th. 

Works by Amadeus, Andres, Dan, Ian, Matthew Goodheart, and Ritwik