todd thille

Ghostlab Interview

2008-07-09T13:51:20Z

An interview I conducted with Cosmin of Ghostlab is up at DuncanLaurie.com. I met Cosmin at Live Performers Meeting 2007 in Rome. His most recent project, with Marie Christine, is an installation entitled "Aurora Consurgens" at ISEA in Singapore.

Mind Meld III

2008-06-23T04:06:39Z

The weekend of Friday the 13th marked the 3rd annual Mind Meld gathering at Duncan Laurie's Jamestown, Rhode Island studio. An incredible assortment of audio and video artists were assembled, ostensibly to relax, but with so much talent in one place, a show or two is inevitable.

Dragonline Studio.

Duncan's three-storey studio sits atop Bull Point, surrounded by water on three sides. The studio was built entirely out of salvaged materials. Floors made of glass block allow light to penetrate up from the lower workshop, through the main room and into the laboratory on the top floor. It is on the top floor that Duncan and his electrical engineer Gordon Salisbury have been experimenting with sonifying signals from Nature. There is an impressive array of old Radionic equipment as well as a number of devices that Gordon has developed. The visual centerpiece of the lab is the "Music Machine", an 8' tall cuboctahedron that was part of a GENESIS Bio-Entrainment Module, a bio-feedback device developed in the 1980's. The machine is now host to Gordon's Purr Generator. The purr generator is a device which generates a signal at approximately 25 Hz. This coincides with the frequency of vibrations given off by a “happy cat” and has long been thought to be therapeutic. External audio sources can be played through the machine.

Gordon dialing in a plant.

Much of the activity at the studio in the last few years has been given over to exploring signals in Nature. Based on precedents set by Cleve Backster and T. Townsend Brown, plants and rocks are fitted with electrodes or have copper leads affixed to them. Small voltages present are picked up with a variety of test equipment, including Wheatstone bridges, rate of change convertors, EKGs, and the IBVA brainwave monitor. The resulting data streams are converted to MIDI and used to drive Ableton Live.

( Photo by Arrow )

For the artists that have assembled each year, the draw of a fantastic location, strange nature research and wealth of information about Radionics that Duncan possesses are too much to resist. This years gathering included mainstays; Steve Nalepa, a West Coast electronic musician, gaining attention with his forthcoming Flatlands CD/DVD and Bass Science, a dubstep project with MattB; Todd Thille ( aka Synesthete ), an Istanbul based VJ and multimedia artist currently engaged in designing new software and hardware for the explorations underway at Duncan's studio; David Lublin, of Vidvox, makers of the popular VJ software VDMX; Josh Randall ( aka Robotkid ), a Creative Director at Harmonix by day, working titles like Rock Band and Phase; Aerostatic, the Brooklyn based couple Michelle Darling and Terry Golob, who's style ranges from ambient to breakcore with some Sesame Street (both have worked at Sesame Workshop) in for good measure.

Newer faces included Brian Kane, a former member of EBN and the self described "Karl Rove of the art world, who was busy pushing his latest meme, Meat Water; Ooah, one of the members of rising stars, the Glitch Mob; Richard Devine, still recovering from a near death experience after a small wound on his foot, infected with staph, nearly destroyed his heart, came to reek sonic mayhem with a massive stack of modular synths; Josh Kay ( aka Jeswa ), who joined Richard in exploring the sonic possibilities of the studio, and a formidable force in his right as a member of Soul Oddity and Phoenecia and founder of Schematic Records; CDM's own Peter Kirn rounded out the list of performing artists.

we'll do it live - Pell Chaffey Hall

we'll do it live - Aerostatic (Terry & Michelle)

we'll do it live - David Lublin & Nalepa

we'll do it live - Richard Devine & Josh Kay

Through the work of Elizabeth Keithline and Nick Bauta of The Steel Yard and Firehouse 13, the audio visual extravaganza, "we'll do it live" found a home at the Pell-Chafee center in downtown Providence. Two massive 40' wide screens were hung from the three-story vaulted ceiling. Duncan and Aerostatic opened with an exploration of signals coming from a piece of granite (seen in their Rockstar short) and a banana. Peter Kirn deftly handled Kore for his 30 minute set with reactive visuals by Synestete. Brian Kane performed selections from his triple-head av masterpiece, HDADD. Robotkid and rndm threw down a bumpin' av mashup. Nalepa and David Lublin got the party moving with Flatlands remixes, dubstep tracks and ethereal hand-held footage with Quartz Composer overlays. Ooah brought out the glitch hop with his Panty Raid and tracks from other Mob members. Richard Devine and Josh Kay double-teamed Traktor, bring the soundsystem down with meters in the red and finishing out the night with TapStereo.

Josh Kay and Richard Devine.

Richard Devine dreaming of Swedish engineering.

The event picked up and relocated to Duncan's studio where Richard and Josh Kay set up a wall of modular synths to plug into the different sound sources. Peter got busy writing an FFT patch in Processing and tried it out with signals coming from an onion and a lime. He also experimented with Gordon's Bat Box. The rest of the crew amused themselves with Rock Band and chatting in small groups around the bar-b-gue that sprang up on the driveway.

Beat Research - Nalepa and Robotkid.

Beat Research - Brian Kane and Peter Kirn.

The group started to disperse on Sunday and everyone but Richard and Josh Kay had left by the time that Steve, his girl Arrow, Peter and I headed up to Boston on Monday night. We met up with Robotkid and Brian Kane for a show in Cambridge at Beat Research. There was a good crowd despite it being a rainy school night. Peter had much better control over his Kore set. Robotkid and I mixed visuals until Brian fired up his DVJ and played some of his AV pieces. Nalepa came in a pinstripe suit and tore up the room with Bass Science dubstep.

Peter working the strobes at the MIT Museum.

Peter and I started Tuesday morning at the new offices of Harmonix. We decided not to get sucked into any meetings and beat a retreat to the MIT Museum. There were good exhibits on deep sea craft, high-speed photography and sculptor Arthur Ganson.

Nalepa with visionary artist Paul Laffoley.

The afternoon brought a visit to the studio of visionary painter Paul Laffoley. He had requested a chicken stuffed in a watermelon, potential racial slur aside, we obliged and hand delivered him a "chelon." Paul was in the midst of prepping for a 60s and 70s retrospective that is to be on display in New York in February. He was also hard at work on a Tarot deck. We parted with Peter afterwards and the 3rd annual Mind Meld came to a close.

LPM 2008

2008-06-02T14:17:16Z

Live Performers Meeting 2008

The fifth edition of the LPM was held in the old slaughterhouse at Mattatoio in the heart of Rome. The low-hanging hooks and carcass processing apparatus had been carefully covered up for safety, but the lattice-work of runs with strange, barbed, wrought-iron chandeliers loomed overhead. The FLxER crew had installed 13 screens in the cavernous space with a stage at each end and an A/V nerve center in the middle with places for the late night VJ sets.

Meat Hooks anyone?

VJ Talks interview with Jaromil

Each of the 4 days began with a VJ Talk hosted by AVIT. LPM is designed a space that enables VJs to engage with each other face-to-face, and the vjtalks were intended the catalyst for this. The talks started on the theme for the day (Digital Freedoms, 8Bit + Electropop, Breakbeat + Techno + Electro, and Visual Genders) and led into topics surrounding vj practice and to the participant's own practice. Short interviews with some of the participants can be found on the AVIT site.

Le Collagiste, BomBaKlak, and Gianluca demo Codanova and FLxER

More workshops followed, including demonstrations of software FLxER, FreeJ, and Modul8; hardware from Codanova, Edirol and VMS; upcoming festivals Amore Festival, AVFactory 08, and LPM Mexico 2008; theory from Iwona Hrynczenko and Brendan Byrne of VJ Theory; and hardware hacking with Servando Barreiro and his Atemga8 based Minia microcontroler.

Akira in 8bit splendor

=ff= vs Return of the Space Invaders

Performances began in the late afternoon. The impact of the first few were deadened a bit by sunlight drowning out the screens. But with over 250 artists being slotted into 40 hours, some sacrifices had to be made. Many more VJs came with AV sets than have been seen in the past and at other festivals. Even if they were only using CD playback, the visual artists were taking control of their whole performance. Notable among them were live AV by Akira of Kiken Corp laying on 8Bits in all their Game Boy and Commodore splendor, Return of the Space Invaders vs =ff= had a tightly integrated performance in VDMX tracked to MIDI accompanying banging Dutch low-fi beats. Frank Sent Us offered a delirious send up of the Spaghetti Western. The BrandyAlexanderProject's performance included live poetry. Synesthete acquired electrical signals from plants to create a live generative audio visual piece.

pintaycolorea

Spain was well represented by Negativo. The collective's +AMOR A/V piece was a dark moody exploration of modern primitivism. pintaycolorea splashed the hall with colorful geometric forms. Madrid based Whiteemotion's 'Cuore International' was made up of photographs, video loops and live camera.

The voyeuristic gaze of the camera's eye was evident in Visuallab's IS YOU(omaggio a Sophie Calle), which featured surreptitious shots of women in public places,only to cut away just before they seemingly became aware of the intrusion. Several performers also trained cameras on themselves, becoming stars of their performances. The aforementioned =ff= filmed an homage to THX1138 in the festival environs prior to their performance. Half-Machine also shot footage on location and of themselves in an exploration of the city and their time in it. Deftoo à La Yoa (who marked her first anniversary as a VJ at the festival) filmed herself when she could not find anyone to film. fomoke donned a wire and vellum mask to perform her odnoto piece in front of her computer's built-in camera. PacOnAzim's "Mrs. Soopradean" was keyed into stills of social situations and feigned interaction with people depicted.

Straight VJ sets rounded out each night with 6 artists at a time bathing the hall with projected video. Highlights included local multimedia artist S.A.D., who performed a set with anatomical line drawings. Jna the AnimalMan, EleKTro mOOn, and Klipman were also impressive.

Akira wins the VJ battle

A VJ Battle hosted by Fefè Project was won by Akira. First Prize was a Codanova VMX VJ controller. Further prizes consisted of 4 copies of modul8.

Strap-on dildoS

The Visual Genders day culminated in a audio-visual Bacchanalia befitting of Caligula's Rome. Strap-on dildoS, a French troupe of liberated women, performed a 3 screen exploration of 'chicks with dicks'. Their performance climaxed with the entire troupe at the front of the stage, stripped down to briefs and tapped breasts, drenched in whipped cream, fondling themselves. Warbear and Ugo Sanchez of the Rome based Phag Off events, took to the descks and the parade of flesh flowed on the rest of the night; caressed, shaved, licked, whipped and sucked; it was projected in all its glory.

Networking was on the minds of a great many of the artists. Representatives of a number of crews, organizations and festivals (aie prod, AVFactory, AVIT, LPM, Mapping, Vision'R, Visual Berlin, VJ Theory, Yroyto among them) all agreed in principle that pooling resources and knowledge was a must for expansion of VJ culture in the public arena.

µ:avit

2008-05-24T20:20:07Z

The DMY festivities were well underway when I arrived from Istanbul. The Visual Berlin crew had a booth set up in the dark nether-regions of the cavernous Arena by the Spree River. The showcase schedule on the µ:avit site is up to date and all is in readiness for the Avit event on Saturday. The usual suspects from the Visual Berlin crew were present and accounted for: fRED, Flux, HilmeKillme, cyper…fALk was also present and Willow made a surprise visit.

Toby and I trekked out to the wilds of Wannsee to stay at fALk's place, nestled amongst 700-year-old oak trees.

µ:avit go underway around noon on Saturday. A series of lectures and performances were staged in two locations in the Arena. Toby *spark was first up with a Quartz Composer demo, Kristian Raue gave talk about his MASH tool. Ilan from GarageCube conducted a modul8 user group meeting. Bram did a hands-on session about MIDI, I talked about some AV pieces of interest, fALk gave his thesis on Live Cinema.

Closed the DMY festival for the evening. The Visual Berlin crew plus out of town guests made their way to a local beer garden. Delicious pizza and beer kept the group going for a while. I headed back to fALk's. Was happy to see the bed. Was up early hoping to get packed and ready to meet up with Toby and fRED, but never quite connected. Ended up walking through the woods to the local bakery to get some breakfast breads. Had a fantastic brunch in fALk's garden. Mogreens came by a bit later to record an episode of the podcast he and fALk are making. I got interviewed for the episode.

Engaged

2008-05-18T00:41:53Z

Engaged to Ms. Duygu Abak in Istanbul, Turkey.

META 2008

2008-05-04T01:17:07Z

Took the Greyhound overnight from Atlanta to Asheville, North Carolina. Met up with Duncan Laurie and his daughters Lena and Bryn. Headed into the "hippie" part of town for some vegetarian lunch at the Laughing Seed Café. Found one of Duncan's cast metal belt buckles from the 1970s in the Paul Taylor Sandals shop.

Finished lunch just as it started to rain. Piled into the car and headed for Rockmont, the former home of Black Mountain College. For one week, the Rockmont Camp for Boys would serve as host to a hand selected group of artists, musicians, and filmmakers from around the world. Primarily friends of filmmaker Roger Manley, the family is continually expanding.

Notable participants included: champion for world peace Lane Berk, visionary artist Paul Lafolley, multi-media artist Jonathon Hexner, photographer Cheryl Dunn, writer Tom Maxwell, harpsichordist Elaine Funaro, photographer Deborah Luster, cellular biologist Kevin F. Sullivan, Ph.D., cinematographer Dyanna Taylor, documentary filmmaker Les Blank, tenor Michael Bennett, composer Giuseppe Gavazza, sculptor František Skála, musician Steve Nalepa, sculptor Duncan Laurie, and filmmaker, author and host of META Roger Manley.

Spent a fantastic week meeting new folks and hearing talks about what they were doing.

Duncan and I set up the IBVA with rocks and plants 3 times to show off how they work. Lots of interest and at one session, an interesting trio of harpsichord, tenor and plants.

One of the nights I set up the projector and a Rutt-Etra Max patch with a live camera input going for the others have a go at it.

A visit with Richard Devine

2008-04-23T03:56:38Z

Paid a visit to Richard Devine at his home in the Atlanta suburbs. Spent the afternoon talking shop with him and Josh Kay, of Phoenecia fame. All of us will convene in June at Duncan Laurie's studio for Mind Meld III.

Got the grand tour of acoustic instruments, modular synths and circuit bent oddities that were used on the recent Sony Creative Software loop library, The Electronic Music Manuscript.

Brian Kane's Meat Water

2008-04-12T19:10:15Z

Brian Kane's latest brainchild, MeatWater, is gaining some traction. As well as some airtime on the Moffit & Frankie show on Fox radio.

Elvis in Istanbul

2008-04-08T22:49:54Z

Dara Kılıçoğlu and Çağlar Kanzık's piece in the Tershane group show, entitled "ELVIS." The group show consisted of a number of approx 40cm square pressboard boxes that the artists decorated the interior of. Dara and Çağlar's box was mirrored to provide an endlessly reflected view of a security camera with ELVIS emblazoned on the side. The camera was liberated from "watching" an ATM in Ankara a couple of years ago. The camera turned out to be an empty fake. The veneer of safety without any of the substance. The "ELVIS" piece is "...a critisim of Turkey's politics against EU standarts and shifting socio-control process nationwide." Dara's blog post. On Düğümküme here and here in Turkish.

Todd joins duncanlaurie.com

2008-04-07T04:27:36Z

Duncan Laurie, Steve Nalepa and Todd Thille @ Spark Fesitval - Feb 2008.

After over a year and a half working behind the scenes to build up online presence for Duncan Laurie at duncanlaurie.com, I have joined the front of house team as a designer. The first project that I will collaborate on with Duncan is the design of a print edition of his Radionics book.

Project: USB Wiimote Sensor Bar

2008-03-19T21:17:04Z

Finally got around to putting together a USB powered Wiimote Sensor Bar. 4 IR LEDs dissipated 4.8v forward which is close enough to the 5v coming off the USB port. Cut up some old circuit boards as a base for each side and Velcroed them to the lid of my 17" MacBook Pro. Used my old Sony DCR-PC5 to check that the LEDs were indeed firing. Nice remote mouse control for the computer via DarwiinRemote.

Spark Festival - Rock Music Paper

2008-02-28T21:40:28Z

Steve Nalepa flew the redeye out from LA and arrived at the Holiday Inn around 07:00. Let him get an hour of sleep before we headed off to get breakfast at the Hard Times Cafe. Headed over to Ferguson Hall in time to catch the end of Megan England's talk about Second Life. Duncan and I were up next with "Rock Music". Started out with a brief intro and Rock Star. Continued along with the work of T. Townsend Brown with petrovoltaics and touched a bit on Cleve Backster's work with plants before getting into Gordon Salisbury's work at Duncan's studio. The talk was well received and garnered some interesting questions afterwards.

We skipped the afternoon concert to go and check out some of the Minneapolis museum scene. First we found the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting in an industrial park. The building was stuffed with all manner of early telegraphy, wireless, radio and TV electronics. It seemed more geared to school groups, with several "working" radio control booths and large scale demonstration rooms. The main hall full of electronics was breathtaking.

Next up was The Bakken, A Library and Museum of Electricity in Life. There were a handful of exhibits of electricity throughout a beautiful mansion on the shore of Lake Calhoun. The real prize was a visit to the vault to look at the few radionics devices that were in the open and some interesting devices from Dr. Otto H. Schmitt. The librarian, Elizabeth Ihrig, was incredibly kind and showed us around even through we turned up without an appointment.

We came back over to the university to catch Gregory Taylor and Andrew Pask show a sneak preview of Max/MSP 5. Ran into Ali Momeni on the way to Hard Times Cafe and took a detour through the installations. Headed over to The Whole for a super inspirational talk by Richard Devine about his influences and career.

Spark Festival - Found Sound

2008-02-27T04:10:16Z

Up at the crack of dawn to bid Kim and Bryn goodbye and hit the road with Duncan. Made good time over to Bradley International in Hartford Connecticut. Had some fun finding the long-term parking but got right on a shuttle in the lot and were on our way. Good flight out to Chicago, but delayed on the Minneapolis leg. Finally got in and through the airport fun to find that the Holiday Inn Metrodome was best reached by Super Shuttle. Stopped at all the rest of the downtown hotels before making our way over beyond the Metrodome. Checked in to the hotel and freshened up before heading across the river the check out the Whole where Duncan and I would perform the following morning as part of the Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts' Concert of Found Sound/Audio Appropriation. The venue looked decent, with video screens flanking the stage.

Were over at the venue by 08:30. Well ahead of our 09:30-10:00 soundcheck. Dave Hill, the manager of the Whole was happy to have us step right up and get plugged in and our levels adjusted. Chatted with Bob Siebert for a while about airport security and him being a terrorist with his circuit bent Casio SK-1 keyboard. Greg Carr was along a short while later with a turntable coffin from the wayback machine. It was sporting 3 tonearms and was piped to a Space Echo tape delay.

A series of CDs followed Greg's awesome opener. Then Duncan and I were up, he made a nice intro and I got busy with Ableton Live. The IBVA software went on the fritz and the performance was less than optimal. But the audience had no idea and Duncan along with the curators were quite pleased.

Zipped out before the last of the CDs played in the Found Sound event to go and take in a talk by James and Todd of Graffiti Research Lab. Friend Ali Momeni had built 3 of the Mobile Broadcast Units. GRL put on a nice presentation about their recent work. Had lunch with the GRL boys, Ali and some of the students.

Gadgets and Kane

2008-02-25T16:36:47Z

Spent the day working on a Max patch to get MIDI data coming out of the Doepfer Pocket Electronics controller attached to Gordon's homebrew Octo input box massaged into something that Ableton Live would like. Input was provided by a magnetometer attached to a Rate of Change Convertor.

Brian Kane drove down from Boston to hang out with Duncan and I for a couple of hours in the late afternoon. Was good to see him in fine spirits after some hassle of getting his installation at Le Cube in Paris working right.

Snow over the Eastern Seaboard

2008-02-24T06:55:26Z

Made a long trek from Istanbul to Jamestown, Rhode Island via Frankfurt, Amsterdam, a bonus stop in Detroit instead of Newark and Hartford, Connecticut. Here to prepare for an audio/visual performance with Duncan Laurie at the Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts in Minneapolis.

Fog in Frankfurt delayed my flight almost an hour...eating up the precariously short layover time I had in Amsterdam. Couple that with the plane taxiing in from one of the far runways, seeming to circle the whole airport and my outbound flight leaving from the opposite end of the massive Schipol Airport...and you have me getting to the gate as the walkway was freshly pulled back from the plane. It sat there taunting me for some time as the gate staff arranged an alternate route through Detroit that only added 20 minutes to my flight schedule.

Had 40 minutes of delay coming out of Detroit for de-icing. Got into Hartford at midnight. Duncan had opted out of getting me that night, choosing instead to come and get me in the morning. Found a nearby hotel that wasn't terribly outrageous, $55 for the night. Crashed out and fell almost immediately to sleep. Up in the morning to find it snowing. Duncan was by around 10am. Took the windy back roads across Connecticut and Rhode Island to reach Jamestown. Snowed all the way. Only go stuck behind one plow.

Started into work as soon as we could get up to the studio. Both Duncan and Gordon had had trouble getting up the road recently. Spent the first evening working with the IBVA and a stone bowl and the RockStar. Had a long session with Gordon the following day working on the Doepfer Pocket Control that was the interface to a multi-sensor input device he was building from scratch.