Last night was the Blood Music Birthday event at Iklectik, London. This was a gig to celebrate Simon Pomery’s recent birthday. The line-up was:
- UAN – minimal, morphing repetitive beats
- En Creux – no-input mixing
- me – video + audio piece
- S McEvoy – piece based on tinnitus sounds
- Blood Music – ‘For the Vagus Nerve’, spoken word, processed guitar
- Roberto Crippa – synth-based rhythmic textures
- Tom Mudd – physical modelling synthesis
- Blood Music with Roberto Crippa – improvised drums and synth
Travelling down to London was a bit of an ordeal because of the storm and high winds which meant trains were cancelled. Luckily I got a lift from Tom and Maude who were travelling down from Edinburgh. It was lovely to finally meet face-to-face with everyone and to hear them play live. Iklectik is a nice venue – the sound system was good, the staff were helpful, and there was also a resident cat. Everyone played well and sounded great.
I showed an animation I made with the Fractal Flames algorithm – an old piece with a new soundtrack based on analysis of the video frames. Using Mathematica, I analysed the frames in terms of file size, number of colours, and number of black pixels. I also created derivatives of these datasets, e.g. measures of permutation entropy and the difference between consecutive numbers. Then these datasets were converted to MIDI files and played with Razor VSTi synth. The result is an experiment in synchresis, trying out the extent to which the visuals and the audio inter-relate when there is an arbitrary but formal correspondence between the two and when what we see affects what we hear, and vice versa.
Aesthetic Complexity 