Interactive Sound(z)
Introducing young musicians to new interactive digital sound technologies through a series of workshops that aim to help move young people towards creating their own sound landscape.
Software and hardware, muscle sensors, new body interfaces and 360 degree sound projections: the ways in which contemporary music is composed or improvised has evolved rapidly in recent years.
Interactive Sound(z) has been designed to introduce young musicians, aged 13 to 18, to new music techniques, software and hardware such as conTimbre, Lemur and XTH Sense.
As part of the project, a series of workshops, each lasting three hours, gave younger people the chance to play, experience, and explore the new perspectives given by electronic tools and digital media.
The objective was to create a beneficial cultural exchange between the educational field and the fringe creative universe of interactive digital sound technologies (sound projection, digital sound processing, virtual orchestras, and so on).
Workshop and performances were formulated to stimulate young musicians' understanding of sound, enhance their instrumental skills and to create and expand their sound landscape with the help of new technologies.
The project team's mission was to create an environment that was supportive in developing experimental material and functional in communicating it. The workshops investigated the ways in which contemporary composers explore and explode the extended technique and theory, parameters of timbre, dynamic, pitch and rhythm in conjunction with instrumental specialists from the visiting ensembles.
As a result of the workshops, new musical works, based on suggestions given by young participants inspired by their world of PC games, movies and TV series, were performed in Belgium and Germany.
The software used was conTimbre, a newly designed 'Virtual orchestra of new music' which includes more than 86,000 sounds, more than 4,000 playing techniques and more than 150 orchestral instruments. Lemur and XTH Sense controllers were also used.
The larger project consisted of three workshops, a laboratory performance and two performances with live electronics and visuals at the Centre Henri Pousseur in Liege, Belgium and at Ensemble Aventure in Freiburg, Germany.
Composer Roberto David Rusconi created new musical work for an ensemble of seven musicians, live electronics, a digital soundtrack, sound projections and visuals. The piece was formed largely from the suggestions given by young participants. The work, called ‘Mnemosyne’ and dedicated to Aby Warbourg, a German art historian and cultural theorist, was performed in Liege (Belgium) and Freiburg (Germany) in November 2015.
You can read more about the festival here.
A workshop took place at King's College London on 18 October 2015. The video below gives an impression of the event:
Below is a video of the concerts, which took place in Liege (Belgium) on 12 November 2015 and Freiburg (Germany) on 16 November 2015:
Interactive Sound(z) is a collaboration between the Department of Music at King's College London and Intrasonus UK, conTimbre, Ensemble Aventure and Centre Henri Pousseur Belgium.It was supported by the university's Culture team.