As promised, here’s a rundown of the interactive projects by Chronotronic Wonder Transducer that will be featured in Theaterlab‘s Studio C during the MMiX Festival. You can check these out 6PM to 7:45 PM on October 8, 9 and 10 – come out and play, it’s free:

OUTIS (Mike Clemow) Thursday

Outis is a Greek word that means “nobody” and was originally intended to be an “intelligent” composition/performance using a video file or live stream as a score, which would be analyzed by a software program and turned into sound. It has become more of a performance tool since the project began in early January, 2009. Today, Outis is a performance that combines many of the same programs that comprised the first iteration of the project without the focus on artificial intelligence that characterized the first version, leaving the intelligence up to the performers themselves.  For MMiX, Outis will be presented as a interactive installation in which audience becomes performer.

SANCTION OF THE VICTIM (Joe Mariglio) Thursday

“Sanction of the Victim” is a composition for a network of computers.  Each computer has two tendencies, which are in tension with each other: a flock, by which the computers cooperate to build rhythmic phrases, and a virus, by which the computers compete and, as a result, cause the router to malfunction.  The flock sounds like banging on metal, and the virus sounds like swarms of locusts.  The result is an chance-based composition that exploits the physicality of the medium for which it was conceived.

POWER BIKE PARADE (Mike Clemow & Amy Khoshbin) Friday

Power Bike Parade is a bike-powered electronic orchestra that demonstrates the use of an alternative power source by converting the kinetic energy of pedaling a bike into electricity used to create a festival of electro-acoustic music and glittering LED lights. The two-rider parade takes this everyday act of riding a bicycle, and expands it into a visual and sonic spectacle, re-appropriating the act as a performance and a venue for expression.

SPACE EGGS (Ted Hayes) Friday

EggBeater uses the intuitive power of rhythm to let anyone control the playback of music. Shaking this small, wireless device in regular patterns can automatically adjust the tempo and timing of loops. Just start playing the EggBeater just as you would a traditional shaker, and listen as the song slows down as you slow down, or speed up as you do!

The instrument uses an accelerometer coupled with an XBee radio to send your movements to PureData, where they detect your downbeats and rhythmic tempo. The software can then control playback within PureData or send OSC or MIDI messages to other platforms.

CRUDLABS’ GINORMOUS THING (Steven Litt) Saturday and Sunday

Steven Litt spent most of the past two years designing CrudBox, a hardware step sequencer which controls essentially whatever electronic devices are plugged into it: doorbells, motors, power tools, flamethrowers, you name it.  He has spent the past 6 months performing highly energized and abrasive electro-acoustic dance music as CrudLabs and CrudLabs Sound System using only his precious CrudBoxes. At MMiX, he will for the first time ever he presents an interactive installation in which attendees may play a CrudBox making rhythmic music out of a 500 square foot room full of clangorous amplified objects being struck, shaken, and generally abused by various mechanisms.

– Jocelyn

p.s. A shout-out to Gideon D’Archangelo, Hans-Christoph Steiner and Greg Shakar for hooking us up with Steven Litt. 🙂