Equinoctial Experiment 2023

THRUMS w. Anju Singh on voice

We held the 2nd Vernal Equinoctial Experiment on March 20, 2023 at Gabriola Island’s Agi Hall.

Matt Rogalsky presented some current work about “using field recordings in improvisation, in terms of inspiration from the “Honourable Harvest” of Indigenous food gathering.” and performed an audiovisual composition in which he improvised in collusion with a thawing lake.

Anju Singh improvised with a recording made using a violin as a prosthetic ear to hear with a tree, and presented recent live-coding work in the esoteric programming language Orca .

and THRUMS sang the spinning wheel

Locally sourced Shropshire fleece hand dyed with foraged Phaeolus Schweinizii spun on a century old Canadian Production Loom prepared for use with monotonic plucked drone instrument. DSP in Max/MSP/Jitter using Austin Franklin’s PnP.Maxtools https://austinfranklinmusic.com/softw… to manipulate fx chains with live vocals.

Field Recording

Most of the most important things are things we rarely notice.

The continual living action of everything in the world around us holds an endless music.


THRUMS – live manipulation of the act of weaving on a 4 shaft counterbalance loom






Ash in the Time of Ash – live manipulation of a recording of the act of cleaning a domestic woodstove in preparation for the onset of winter





Field 3 – manipulated field recordings from Good Earth Farm




Kandy Traces – reimagined sounds of a busy intersection in Sri Lanka

Sonification Experiments

A scanline moves across the moving image and the pixel values drive banks of tuned oscillators. Signal values are used to drive brightness/contrast/saturation parameters on the video feed. Effect chains on the oscillator banks are likewise altered by the parameters of the sound, which feeds back into the video.

the excellent bathouse fight scene from the Sonny Chiba classic Return of the Street Fighter sonified to a Sarang Raga in F using Max/MSP/Jitter.
everything that’s not obviously a drum is a sonified video of a painting by Eben Bender. Sonification in Max/MSP/Jitter, drums, mixing etc. in Ableton
everything that is not a drum is video of a rag rug some of the drums are logs, some of them are seaweed

Cultivate 2019 – Show report, part 2

After the cookies were baked and the rants were ranted it was time to tear down and relocate to the projection site.

From 9 to midnight I manipulated field recordings taken from various locations around the island – including recordings of the Quinsam, a trip to the grocery store, and a trio of pileated woodpeckers foraging in my yard.

The audio was accompanied by video generated by a Jitter patch I wrote. The patch takes the audio and uses it to generate colour information and deform some simple geometry.

Cultivate 2019 Show Report, part 1

The debut of an episodic, semi extemporaneous anarchist cooking program:

Every Cookie Is A Tiny Fist  Raised Against the Dismal  Edifice of Babylon

  • 144 Cookies
  • secret knowledge
  • Bhakti Anarcho-Pragmatism
  • Love & Rage
  • a clean kitchen

The performance ran 5 times over the course of the afternoon to crowds of various sizes. Everyone enjoyed the cookies – maybe the anarchism will catch on as well.

the Cinnamon Clinamen Liberty Biscuit (a cookie for all occasions)

  • 100g coconut oil
  • 180 g brown sugar
  • 200 g whole wheat flour
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • pinch salt
  • 1 tbsp cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp chai spice

The baking itself was done on a barbecue. A few bricks under the cookie tray keeps the cookies in a flow of hot air and undermines the brute banality of the systems which would deprive us of a nuanced incarnation.

But I can love it one cookie at a time.
  1. cream together warm oil and brown sugar
  2. add egg
  3. mix dry ingredients
  4. gradually add dry to wet
  5. form cookies
  6. cook for 7 to 10 minutes, depending on barbecue
  7. while the cookies bake, chant the mantra of king shark

My Name Is Trixie. I Like To Party.

Cultivate

So this is a thing:

https://cultivate.artsgabriola.ca/events/every-cookie-is-a-tiny-fist-raised-against-the-dismal-edifice-of-babylon/

Actually two things.

I’ll be barbecueing cookies (probably vegan cookies) and processing the sounds of cookie production, accompanied by brief musical interludes and some little chats about love and rage and memetic contagion.

On Saturday evening we will gather in the shining place and chant the mantra of King Shark.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CJRwFA3UsAATDOO.jpg