Phonos Frenzy
Have been working slavishly on several pieces for the Barcelona Laptop Orchestra. Among them, an optical-recognition piece that took Steve Reich’s Six Pianos as its starting point (or – more accurately – it’s ultimate goal, and we’re not quite there yet!), and a piece we call CliX ReduX, inspired by Ge Wang and the Princeton Laptop Orchestra’s original CliX.
We have our Phonos concert coming up next Thursday (January 31, 2013), at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Full details of the repertoire we’ll be performing is available on another page (only in Catalan, sorry). You can also read a description of the pieces, by director Josep Comajuncosas (also in Catalan) here.
First up, a sample of CliX ReduX, showing several enhancements, such as the audio and video snippets seen in this video. In the video, I just run through the alphabet a few times, giving a taste of how it looks and sounds (when in “Vox” mode). The audio and UI components are written in SuperCollider, the video sampler program in Openframeworks.
Next, I show the more “classic” version of CliX ReduX. This one has sound that’s more in keeping with Ge Wang’s original piece, but adds visual display of “flying letters”, and also the possibility of multiple syncopated character streams per player. The text here is from Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, and runs from: “To be, or not to be, that is the question” through to: “Tis a consummation / Devoutly to be wished.” At first there is only one stream, so it’s relatively easy to follow the letters (if you know what to expect!), but after a few lines I put it into “syncopated” mode, where more than one letter can play simultaneously. It’s like a spelling bee on steroids…
Finally, here’s another example of the CliX ReduX piece (this one featuring another BLO member, Andrés, “speaking” the first part of the famous Hamlet soliloquy – “Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them."):