I just spent an exciting morning making noise with ace-clarinettist Peter Furniss. We were preparing the bass clarinet edition of GruntCount.

Pete is an extremely willing improviser so it was very easy to stretch the system and get some new, filthy settings for our concert in the Reid Concert Hall on the 13th March 2012.

The computer processing in GruntCount is fairly gritty (one of the reasons for its title) and this seems to work very well with the rich colours Pete can produce. The way we worked this morning was to take each voice of the processing system in turn and establish a series of settings that we thought worked well. We also got as far as finding some mixes of the different voices and parameters but have still to find a musical structure that makes sense of the wide variety of sounds that Peter can produce in combination with the software.
One of the features of GruntCount is that it can be scaled to fit different contexts. Depending upon what else is in the programme, it can be a long blow, full of atmosphere and tension, or it can be more flamboyant and short. As we’re preparing this for a concert featuring Stravinsky, Musgrave, Reich and a recent piece by Alex Harker called Fluence, we’re going for something in between the two. We’re hoping to give the audience’s ears a bit of a blast but should also show some of the reactive twists and turns the electronics can take.

The concert is a University lunchtime event, starting at 1:10pm in the Reid Concert Hall, the gig is free.

Here’s a rough snippet or two from the system as it sounds today (20th Jan 2012);

http://www.tinpark.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Extract_02.mp3

http://www.tinpark.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Extract_03.mp3

Please note, these are rough mixes from a draft session, certainly not the finished piece as you’ll hear it in concert.

StPölten-Jan2012

Born Staffordshire, UK, 1975

A composer, improviser and soloist with laptop, my sound-centric projects focus on encounters between computers, people and places. Based in Edinburgh, I perform and compose works involving computers, sound installations and sound design projects with a range of theatre companies, symphony orchestras, visual artists and ensembles.  Recent pieces include Man High, an audiovisual collaboration with Stephen Deazley and Andy McGregor, GruntCount a configurable improvisation for instrument and computer and Songs for an airless room, an “opera” for cinema.

I am Artistic Director of Edinburgh’s Dialogues Festival www.dialogues-festival.org and one third of free improvisation trio Lapslap.

I studied composition at the University of Manchester and completed a Ph.D in Composition at the University of Edinburgh in 2003. I am Programme Director of the University of Edinburgh’s MSc in Sound Design.

Some of my music is available on Ein Klang records; www.einklangrecords.com and www.leorecords.com. Otherwise, you can find information here and with the music publisher sumtone.com.

32 kms above the desert, on the edge of space, Joseph Kittinger stepped out of a balloon… for the next 13 minutes & 45 seconds he fell to Earth, breaking the sound barrier, terminal velocity and nearing death… His story has inspired the creation of this original music & film piece, Man High.

www.manhigh.org

Man High is a collaborative piece written with composer Stephen Deazley and visual artist Andy McGregor. The piece was commissioned by Music at the Brewhouse and developed with funding and support from Creative Scotland, the University of Edinburgh and Inspace.

Watch a trailer here;

www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7DzB84-0ac

View the Music at the Brewhouse Photo stream;

www.flickr.com/photos/66825231@N04/

I have a new work for the soundwaves festival go live this week. Playlist interludes is a series of 10 short pieces to dump into your music collection.  They can be listened to in order A-J but better to stumble across them on shuffle play.

They’ll premiere at Soundwaves on the 17th July 2011, more information is here.

arts.brighton.ac.uk/soundwaves/artists-2010/martin-parker

Download to your portable player from official.fm; official.fm/playlists/67493.

Soundwaves Festival in Brighton invited me to make a work that explores listening habits in some way for their “Listen” event on the 17th July 2011. Each of these ‘playlist interludes’ began as a location recording made when listening intently to particular environments, mostly urban, on holidays and performance trips. I then mixed in studio material that latched onto elements of pitch, rhythm, timbre or general feel of these environments to create some sort of friction or interrelationship between the two worlds.

Visit the soundwaves website for the download link, until the 18th July;

arts.brighton.ac.uk/soundwaves/artists-2010/martin-parker

playlist interludes 17′24

Anne tells me she’ll perform gruntCount in Amsterdam on the 6th July.  Good luck Anne!

www.splendoramsterdam.com/

I’ve just spent three days in the company of the absolutely spectacular flautist Anne La Berge. We’ve been developing the first official edition of gruntCount, a sound-managed (self playing) piece for solo instrument and computer.

Anne was fantastic to work with and totally got the idea of the piece (that requires the player to literally push their way through a map of complex sound processing presets). I’ll publish the score and software on sumtone soon, it will then be available for other flautists to take on the road. Meanwhile, I’ll be working with other instruments to get settings for their own edition of gruntCount soon.

We premiered the piece in Alison House at a lovely concert with edimpro on Tuesday 14th June. The image above is the map of the piece that Anne performed; 8500 grunts took her around 15 minutes to get through.

GruntCount is an improvised piece for computer and solo instrument.

Whilst GruntCount is described as an improvisation, it is also to some extent a repeatable and rehears-able piece of music. Notation instructions have been replaced by a pre-defined structure that is learned as the player rehearses. However, the duration of the piece and the sounds the instrumentalist will play are largely open and versions of the piece could be configured to last anywhere between 5 and 20 minutes depending upon the needs of the performance. Such extremes are possible (and permissible), because this is part of the fundamental concept of the piece. Not only should this piece of computer music be accessible and reliable enough for players to be able to rehearse alone, the player also gets autonomy to change the scope and scale of the piece by changing the number of ”grunts” to count before the piece finishes. A player who has rehearsed the piece several times will develop an understanding of how the improvisatory tension develops and will give the player confidence to find musical solutions to some of the unexpected events the computer may throw up as the piece runs.

The computer responds to the player by being pushed through a map of interleaved presets with each sound (or grunt) the player makes, no sophisticated score following algorithms are used. The computer part responds to the live input if sound input crosses a threshold specified in advance. Close integration between player and electronics is achieved by connecting the threshold crossing event with a range of interconnected parameter changes that are nested within one another. Unless the settings are configured to remain the same when the threshold is crossed, any sonic event will result in a change across multiple parameters leading to a discernible sonic result. The responsiveness of such a system offers the player chance to respond back. To add to the excitement, a few parameter changes are not absolute, rather a change may simply offer permission for a meso-sonic sound element to be randomised.
GruntCount was designed so that the computer plays its part unassisted. The computer will ideally be present on stage and the player will start the piece off who then must leave the computer alone until the preset map is complete. The computer will dutifully stop making sound once the journey through the preset map is complete. Because there is no score, there are no limits as to how much input is enough to push the piece along and this leaves enough of a certainty vacuum to justify its status as an improvisation.

The flute version was developed in June 2011 with the extraordinary improvising flautist Anne La Berge. Her visit was supported by the University of Edinburgh, School of Arts Culture and Environment research fund.  I learned many things from this collaboration and used this time to refine the approach that might be used to make future versions.  A piano version has been devised with pianist Karin Schistek (September 2011), a bass clarinet version with Pete Furniss will be made in March 2012 and I’m hoping to squeeze in a trombone edition for a concert with John Kenny in November 2011.

sd.caad.ed.ac.uk/tinpark/media/sound/outthere/01_StFillansCave.mp3

Credited with powers of healing the sick, St Fillan is alleged to have lived in this cave in the 8th century. It is more likely though that he took shelter here on his travels as a missionary.
In the 18th century, the town’s drunks were (also allegedly) deposited here and cured of their addiction by being tied up over night and forced to go cold turkey. www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fillan.
As the only ‘indoor’ piece of the three, I’ve tried to make a very internal and reflective kind of music. The sounds you hear are freely associated, perhaps illustrative of passing thoughts. Field recordings I’ve taken from various recording trips with my portable in-ear microphones have been used throughout. Sounds recorded in the cave are also present giving the feeling that there might be others with you. The many layers and juxtapositions in this piece allude to the many uses this cave might have had, from shelter to smuggler’s lair, from holy site to an empty space.

sd.caad.ed.ac.uk/tinpark/media/sound/outthere/02_CrailHarbor.mp3

02 – Crail Harbor
The sleepy village of Crail boasts a peaceful and atmospheric harbor with a view out across the Forth that looks towards the Isle of May. Crail is the furthest East of the Neuk’s fishing towns and therefore the view from the harbor also reaches out beyond the confines of the wash of the Firth of Forth. This far edge of the Neuk is exposed to Denmark, the Netherlands and Southern Norway as well as the Bass Rock and North Berwick. It is from this view that sounds collected from the sea shore take you out across the ocean towards unknown places on an unknown ship. This slow, drone-based piece regards the sea as a powerfully mysterious, inhospitable and possibly frightening place, its otherness and relentlessness reflected in the sounds of processed Chinese percussion samples. The music should leave you with space to hear the sounds of wind and sea through your headphones, listening at louder levels may mask the presence of the environment you are in though. Your ship drops you back on the harbor side to the accompaniment of digital rain and a distant defensive arctic tern.

sd.caad.ed.ac.uk/tinpark/media/sound/outthere/03_DuninoDen.mp3

03 – Dunino Den Dunino

Den Dunino Den is a peculiarly mysterious and special location with a history of spiritual human activity dating back to the Picts and before. If you look around carefully you’ll find carvings on some of the rocks near the brook and stones from an ancient stone circle are littered around the church yard near where you’ll park when you come here.
Susan Delatour LePoidevin’s poem to Dunino Den ends with the questions; ‘a sanctuary? a sacred place? who had been here before us?’ www.skjaere.me.uk/dunino/dunino.html
This piece responds directly to the Den, and refers to its mysterious qualities and functions both historic and current as a place for ceremony and delirium. The piece slowly awakens to rhythmically processed material recorded in the forest at 5am on an April morning. As the music progresses the digital aesthetic takes over but the sound of bells coming into and out of the texture cut through this. The piece ends with a direct reference to the Den’s use by party goers using a processed drum loop donated to the piece by Acid dance musician Mike Dred www.83db.com.

More coming soon about a new sound installation presented at Newhailes, a National Trust for Scotland building on the northern edge of Edinburgh.

The work was devised and created in collaboration with artist Anna Chapman whose exhibition “Subjects of Melancholy Retrospection” has drawn extensively from the books that once belonged to the library and now reside in the National Library of Scotland.

Subjects for Melancholy Retrospection
Newhailes, near Edinburgh, Scotland, 5 August – 6 September 2010
private view Wednesday 4 August 6-8pm
additional late opening Thursday 26 August 6-8pm

More information about the estate and how to get there is available here; www.nts.org.uk/Property/47/.

I’ve just completed a sound installation devised for the library of the atmospheric National Trust for Scotland’s Newhailes Estate. Dr Johnston once described this room as “the most learned drawing room in Europe” but its shelves are now empty.

The work was devised and created in collaboration with artist Anna Chapman whose exhibition “Subjects of Melancholy Retrospection” has drawn extensively from the books that once belonged to the library and now reside in the National Library of Scotland.

Subjects for Melancholy Retrospection
Newhailes, near Edinburgh, Scotland, 5 August – 6 September 2010
private view Wednesday 4 August 6-8pm
additional late opening Thursday 26 August 6-8pm

More information about the estate and how to get there is available here; www.nts.org.uk/Property/47/.

Joby Burgess and Gabriel Prokofiev invited me to write a remix for their import-export project.  The disc was released in 2010.

You can get hold of the album and my chatter remix here;

nonclassical.greedbag.com/buy/import-export-g-prokofiev-suite-0/

here

itunes.apple.com/gb/album/import-export-g.-prokofiev/id389448883

or here

www.amazon.com/Export-Martin-Parker-Chatter-Remix/dp/B003JOE7R6

Taking Sean Williams, Owen Green and Lauren Hayes to STEIM for a week of orientation and introduction to what’s going on there.

Here is a link to our blogs; steim.org/projectblog/.

Links to some of our late night studio 2 improvisations are below:

Ode to Sextant
Have we started yet?
Master System
Short, Sweet
Beetles and Chips
TVmovie
Frittata
Grimula
Long and Boring
Jurassic Parker (Vocal Mix)
LateLurpak
Chit Chat
VeeSeeEss
Smerge

My opera for cinema is finally finished and on tour.

www.airless.tinpark.com

Songs for an airless room on tour, February 2010;

Friday 19th February, 6:45pm

Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT)
www.gft.org.uk/
Showing as part of the Glasgow Film Festival
www.glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk/

Tickets: 0141 332 6535

Sunday 21st February, 9:30

Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh
www.picturehouses.co.uk/cinema_home_date.aspx?venueId=edbg

Tickets: 0871 704 2052

Monday 22nd February, 8pm

FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) Liverpool
www.fact.co.uk/

Tickets: 0871 704 2063

In December 2009, Jennifer Williams, Anna Chapman and I finally released our project Chiaroscuro Pentimenti.

The book has been beautifully designed by Anna Chapman (www.fogbank.co.uk) and is available as a limited edition of 200 for £12 including PnP, please get in touch if you want to get hold of a copy.

Lapslap release Zuppa Inglese, our third release on Leo Records.

You can buy the disc here: http://www.leorecords.com/?m=select&id=CD_LR_550

Somewhere between documentary, theatre and opera, songs for an airless room is a piece of music to be performed in cinemas. Featuring the vocal extremes of Phil Minton and relentless clatter of percussionist Joby Burgess, with computer processing, live visuals and surround sound, the piece explores a potential for obsessive isolation wrought by digital technologies.

More information about the piece can be found at this website: www.airless.tinpark.com

Reviews for Airless room are here:

http://living.scotsman.com/music/Gig-review-Songs-for-an.6094305.jp
http://www.edinburghguide.com/reviews/music/reviewsongsforanairlessroom-4951
http://www.musolife.com/trapped-in-a-box-with-songs-for-an-airless-room.html

Zuppa Inglese, the Italian for custard or trifle, is the third release by Lapslap on Leo Records. As before, it is a varied concoction of ten improvisations combining acoustic and computer-based instruments. However, the usual line-up of brass, sax, keys, and computers has been augmented by the long-time collaborator Mark Summers who is heard on viola da gamba.

Just One Kiss – The Fall of Ned Kelly: about the sound

Live performance, Filmhouse, Edinburgh 7th November 2009

‘One can say that every narrative feature film has been essentially the same since 1906 and the self-standardizing storyline has become a language in itself which we expect to read in any sequence of moving images. In Just One Kiss – The Fall Of Ned Kelly I have attempted to invoke our interpretive faculties to construct this meta story out of unrelated found footage images.’
Sami van Ingen

In response to Sami’s film and the ideas behind it, we took as source material a musical work that also dates from 1906: Charles Ives’ “Central Park in the Dark”.  This 8-minute piece has been stretched out to match the duration of the film and we’re using it to tether Sami’s storytelling to the other sounds that we’ve gathered to play over and around the images.

We didn’t just choose “Central Park in the Dark” because it was written in the same year as “The Fall of Ned Kelly”. The piece is a particularly bold experiment in musical form, constructed as it is from several sound worlds (pieces) that overlap and pass over one another as the music goes on. It makes a plausible case for resisting the conventional musical shapes that became so well established and familiar in the 18^th and 19^th centuries.  As Sami’s work attempts to test its own idea, that we can follow the same story through any collection of images, Ives’ piece tests our ability to follow musical layers when they are superimposed.

In the spirit of this film, which is composed of references from across the history of moving image, our soundtrack is made of borrowed and stolen sounds, mostly sourced from YouTube.   Several quotes are culturally iconic and serve to annotate the images in a different way to the inter-titles.  It is a confusing mush, carefully rehearsed and improvised on the spot.

Thanks to Kim Knowles for inviting us to be involved in this project and the Filmhouse staff for letting us loose on their sound system.
Martin Parker  www.tinpark.com
Owen Green  www.owengreen.net

Chiaroscuro / Pentimenti is the culmination of a collaboration between poet JL Williams, composer Martin Parker and artist Anna Chapman.

The two painters’ terms came to our attention in 2006 as intriguing starting points for the making of work that crossed the boundaries of each of our artforms. Chiaroscuro (Italian, ‘light-dark’) is an artist’s technique for synthesising form through casting shadow, while pentimenti (Italian, ‘repentances’) are traces of the artist’s earlier decisions or outlines, revealed as layers of paint become translucent over time.  We took these ideas as departure points for excursions through text, image and sound.

On the disc, published by Fogbank Projects in 2009 and available from me as a limited edition, all sounds you hear were generated from recordings of JL Williams reading her poems.  In ‘Chiaroscuro’ [Track 01], the music is synthesised by literally beaming simple sound sources like white noise and sine tones through the spectra of the voice. this technique was devised in response to the beams of light described in the poem, ‘You, chiaroscuro’.

‘Pentimenti’ [Track 02] was constructed by playing back Williams’ readings of her poem ‘Pentimento’ in many different locations and layering hundereds of recordings on top of one another.The result is a piece composed of the parts of the spectrum usually removed when cleaning up location recordings. As the piece progresses, the noise becomes too much for the sound processors and they begin to clip and beat rhythmically. Through this litter of broken audio, a chorus of voices seems to appear but is just the debris of filters and compressors. A mistake made in the reading during one of the recording sessions has been kept in as a deliberate reference to the technique of painting over (repenting).

The drawings you see here and on the limited edition release were made in response to the content of Williams’ poems, together with some of the processing characteristics of the music described above. Specific references to things, places and events that occur in the poems, including a view from a shop, a fresco in Padua and experiences of light were taken from the text, but their visual source is something relayed through other media rather than seen directly. Here chiaroscuro may be a more private drama of black-and-white dots composing an image for halftone printing; pentimenti the uncertain edges of objects affected by image compression.

The development of the project was supported by the Scottish Arts Council, now known as Creative Scotland.

This is a handy interface to the pattrstorage preset system. Use in a bPatcher in the top level patch or as an abstraction. You need to use mp.assignment to assign keys or other controllers to cue up and select presets. You can interpolate between selected presets using the interface on the top right of the patch. mp.assignment is included in the zip.presetManager

To do;
Create a more sophisticated interpolation and automation through presets.

I’ll play a concert with long-time collaborator Hannes Raffaseder at the SMC conference in Porto on the 23rd July.
This is the 6th Sound and Music Computing conference: smc2009.smcnetwork.org/. It will take place at the extraordinary Casa da Música.
Other performers on the bill that night include;
Diemo Schwarz, Yasuhiro Otani and Alexander Schubert
smc2009.smcnetwork.org/programme/concerts.html#concert2

Out there, three pieces for headphones and real places by Martin Parker, commissioned by the East Neuk Festival 2009.

Writing for headphones

Aside from the obvious risks you face when crossing roads or riding a bike whilst listening to music, portable mp3 players pose a threat to the health of your ears. Consider that the ambient noise level by a city road is around 83dB [1]. Don’t worry about this number but do remember that in order to hear music over this level, you may well be playing 85-90dB (double the volume) next to your ear [2]. Then consider that the UK Health and Safety Executive recommends employers actively protect workers exposed to levels of 85dB for long periods [3]. So, in order to hear your music, you walk around the city with an in-ear headphone pumping industrial-strength loudness right at your ear-drum. Obviously, there is something wrong here but few of us seem to mind, why?

In 1977 Murray Schafer, composer, sound theorist and pedagogue warned that city dwellers faced a ‘universal deafness’ unless the noise floor of modern cities could be reduced [4]. It has not reduced, only increased in the last 30 years. Perhaps the popularity of portable music players can be put down to a kind of ‘personal-choic’ deafness; city sound being so stressful, irritating and sonically aggressive that we prefer to block it out with our own private soundscape. This makes sense musically too. The speed of traffic, bustle of shoppers and commuters achieve a poetic flow and grace when decoupled from their sound sources and viewed through the strains of Aphex Twin, Piazzola or Mahler.

Filmmakers well know how music interprets image and have trained us to respond to this device, it may explain why we carry around these sounds as they help us to re-interpret our environment as a cinematic and visual experience. Portable music players offer a personal, private space for individuals to re-see their world but we now also behave with music in a way that is perhaps different to modes of listening and access we’ve had up until recently. ‘Flash mobs’ [5] (where groups of people gather to perform acts of guerrilla resistance or individuality) are also associated with portable music players. ‘Silent Disco’ [6] and ‘Mobile Clubbing’ [7] are events where people dance together whilst listening to their own choice of music through headphones [8].

A particularly famous silent disco was staged at Victoria Station in London in 2007. One suggestion on the youtube video comments below is that activists should use this action as a form of protest. Perhaps the next iPod flashmob in London will stop traffic, grinding the city to a silent halt. These events/protests/actions are organized online and link with another feature of portable music devices and the internet, namely social networking, torrent sharing, blogging and podcasting. Whilst we may not be experiencing the same music together at the same time as in the days of the public concert or even radio broadcast, we do share playlists, creating intimacy by publishing our taste, choices and opinions freely. The isolation of a headphone music experience does not mean we are not made aware of something larger than ourselves.

I’ve often thought that my music belonged in the city where contemporary culture thrives but this commission has offered me an escape from this way of thinking. By using another trick from film [9], I’ve mixed environmental sound from the places themselves under and around the music. This has helped to create a plausible cushion for the electronic musical language I usually work with. There is no need to listen to this music at loud levels. Let the sound of the environment in.

Headphones are not a new vehicle for sound, music and art, Janet Cardiff, Christina Kubisch (to name couple of famous examples) and many theatre projects have made use of headphones in innovative and interesting ways but it is still comparatively rare to find music specially authored for portable playback. We have poetry on the underground, why not music for the underground too; pieces of music commissioned especially for playback between certain points on the Circle line? I’m not describing historical narratives or museum guides but actual music, crafted with the noise floor of the environment in mind and designed to expand one’s commute in a sonic direction usually obliterated by the noise of your ride.

A version of this note appeared MUSO magazine in July 2009.

1. Tested midday, Edinburgh, EH8 9DF, 29th using a B&K SPL meter ↩
2. More information about the dB scale is available here: www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/dB.html
3. www.hse.gov.uk/noise/noise.pdf
4. The Soundscape, Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World.(1977, Destiny Books, Vermont)
5. Initiated by Bill Wasik in 2003.
6. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWQpDaC0T-s
7. www.mobile-clubbing.com/
8. At commerical parties this is not the case, a DJ or live performer will play the same music to everyone at the same time. See www.silentdisco.com
9. Room tone

Listening

Please make sure that you are familiar with the operation of your MP3 player before playing these tracks. If at any time, the music seems too loud, please adjust the volume of your headset to a comfortable level. A good way to check that you are not playing the music too loudly is that you should still be able to hear wind, rain and nearby traffic above the sound of the music. In a quiet place, half volume level on an Apple iPhone should be plenty of level. If you find you have your mp3 player at full volume, this is almost certainly too loud. Please note these mp3s have been optimized to play-back on headphones and to be listened to outdoors. These mixes are not for listening to on home stereo systems although they won’t do any harm to your equipment, you the music is designed to be heard outdoors.

Notes on the places these pieces were originally written for

01 – St Fillan’s Cave – www.tinpark.com/2011/01/out-there-st-fillans-cave/

02 – Crail Harbor – www.tinpark.com/2011/01/out-there-crail-harbour/

03 – Dunino Den Dunino – www.tinpark.com/2011/01/out-there-dunino-den/

In Feb 2009, lapslap released Scratch, our second album on Leo Records.

The disc can be bought from Leo Records www.leorecords.com/?m=select&id=CD_LR_531

The album was recently reviewed by John Eyles on allaboutjazz.com:

www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=32104

Site content (C) Martin Parker unless otherwise stated.

Larger media files are hosted by the School of Arts Culture and Environment, University of Edinburgh

Site template hacked crudely from 5thirtyone.com/grid-focus by Derek Punsalan 5thirtyone.com

Site content management system thanks to www.wordpress.org

Plugins used:

µAudio Player
All in One SEO Pack
AStickyPostOrderER
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Auto-hyperlink URLs
Category Order
Google Analytics for WordPress
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pageMash
Podcasting
WordPress Database Backup

download > mptimelapse_rev3d-build

August 2006
Mac OSX Version 1.d
This system was developed for the AHRC research project Inflecting Space.
As part of our data gathering we have been devising a sound installation/voice experiment called Vocal Ikebana.
This tool was developed to make documenting the experiment quick and efficient, however, it has been designed such that it can be used for most timelapse or stop_frame video projects.

Instructions

1. Choose dimensions of video to record
2. Initialise the camera
3. Decide if you want to add date stamp to the video.
4. Setup grab schedule or choose a key on your keyboard to grab a frame when you like
5. Setup output format. Video formats range from web optimised to full quality DV.
6. Click write to choose a place to write the file.

Features

• Audio cuing during automated grabbing
• Time and Date stamping directly to the video optional
• Grab a frame every 1- 59 seconds
• Stop after any number of frames
• Calculates how long the video will be at your chosen frame rate
• Most output video codecs supported
• Grab frames using asci keyboard.

Credits

Created in the Max MSP Jitter Programming environment, thanks to www.Cycling74.com

License

This software is free to download and use. The author takes no responsibility for what this software does to your computer.

This is a simple but useful abstraction that helps you to time events in an installation or other context. The example included with this abstraction shows how to control the master amplitude of an installation.  The abstraction listens for events, waits a certain amount of time without events, if that time has passed, the installation amplitude fades out.

Download it > installationtimer

“Scratch” is the companion album to lapslap’s debut CD “Itch” released in 2008 to a high critical acclaim. Michael Edwards (tenor sax, computer, midi wind controller), Martin Parker (french horn, computer), Karin Schistek (piano) freely combine computer solos with instrumental trios and any combination in between. The music draws from traditions ranging from avant-garde classical, free improv/free jazz through to improvised electroacoustic/glitch.

www.leorecords.com/?m=select&id=CD_LR_531

Ein Klang records kindly invited me to remix some of their catalogue to celebrate 10 years of the label’s releases. The title should be fairly self explanatory, I did irreversible damage to three tracks from disc 2 of the 7th forum release. Apologies to those involved in tracks 1, 6 and 12.

www.einklangrecords.com/remix/remix.htm

I’m writing a new piece for Music at the Brewhouse, to be performed on the Rock and Roll swindle tour in April 2009.

The Story So Far, 8 min 15 sec

Colour, stereo, 2008

Screening copies DV, Beta SP, DVD
A video by Rob Kennedy, Martin Parker and Sue Tompkins

An Artist’s Film & Video production supported by The National Lottery® through Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen.

Screenings:

Upgrade!, New Media Scotland, CCA, Glasgow 2008
Backup_festival Forum, Weimar, Germany, 2008
‘I relish  your balderdash’, Location One, NY, NY, USA 2008

I’ll write a new work for headphones to be presented at the East Neuk festival in June 2009.

In December 2008, I joined online music publisher www.sumtone.com
Several older and some new pieces are published there including:

Grab 2008
Steinmetzarbeiten 1997
Sounds of Line 2000

Martin Parker

E: mp@ the name of this website
T: +44 (0) 131 650 2333

The University of Edinburgh
Music, Alison House
12 Nicolson Square
Edinburgh
Scotland
EH8 9DF

Google Map
maps.google.co.uk/?q=eh8+9df

Download > mp.assignment

mp.assignment is a fiddly little bpatcher that allows you to connect any input device and assign it to whatever you like. Behaves in a similar way to midi learn functions in software like Ableton or Logic. Because it is tied into the pattrstorage system, the assignment can change dynamically. This means a parameter in max can be controlled by any input device and this can change during performance or if you have different input devices available on different occasions, or if you decide you don’t like the mapping you originally designed, you don’t need to edit the patch just make a new preset for it.

lock your patch, click on the mp.assignment bpatcher, it will go red. Move a fader, joystick or keyboard and the input device has been assigned.

Requires tinpark_alphabet.txt to work. This is included inside the .zip file above.

Parker, Martin 2008. “Water does not run uphill unless it is pushed. Maxims for thinking about sound in the context of architecture, installation art and technology, a response to ‘Athens by sound’.” Venice architecture Biennale, 2008, Greek Pavilion catalogue. Publication details to follow in October 2008.

Live performance at the U8 gallery in Nagoya, Japan.  A second performance in completely different circumstances lead to different rhythms and timbres emerging from the loudspeakers.

http://www.leorecords.com/?th=1&m=select&id=CD_LR_516

All tracks on this release were performed live in a single take and recorded during a three-day session at the Reid Concert Hall in Edinburgh, September 7th to 9th 2007. The special acoustic of the hall is featured on several tracks, often with each instrument in its own space (recording purists beware). The recordings were made in surround and mixed into stereo by Michael Edwards and Martin Parker. Surround versions of the recordings will hopefully be made available via Leo’s website (watch this space).

sd.caad.ed.ac.uk/tinpark/media/sound/Concept_Space.mp3

A live performance at the Concept Space gallery in Gunma, Japan using drum pads, gel loudspeakers and the resonant frequencies of the room.
This new project was developed in collaboration with fine artist Alan Johnston who invited me to join him on his trip to several galleries in Japan where he produced a series of wall drawings.

In response to Alan’s well defined shapes, scratched onto the walls of the space using pencil, I placed small Gel-Based loudspeakers on the walls of the room.  These loudspeakers are very special.  They are designed to be attached to almost any flat surface.  Once connected, they make that surface resonate turning the entire surface into a resonating body.

Using measurements of the room’s dimensions, I devised rhythmic patterns and frequencies that would emerge from the walls in 6 channels around a seated audience.

The performance above took place on October the 8th at the Concept Space gallery in Gunma, Shibukawa, Japan.

Beginner Drummer is a project that started in July 2008.  It is a live performance for midi drum pads and the sound of the pads themselves.

sd.caad.ed.ac.uk/event/wp-content/audio/beginner_drummer.mp3

Grab

Oboe, Bass Clarinet, Percussion and Computer.
The score, parts for performance and software are available from sumtone.com | sumtone.com/work.php?workid=193

sd.caad.ed.ac.uk/tinpark/media/sound/grab-mix3.mp3

written for New Noise London in March 2008.

Premiere performances:
Purcell Rooms, London
The Bluecoat, Liverpool
Djanogly Recital Hall, Nottingham

Reviews of Grab

…Grab, by Martin Parker, was the highpoint. Scored for oboe, bass clarinet, percussion and computer, the trio effectively became a sextet, with the computer semi-randomly sampling and manipulating each instrumentalist’s contribution to create another three voices… producing some disturbing dialogue reminiscent of passages from Berio’s Visage.  The work gave the flesh-and-blood performers a chance to shine – Burgess in particular let his hair down with some excellent solos – a highly effective and enjoyable piece performed with considerable flair.

David Bignell, Classical Source, May 2008

Martin Parker’s Grab employs a live computer-generated shadow of the oboe, bass clarinet and percussion trio, which is triggered by the on-stage performers, growing Hydra-like until it threatens to utterly overwhelm them. This simple arc is made much more interesting by the complexity of the live music the performers are required to play, even as the rich details of their efforts are obliterated by the computer. The drama was in the palpable sense of waste and futility as performing skill and commitment was digitised and then redeployed against itself.’

Tim Rutherford-Johnson, Musical Pointers, May 2008

Martin Parker’s Grab, receiving its world premiere this evening, was one of the highlights of the concert.  With an exciting interplay between the live elements and electronics, the bass clarinet provided a lovely timbral variety to the oboe sound and the two complimented each other very well.
The percussion held all the disparate elements together and served as the main driving force for the work.  This was an exciting and dramatic work, which was given a highly convincing first performance.  I have no doubt that this will become a part of the core repertoire for this combination of instruments, and I look forward to hearing more from Parker in the future.
Carla Rees, Seen and Heard, May 2008

Accompanied by maracas, Steve Reich’s Four Organs took a dominant chord on an epic sleigh-ride. Kreuzspiel, for oboe, bass clarinet, piano and percussion, reflected Karl-Heinz Stockhausen at the start of his maverick career.  Thanks to computer resources, a trio became a dramatic sextet in Martin Parker’s Grab, the evening’s other new work.  Electronics helped to conjure the muted sounds of Pedro Gomez Egana’s recent Clark Nova, as well as the magic of Dennehy’s exploits in overtones.’
Peter Palmer, Nottingham Evening Post, May 2008

• Coyne, Richard, and Martin Parker. 2007. Voice and space: The agency of the acousmêtre in spatial design. In P. Turner, S. Turner, and E. Davenport (eds.), Exploration of Space, Technology and Spatiality: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, to appear: Idea Press. First appeared as Coyne, Richard, and Martin Parker. 2004. Voices Off: The Spatial Implications of Voice in Ubiquitous Digital Media. Proc. Space, Spatiality, Technology Conference 12 – 24 Dec 2004: 34-38. Edinburgh: Napier University. [MO]

• Raffaseder, Hannes and Martin Parker 2008, ‘Interrelation – Sound Transformation and remixing in real-time’.  In Transdisciplinary Digital Art, Sound, Vision and the New Screen, Volume 7. 1865-0929 (Print) 1865-0937 (Online).

• Parker, Martin. “Joys of travel: introducing the Spectral Tourist.” LEA Special Issue: My Favorite Supplement: The Joy of the Gizmo, Leonardo Electronic Almanac Vol. 15, No. 11-12 (2007). 31 Dec. 2007

leoalmanac.org/journal/Vol_15/lea_v15_n11_12/MParker.html

• Coyne, Richard, Raymond Lucas, Jia Li, Martin Parker, and John Lee. 2007. Co-operation and complicity: Voices, robots, and tricksters in the digital marketplace. International Journal of Architectural Computing (IJAC), (5) 1, 161-175.

• Coyne, Richard, John Lee, and Martin Parker. 2005. Permeable portals: designing congenial web sites for the e-society. Tangentium, (2) 1, www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~polaw/tangentium/jan05/index.html. [MO]

• Coyne, Richard, Pedro Rebelo, and Martin Parker. 2004. Resisting the seamless interface. International Journal of Architectural Computing (IJAC), (4) 2, 430-442.

• Coyne, Richard, and Martin Parker. 2006. Voices out of place: Voice, non-place and ubiquitous digital communications. Mobile Understanding: The Epistemology of Ubiquitous Communication: 171-182. Vienna: Passagen Verlag. First appeared as Coyne, Richard, and Martin Parker. 2005. Sounding Off: The Place of Voice in Ubiquitous Digital Media. Proc. Seeing, Understanding, Learning in the Mobile Age, Budapest, April 28–30: 129-134.

• Coyne, Richard, Raymond Lucas, Jia Li, Martin Parker, and John Lee. 2007. Co-operation and complicity: Voices, robots, and tricksters in the digital marketplace. International Journal of Architectural Computing (IJAC), (to appear) Also appeared as Coyne, Richard, Raymond Lucas, Jia Li, Martin Parker, and John Lee. 2006. The augmented marketplace: Voices, robots and tricksters. In V. Bourdaksi, and D. Charitos (eds.), Keynote Speakers: Proc. Communicating Space(s): ii-ix. Volos: University of Thessaly, Greece.

• Coyne, R. and M. Parker, ‘Voices Off: The Spatial Implications of Voice in Ubiquitous Digital Media’, Proc. Space, Spatiality, Technology Conference 12 – 24 Dec 2004, Edinburgh: Napier University, 2004, 34-38.

• Coyne, R. and M. Parker, ‘Sounding Off: The Place of Voice in Ubiquitous Digital Media’, Proc. Seeing, Understanding, Learning in the Mobile Age, Budapest.

free improvisation ensemble with computers and instruments

www.michael-edwards.org/lapslap/mp3/not-cheddar-but-taster.mp3
not cheddar but from itch, July 2008

lapslap is a free improvisation trio with Michael Edwards, Karin Schistek and me.

Together we make well formed music in real-time with computers and instruments.
We’ve released two records on Leo Records so far; itch and scratch.
Check us out at www.lapslap.net

Martin Parker, Michael Edwards and Karin Schistek recording in September 2007

A new version of Filament was commissioned for a staircase in Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre. The installation ran from 29th October to end of November 2006 as part of Traverse Cubed, http://www.traverse.co.uk/show_detail.php?id=398

As audiences head down to see a performance, the copper wire curtain is switched on and sounds reverberated up and down the staircase “pre-mixing” sounds extracted from rehearsals of the play they are about to see.

On the 29th October 2006, the installation was “performed live” as part of the opening celebrations of the Traverse Cubed events.

This project was supported by http://www.7hings.co.uk.

In a successfully functioning city, communication networks such as telephone and internet are seamless, controlled and hidden from view. Filament exposes these communications, offering them up for reconfiguration via an interactive curtain of raw copper wires.

Hall Akustika has positioned microphones at sonically interesting and locally significant sites around the city of Hall (There are 7 other sound installations happening at this time). The soundscapes are sent to a server which then feeds the sprouting curtain in the Platzl, a cafe square in the centre of the city.

As wires in the curtain are crossed, circuits are closed, releasing sound into the Platzl. Different sounds of the city are connected with one another in randomly chaotic order.

The curtain serves two purposes; providing a musical performance interface, with coffee drinkers looking on, meanwhile exposing the potential of network communications to cause misunderstanding and complexity through the physical mechanism of crossed wires.

The screen is very sensitive and will react to the slightest impulse, even from wind so the copper wire screen could also be thought of as digital wind chime.

A radio programme about Hall Akustika was made for the Kunstradio show, aired on Sunday June 11th at 11pm.
http://www.kunstradio.at/2006A/11_06_06.html

Some press information online here;
http://www.tirol.com/szene/innsbruck/38713/index.do

kjavik=>Munich=>Glasgow=>Reykjavik=>Munich=>Glasgow=>Reykjavik=>Munich=>Glasgow=>Reykjavik=>Munich=>Glasgow=>Reykjavik=>Munich=>Glasgow=>Reykjavik=>Munich=>
Glasgow=>Reykjavik=>Munich=>Glasgow=>Reykjavik=>Munich=>Glasgow=>Reykjavik=>Munich=>Glasgow=>Reykjavik

July 6th 2006
Network Concert: circular breathing
Hosted by T-U-B-E Munich http://www.t-u-b-e.de

6pm (Reykjavik) GMT | Martin Parker | Harmonica, live electronics
7pm (Glasgow) BST | Pete Dowling | Sax, live electronics
8pm (Munich) CEST | Christoph Reiserer | Sax, live electronics

Three musicians played together simulataneously in Reykjavik, Glasgow and Munich. Crossing three timezones we attempted to simulate circular breathing, a technique used by saxophone players enabling them to play continuously for long periods of time. A sound began in Munich, traveled to Glasgow and then continued to Reykjavik before being sent back to Munich.

The names of our audience members were different in each country. We invited audience members to type names into our name sampler software. Each name was used to generate a sequence of notes that were unique in each country.

Christoph Reiserer http://www.t-u-b-e.de
Pete Dowling http://www.steadykammer.net
Martin Parker http://www.tinpark.com

Streaming was achieved using the T-U-B-E VST plugin by Dr. Jorg Stelkens http://www.stelkens.de/

I developed a wrapper for the plugin which is an OSX only standalone application. It was produced with research I developed using a research and development award from ALT-W. More details below;

T-U-B-E HOST PLUGIN wrapper;

INSTRUCTIONS The T-U-B-E plugin is quite CPU intensive so it is difficult to use the network and do lots of fancy audio processing on the same machine.
This plugin wrapper is designed to allow you to run the tube plug on one system and send audio for processing on another machine. It should work on any OSX 10.4.6 machine, best to use two pro- audio cards or a digital connection to avoid quality loss between the two machines. You can also record the output and input to disk for post-performance remixing and mastering.
Currently version 0.95

The T-U-B-E SERVER HOST
Is a standalone plugin handler which allows you to create a T-U-B-E server on any net connected MacOSX 10.4.6 machine with port 7172 open. You will need to download the T-U-B-E plugin from here; http://www.t-u-b-e.de/iplug.htm

The extract above is a theme I developed for Helen of Troy as she slowly parades herself in-front of the broken Hecuba and war-weary Menelaus.

This was a commission from Theatre Cryptic to generate real-time visuals and sound/music for a version of Brendan Keneally’s adaptation of Euripides’ Trojan Women in 2005. The work was premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2005 and toured Scotland between September and November 2005.

My approach involved developing a continuous soundscape that was played by computer and distributed to a 5.1 surround system.  The computer part was performed by an operator (Angelica Kroeger) who learned to play the piece extremely well.  Live sound from the virtual chorus (Katie Dickie and Itxaso Moren) was converted into spectral data that windowed a processed choir of distant female voices.  These effects and other sounds were combined with a series of tracks that were brought into and out of focus by Angelica as she followed the emotional trajectory of the narrative.

Myra McFadyen as Hecuba
Kate Dickie as Andromache
Itxaso Moreno as Cassandra
Candice Edmunds as Helen
Keith Macpherson as Talthybius and Menelaus

Direction by Cathie Boyd
Design by Julia Bardsley
Lighting by Giuseppe di lorio
Sound design, composition and real time visuals by Martin Parker

sd.caad.ed.ac.uk/tinpark/media/sound/TrojanWomen-HelenTheme.mp3

Landscraper was commissioned by the Upper Austrian Museum Betriebsges.m.b.H. in April 2005.
The piece ran from April – November 2005 at the Klangturm in St Pölten.

The installation in use inside the klangkugel

The image is analysed for colour content and this data is used to create a spectral envelope over sound sources collected from around the sound tower, ranging from ambient sound textures outside the building to sound from other installations on display at the same time.

Visitors sit on reactive cushions to trigger sonic and visual interruptions to the state of the klangkugel (sound ball).

The view from the camera is disturbed by the actions of people sitting. Visitors watch this on the small TV surveillance monitors.

Auto-route starts off with a live sound source, what follows is an automated response to the sound and information about that sound.  The response continues to eat itself until the concert organisers turn the machine off, the computer crashes or the feedback loops inside the system result in silence or white noise.

This piece attempts to illustrate what arbitrary, non-sentient but controlled music can sound like.   The piece runs on terms defined by the computer itself, makes its own decisions based on criteria that it invents as time passes but that are based on data extracted from the live input. Like most improvisations, initial musical ideas are first considered but shortly after this period, the machine begins to explore material dynamically, chewing on its own matter, quickly becoming self-referential and eventually running out of energy or coruscating into maximal debris.

Auto Route has been performed in several incarnations. A version was made for the Glasgow-based video artist Rob Kennedy and performed at Machinista in Glasgow in 2004. Two other versions have been made and performed without the composer present; once on a tourist boat trip in Belfast as part of the Sonorities festival, the other was performed in Newcastle by Mark Summers (Viol) and the Palindrome dance company.

The recording presented here was generated from a Marais Fantasie performed by Mark Summers (Viol) for whom the piece was written.

www.tinpark.com/wp-content/uploads/2004/10/output_2autoroute.mp3

The input source : Fantasie 41 by Marin Marais for solo viol performed by Mark Summers:

www.tinpark.com/wp-content/uploads/2004/10/input_fantaisie-411.mp3

Image by Colin Chipchase, April 2011

I am programme director of the MSc Sound Design at the University of Edinburgh. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you wish to find out more information about the course.

The course lasts 12 months full-time, 24 months part-time.
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/edinburgh-college-art/graduate-school/taughtdegrees/msc-sound-design

The course handbook is available at the following link:

sd.caad.ed.ac.uk/handbook

Schedule and Courses

Semester 1
Sound Design Media
Sound tools, sound libraries, audio editing and basic sound sync
Sonic Structures
Industrial Sound Design, Max MSP programming and prototype design
Media and Culture
Design and cultural theory

Semester 2
Interactive Sound Environments
Web design, multimedia sound design, interaction design, computer games audio
Sound and Fixed Media
Film sound analysis, sound design for moving image, surround sound
Digital Media Studio Project
Interactive sound design beyond the desktop, sound art and interactive devices

Summer
Final Project
Collaborative or individual research into a sound design topic of your choice

The relationship between a musician and an acoustic instrument is not solely concerned with converting human gesture into pitch and timbre: there is a process between player and instrument that involves resistance. It is within the struggle to produce and then control a sound that conflict between a musician and his instrument can give rise to complex and interesting results.

It is a continuing struggle to make computer-based sounds that breathe with their own life and to play the computer like a musical instrument. Interfaces for transferring real-world data into the computer such as fader boxes, tracker-ball mice, graphics tablets, game controllers, wireless devices, motion tracking etc., are increasing in flexibility and interest and through software such as Max MSP , these interfaces can offer reasonable ways of converting human movement into sound. Joysticks, for example, are a ubiquitous, inexpensive and a generally reliable piece of technology. An external MAX object was written by Adam Schabtach in 2001 to collect joystick data and view it within Max MSP.

However, there is nothing inside the hardware of most joysticks to curb a gesture. They can be pulled between extremes in milliseconds, while with a real world instrument such as a saxophone, extremes are very hard to reach and have to be found with care to avoid complete breakdown of the system and a split note. Therefore, grafting the joystick’s extremes to the extremes of one’s software may result in an artificial and possibly unfulfilling musical experience.

One way in which to create some ‘resistance’ is to imagine the joystick as a tool for travelling rather than for gesture mapping. In computer games for example, one is never in the same place for long. Pushing forwards with differing degrees of intensity means that one travels forward at different speeds. This approach has been implemented in the Spectral Tourist, although the landscape traversed is not one of snipers and guard dogs but the hilly terrain of a spectrogram.

HAZE ver.1 October 2002
Reactive music for computer with
Clarinet in Bb
Tenor Trombone and Cello
Duration ca 5 minutes

HAZE was written for members of the Paragon Ensemble and computer. Rather than interactive, HAZE is reactive. Essentially, the role of the live performers is to trigger computer based sound synthesis. The computer listens for pitch and amplitude data a re-maps this onto synthesis parameters.

This version was prepared to open a concert and was created to be punchy and brief. The score was used as a very literal guide for the performers who found it useful to follow because of very restricted rehearsal time.

The software for HAZE was written in the MaxMSP environment (www.cycling74.com) and makes use of the following third party external : Ted Apel’s MSP port of Miller Puckette’s fiddle~ which is downloadable from the following site: http://crca.ucsd.edu/~tapel/software.html (current as of 21/03/04).

In performance and rehearsal, a 16 channel midi fader box is required to take care of the input and output signals.
Controllers 1, 2 and 3 are assigned to the input levels of the three instruments and channels 14, 15 and 16 control the three levels of the computer output relative to each instrument. The routing to the four or two loudspeakers is undertaken by the software, which diffuses the computer output depending upon the parameters that the computer receives from live input.

The software is compiled as a standalone application which is ASIO compatible and requires four dedicated channels of audio output and three dedicated channels of audio input.
System requirements for the standalone  Apple Macintosh Power PC running OS 9.1 or 9.2.
G3 500Mhz, 64Mb Ram, 5mb disk space ASIO drivers for ASIO compatible sound card to be placed in ASIO drivers folder. A version for OSX 10.2 and 10.3 is also included on the CD. The sound card should be Core-Audio and Core-Midi compatible the card can be configured in the standalone with ease.

The sculptures of Kassian Erhard spend most of the year in the Austrian Alps in a small village called Pillar near to the Italian border. On the mountainside Erhard creates stone ‘instruments’ including interpretations of trombones, saxophones, percussion and strings all carved from the indigenous rock.

During the late summer of 2002, I was fortunate to spend three weeks living with the sculptor and his family and had the opportunity to write some music for his instruments. Of all the sculptures in his garden, the one that attracted my ears and eyes the most was his stone violin. Not only is the body of the instrument made of stone, so are the strings and bow. The instrument’s sonic properties depend entirely upon the type of stone used to make bow and string.

A gentle scrape of stone against stone reveals tones that are essentially inharmonic, scratchy and very rich in potential for analysis within the computer. The computer software is a reactive environment, which listens to the incoming sound and generates sympathetic resonances. If you feed it noise, you get purity.

This piece was revised for Viol in 2003 and continues to reinvent itself based on input and the liveliness of the space in which it is played.

Shonky Music for tracker action organs was written in February 2001.

The score of Shonky Music is not a reliable guide to how the piece actually sounds. Written for tracker action organs that are able to make sound while the pipes are half drawn, Shonky exploits the unreliability of the king of instruments when prepared in this uneven manner. Certain configurations of the stops result in a keyboard that is both out of tune and consistently unpredictable; the generic scales and runs that litter the score become rhythms and melodies.

Shonky was first performed on the Reid organ, a fabulous machine housed in Edinburgh’s Reid Concert Hall. It is an organ similar to that which Bach would have used in Leipzig. A second recording was made on the Henry Willis organ in the song school of St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh, which was built in 1887.

Four and seven minutes long respectively, the Willis and the Reid organ recordings show how wildly different the piece can sound. With no tempo marking on the score, it is the player’s decision to respond to the idiosyncrasies of the instrument. When prepared, the Reid organ responded more sluggishly to touch and thus required a slower pace. For the more immediate response of the Henry Willis organ the performance was naturally much faster; labouring over the rather banal finger work would have yielded less interesting results.

Spool was created in July 1999 with Sound and Media artist Pedro Rebelo. Reel to reel tape machines stretched tape across the gallery and sound was generated as the tape shuffled unpredictably across the tape head.

Reflext was created in collaboration with Naomi West and Pedro Rebelo and presented in the Matthew Gallery on Chambers Street in Edinburgh, 1999.

The project involved two mirrors, web camera and sound.  As visitors peered inbetween two mirrors overhanging one another, they interrupted the

Steinmetzarbeiten (stone work) for Piano and sinfonia

http://sd.caad.ed.ac.uk/tinpark/media/sound/steinmetzarbeiten_extract.mp3

Extract performed by Edinburgh Contemporary Music Ensemble, conducted by James Lowe with Simon Smith piano, recorded by Sean Williams, Artefact Records.

The score, parts for performance and software are available from sumtone.com | sumtone.com/work.php?workid=239

Written in 1997 for the Yorkshire and Humberside Young Composer’s Competition and performed at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Steinmetzarbeiten won category A of this competition. It was first performed by Nicholas Hodges (piano) with the Athelas Ensemble. This piece was written after finding a limited edition print of Elizabeth Scherffig’s eight Steinmetzarbeiten drawings in a second-hand bookshop. Close-up viewing of the images shows evidence of a pencil that has always been moving, shifting constantly and perhaps effortlessly over the paper. This conveys movement, change, light and shade. Pulling back to view the image from a distance, the drawings are of slabs of stone, locked in dense and un-movable layers. This piece reflects a similar contradiction. The music appears to be perpetually on the move, trying to go somewhere but it is actually stuck; continually representing the same ascending scale.