We are very excited to announce that two artists have been selected to participate in an Embedded composer in residency programme at the Music Hackspace, made in partnership with Sound and Music.

We are thrilled to welcome sound artists Leslie Deere and Jack James into our organisation, to develop their projects and engage with the Music Hackspace community for the next 6 months as part of the programme.

Register to meet our composers in residence at our seminar programme for the following dates (Jack James, 28th May and Leslie Deere, 4th June). In the presentations we will introduce the artists and their projects; it will be an excellent opportunity for the community to explore engaging with their practice.

Jack James is an artist interested in events, happenings and the role of media in everyday life and culture. Often featuring domestic technologies (re)positioned to explore their relationship with people, Jack’s work traverses the fields of sound and social practice, through installation and performance. He is part of artists’ collective thickear with whom he created Ministry of Measurement, Pink Sheet Method and initiated the Data and Ethics Working Group at ICT & Art Connect 2013, Brussels. Leading to string of European engagements including Experiment #2 Consent exhibited at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam.

Meet Jack James, Thursday 28th May

Leslie Deere is a London based artist. Originally from Tennessee, Leslie moved to the UK to study Sonic Art, continuing on from a performing arts dance scholarship in New York City. She holds a BA Honours degree in Sonic Art under Hugh Davies at Middlesex University and an MA in Communication Art & Design from the Royal College. Commissions include sound installations for Kew Gardens and the SoundUK 2013 tour. Most recently Leslie completed the inaugural year of the KULES residency in Stoke-on-Trent. Situated in a large warehouse space, Leslie created an 8 Channel installation utilising the natural reverberation present and found cassette tape.

Meet Leslie Deere, Thursday 4th June

Date: Tuesday 28 April, 7pm
Location: Music Hackspace

Augmented trumpets are acoustic trumpets on which transducers have been mounted in order to provide extra sonic control variables. At present only a few augmented trumpets are known to be in active use, yet there is an obvious interest in the subject judging by the regularity of new projects appearing in the literature since the first publication in 1989.

In order to fully explore the musical potential of this technology, it must be adopted by a larger population of performers. The problem is that takes a great deal of technical expertise to create, maintain, modify, and upgrade a sophisticated custom instrument. This is an insurmountable hurdle to those who might otherwise be interested in making music with an augmented trumpet. How can the technical requirements of such projects be reduced to promote widespread experimentation?

Starting with a review of existing projects, this presentation demonstrates that while each augmented trumpet must fit to custom artistic needs, there are commonalities that could be incorporated into a standardized design approach.

The proposed solution is to use an open and modular paradigm, making it easier to build instruments and share design ideas, and to pursue embedded synthesis, allowing for standalone instruments with plug-and-play behaviour.

Audio examples will accompany the presentation, and an open discussion on new musical instrument design will follow.

Joseph Thibodeau is a musician and researcher associated with McGill University’s Music Technology area and Concordia University’s Penhune Laboratory for Motor Learning and Neural Plasticity. His work centres mainly around new digital musical instruments, specifically augmented trumpets, which he uses in live performance and in studio production. His research is published in Computer Music Journal, and in 2014 he was commissioned to compose augmented trumpet music for a Radio-Canada documentary, “Correspondences de Guerre”.

Together with fellow researcher Jason Hockman (Birmingham City University), Joseph produces music under the alias DAAT and runs the Detuned Transmissions record label. In 2014, DAAT’s full-length album HVAC received overwhelming support from a variety of international DJs, airplay on some of the United Kingdom’s largest broadcasting services (e.g., BBC, Rinse FM), and accolades from major popular publications such as Mixmag Magazine.

Fields is an electronic sound piece diffused through the audiences smart phones, laptops or tablets.

Date: Thursday, 16 April 2015 from 18:30 to 21:30
Location: Music Hackspace, Unit 15, 5–10 Corbridge Crescent, E2 9DS

Sébastien Piquemal and Tim Shaw explore mobile technology as a medium for sound diffusion. The Fields system enables musicians and composers to explore the potential of smart phones and tablets for sound diffusion. It is a distributed, open-source, modular instrument that is fully configurable and extensible. In this seminar Tim and Sébastien will share the process of developing Fields, composing sound design for tiny speakers and experiences of performing a work of this nature.

The piece was originally conceived at this years Music Makers Hacklab at CTM 2014 and has since been performed in Berlin, Lisbon, Helsinki, Paris Athens and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Fields is being performed at Cafe OTO on 12th April 2015 https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/tetsuya-umeda/

More information, videos and photos can be found here – http://tim-shaw.net/fields