Barry Moon » Projects

Surface Noise

admin — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 09:01:36 +0000

Surface Noise is an opera/installation by Barry Moon and Chris Danowski, performed by Christina Dahl. It was shown at the IAP Gallery on 2nd and 3rd of February 2009 and at the PhiX Gallery on the 12th and 13 of February 2009.

Documentation of the installation is available here – http://barrymoon.com/surfacenoise/

dubov

admin — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 06:30:16 +0000

Here’s a couple of pieces based on the prison journals of Stephen Dubov.

dot dot dash

admin — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 06:17:00 +0000

A piece I created with a friend of mine Scott Pagano.

Here’s some documentation Scott made is available on his site (see his Projects section).

Postcard

admin — Tue, 01 Jul 2003 17:00:55 +0000

Postcard is a piece for chair and computer generated image and sound. Video images come from Wells, the place where I bought the chair and am currently living. The sound is largely synthesized, using techniques such as chaos, and comb-filtered noise. Playing the chair controls the video and sound. This is done by feeding live video of the chair via Firewire into SoftVNS for analysis. SoftVNS allows the definition of regions according to a mask. In this case the regions and mask are defined by a drawing of the parts of the chair.

Some images from the piece:


	Excerpt 1 (Quicktime Movie – 2.8Mb) Excerpt 2 (Quicktime Movie – 1.7Mb)

Souvenir

admin — Tue, 01 Jul 2003 17:00:10 +0000

This is a collaboration with the choreographer Adele Levi. It was performed by dancers Maria Ramos, Clive Andrews, and Katherine Nietrzebka, and musician John O’Hara. The development of motion-tracking techniques in SoftVNS was supported by a grant by the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB).

Maria’s Solo (Quicktime Movie – 2.1Mb)
Drone with Clive (Quicktime Movie – 2Mb)

Interact II

admin — Mon, 01 Jul 2002 17:00:04 +0000

Interact II was written for Danish recorder player Majbritt Christensen.
It uses the same open-form score-following techniques as Interact I.

Excerpt (mp3 Music File – 2Mb)
Score (PDF Document – 111Kb)

Blues

admin — Sun, 01 Jul 2001 17:00:34 +0000

In 1998, Mark Menzies asked me to write a piece for violin and computer that somehow captured the spirit of the blues. A couple of years later, when my father died, the idea came back to me. My father was a big fan of early ‘downhome’ blues, so the piece ended up being an amalgam of elements of downhome blues and my memories of him. Besides direct references to early blues made through sample modulation, oblique references are made by a certain amount of flamboyancy, virtuosity, and quirkiness.

Excerpt (mp3 Music File – 1.6MB)
Score (PDF Document – 197KB)

Mince

admin — Sun, 01 Jul 2001 17:00:29 +0000

The video for this piece was shot in the winter of 2000/01. I wanted to use video that needed no processing and explored the framing of objects and scenes. The excerpt below is the most recognizable in the whole piece: it is of Niagara Falls (Canada side) during The Festival of Lights.

Most of the sound was produced in Max/MSP. I wanted to play similar sounds over each of the five channels in 5.1 surround, which produces a very immersive effect. For the part heard in the excerpt I used a technique I call Temporal Filtering (or more specifically Spectral Cataloguing) that is described in this paper published in the proceedings of the 2001 International Computer Music Conference.

Some images from the piece:


	Excerpt (Quicktime Movie – 2.8Mb) Paper – Temporal Filtering: Framing Sonic Objects (PDF Document – 3.3Mb)

Interact I

admin — Mon, 01 Jul 1996 17:00:48 +0000

Interact I was written for flutist ElizabethMcNutt. The score consists of three large pieces of paper, all of which must be visible to the flutist in performance. The flutist chooses materials to play according to some simple rules in response to the computer. The computer follows the flutist and makes changes in output according to where it determines the performer is in the score and how much it has heard the flutist play sequentially. Thus, the flutist shapes the piece in performance. Score following techniques developed for this piece were further enhanced by John Lawter, who developed an external object for MAX. Thanks John, thanks Elizabeth. Here is a paper written about the following object, published in the proceedings of the 1998 International Computer Music Conference.

Score Following in Open Form Compositions – John Lawter & Barry Moon (ICMC 1998)(PDF Document – 82Kb)
Interact I (Reduced Score) – Barry Moon 1997 (PDF Document – 308Kb)
Excerpt (mp3 Music File – 916Kb)
Full version available at EMF Media

Study for Voice and ISPW

admin — Sat, 01 Jul 1995 17:00:35 +0000

This was my first finished piece using Max-fts. It explores the role of the voice in singing and the space between intelligibility and musicality. Much of the computer part consists of assembling melodic and phonetic patterns by playing back short (<600msec) pre-recorded samples. These samples are replaced towards the end of the piece with live input from the singer.

The text comes from Shakespeare’s Richard II:

(And now) my tongue’s use is to me no more
Than an unstringed viol or a harp,
Or like a cunning instrument cased up,
Or, being open, put into his hands
That knows no touch to tune the harmony:
Within my mouth you have engaol’d my tongue,
Doubly portcullis’d with my teeth and lips;
And dull unfeeling barren ignorance
Is made my gaoler to attend on me.

Excerpt (mp3 Music File – 1.5Mb)
Score (PDF Document – 293KB)