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Hyperessay: The Cave of Sounds by Music Hackspace, led by Tim Murray-Browne

About the artists
Music Hackspace is a London based community for innovators and hobbyists passionate about music technology and sound art. Organises regular DIY workshops and events. Tim Murray-Brown, who led his team to create The Cave of Sounds, is a composer in residence at the Music Hackspace as a part of Sound and Music’s embedded composer scheme. His work focuses on interactive sound, particularly public installations that provide people with a space to explore and discover without being told what to do (musichackspace, 2018).

Interactivity, as described, is the reciprocal exchange between the viewer and the artwork, the ability to manipulate media and objects intuitively and with immediacy. In this Hyperessay, the main topic focuses on interactive media and participation and I will be analysing the relationship of movement to sound, using interactive media to recreate historical experiences and the idea of indeterminacy.

The Cave of Sounds (2012), a collaboration between eight artists from Music Hackspace and by Tim Murray-Browne, is an interactive sound installation exploring the power of music to bind individuals together and the visceral urge to use technology to broadcast our identity. Inspired by the prehistoric origins of music, the work is formed of eight original musical instruments, arranged in a circle facing inwards, each of which can be played by intuition and by the audience itself.

In this unique piece, each instrument has been designed and created by an individual (from the team) as an embodiment of their own artistic practice, but also to exist together as a new ensemble. The eight instruments are as follows (via The Cave of Sounds):


The Animal Kingdom (top) & Lightefface (bottom) via caveofsounds.com.

The Relationship from Movement to Sound

In the hands of the audience, the work is crafted to provoke participants to connect and resonate with each other through musical expression. Software linking the instruments gently adjusts their sounds to converge musically as well as detecting musical connections between participants and visualising them onto a central projection (thecaveofsounds, 2012).

With the instruments, there are endless possibilities as participants are given the freedom to choose any instrument and play it as and when they like. With that, this piece of work becomes an ultimate collaborative ensemble and transcends traditional methods of music making – from movement to sound, from technology to prehistoric sounds. The sound translated from the movement of the audience broadcasts their identity and reflects the behaviouristic qualities of them – the choice of instrument, the method in which they play the instrument and the duration they play it for. The boundaries between instrument creator, composer, performer and audience are increasingly blurred as the audience have now, the highest control over the ensemble, determining the outcome. The audiences’ role are paramount as, without them, there is no ensemble and this sort of interactivity is similar to a dialogue, where it shows reciprocal exchange and immediacy initiated from their actions.

Using Interactive Media to Recreate Historical Experiences

The Cave of Sounds also explores the juxtaposition of prehistoric music and interactive media. It uses both to connect the audiences within the space, providing an immersive and new experience. It is ironic, yet unique, that an ensemble of prehistoric sounds can be replicated, reimagined and re-experienced in a whole new modern context with technology. Who would have ever thought that hitting wooden drums or playing an old flute can be translated into buttons, sensors and actions? Thus, The Cave of Sounds is one interactive piece which explores sounds that strongly replicates an era far from today. The advancement of technology has enabled us to bring us to the past and has enabled us to familiarize and experience concept almost impossible to be realized and heard (music from the prehistoric era).

Indeterminacy & Entropy

As we all know, interactive media with participation is no musical or ordinary staged performance – it is very real, intimidating, personal, chaotic and free. The Cave of Sounds is exemplary as it involves the audience to create an ensemble as they play their chosen instrument amongst the other participants. A preceding example of such interactive media would be Jon Cage’s Variation V (1965), where, in this audio-visual performance, sounds created are affected by movement. The dancers’ movements are triggered by photocells, which triggers waves of sounds and also the projections on-screen (medienkunstnetz, 2018).


Variation V (1965) by Jon Cage (via medienkunstnetz)

Similar to Jon Cage’s Variation V (1965), chance techniques are used to avoid the habitual tendencies of deterministic musical composition. This embraces entropy. Although both artists have chosen the types of sounds, textures and objects, the specific musical sequence of sounds was left to chance. This degree of interactivity in the musical composition process enables a shift of control and creative decision from the artist to the audience and process. Both Variation V and The Cave of Sounds demonstrates the idea of indeterminacy by creating unpredictable, indeterminate relationships between music, dance, image and movement. And because of this indeterminacy, these interactive pieces are always in a continuous state of transformation, never finished, always changing and not an absolute finality in its realization. 

It is also apparent from both examples, that there is a continuum, or in fact, an evolution in interactive media. In Variation V, as much as the performers were also the artists, composers and dancers that make up the entire performance, typical audiences lacked the freedom to be in it. Thus, this separates it from The Cave of Sounds, where audiences can freely include themselves in the piece, creating more entropy. Tadeo Sendon, a sound a digital artist, responses to this aspect, saying, “Although music plays a greater role in our lives than ever before, creating music is an activity often limited to trained professionals. Made up of a set of newly conceived musical instruments, The Cave of Sounds seeks to disrupt the boundaries between performer and audience. Regardless of training, visitors are invited to actively participate and experiment with new ways of creating and connecting with each other through sound.” (Sendon, 2018). This form of participation is more commonly seen today with interactive media artists, as our technology today has made ideas more concise and user-friendly. From Roy Ascott’s “Behavioral Art and the Cybernetic Vision,” he mentioned that the aspect of creative participation is an inclusive form of art, with a basic principle of “feedback. And this loop makes the artist/artwork/observer an integral whole. This important quality of participation and interaction is exemplary in The Cave of Sounds.

References:
http://timmb.com/pdf/murray-browne2014cave-of-sounds.pdf
http://caveofsounds.com/
http://www.tadeosendon.com/cave-of-sounds-tim-murray-browne-1/
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/variations-v/ 
http://musichackspace.org/author/timmb/
https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/17s2-ap9044-sem-1/wp-content/uploads/sites/2276/2018/01/ascott-behavioral-art.pdf 

Hyperessay Key Work Selection: The Cave of Sounds by Music Hackspace/Tim Murray-Browne

The Cave of Sounds, a collaboration between eight artists from Music Hackspace and led by Tim Murray-Browne, is an interactive sound installation exploring the power of music to bind individuals together and the visceral urge to use technology to broadcast our identity. Inspired by the prehistoric origins of music, the work is formed of eight original musical instruments, arranged in a circle facing inwards, each of which can be played by intuition and by the audience itself.

Created during a ten month residency at the Music Hackspace, each instrument has been designed and created by an individual as an embodiment of their own artistic practice, but also to exist together as a new ensemble.

In the hands of its audience, the work is crafted to provoke participants to connect and resonate with each other through musical expression. Software linking the instruments gently adjusts their sounds to converge musically as well as detecting musical connections between participants and visualising them onto a central projection. The Cave of Sounds also explores the juxtaposition of prehistoric music and modern interactive technology. It uses both to connect the audiences within the space, providing an immersive and new experience.

The eight instruments are as follows (via The Cave of Sounds):

Sonicsphere by Panagiotis Tigas

A palm-sized sphere with an embedded wireless gyroscope that you can use to warp and charter spaces of heavy digital timbres.

Joker by Wallace Hobbes

A punchy drum kit you play by wearing a mask and tapping your fingers onto conductive tape.

The Animal Kingdom by Daniel Lopez

A world of sounds you awaken and shepherd by casting hand shadows in the shape of animals onto a table top, which are read and interpreted by an interior camera.

Generative Net Sampler by Tadeo Sendon

Experimental audio samples, created from digital field recordings of the internet, are triggered as you move through invisible cylindrical trigger zones, detected using a 3D camera.

Lightefface by Kacper Ziemianin

A deep drone you control by shining lamps over 24 light sensors, each of which modulates the intensity of a different harmonic of a fundamental frequency.

Campanology by Dom Aversano

Generative rhythms derived through the mathematics of church bell ringing patterns, controlled through free movement of your hands using a 3D camera.

Mini-Theremin by Sus Garcia

Using hand gestures, you control a DIY theremin running through a pitch-tracker, turning it into a controller to mangle noise synthesis.

Wind by Tim Murray-Browne

A breathy flute sound you play by moving your hands around your body through a grid of harmonious notes, sensed using a 3D camera.

 
The Animal Kingdom (top) & Lightefface (bottom) via caveofsounds.com.

With the instruments, there are endless possibilities as participants are given the freedom to choose any instrument and play it as and when they like. With that, this piece of work becomes an ultimate collaborative ensemble – from movement to sound, from technology to prehistoric sounds. The boundaries between instrument creator, composer, performer
and audience are increasingly blurred as well.

Similar to Jon Cage’s Variation V, chance techniques are used to avoid the habitual tendencies of deterministic musical composition. This embraces entropy. Although both artists have chosen the the types of sounds, textures and objects, the specific musical sequence of sounds was left to chance. This degree of interactivity in the musical composition process enables a shift of control and creative decision from the artist to the audience and process. Both Variation V and The Cave of Sounds demonstrates the idea of indeterminacy by creating unpredictable, indeterminate relationships between music, dance, image and movement.

References:
http://timmb.com/pdf/murray-browne2014cave-of-sounds.pdf

Cave of Sounds

Hyperessay Artist Selection: Tim Murray Browne

Tim Murray-Browne is an artist and creative coder from the UK creating interactive installations and performances. His work explores how our ideas and identity relate to our lived experience. It includes ensembles of bespoke musical instruments performed by the audience, audiovisual landscapes generated by the movement of a dancer, interactive light and sound sculptures that respond to the viewer’s position and immersive one-on-one performances to transform an individual’s memories into calligraphic images. It has been exhibited around the world at venues including Tate Modern, The Victoria & Albert Museum and Berkeley Art Museum.

In Murray-Browne’s website, he discusses his practices and ideas further from an interview with Create Hub.

“This is what draws me to working with interactive technology so much — particularly when it involves the moving body with music and abstract imagery. Music and dance have this strange way of saying so much while also saying nothing. The abstraction lets us explore our human activities together before we get focused on the specific personal details of our lives. In some sense, you can reduce human experience down to this dialogue between what we do and what we sense. Mixing interaction, music and dance lets you create an abstract microcosm of experience. This is a space where you can explore this complex relation between identity and environment.”

Some thoughts:
There are many artists who work with technology and media. However, Murray-Browne’s works stood out to me as many of his works and idea explores the relation of the moving body and sounds. His works show an immersive experience where people can participate and connect, even if they are physically apart in the space. Also, through his works, there are many elements similar to interactive works in the past – exemplifying how these ideas of interactivity and connectivity have influenced contemporary artists like Tim Murray-Browne.

References:

About

Symposium Hyperessay

Having to attend 2 of the online symposium sessions live and watching the other through a recording, it was definitely an eye-opening and phenomenal experience for me. The symposium has shown how the limits of social broadcasting can be pushed, creating a whole new immersive and sensational experience through the performance art.

The concepts from the keynotes by Maria X and Matt Adams included a revisit of what I have learnt and discussed in class, for example, Uncle Roy All Around You by Blast Theory. I felt that it was a good head start to have a basis of these concepts as the performances, later on, became more abstract.

Both performances which I have watched, “Entanglement” by Annie Abrahams and “igaies” by Jon Cates, were spectacular and an eye-opening experience for myself, which I will discuss in-depth later on.

Social Broadcasting: A Communications Revolution

With the advancement and rapid changes in this world, we are bound to experience some sort of revolution – in this case, a digital revolution. This hyperessay closely looks at social broadcasting being a communication revolution. The symposium is an interconnected platform whereby artists collaborate and perform together through the Internet and a networked third space (Adobe Connect). The analysis includes exploring collaborative performance art, the boundaries of networked spaces and how these artists pushed the limits of performance through a networked space to create an immersive experience for the viewers. The symposium also demonstrates the embracement of glitches and errors during the performance.

Social broadcasting via a networked space is claimed as revolutionary. Having to experience this symposium, an online third space environment, it is evident that the shift from one-to-many to many-to-many forms of live performance changed the dynamics of how a traditional one-to-many social broadcasting can be.

1. Telematic Connectedness Through Social Broadcasting

The first performance, “Entanglement” by Annie Abrahams on Day 1, exemplified this change in dynamics. In Entanglement, 7 artists remotely performed via their webcams. Despite being in different locations and even countries, the performance showed telematic connectedness as the artists were mostly in synced. Collaborating was key here. Common motifs were seen throughout the performance such as their hands and fingers on the screen or circular objects and the artists each had a phrase to say, accompanying the object. Also, it seemed like the position and movement of the objects are being mimicked by each other to create a sense of connectedness.

Although explained later on that the lag was unintentional, Randall Packer brought up a relevant point by saying that this is too, a glitch that occurred naturally. Linking back to our syllabus, glitch surrounds us in this world and embracing glitch is an art. Also, this performance is exemplary of DIWO (Do-It-With-Others) by Marc Garrett, where it involves people all around the world to create artworks and performances together, yet remotely.

According to Annie Abrahams,

This is a notion of freedom and expression. They are able to express whatever they want and whoever they are.

These actions seen throughout the performance represent how free these artists can express themselves by using objects and also how the flexibility of the networked space grants greater control for these artists; the very essence what freedom means.

The underlying meaning of this performance resonated with what I have learnt in class and this very performance was a unique and eccentric method to show how abstract and collaborative a live performance art can be, breaking away from the conventional performances. Comparatively, looking at, for example, Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece (1964), the core of Entanglement relies largely on online viewers from all over the world, whereas the latter, was a traditional and physical performance; both demonstrating different kinds of experience and involving different degrees of audience participation and involvement.

On Day 3, there were 2 distinct parts during the “igaies” performance by Jon Cates which I would like to highlight – the front section from xXxtra.Princess which focused broadcasting aesthetics and the later part which includes placing leeches on Robert during the performance.

2. #SocialBroadcastingAesthetics

“Cute” is what everyone described it as. The split screen function shows the artists, xXxtra.Princess, using filters to alter their avatar and their shared screen (as shown below).

Camera filters as avatars. Bitmoji. Lots of #Hashtags.

I was bombarded with internet terminologies. Yet, I really enjoyed how the xXxtra.Princess conveyed their narrative, touching on societal issues.

Some felt that it was redundant to utilize an alternate avatar with the phones placed in front as it does not affect the nature of how collaborative this performance is. However, I felt that the use of internet aesthetics was perhaps a method to veer from the ordinary and traditional. These methods curate creative dialogues and suggest modernity and the digitalized world.

3. Broadcasting X Phenomenal live performances = Revolutionary.

Close up screenshots of drawings from Arcangel Constatini and arkTeria.

The second part of the performance includes the audiences placing leeches on Robert. Meanwhile, Arcangel Constantini is seen drawing quirky alien-like illustrations on
petri dishes, resembling bacterial forms. In screenshot above, arkTeria was seen showing eccentric text as the “leech ritual” continued.

As mentioned by arkTeria,

“We are the leeches. The leeches are us. We are each other. And the Internet is also an animal. I think it’s beautiful.”

Initially, I was confused by this. But as the discussion went on, I have learnt that this “leech ritual” refers to a body alteration which demonstrates glitching. The whole idea of this was about the interconnectivity of life forms, drawing similarities to the third space network interconnectivity.

In this particular performance, my main focus revolved around considering both type of audiences – the online viewers and the physical participants. With both concurrently happening, it constitutes and curates an alternative social world. This live performance is not just merely “live” for one group of audiences there, but “live” in another layer as online viewers are watching it as well. This was a unique aspect of this performance as we can see both the performance from and outside of the audience’s perspective. With this, the online third space environment is expanded to an extensive audience all around the world as they experience this live performance. In addition, this shows the power of a networked space and social broadcasting of many-to-many. This is what, I feel, makes it revolutionary.

In conclusion, through experiencing the symposium myself and analysing these performances, I can see how artists break away from the conventional performance art by playing with the online third space environment. It is an enriching experience as they successfully integrated concepts, narratives and brought up societal issues through the performances and chat conversations.

 

Bibliography

“Uncle Roy All Around You | Blast Theory”. 2003. Blasttheory.Co.Uk. https://www.blasttheory.co.uk/projects/uncle-roy-all-around-you/.

“Yoko Ono’S Cut Piece Explained | Art | Agenda | Phaidon”. 2015. Phaidon. http://uk.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2015/may/18/yoko-ono-s-cut-piece-explained/.