Saturday 4th September 2010 @ 21:00
Isambard Khroustaliov / Lothar Ohlmeier / Ollie Bown / Tom Arthurs
Long Division – a series of pieces for two performers and autonomous electronics
Tom Arthurs – trumpet
Lothar Ohlmeier – bass clarinet
Isambard Khroustaliov, Ollie Bown – software design and development
NK
Elsenstraße 52,
2.Hinterhaus Etage 2,
12059 Berlin-Neukölln
0049(0)176 2062 6386
€5.00
Long Division is a collaboration between Arthurs, Bown, Khroustaliov and Ohlmeier for two instrumentalists and two computers pre-programmed from afar, that was originally commissioned for a performance at the North Sea Jazz Festival. Only Arthurs and Ohlmeier will be on stage for the performance, interacting with a computer system that has been programmed to react and improvise with them.
Simultaneously a challenge and a proof of concept, the computer will act autonomously without a score or a determined progression, orchestrating a path around and through the music developed by Arthurs and Ohlmeier whilst also proposing structures and themes of its own. The software’s autonomy is needless to say of a limited sort, and encodes the creative decision-making of its programmers.
The collaboration is both a continuation of the free improvised electroacoustic performance styles explored by Arthurs, Bown, Britton and Ohlmeier in the various onstage incarnations of the Not Applicable Artists, and a more formal, albeit risky, set of software studies carried out by Bown and Britton into generative and interactive music systems, for which Arthurs and Ohlmeier are the willing and highly capable subjects.
The groups interest in and exploration of autonomy is multifaceted, viewing it in the light of new approaches to the structuring of a live musical work, experimentation in interactivity, and also novel approaches to remote collaboration, where one or more participants contribute to a performance by proxy, in the form of the behavioural software created by them.
