Fall 2009...gone...

(Click any image to enlarge)

Fall in San Diego!
(Is gone...)

This quarter flew by...and I still haven't taken my qualifying exams....BUT I had a great time: touring with David Borgo (KaiBorg) with gigs in Santa Barbara at Colter Frazier's series, and UC Santa Cruz at the International Society for Improvised music (joined by video artist Mark Henrickson-thanks for the great photo, Kris Tiner!) and I presented a paper on John Zorn's Arcana series and metaphor. The Desert Fathers (Gregory Taylor and myself) played in Madison, WI. A busy, work filled, and fun quarter. I feel lucky, good friends to be creative and experience life with...

Jann Pasler presenting on her new book, Composing the Citizen.


Clown rappers at Club 721...!


Good food


Beer with my brother at Stone Brewing


With Phil Skaller at Ocean Beach


Flying under a storm to Madison, Wisconsin


The Desert Fathers at Madison Music Collective (Gregory Taylor and myself)


Joanne, Jolande, Patrick, ?, Gregory, Steve, Yi Hong, me


Gregory and I later


the walk home in Madison


with Jeffrey Trevino and Grace Leslie at a local pub in San Diego


Anna, Jim, Jaco, me, David, Colter, Kris, ?, Bob at dinner at Sojourner's in Santa Barbara before the gig.


George Lewis's keynote presentation at ISIM at UC Santa Cruz


Mark Henrickson's video about to eat me...(Media Theater, UC Santa Cruz)


Kris, Ceasar, Charity, Rick at The Rush Inn, Santa Cruz


Dustin and Rick


Rick and me


Zachary Watkins, me


David, Maud, David at Saturn in Santa Cruz


Kris, Allen, me


Allen, Dave, Sherry, Gerry, Kris, David at The Asian Rose in Santa Cruz


Gerry and me


Mark Dresser and Sarah Weaver, ISIM UCSC


Kris Tiner at ISIM...a killer set!


Kris Hartung and Bob Sterling smoking at ISIM, UCSC


Dave Medine and Batya MacAdam-Somer back in San Diego


Ted and Joan at Kelly and Sarah's house in San Diego


Crystal Head!


mmmmm....quarter is over, can enjoy a cigar in La Jolla with


Ben Power and


Jeff Denson

Now winter break is here....time to get some work done.

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ADDENDUM: Found these on my camera...

Me, Borgo, Justin Cassidy, Bob Sterling, Kris Hartung at Muddy Water's in Santa Barbara before the gig...


Tracy McMullen, Rob Wallace


Rob Wallace and KaiBorg poster


Rob and Tracy at Muddy Water's


with Mark Henrickson at UCSC


Mark's rig and mine...set-up pre-gig....


David's...

Sirone

Received the following from Guerino Mazzola. For those in Berlin:

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“We Are Not Alone, But We Are Few”

We are gathering together to remember our companion in love and suffering, our soulbrother and friend, a music rebel, a music lover, the jazz bassist, bandleader, composer and actor:

SIRONE

28.9.1940, Atlanta – 21.10.2009, Berlin

We want to remember together how he lived his life in music.
How, with his fat-bellied contrabass (tenderly called "Angel") he plucked his way through the Rhythm-and-Blues of the American South; how, in New York with Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders and Ornette Coleman, he railed against segregation and racial discrimination, solidifying his protest with Leroy Jenkins and Jerome Cooper in founding the "Revolutionary Ensemble"; that, without Sirone, the freedom won through American Avant-garde jazz in the 70's would never have happened.

We want to remember that devoted man on the contrabass with Afro-American-Indian genes, whose sufferings through segregation and prejudice fused into distinctly individual interpretations and compositions of melody and rhythm. That unique quality of his, which always pushed him, personally and professionally, to cross boundaries. Side by side with Cecil Taylor; later with Billy Bang and Charles Gayle. And with his Berlin formation Concord, in which he found a brand new sound of freedom once again.

We want to remember the Avant-garde jazzman from New York, who, since 1989, sought to conquer new ground in Berlin, and engaged himself in the artistic context of the German speaker. Who composed and acted for theater productions by George Tabori: who, for Werner Schroeter, stood together with his bass on the stage of the Berliner Ensemble. And who, with his wife, Veronika Nowag-Jones, continued to realize collaborative productions at home and abroad - both in Germany and America.

We want to remember that strange, vibrant man next door, a unique character in that Kreuzberg neighborhood, often seen in Görlitzer Park, performing in its clubs and cafés, or on stage at the Eiszeit-Kino.
And that distinctive face in films, seen far too seldom.
We want to remember a man taken from us, whose Buddhist mantra was his refuge.

"We Are Not Alone, But We Are Few"

– Remembering Sirone (Norris Jones) on November 15 at 16:00 in Berliner Friedenszentrum, Tempelhofer Ufer 36, 2HH, 3OG-

STEIM Blog...The Trumpet and Spatialization

The following is from the STEIM Project Blog

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“Noise Trumpet,” as some of my friends call it, is using extended techniques on the trumpet to make it sound what many people would call un-trumpet-like. The use of air as noise, valve sounds, split-lip multi-phonics, sung multiphonics, throat growls, tongue stops and modulations, changing the resonant shape of the inside of your mouth, playing more with the inside of your lips, playing more with the outside of your lips, playing with less lip pressure, more lip pressure, bouncing the lips of the mouthpiece, opening your teeth more, closing your teeth more, more air, less air, letting air escape, playing very quietly, playing very loudly, very low pitches, very high pitches, circular breathing to make constant harmonic/melodic/rhythmic textures beyond the traditional idiomatic uses of the instruments. Not to mention physically reconfiguring your instrument, taking it apart, adding mutes, tubes and more.

When mixing recordings of myself and others playing trumpet, I noticed while using a FFT visualizer during the EQ stage that, unsurprisingly, when playing notes in a traditional manner, the resonant spikes would fall into a fairly predictable pattern of overtones. And, equally not surprising, when going into extended modes of playing, the patterns of resonant frequencies would become more dynamic and complex. Yet even though it was unsurprising, somehow this was still interesting to me, which made me think, is there a way this can be used in my software patch in an improvised music setting. This question was what I explored during my STEIM residency in September 2009.

The exploration was somewhat frustrating at first, and I won’t go into tedious and somewhat academic details of that, but I did come up with a way of spatializing the resonant bands that I found interesting, and was able to incorporate into my Max/MSP rig.

The first technical question was answered by the use of “sigmund~” by Miller Puckette. I would use this object to track the fundamental frequency of what I was playing. This base pitch would then be used to set a series of seven biquad filters to divide my trumpet sound into discrete frequency bands. (“Sigmund~” is a great tool, and I was very impressed with the speed at which it would track even noisy trumpet sounds.) These discrete bands were routed into seven channels of audio, then sent into ICST’s Ambisonic externals for spatialization. In other words, I’m able to locate these channels into three-dimensional audio space. (These tools are free, so know that I’m not trying to sell you something when I say they are truly fantastic.) The spatial placement was at first pre-determined by sending patterns to the ambisonic controller, but then using amplitude and pitch following on the seven audio channels, decisions can be triggered at certain points by the software as to where the sounds would be placed, either in a pre-determined, random or other generated manner.

The idea was at first that this is something that I could use in an electro-acoustic improvised audio environment, something that would quickly respond to my sound just by playing, without me needing to exert external control over the software with my pedals, buttons, faders et al.

But this become so enjoyable to work with, that now I’m working on routing the bands of data into areas to be controlled and modified by other patches.

My residency at STEIM was a very productive and inspiring time on multiple levels. In addition to the creative/technical work mentioned above and grant writing, I was able to perform a concert with Michael Moore and Michael Vatcher (see video) and had a very nice recording session with Anne LaBerge. I also had some wonderful visitors during my residency, included violinist Johnny Chang, composer Trevor Grahl and was able to spend time working with some young Amsterdam artists and assist them in developing their own software, and talk with them about what I was working on. Dinner with the ICP at BIMHUIS two nights in a rows was a real treat, hanging with Mary Oliver, Han Bennink, Susanna Von Cannon, Thomas Heberer, Carolyn Muntz, Jodi Gilbert and lots of time with Michael Moore...what a treat. Also: big thanks to Esther Roschar for helping me get my grant out among other things, Takuro Mizuta Lippit for software and creative dialogue, Vivian Wenli Lin for the great video, Alex Nowitz for the hang-time and walking long distances to eat vegetarian with me, and Nico Bes for everything he does (which is everything). So many more people to thank for great discussions and food and music…John Dikeman, Mike Straus, Dana Jessen, Taylan Susam. Only one regret: not enough chess time with Michael Vatcher..!

Please visit me, at JeffKaiser.com

New Media Reading Group...

Friends regularly ask what I am reading here at UCSD, so I thought this might interest some of you. A friend and I started a reading group this quarter for new media theory....here are the texts, they are going to be a lot of fun. (Links take you to the books on Amazon.)

Week 1:
McLuhan, Marshall, and Lewis H. Lapham. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1994.
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

Week 2:
Lister, Martin. New Media: A Critical Introduction. 2nd ed. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New
York, N.Y.: Routledge, 2008.
New Media: A Critical Introduction

Week 3:
Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Leonardo. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002.
The Language of New Media (Leonardo Books)

Week 4:
Thackara, John. In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005.
In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World

Week 5:
Hansen, Mark B. N. Bodies in Code: Interfaces with Digital Media. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Bodies in Code: Interfaces with Digital Media

Week 6:
Munster, Anna. Materializing New Media: Embodiment in Information Aesthetics. University Press of New England, 2006.
Materializing New Media: Embodiment in Information Aesthetics (Interfaces: Studies in Visual Culture)

Week 7:
Clark, Andy. Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension (Philosophy of the Mind)

Week 8:
Dyson, Frances. Sounding New Media: Immersion and Embodiment in the Arts and Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.
Sounding New Media: Immersion and Embodiment in the Arts and Culture

Week 9:
Wardrip-Fruin, Noah. Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009.
Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies

Blue Angels in above the house...

From my balcony...(Click on any image to enlarge)