Darmstadt 2016
Summer courses
In its 48th edition, the International Summer Courses for New Music were taking place in Darmstadt this year with a wide program.
Initiated just after World War II by Wolfgang Steinecke (then head of Department of Arts and Culture, in a city that was pretty much completely destroyed during the war), the Darmstadt School has risen to glory not only because of its famous seminarists such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, but mainly because of its diversity, international flavor and rehabilitation of art that was tainted by the Third Reich.
I am happy to have been a part of this year's spectacle, although I didn't really see much aside from the rehearsals and premiere of the piece I came to help establish: Tolerance Stacks by Annesley Black.
Tolerance Stacks
Annesley's piece is a very funny and diverse multi-channel multimedia experience, that got its name from the process of decaying electronic parts, that change their behavior over time, in turn changing the workflow of the system they are used in (by accumulating tolerances of the parts).
She was confronted with this undesired behavior while trying to get old music gear of Hermann Heiß fixed during research on the late Twelve-tone technique and Electronic music composer. Initially, some of his synthesizers were meant to be used in the piece, but in the end only two TEAC tape machines made their way into it, as the rest was unrepairable.
Tolerance Stacks (try the German version for a better description and biographies) gives a funky perspective on these relics from the olden days by commenting with historical markerpoints, rap, unconventional tools (Etch A Sketch) and instruments (ideogrammophon, no-input-mixer, turntables), constant positional changes of the musicians, alongside a very neat video projection by Lutz Garmsen, showcasing the bowels of old machines and tools.
Collidin'
While the musicians involved did a very fine job rehearsing the piece in such a short amount of time, a pressure project like this obviously leads to friction, which luckily is released after the premiere has taken place.
I for my part had a relatively relaxed job behind the mixing desk, as I monitored a piece of software I wrote to feed Lutz's vvvv with OSC messages derived from the various audio inputs coming from musicians and microphones.
As a little inside joke I baptized this SuperCollider application bowelyzer. It is able to monitor up to n channels (also n times each) and send OSC messages depending on the settings you choose. It uses JSON for saving and loading its settings.
These are the settings we used for Tolerance Stacks:
{ "forwardAddress": "192.168.2.2", "forwardPort": 9998, "hubAddress": "127.0.0.1", "hubPort": 57120, "synthServerAddress": "127.0.0.1", "synthServerPort": 57110, "controls": { "Comp": { "active": true, "amplitudeAttackTime": 0.01, "amplitudeReleaseTime": 0.1, "freqRange": [ 100, 14000 ], "hfFoote": 0, "hfHainsworth": 1, "hfThreshold": 0.3, "hfWaitTime": 0.04, "onlyForwardOnNewPitch": false, "pitchAmpThreshold": 0.01, "pitchDownSample": 1, "pitchExecFreq": 100, "pitchInitFreq": 440, "pitchMaxBinsPerOctave": 16, "pitchMaxFreq": 14000, "pitchMedian": 1, "pitchMinFreq": 80, "pitchPeakThreshold": 0.5, "sendReplyFreq": 20 }, "Drms": { "active": true, "amplitudeAttackTime": 0.01, "amplitudeReleaseTime": 0.093, "freqRange": [ 60, 16000 ], "hfFoote": 0, "hfHainsworth": 1, "hfThreshold": 0.3, "hfWaitTime": 0.04, "onlyForwardOnNewPitch": false, "pitchAmpThreshold": 0.16, "pitchDownSample": 1, "pitchExecFreq": 100, "pitchInitFreq": 440, "pitchMaxBinsPerOctave": 16, "pitchMaxFreq": 14000, "pitchMedian": 1, "pitchMinFreq": 60, "pitchPeakThreshold": 0.5, "sendReplyFreq": 20 }, "Ideo": { "active": true, "amplitudeAttackTime": 0.01, "amplitudeReleaseTime": 0.1, "freqRange": [ 60, 14000 ], "hfFoote": 0, "hfHainsworth": 1, "hfThreshold": 0.3, "hfWaitTime": 0.04, "onlyForwardOnNewPitch": false, "pitchAmpThreshold": 0.01, "pitchDownSample": 1, "pitchExecFreq": 100, "pitchInitFreq": 440, "pitchMaxBinsPerOctave": 16, "pitchMaxFreq": 14000, "pitchMedian": 1, "pitchMinFreq": 60, "pitchPeakThreshold": 0.5, "sendReplyFreq": 20 }, "Moog": { "active": true, "amplitudeAttackTime": 0.01, "amplitudeReleaseTime": 0.1, "freqRange": [ 30, 16000 ], "hfFoote": 0, "hfHainsworth": 1, "hfThreshold": 0.3, "hfWaitTime": 0.04, "onlyForwardOnNewPitch": false, "pitchAmpThreshold": 0.01, "pitchDownSample": 1, "pitchExecFreq": 100, "pitchInitFreq": 440, "pitchMaxBinsPerOctave": 16, "pitchMaxFreq": 16000, "pitchMedian": 1, "pitchMinFreq": 30, "pitchPeakThreshold": 0.5, "sendReplyFreq": 20.1 }, "NIM": { "active": true, "amplitudeAttackTime": 0.01, "amplitudeReleaseTime": 0.1, "freqRange": [ 60, 13000 ], "hfFoote": 0, "hfHainsworth": 1, "hfThreshold": 0.3, "hfWaitTime": 0.04, "onlyForwardOnNewPitch": false, "pitchAmpThreshold": 0.01, "pitchDownSample": 1, "pitchExecFreq": 100, "pitchInitFreq": 440, "pitchMaxBinsPerOctave": 16, "pitchMaxFreq": 13000, "pitchMedian": 1, "pitchMinFreq": 60, "pitchPeakThreshold": 0.5, "sendReplyFreq": 20 }, "Pub": { "active": true, "amplitudeAttackTime": 0.01, "amplitudeReleaseTime": 0.01, "freqRange": [ 150, 16000 ], "hfFoote": 0, "hfHainsworth": 1, "hfThreshold": 0.3, "hfWaitTime": 0.04, "onlyForwardOnNewPitch": false, "pitchAmpThreshold": 0.04, "pitchDownSample": 1, "pitchExecFreq": 100, "pitchInitFreq": 440, "pitchMaxBinsPerOctave": 16, "pitchMaxFreq": 12000, "pitchMedian": 1, "pitchMinFreq": 60, "pitchPeakThreshold": 0.5, "sendReplyFreq": 20 }, "Revox": { "active": true, "amplitudeAttackTime": 0.01, "amplitudeReleaseTime": 0.1, "freqRange": [ 63.25, 12000 ], "hfFoote": 0, "hfHainsworth": 1, "hfThreshold": 0.3, "hfWaitTime": 0.04, "onlyForwardOnNewPitch": false, "pitchAmpThreshold": 0.01, "pitchDownSample": 1, "pitchExecFreq": 100, "pitchInitFreq": 440, "pitchMaxBinsPerOctave": 16, "pitchMaxFreq": 14000, "pitchMedian": 1, "pitchMinFreq": 60, "pitchPeakThreshold": 0.5, "sendReplyFreq": 20 }, "Sax1": { "active": true, "amplitudeAttackTime": 0.01, "amplitudeReleaseTime": 0.184, "freqRange": [ 100, 10000 ], "hfFoote": 0, "hfHainsworth": 1, "hfThreshold": 0.3, "hfWaitTime": 0.04, "onlyForwardOnNewPitch": false, "pitchAmpThreshold": 0.11, "pitchDownSample": 1, "pitchExecFreq": 100, "pitchInitFreq": 440, "pitchMaxBinsPerOctave": 16, "pitchMaxFreq": 10000, "pitchMedian": 1, "pitchMinFreq": 100, "pitchPeakThreshold": 0.5, "sendReplyFreq": 20 }, "Sax2": { "active": true, "amplitudeAttackTime": 0.01, "amplitudeReleaseTime": 0.139, "freqRange": [ 60, 14000 ], "hfFoote": 0, "hfHainsworth": 1, "hfThreshold": 0.3, "hfWaitTime": 0.04, "onlyForwardOnNewPitch": false, "pitchAmpThreshold": 0.17, "pitchDownSample": 1, "pitchExecFreq": 100, "pitchInitFreq": 440, "pitchMaxBinsPerOctave": 16, "pitchMaxFreq": 11000, "pitchMedian": 1, "pitchMinFreq": 200, "pitchPeakThreshold": 0.5, "sendReplyFreq": 20 }, "Sop": { "active": true, "amplitudeAttackTime": 0.01, "amplitudeReleaseTime": 0.184, "freqRange": [ 100, 12000 ], "hfFoote": 0, "hfHainsworth": 1, "hfThreshold": 0.3, "hfWaitTime": 0.04, "onlyForwardOnNewPitch": false, "pitchAmpThreshold": 0.05, "pitchDownSample": 1, "pitchExecFreq": 100, "pitchInitFreq": 440, "pitchMaxBinsPerOctave": 16, "pitchMaxFreq": 14000, "pitchMedian": 1, "pitchMinFreq": 100, "pitchPeakThreshold": 0.5, "sendReplyFreq": 20 }, "Ttb": { "active": true, "amplitudeAttackTime": 0.01, "amplitudeReleaseTime": 0.01, "freqRange": [ 50, 16000 ], "hfFoote": 0, "hfHainsworth": 1, "hfThreshold": 2.706, "hfWaitTime": 0.349, "onlyForwardOnNewPitch": false, "pitchAmpThreshold": 0.03, "pitchDownSample": 1, "pitchExecFreq": 100, "pitchInitFreq": 440, "pitchMaxBinsPerOctave": 16, "pitchMaxFreq": 16000, "pitchMedian": 1, "pitchMinFreq": 50, "pitchPeakThreshold": 0.5, "sendReplyFreq": 20 } }, "inputs": { "Comp": 1, "Drms": 15, "Ideo": 11, "Moog": 17, "NIM": 13, "Pub": 2, "Revox": 0, "Sax1": 10, "Sax2": 12, "Sop": 14, "Ttb": 16 } }
If you are interested, go and check out its about page.
So, while Lutz was sitting in front of the stage, dealing with a bunch of camera-enhanced Raspberry Pi 3s, that in turns filmed parts of the musicians' work, bowelyzer sent its messages, which were used to morph and move the video pieces, over LAN.
In the meantime we were able to communicate through a local Etherpad instance.
Overall a very nice process, that got more visually interesting by the minute (although I must admit I liked the second performance's visuals the best).
Aftermath
The premiere has been recorded (video and audio) and there is a video in the making. As soon as I know more, I will post an update to this.
Sidestory
Me having less to do during the rehearsal process didn't mean less stress for me (apart from the programming marathon and the calibration process on-site).
As soon as I got on the train in Berlin, I realized, that I had forgotten my power adaptor for my Lenovo Thinkpad X220.
Luckily, this is a very common laptop and has an even more common power adaptor.
So, instead of going crazy, I spent half an hour on the train to communicate with the nice folks at Chaos-Darmstadt, whose hackspace Trollhöhle (Twitter) I wanted to visit anyways.
Turns out, they have a heap of the power adaptors just lying around and their new spot was 100m away from Centralstation, where Tolerance Stacks was rehearsed and performed.
This way I ended up with a borrowed power adaptor for my laptop, some nice acquaintences from one of the many CCC bubbles and a great spot to decompress. Thanks again, folks!
If you're visiting Darmstadt, make sure to go by their space in the late afternoon/ evening. It's worth a peak.