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Bioluminescence

R. Luke DuBois, and Lesley Flanigan

Music Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract

Bioluminescence is a two-person improvised performance to be considered for either concert or club performance. The performance is improvised and of variable length, and consists of a vocalist (Lesley Flanigan) and a laptop performer (R. Luke DuBois). All the material generated from the laptop is taken from the vocalist during that performance (no pre-sampling or synthesis) and the laptop performer’s sole interface is through typing on the keyboard. Visualizations of the sound are projected as well. The performance makes extensive use of a phase vocoder to transform the voice as an act of memory and intimate conversation, by taking previously sung phrases and re-inserting them into the performance at difference speeds / pitches, in different order, and layered in different ways. In addition, the performance tackles what I see to be the core issue of the laptop computer as NIME, which is the issue of transparency (everyone has one...) versus opacity (...but no one knows what you’re doing with it).

Citation

R. Luke DuBois, and Lesley Flanigan. 2009. Bioluminescence. Music Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1177501 [PDF]

BibTeX Entry


@inproceedings{nime2009_music_17_DuBois,
author = {DuBois, R. Luke and Flanigan, Lesley},
title = {Bioluminescence},
pages = {336},
numpages = {1},
booktitle = {Music Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
editor = {Noel Zahler and Riccardo Schulz},
year = {2009},
month = {June},
publisher = {Carnegie Mellon University},
address = {Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania},
issn = {2220-4806},
articleno = {17},
track = {Music},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.1177501},
url = {https://nime.org/proceedings/2009/nime2009_336.pdf},
abstract = {Bioluminescence is a two-person improvised performance to be considered for either concert or club performance. The performance is improvised and of variable length, and consists of a vocalist (Lesley Flanigan) and a laptop performer (R. Luke DuBois). All the material generated from the laptop is taken from the vocalist during that performance (no pre-sampling or synthesis) and the laptop performer’s sole interface is through typing on the keyboard. Visualizations of the sound are projected as well. The performance makes extensive use of a phase vocoder to transform the voice as an act of memory and intimate conversation, by taking previously sung phrases and re-inserting them into the performance at difference speeds / pitches, in different order, and layered in different ways. In addition, the performance tackles what I see to be the core issue of the laptop computer as NIME, which is the issue of transparency (everyone has one...) versus opacity (...but no one knows what you’re doing with it).}
}