Fieldwork

Christopher Burns

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

• Year: 2012
• Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A.

Abstract:

Program notes: Fieldwork is a software environment for improvised performance with electronic sound and animation. Two musicians' sounding performances are fed into the system, and analyzed for pitch, rhythm, and timbral change. When the software recognizes a sharp contrast in one performer's textures or gestures, it reflects this change by transforming the sound of the other musician's performance. Not only are the musicians responding to one another as in conventional improvisation, but they are also able to directly modify their duo partner's sound through the software. Fieldwork emphasizes rapid, glitchy, and polyrhythmic distortions of the musician's performances, and establishes unpredictable feedback processes that encourage unexpected improvisational relationships between the performers and computer. Composer(s) Credits: Christopher Burns Instrumentalist(s) Credits: Christopher Burns, Andrew Bishop Artist(s) Biography: Christopher Burns is a composer, improviser, and multimedia artist. His instrumental chamber works weave energetic gestures into densely layered surfaces. Polyphony and multiplicity also feature in his electroacoustic music, embodied in gritty, rough-hewn textures. As an improviser, Christopher combines an idiosyncratic approach to the electric guitar with a wide variety of custom software instruments. Recent projects emphasize multimedia and motion capture, integrating performance, sound, and animation into a unified experience. Across these disciplines, his work emphasizes trajectory and directionality, superimposing and intercutting a variety of evolving processes to create form. Christopher is an avid archaeologist of electroacoustic music, creating and performing new digital realizations of classic music by composers including Cage, Ligeti, Lucier, Nancarrow, Nono, and Stockhausen. A committed educator, he teaches music composition and technology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He has studied composition with Brian Ferneyhough, Jonathan Harvey, Jonathan Berger, Michael Tenzer, and Jan Radzynski. Andrew Bishop is a versatile multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser, educator and scholar comfortable in a wide variety of musical idioms. He maintains a national and international career and serves as an Assistant Professor of Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Bishop's two recordings as a leader have received widespread acclaim from The New York Times, Downbeat Magazine, Chicago Reader, All Music Guide, Cadence Magazine, All About Jazz-New York, All About Jazz-Los Angeles, and the Detroit Free Press, among others. As a composer and arranger he has received over 20 commissions, numerous residencies and awards and recognition from ASCAP, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Andrew W. Melon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Chamber Music of America and a nomination from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has performed with artist in virtually every musical genre. He earned five degrees in music including a D.M.A. in music composition from the University of Michigan. Concert Venue and Time: Necto, Wednesday May 23, 9:00pm

Citation:

BibTeX Entry:

  @incollection{nime2012-music-Burns2012,
 abstract = {Program notes:

\emph{Fieldwork} is a software environment for improvised performance with electronic sound and animation. Two musicians' sounding performances are fed into the system, and analyzed for pitch, rhythm, and timbral change. When the software recognizes a sharp contrast in one performer's textures or gestures, it reflects this change by transforming the sound of the other musician's performance. Not only are the musicians responding to one another as in conventional improvisation, but they are also able to directly modify their duo partner's sound through the software. Fieldwork emphasizes rapid, glitchy, and polyrhythmic distortions of the musician's performances, and establishes unpredictable feedback processes that encourage unexpected improvisational relationships between the performers and computer.

Composer(s) Credits:

Christopher Burns

Instrumentalist(s) Credits:

Christopher Burns,  Andrew Bishop

Artist(s) Biography:

Christopher Burns is a composer, improviser, and multimedia artist. His instrumental chamber works weave energetic gestures into densely layered surfaces. Polyphony and multiplicity also feature in his electroacoustic music, embodied in gritty, rough-hewn textures. As an improviser, Christopher combines an idiosyncratic approach to the electric guitar with a wide variety of custom software instruments. Recent projects emphasize multimedia and motion capture, integrating performance, sound, and animation into a unified experience. Across these disciplines, his work emphasizes trajectory and directionality, superimposing and intercutting a variety of evolving processes to create form.
Christopher is an avid archaeologist of electroacoustic music, creating and performing new digital realizations of classic music by composers including Cage, Ligeti, Lucier, Nancarrow, Nono, and Stockhausen. A committed educator, he teaches music composition and technology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He has studied composition with Brian Ferneyhough, Jonathan Harvey, Jonathan Berger, Michael Tenzer, and Jan Radzynski.

Andrew Bishop is a versatile multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser, educator and scholar comfortable in a wide variety of musical idioms.  He maintains a national and international career and serves as an Assistant Professor of Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.  Bishop's two recordings as a leader have received widespread acclaim from \emph{The New York Times, Downbeat Magazine, Chicago Reader, All Music Guide, Cadence Magazine, All About Jazz-New York, All About Jazz-Los Angeles, and the Detroit Free Press}, among others.  As a composer and arranger he has received over 20 commissions, numerous residencies and awards and recognition from ASCAP, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Andrew W. Melon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Chamber Music of America and a nomination from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  He has performed with artist in virtually every musical genre.  He earned five degrees in music including a D.M.A. in music composition from the University of Michigan.

Concert Venue and Time: Necto, Wednesday May 23, 9:00pm},
 address = {Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A.},
 author = {Christopher Burns},
 booktitle = {Music Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 day = {21-23},
 editor = {Georg Essl and Brent Gillespie and Michael Gurevich and Sile O'Modhrain},
 month = {May},
 publisher = {Electrical Engineering \& Computer Science and Performing Arts Technology, University of Michigan},
 title = {Fieldwork},
 year = {2012}
}