URTEX FRO: a collaborative, cross-disciplinary improvisation

Panagiotis Ghikas, and Daniel Herbert

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract

URTEX FRO is an improvisation piece featuring the developer-performers and authors (Ghikas & Herbert) of a novel digital instrument called Unrealtime [2]; and, as invited guests, a modular synth performer; acoustic instrumentalists; a poet; and a movement artist. The performance will include real-time improvised video projection, incorporating prepared and live sampling of audiovisual material, amplified viola, saxophone, DIY electronics, voice, poetry, word art, and movement. The majority of the collaborators belong to a subgroup of the Free Range Orchestra, a Canterbury-based collective of musicians, dancers, and poets focused on improvisation, experimentation, and community collaboration. URTEX FRO will be a continuation of a previous collaboration between the developers of Unrealtime and the Free Range Orchestra, in which performers explored modes of gestural and textural interaction between Unrealtime’s sample-based improvising and acoustic instruments. In the words of the orchestra’s co-director Sean Williams, “The collaboration […] ultimately stimulated us to listen and play in different ways. The ability to experiment with the software during rehearsals enabled many players to gain insight into approaches the laptop performers might often take. Players were able to hear how their own sounds could be manipulated, and this fostered a greater degree of listening during the performance. […] as a result, the playing style and ability of the orchestra in terms of rhythm and the ability to listen and react to ourselves, mediated through the software, have noticeably improved”. The URTEX FRO performance at NIME 2026 will explore how a hybrid ensemble creatively responds in real time to multimodal stimuli comprising complex layers of sound, video projections, voice, words, and movement. With backgrounds in free improvisation, digital and analogue performance, video art, experimental poetry, and dance, the performers will rehearse to create materials for a performance with an unknown outcome. At the centre of this process will be the Unrealtime digital instrument, which enables simultaneous triggering of audio and video samples. Unrealtime is a gestural digital instrument for audiovisual performance. Its gesture mapping is engineered to use only a standard mouse-and-keyboard setup to control and manipulate audio and video samples. The software features a visual interface that enables performers to navigate timelines and resequence audiovisual gestures in real time. It provides gestural control with high immediacy and granularity, making it ideal for improvisation. Developed by a team of musicians and academics since 2012, Unrealtime is, in part, an aesthetic approach to improvising, a provocative musical partner, and a digital prosthetic that extends existing instrumental capabilities. Unrealtime provides multimodal output through synchronous triggering of audio and video. Its current design does not support multimodal input via its gestural interface (although this expansion is part of future plans), as the focus has been on simplicity of gestural access, enabling the immediacy required for free improvisation. While Unrealtime’s output might not respond to real-time input data from movement, video, and audio, this kind of gestural information has directly influenced the interface design. The authors of Unrealtime are cross-disciplinary artists, filmmakers, and primarily free improvisers, and this experience of working in real time across different modalities continually informs the design of the digital instrument. In academic contexts, Unrealtime could be described as an AV scrubber, re-sequencer, or sample navigator, but at the heart of its design lies experimentation informed by the embodied experience of improvising with acoustic/electric instruments and amplified objects, and by interacting with DIY scenes, where cross-modality is the default mode of performance. Beyond the Free Range Orchestra, artists in London and beyond who have informed the development of Unrealtime by using or interacting with it include Lauren Hayes, Jennifer Walshe, Scanner, Wobbly, Louis Tabuenca, Nick Roth, Dan Hayhurst, Pavlos Antoniadis, The Chap, Alex Ward, Marina Gioti and Kat Peddie. Iklectik Art Lab and B.AIT WEST in London have provided a welcoming space for much risk-taking, with performances featuring Unrealtime. The URTEX FRO ensemble has 6 members: 1- Laptop, projector and amplified objects – Dan Herbert; 2- Laptop, projector and electric viola – Panos Ghikas; 3- Modular synth – Sean Williams; 4- Saxophone – Nick Roth; 5- Word artist – Kat Peddie; 6- Movement artist – Kristin Fredricksson

Citation

Panagiotis Ghikas, and Daniel Herbert. 2026. URTEX FRO: a collaborative, cross-disciplinary improvisation. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20782158 [PDF]

BibTeX Entry

@inproceedings{nime2026_music_44,
 abstract = {URTEX FRO is an improvisation piece featuring the developer-performers and authors (Ghikas & Herbert) of a novel digital instrument called Unrealtime [2]; and, as invited guests, a modular synth performer; acoustic instrumentalists; a poet; and a movement artist. The performance will include real-time improvised video projection, incorporating prepared and live sampling of audiovisual material, amplified viola, saxophone, DIY electronics, voice, poetry, word art, and movement. The majority of the collaborators belong to a subgroup of the Free Range Orchestra, a Canterbury-based collective of musicians, dancers, and poets focused on improvisation, experimentation, and community collaboration. URTEX FRO will be a continuation of a previous collaboration between the developers of Unrealtime and the Free Range Orchestra, in which performers explored modes of gestural and textural interaction between Unrealtime’s sample-based improvising and acoustic instruments. In the words of the orchestra’s co-director Sean Williams, “The collaboration […] ultimately stimulated us to listen and play in different ways. The ability to experiment with the software during rehearsals enabled many players to gain insight into approaches the laptop performers might often take. Players were able to hear how their own sounds could be manipulated, and this fostered a greater degree of listening during the performance. […] as a result, the playing style and ability of the orchestra in terms of rhythm and the ability to listen and react to ourselves, mediated through the software, have noticeably improved”. The URTEX FRO performance at NIME 2026 will explore how a hybrid ensemble creatively responds in real time to multimodal stimuli comprising complex layers of sound, video projections, voice, words, and movement. With backgrounds in free improvisation, digital and analogue performance, video art, experimental poetry, and dance, the performers will rehearse to create materials for a performance with an unknown outcome. At the centre of this process will be the Unrealtime digital instrument, which enables simultaneous triggering of audio and video samples. Unrealtime is a gestural digital instrument for audiovisual performance. Its gesture mapping is engineered to use only a standard mouse-and-keyboard setup to control and manipulate audio and video samples. The software features a visual interface that enables performers to navigate timelines and resequence audiovisual gestures in real time. It provides gestural control with high immediacy and granularity, making it ideal for improvisation. Developed by a team of musicians and academics since 2012, Unrealtime is, in part, an aesthetic approach to improvising, a provocative musical partner, and a digital prosthetic that extends existing instrumental capabilities. Unrealtime provides multimodal output through synchronous triggering of audio and video. Its current design does not support multimodal input via its gestural interface (although this expansion is part of future plans), as the focus has been on simplicity of gestural access, enabling the immediacy required for free improvisation. While Unrealtime’s output might not respond to real-time input data from movement, video, and audio, this kind of gestural information has directly influenced the interface design. The authors of Unrealtime are cross-disciplinary artists, filmmakers, and primarily free improvisers, and this experience of working in real time across different modalities continually informs the design of the digital instrument. In academic contexts, Unrealtime could be described as an AV scrubber, re-sequencer, or sample navigator, but at the heart of its design lies experimentation informed by the embodied experience of improvising with acoustic/electric instruments and amplified objects, and by interacting with DIY scenes, where cross-modality is the default mode of performance. Beyond the Free Range Orchestra, artists in London and beyond who have informed the development of Unrealtime by using or interacting with it include Lauren Hayes, Jennifer Walshe, Scanner, Wobbly, Louis Tabuenca, Nick Roth, Dan Hayhurst, Pavlos Antoniadis, The Chap, Alex Ward, Marina Gioti and Kat Peddie. Iklectik Art Lab and B.AIT WEST in London have provided a welcoming space for much risk-taking, with performances featuring Unrealtime. The URTEX FRO ensemble has 6 members: 1- Laptop, projector and amplified objects – Dan Herbert; 2- Laptop, projector and electric viola – Panos Ghikas; 3- Modular synth – Sean Williams; 4- Saxophone – Nick Roth; 5- Word artist – Kat Peddie; 6- Movement artist – Kristin Fredricksson},
 address = {London, United Kingdom},
 articleno = {44},
 author = {Panagiotis Ghikas and Daniel Herbert},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.20782158},
 editor = {Lia Mice and Nicole Robson and Tara Pattenden},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 month = {June},
 note = {Live Performance},
 numpages = {5},
 pages = {187--191},
 presentation-video = {https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5LYlzPV26M},
 title = {URTEX FRO: a collaborative, cross-disciplinary improvisation},
 track = {Music},
 url = {http://nime.org/proceedings/2026/nime2026_music_44.pdf},
 year = {2026}
}