One of our “Krapp’s Last Tape” videos has been featured on the ReacTIVision Vimeo channel. I encourage you to surf around this channel and see the astounding variety of projects made possible by the open-source release of the ReacTIVision software.
Krapp’s Last Tape: Mapping Fiducials to Ableton with ReacTIVision and some Links
With our Soundwalk installation date rapidly approaching, my students have just finished their soundscapes, hosted them in Ableton Live 8, and are learning to MIDI map them to ReacTIVision fiducials via OSCulator.
What I have enjoyed about this kind of project is seeing my students not only grapple with the abstractions of composition, but watching them consider multiple modes of interactivity. I think the important lesson is not just learning to execute the project by daisy-chaining software, but dealing with the metaphors of the objects and their associated sounds.
I am especially appreciative of Martin Kaltenbrunner and Ross Bencina for their open-source gift of ReacTIVision, the software that allows fiducial-tracking. This has opened up a creative use of technology to my high school students that otherwise would be well beyond their capabilities, not to mention mine!
Even the simplistic implementation we use has far-reaching implications for metaphoric and abstract thought.
Links:
Krapp’s Last Tape Project: Asking My Students to Compare Schafer and Cage
In my music appreciation classes, we have been learning about the aesthetics and construction of sound-art and soundscapes as models for their individual contributions to “Krapp’s Last Tape.” Today we watched a short and fascinating video portrait of R. Murray Schafer, the composer and environmentalist.
Schafer coined the term “soundscape”. According to him, there are three main elements of a soundscape:
From Wikipedia article on Soundscapes:
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Keynote sounds
This is a musical term that identifies the key of a piece, not always audible… the key might stray from the original, but it will return. The keynote sounds may not always be heard consciously, but they “outline the character of the people living there” (Schafer). They are created by nature (geography and climate): wind, water, forests, plains, birds, insects, animals. In many urban areas, traffic has become the keynote sound.
Sound signals
These are foreground sounds, which are listened to consciously; examples would be warning devices, bells, whistles, horns, sirens, etc.
Soundmark
This is derived from the term landmark. A soundmark is a sound which is unique to an area.
It is interesting to note how Schafer speaks about sound as music and uses the word “noise” pejoratively.
In the following video, John Cage also speaks of sound as music, but without judgement.
His philosophy about listening to sound seems to be codified by Michel Chion’s Three Modes of Listening and Pierre Schaffer’s Reduced-Listening. Cage derives pleasure from the transient qualities of sounds themselves.
My students watched and discussed these videos as they prepare to fabricate their contribution to “Krapp’s Last Tape”. They will make sound-compositions about a personal memory in a way that gives the listener a window into how they uniquely experience memories. They will consider Schafer’s aesthetic and structure when composing the piece as well as reduced-listening skills when evaluating the sound-material and placement for the composition.
Just a reminder that Soundwalk 2011 is coming. In the above promo video, a clip of our project appears at about 20 seconds in. Below are some videos of our past Soundwalk installations from the last two years.
Sound Art: Parthenocarp- Drones with Drills and Cucumber Plants
According to their website:
‘Parthenocarp’ is a sound art installation which consists out of 3 one string instruments. The sound of the 3 instruments is creating a ‘drone’ which is changing in a very slowly way by the growth of the cucumbers. Each string is vibrating by the touch of a wooden wheel which is slowly turning around by a drill behind each instrument.
Because each cucumber has it’s own speed of growing, the tone of each instrument is changing in it’s own way. Therefore the drone is constantly changing into harmony and dis-harmonie…
The work refers to the changing urban plans of Alkmaar during the last 50 years. It changed from an agricultural area into an industrial area and is now being changed into a residential region.
dimension: length of each instrument: 4,5 meter
materials: cucumber plants, water, sodium lights, drill machines, ply
-wood, metal, steel strings.
year: 2010
exhibition: Kunsteyssen, Alkmaar, Netherlands
website: kunsteyssen.nl
concept, production and design: Ronald van der Meijs
website: ronaldvandermeijs.nl
Krapp’s Last Tape: Software that’s not Krappy
image by steven speciale
I am featuring software I use in my class. Without a one-to-one computer program, I could not guarantee that all of my students had equal access to technology. I began searching for open-source and cross-platform software that would equalize the playing field. Over the last two years, I think that some of my class’ strongest projects were created using the free-software ReacTivision.
reacTIVision is an open source, cross-platform computer vision framework for the fast and robust tracking of fiducial markers attached onto physical objects, as well as for multi-touch finger tracking.
- ReacTivision website
In other words, my students can turn physical objects into reactive multimedia controllers. ReacTivision can read and track blobs called fiducials. By assigning these blobs to different features of other software via a MIDI or OSC protocol, one can remotely control the features of that software. I will detail how to do this in upcoming posts. For the impatient, visit the ReacTivision website for instructions.
While this technology’s most spectacular applications require high-level programming abilities, with a little ingenuity, I think this software lends itself to creative class projects.
I find that group projects work best when I provide an overarching theme that gives creative space for each student to express their personal views. It also works best when the projects can have the same requirements for each student in the group so that the ultimate success of the project is not totally dependent on the work of the group’s weakest link.
In the above featured works, I gave my classes the challenge of designing reactive music tables where the player intuits the manner of playing. Sounds also had to relate to the objects used. Students, therefore, had to consider the user-interface, the design of the objects, the consequence of moving the objects on the table, and the sound.
Projects not pictured here included album-art fiducials that triggered iconic hooks which could be mixed on the tables and fiducials of face-parts where users mied eyes, noses, mouths, etc… to create different pieces.
I do imagine similar projects working in other curricula as the technology threshold is not too overwhelming. Our current-project, for example, requires analysis and reflection on the play “Krapp’s Last Tape” by Samuel Beckett.
I will provide tutorials and software-specific examples in the coming weeks. I will also detail relevant aspects of my lesson plans.
The Skoog: photo by Ric Charlton EduGeek & BETT 2010
The geektastic Brett Domino and his cover of “Hey Ya” on the Skoog:
I have been preparing to hack a Microsoft Kinect for use as a computer-music interface. While surfing the web for further inspiration for my music-appreciation projects, I stumbled upon the Skoog.
The Skoog is a new way to interface with digital music creation. Designed for special-needs students and music therapy, it is a brilliant and intuitive device that invites one to hug, shake, and pet music from it!
The creators have left the musical design open so one might choose from presets like pentatonic scales, or design one’s own scale. You can visit their website to watch several demonstration or review videos here. The videos are terrific!
This is one of the most brilliant examples I have found of a digital musical interface that doesn’t sacrifice expressive potential for accessibility. Bravo!
image by Steven Speciale
I have read Samuel Beckett’s play “Krapp’s Last Tape” several times looking for themes for my students to elucidate with sound.
Krapp, Beckett’s protagonist, is a failed writer/artist. Each year since he was 24, Krapp records his impressions of the year’s events into a tape recorder. We meet him on his 69th birthday listening to a 30-year-old tape of himself, preparing to record a new summary on the exact anniversary of his birth.
There are three notable features of “Krapp’s Last Tape” I want our piece to realize: the conversations between one and one’s former-selves through recorded media; that our contemporary-selves are unique as compared to our former-selves; and the symbolism of polar opposites.
We will be using six pieces of software in our piece to realize these objectives: ReacTivision, MacCam, Osculator, Ableton Live, and an as yet undetermined piece of video software. This list is for the actual installation. It does not include the use of iMovie, GarageBand, Audacity, Soundbooth, etc…programs we will use to construct the pieces.
The installation will be a glass table illuminated from below. On top will be two objects, symbolic polar opposites of each other, that will serve as speakers. Cassette-tapes and other objects from Krapp’s world will be in nearby cardboard boxes. Each object is tagged with a fiducial. When placed on the table, the fiducial will trigger the associated sound design. Moving the object closer to each of the “speakers” will pan the sound towards that speaker. The sounds are modified apropos to the symbolism of each speaker. One speaker will present the tape as it recorded. The other will present the tape as heard through the distortions of time. The distortions will be both digital and acoustic.
The next step is to create an interpretive/symbolic framework as a model or template for my students. They will then be responsible for creating sonic analogs to Krapp’s tapes from their own lives.
As this is a music appreciation course, my students will first study musique concrète and familiarize themselves with the three modes of listening by Michel Chion, as well as sonic-installations by Bill Fontana. Music by Alvin Lucier will serve as models for the digital and acoustic manipulation of their sound-designs.
