11th of Dec 2023, 23:12
This year was particularly fruitful when it comes to publications. Having a lot of research piling up on my back catalogue, I was finally able to get some of it past peer review, out there in the wild, for the public to read and judge.
First, I was able to present our research on circularly moving sources at the AES convention in Helsinki Finland in Spring. Here, we mainly focused on the physical phenomena of measuring a sound source emitting a pure tone while rotating around the measuring spot. The research was of theoretical nature and was intended to pave the way for publications to come in the future and avoid overly multidisciplinary papers by separating the physical from the musicological, that we intend on researching more in the future. In summary, at the center of rotation, the velocity vector of the particles of the medium get distorted as the source rotates, resulting in a spectrum split that is equivalent to the angular velocity of rotation. The interesting thing, we find, is, that neither is the source sound is modified, nor are we changing the distance, i.e. the radius of the rotation, meaning that the Doppler effect is also not responsible in any way. Just by rotating are we able to modify what the source emits at the central listening position.
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08th of Oct 2020, 01:55
While the 2020 pandemic and the resulting quarantine installed in most countries around the world is not a particularly motivating topic to talk about, if one is lucky enough to remain in good health, the choice to make to the best of your time at home is most likely a welcome opportunity to many that have found themselves chasing the white rabbit for too long. During the evenings of the past 3 months, I took it upon myself to finally confront some of the criticism I received, as well as my own minor issues I had about my website – particularly the most common one: the font is too small.
Now, back in the days when finishing the original design, I was aiming for a fixed width for reasons stated in the first Welcome blogpost, here. Therefore, simply increasing the font in the old layout did not result in any acceptable outcome. Everything had to be accommodated to suit a larger font. Also, I had some skeletons in my code I wanted to address and clean up the background a bit... as in, a lot! Simply put, I had to roll up my sleeves and get dirty, as I was about to delete code like I was pulling weeds.
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20th of May 2020, 17:50
Under the EU Project "Interfaces", funded within the "Creative Europe" program, the No Input Ensemble was invited by the ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany to participate in a disjointed performance around the entire city. A total of four groups and artists played in different corners of the city of Karlsruhe. The performances were all joined together at the central hub at the ZKM "[...] like a kaleidoscope and artistically processed in a sound installation [...]" in the different locations around the facilities of the museum.
A CD of this performance has now been released on the record label Gruenrekorder as a single track of 62 minutes and 12 seconds. You may grab a copy of the limited release on the record label's shop here
For our performance as the No Input Ensemble in NEXT CITY SOUNDS: INTERFACES, we oriented ourselves along a concept that would base itself in a Drone-performance, as part of the performance space ambience, the ZKM-Kubus' Subspace, but would simultaneously provide fitting material for the central mix in real time. While we were not able to hear and react to what other artists around the city were doing at the time and we're confined only to our own performance, we were however able to study the collaborating artists and prepare ourselves to find our place in the overarching soundscape. The ensemble developed multifaceted spectrum of sounds that would be affected by a restrained character. However, it's detail rich and lively sounds we're able to stand on their own, as audiences we're not only able to visit the central artwork, where all performances were mixed together inside the ZKM itself, but also visit and enjoy the other performances on their own.
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22nd of Sep 2019, 16:17
Smartphones might have come to save our lives from the Stone Age, but when looking beyond their devilish grin, one can grasp a sense of their true nature. I have never warmed up to them and I believe this is due to some serious design flaws and lack of focus on what is really important that diminishes the user experience. Here, I want to let off some steam and rant about my gripes with these little monsters and their creators.
One of the biggest mistakes I believe smartphones designers have done is to put too much focus on touchscreens. While they do offer some benefits, mostly the removal of an interaction layer by promising to simply reach out with your fingertip and touch the element you're interested in, [1] putting all your design eggs into a single basket causes a whole new bucket of problems. By this, I mean tunneling all user interaction entirely and exclusively through the touchscreen.
First of all, they have an issue with moisture. Water does not go well with most touchscreens currently built into phones on the market. Just done the dishes or washed your hands and didn't dry them with a hairdryer for at least 5 minutes? Well, good luck getting that phone unlocked or answering that important phone call. Need to use the phone to call a taxi out in the rain or check the bus schedule? Well, sorry, but that technological wonder will be too confused about what's a finger and what's a drop of rain.
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02nd of Oct 2018, 00:50
I just recently came back from vacation and in my boredom on the flights over the Atlantic Ocean I wrote a short text on drink combos for split decisions on airplanes. Even though this is not the most serious article I felt like I wanted to share it. I hope this bridges the gap I have left of not tending to my website very well.
Having flown my fair share within Europe, attendants have often caught me on the wrong foot with me having to make split decisions on which drink to choose. Hence, I have developed a system of drink combinations that I can quickly take advantage of, depending on the time of day, my current mood and choice of sandwich provided.
Flying tourist class with normal carriers in Europe usually gives you free complimentary drinks and snacks. Unlike the choice of snack, which usually comprises one of two sandwiches, the choices in drink are usually a much more plentiful. If you book with a non-low-cost airline, you may usually choose more than one drink as well. For example, Lufthansa flight attendants even encourage choosing two drinks, asking passengers if they would like some coffee or tea with their first choice.
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26th of Jun 2018, 11:06
In the upcoming weeks, I will be giving some presentations on different topics in a small tour around Europe.
First, a workshop in 3D audio production tools will be held at the 2018 Sónar Festival in Barcelona, Spain together with my colleges at Sfëar. Participants will given the chance to try out our newest beta version of our software and we will guide them through the available tools and production techniques that can be achieved with these.
Next, I will go to the Sounds in Space conference at the University of Derby in England to give a talk about both my Spherical Glitch Study I and II. The talk will center around the ideas that went into those compositions and how they are composed. It will also, however, go into some implementation details about the code, as they intersect with topics the currently running Binci EU funded project, where we are developing a spatial synthesizer that produces sound synthesis solely from spatial manipulations. The Spherical Glitch Studies provide both an inspirational ground as well as a first creative use case for this technology.
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11th of Jan 2018, 23:28
This Saturday the 12th of January I will be giving two presentations on spatial audio for the Tupper Festival in Barcelona, Spain. They will be at 10:00 and 12:00 respectively and last for roughly two hours. Together with Gerrard Erruz we will introduce audio producers, musicians and other that may be interested into the basics of what constitutes 3D Audio. The talks will be held in Sfëar's Barcelona studio premises in Spanish with limited availability, so if you're interested act soon!
For my own part, I will give an overview of the common technologies, grouping them into channel based (5.1 to 22.2), scene based (Ambisonics) and object based (VBAP and WFS). Care will be taken to point out the strengths and flaws in each so the participants will better learn to choose the right one for their specific purposes. Additionally, we will compare VBAP and several orders of Ambisonics with one another and learn what the qualitative differences there are. Finally, we will look into commercial solutions available on the market, now having learned the backgrounds of what they claim to be based on.
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31st of Dec 2017, 16:44
I was able to use the time during the holidays to finally bring a new update to my website, which was long due. Just in time for new years, I would like to present my first snippet of code, written for Max/MSP. It is a small package consisting of two tools for circular interpolation. The impatient may download the package going to its proper page here.
Circular interpolation is not necessarily as easy as it sounds. I want to find the shortest way around a circle given two values: the old value I am currently at and the new one I want to go to. There are easy examples, in where I simply would go from, e.g. 0˚ to 90˚ by crossing the 45˚ mark. Easy enough, we simply use a "straight line" and move along all numbers between 0 and 90.
But upon further inspection, I notice that I do not necessarily want to go from 0˚ to 350˚ going over the 180˚ mark. Rather, I'd simply like to move from 0˚ backwards along the circle to traverse 355˚ and arrive at 350˚. Similarly, I would like to reach 185˚ from 0˚ moving backwards past 350˚, and not forwards, traversing 180˚.
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15th of Jul 2017, 13:56
I am excited to announce that the No Input Ensemble will be playing a series of concerts in the upcoming months!
On the 15th of July, we will perform at the Hafenkirche in Mannheim, organized by elektrosmog. This will be an exclusive No Input Ensemble concert, where we will be performing some compositions and an improvisation.
Next up is the Und 9 festival in Karlsruhe. We will be performing on Thursday the 20th of July in a series of concerts during the opening Vernisage.
Finally, we are happy to be invited to perform alongside two other acts at one evening of a concert series by Post Post in Düsseldorf on the 23rd of August.
01st of Jun 2017, 23:24
So, here it is, after more than 7 years in the making: my portfolio website. Not, that it took me 7 full years to make it, of course... it was just... well, I was busy, you know? 7 years of on and off: working a bit on it, letting it sit for half a year, picking it up again, getting distracted for another... and so on. I have to admit, my priorities were more on doing my work than presenting it, hence, that is why, instead of working on making this website, I focused on doing the content that would eventually be presented here.
Luckily, all things come to an end and here it is... and I am proud of how it turned out! It is my own creation and by that I mean, I own everything and made almost all the stuff here myself. Because, not only should the content by displayed on a shiny background, but the display itself should also be something I would want my profile to demonstrate. You see, as a programmer, I wanted not only to show I can find and use existing libraries, but I wanted to take the opportunity during my free time to understand how these processes work.
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