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- Music with plants: cultivating bonds between grade-schoolers and nature through sound designPublication . Lêdo, Rita; Penha, Rui; Lopes, FilipeA growing need for environmental awareness requires sensitive strategies to help us rethink the way interactions transform our habitat. This work proposes a musical approach to nourishing the bonds between elementary-school students and nature. Since plants and humans experience life in very different time frames, humans might mistakenly perceive plants as quiet and motionless living-beings. The ability to sense elements of their surroundings to which we are unaware of, makes plants invaluable allies towards a more conscious relationship with the planet we share. This work proposes that music has the potential to intermediate these interactions and provide meaningful experiences to the young participants by bringing to common ground digital technology, music and plants. Using sensors to collect data from the plant’s environment we shape musical features over time, encouraging children care of their own plant as it blossoms into its matured “musical form”. In addition, sound events might be triggered to reward positive behavior in the classroom. Students split responsibility for the plant assigned to their desk, which stimulates cooperation and companionship. Each individual plant then becomes part of and contributes to its class and school musical.
- Plantorumori – first reportPublication . Lopes, Filipe; Rodrigues, PauloPlantorumori, our research and art work, is about complicity with plants. Our aim is to use music as a conciliator to create subjective communication channels with nature, particularly with plants. The communication channels that we want to “open” with plants are, however, a utopia. We are dealing with entities that do not manifest themselves in ways we humans can easily perceive. We are atempting to understand how relationships could be outside the realm of logic, numerical truths or intersubjectivity. To accomplish this desire, we want to explore the opening of “communication channels” with plants using a wide range of technologies and interfaces to nurture a subjective relationship with nature and to integrate that “contribution” in musical performances.
- Cinema Sem Imagem: um estudo de geração imagéticaPublication . Lopes, Filipe; Afonso, Pedro M.
- Looking at music, science and education through the pianoscopePublication . Rodrigues, Paulo Maria; Lopes, Filipe; Miguel, Mariana; Rodrigues, HelenaOver the last few years Companhia de Música Teatral (CMT) has been developing a series of original ideas that has designated as “artistic-educative constellations”. CMT's work is deeply rooted in music but explores links with other artistic languages and technology and proposes an intrinsic articulation with education (in a very broad sense). The CMT projects are a kaleidoscope of Performance pieces, Installations, Workshops, Publications and TransFormation activities and the piano has been central to many of these projects. One constellation in particular, Anatomia do Piano, has made the piano the “attractor” of a series of initiatives that connect the “main-stage” with the classroom, the science laboratory or the community. The installation Pianoscópio, part of this constellation, is the subject of this communication: it is based on the idea of “deconstructing” the piano, in order to contribute to a more profound understanding of music, creating an opportunity for discovery and expression. It is an experience that transforms the piano into a collective instrument, a sound installation/sculpture capable of producing sounds of a myriad of colours, a space to be inhabited by people and produce sound through their combined interaction. In this paper we report on the experience using the Pianoscópio in a wide range of situations, from workshops with children to concerts and recordings with professional musicians, science-based projects or projects with the community.
- Composing a sound installation to a specific outdoor place employing soundwalking as a methodologyPublication . Oliveira, Elder; Lopes, Filipe; Carvalho, SaraThis paper presents the methodology employed to create the sound installation Saving Shapes (2016-2018). Based on that, we will present some remarks about composing music for sound installations at outdoor places on exhibition for prolonged periods of time, particularly strategies to avoid audio loops. Our approach is based on three phases: (1) gather a wide range of phenomenological “information” from the place, mostly by performing soundwalks, taking notes and doing sound recordings (2) analyzing that “information” and composing music to be performed and installed at that specific place (3) periodically recreate the composition/installation using new “information” retrieved by repeating step number 1. Our research is mostly based and inspired on ideas from soundscape studies and artistic practices of well-known authors such as Murray Schafer (1977), Hildegard Westerkamp (1974), Barry Truax (2001), David Abram (1996) and Bernie Krause (2013). For our specific work and research, Westerkamp and Krause are two key figures. On the one hand, Westerkamp (1974) addresses the surrounding environment as a performing place to be experienced while one performs a soundwalk. She believes that such a “performance” (i.e. soundwalking) within complex soundscapes (e.g. outdoor locations) is a rich sonic experience, thus, we believe, interesting to create (and recreate) music compositions. Soundwalking became the central aspect of our creative and analytical methodology, understood here as a multifaceted activity to listen, record and devise music compositions; on the other hand, Krause defined biophony, geophony and antrophony as complementary spheres of the soundscape, thus, defining a clear theoretical and practical reference about the acoustic elements of a given place. Krause’s spheres of the soundscape, together with Westerkamp’s soundwalk, are essential to our methodology and they form the theoretical and practical basis of our proposed creative process. Saving Shapes (2016-2018) was composed for an outdoor space. We believe that outdoor spaces, as opposed to indoor spaces, are best suited for our proposed creative methodology. Outdoor spaces offer an infinitude of complexities that (might) transform and dialog with instrumental and electroacoustic sounds. Lastly, we will discuss the benefits of revisiting the same place to experience its particularities and meanings as a methodology, as opposed to using a computer to retrieve data in real time during the period of the installation. A lot of objects and narratives were constantly explored during a long period of time to instigate new (or old) connections between environmental sounds and the creative process. It materializes the multiple roles of soundwalking and the idiosyncrasy of the “human factor” to rebuild perspectives and transforming pre-existing compositions for a specific place.
- Variações sobre espaço #6Publication . Lopes, Filipe; Bernardes, Gilberto; Cardoso, ClaraWe present Variações sobre Espaço #6, a mixed media work for saxophone and electronics that intersects music, digital technologies and architecture. The creative impetus supporting this composition is grounded in the interchange of the following two concepts: 1) the phenomenological exploration of the aural architecture (Blesse & Salter 2007) particularly the reverberation as a sonic effect (Augoyard & Torgue 2005) through music performance and 2) the real time sound analysis of both the performance and the reverberation (i.e. impulse responses) intervallic content — which ultimately leads to a generic control over consonance/dissonance (C/D). Their conceptual and morphological nature can be understood as sonic improvisations where the interaction of sound producing bodies (i.e. the saxophone) with the real (e.g. performance space) and the imaginary (i.e. computer) acoustic response of a space results in formal elements mirroring their physical surroundings.
- Spaces sing, are you listening?Publication . Bernardes, Gilberto; Lopes, Filipe; Cardoso, ClaraWe present Soniferous Resonances, an ongoing collection of electroacoustic composition pieces that intersect music, digital technologies and architecture. The creative impetus supporting this research is grounded in the interchange of the following two concepts: 1) the phenomenological exploration of the aural architecture [1], particularly the reverberation as a sonic effect [2] through music performance and 2) the real time sound analysis of both the performance and the reverberation (i.e. impulse responses) intervallic content — which ultimately leads to a generic control over consonance/dissonance (C/D). Their conceptual and morphological nature can be understood as sonic improvisations where the interaction of sound producing bodies (e.g. saxophone) with the real (e.g. performance space) and the imaginary (i.e. computer) acoustic response of a space results in formal elements mirroring their physical surroundings. Particular emphasis is given to spectromorphological manipulations by a large array of “contrasting” digital reverberations with extended control over the sound mass [3] and its musical interval content across a continuum between pitched and consonant to unpitched and dissonant sounds. Two digital applications developed by the authors are seminal in Soniferous Resonances: Wallace [4] and MusikVerb [5]. The first is a navigable user-control surface that offers a fluid manipulation of audio signals to be convolved with several “contrasting” digital reverberations. The second offers refined (compositional) control over the interval content and/or C/D levels computed from the perceptually-inspired Tonal Interval Space [6] resulting in an automatically adaptation of harmonic content in real time. Soniferous Resonances aims at pushing the boundaries of musical performances that are formally tied to its surrounding space, as well as triggering new concepts and greater awareness about the sublime qualities of experiencing aural architecture.
- Old new technologies #1Publication . Lopes, FilipeDigital technologies are ubiquitous in modern life. They mediate many of our daily actions, particularly those involving other humans, providing us information of all sorts and connectiveness with almost anything. This condition, in addition to the rises of artificial intelligence, the internet of things and quantum computers, has prompted many important discussions about the way humans and machines interact and relate (or should relate to each other in the near future). Yet, a common feeling of something “human” being lost is felt by many people. What are we losing and what´s the responsibility of the digital technologies? It is not an easy answer. I believe that in the past decade, the transformation of our “feeling of passing time” is perhaps one of the most noticeable traces of how computers affect our daily life. Old New Technologies #1 is an audiovisual installation proposing to merge old and new technologies to create a feeling of “slowing down the passage of time”. It does so by inviting individuals to pick up an old rotary telephone, to dial a number from a list and to listen and see an audiovisual postcard. Take your time, recover your time, feel your body. Enjoy. Breath.
- ORCA [Orquestra de Robots, Computadores e Altifalantes]Publication . Botelho, André; Lopes, Filipe; Dores, Francisca; Afonso, PedroRecentemente tornei-me responsável pela área de Som na Escola Superior de Media Artes e Design (ESMAD), encarando pela primeira vez estudantes que, em princípio, não têm bases musicais nem tão pouco interesse assumido nessa arte (levando em conta a escola em que se inscreveram). Os currículos, em consonância com as bibliografias de referência sobre som no cinema e multimédia, espelham também essa ausência de “música” privilegiando o estudo técnico (e.g. áudio digital, microfones, pós- -produção áudio). Ora, acredito que o currículo destes estudantes não deve ser refém da aprendizagem técnica mas sim complementadas com experiências musicais que aflorem o sentido crítico e criativo. Nas palavras de Andreas Schleicher, diretor do departamento de Educação e Competências da OCDE, o mundo “já não recompensa as pessoas apenas por aquilo que sabem – o Google sabe tudo – mas por aquilo que conseguem fazer com isso”. Neste sentido, a criação livre e artística é especialmente importante promovendo competências criativas e preparando as pessoas para problemas que, porventura, hoje ainda nem existem. A ORCA (Orquestra de Robots, Computadores e Altifalantes) é uma atividade extra-curricular que num primeiro plano traz “música ao som” mas que, acima de tudo, é um espaço instigador da criatividade pela partilha humana e criação livre. A ORCA nasceu em janeiro deste ano e fazem parte o prof. de Som e três estudantes. O Projeto 1 é a nossa primeira manifestação pública e é constituída por um agregado robótico de objetos sonoros controlados por interfaces originais e internet, com estreia marcada no Intermediartes.