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The Prix Ars Electronica Archive is a collection enabling search and viewing of all the submissions since 1987. The award-winning projects are documented with catalogue texts and audio-visual media. All other submissions can be searched by title/artist and displayed with year, category in list form. Please cite the credits (artwork name, artist and photographer) and only use the materials if your article is related to Ars Electronica.
altogether disproportionate
Michael Edwards
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Algorithmically generated from beginning to end using my own 13-year-old algorithmic composition software project, *altogether disproportionate* employs a new technique developed especially for this piece. Using what I call rhythm chains, all the material is generated from two small sets of nine rhythmic groups, each lasting only one beat, along with accompanying slower contrapuntal rhythmic groups lasting two or three beats. Though the rhythms themselves are very simple, the metrical groupings created by the chaining process can become considerably more complex than the materials would imply at face value, especially at the high tempi indicated (we start at 176 beats per minute).
Harmony is also algorithmically generated, using ring modulation techniques borrowed from the realm of (analog) signal processing. Essentially I generate sum and difference tones from the harmonic partials of a single pitch to create harmonic material that is often fundamentally tonal, though not used in a conventional or functional manner.
The algorithms determine both the live piano and computer-generated sound material, thus unifying their structural base and creating a sound world where the electronic and acoustic materials are often blended into a super-piano, which is simultaneously prepared (in the sense of Cage, Cowell, etc.) and unprepared.
Links: http://www.sumtone.com/work.php?workid=275
Harmony is also algorithmically generated, using ring modulation techniques borrowed from the realm of (analog) signal processing. Essentially I generate sum and difference tones from the harmonic partials of a single pitch to create harmonic material that is often fundamentally tonal, though not used in a conventional or functional manner.
The algorithms determine both the live piano and computer-generated sound material, thus unifying their structural base and creating a sound world where the electronic and acoustic materials are often blended into a super-piano, which is simultaneously prepared (in the sense of Cage, Cowell, etc.) and unprepared.
Links: http://www.sumtone.com/work.php?workid=275
Michael Edwards (UK): composition, programming, recording, mix, master
Per Rundberg (SE): piano
Per Rundberg (SE): piano
Michael Edwards (UK), born 1968, studied oboe then composition at Bristol University with Adrian Beaumont (1986-91), privately with Gwyn Pritchard, and computer music with John Chowning at CCRMA, Stanford University (1991-96). He was consultant software engineer in Silicon Valley (1996-97), visiting professor at the Mozarteum University Salzburg (1997-2002), and is currently a reader at the University of Edinburgh. His compositional interests lie in the development of algorithmic composition structures for instrumental music and the integration of these within similarly generated computer-processed sound structures and live electronics. He is also active as an improviser on laptop, saxophones and MIDI wind controller.