On this page you can find information about installations, musical collaborations and other things that I have been involved with.
Atmospheric Railway
A collaboration between myself and interactive artist and inventor Di Mainstone in 2011. The piece was an interactive wearable musical instrument, performed by dancer Hollie Miller at the National Portrait Gallery. The piece was inspired by an Isambard Kingdom Brunel engineering project called the 'atmospheric railway'. It involved several wearable modules augmented with tubes. Affected by the dancer's movement, ball bearings travel down these tubes, colliding with bells at the end. Microphones pick up the sounds and audio analysis is used to automatically cut and loop ringing sounds, passing them through a number of atmospheric effects. The resulting atmospheres resemble the click and clack of trains. Finally, a bluetooth tilt sensor is embedded in one of the modules allowing the dancer to manipulate the effects through body movement.
Tilly Automatic
A collaboration between (brilliant) pianist Sarah Nicolls and a group of researchers at C4DM including myself, Samer Abdallah, Kurt Jacobson and Andrew Robertson. During summer 2008, we spent a week in Liverpool adapting Sarah's piano - including developing software to control electronic motors fitted with card so that they could pluck the strings of the piano and a wireless sensor in a hat to control delayed granular sounds sourced from the piano itself. The result was a piece called Machines Within Machines. A few months after we finished the initial work and performances, I went down to Bexhill on the South Coast to help set up and record a performance at the De La Warr Pavilion - you can see the performance, from 22nd November 2008, in this video: (http://blip.tv/playful-audiovision/tilly-automatic-machines-within-machines-1663483)
The Giant Instrument
The appallingly titled Giant Instrument is a light instrument where you break beams of light to create sound. Initially designed for an installation at Shunt in London Bridge during May 2008. I worked on this project with Andrew Robertson, Jean-Baptiste Thiebaut, Steve Welburn, and Kurt Jacobson. Check out the video below:
DigiVu
DigiVu was an installation exploring time delay and repetition at Shunt in London Bridge. It involved several components. Central to the installation were `digital mirrors' - screens displaying the movement of people through the Shunt entrance hall. However, the screens also contained delays of several seconds mixed in with the current video so that your past image follows you around as you pass through the venue. There was also granular noise panned around the space depending on your position on the screen. Finally, your words were recorded as you entered the hall and reflected through multiple sets of speakers as you moved through the main hall. The installation was collaboration between myself, Dan Stowell, Steve Welburn and Kurt Jacobson. See this video for an idea:
