Tuesday, November 18, 2008

ANALOG member Heather Frasch at IRCAM

I just had a quick chat with our longtime friend and ANALOG member Heather Frasch. She's in the middle of a term of study at IRCAM, and taking a sabbatical from her doctoral studies at UC Berkeley.



She gave a quick taste of what it's like studying at the world-famous center for experimental and electronic/computer sound and music.



"I find it stressful." says Heather... To be sure, in our very short conversation, she told me a little about what she was doing. In addition to catching up with friends in Finland and all through France, she's going to a festival in Moscow that's associated with UC Berkeley.



Heather told me that she's been focusing on an artistic and aesthetic level of electronics, since she's been there, but that she really misses writing acoustic music. She will have a good opportunity to combine the two very soon as she begins a major project. Heather is planning a piece for saxophone and electronics, specifically she plans to incorporate sensors for the performer to trigger. "I was thinking of putting an accelerometer on the sax, and then maybe a few triggers on the floor. The saxophonist would move around to play with spacalization and movement of the acoustic source as well as the electronics."



I told her about someone who used Xbee radios with accelerometers on Roller Derby contestants. As they would smash into each other, a sound or light show would be triggered.

http://www.faludi.com/projects/



Heather said that they have a trial for their projects at the end of January to see what works and what doesn't. From there they work on the large project for April.



Other than that, she talked briefly about presentations from researchers, and some of the other people studying there. She is one of three Americans, and she has had a lot of fun working with them. She also had good things to say about Ann Cleare, from Ireland, whose music Heather likes a lot.


Dolf Kamper

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Wednesday, April 09, 2008

The Medium Is The Form

The Francois Bayle installment of the Avant Garde Project called to mind Heather Frasch's installation from ARTSaha! 2007:
Heather Frasch's Speaker Objects are a way of bringing one of her favorite mediums for sound generation into plain sight. As an electronic music composer, she spends a great deal of time in the studio generating sounds with found objects like metal and glass, then sculpting those recorded sounds into finished pieces.

By recasting them as Speaker Objects, Heather is sharing the musical potential of these objects with the public for the first time in a way that they are invited to see and touch. The objects replace the vibrating component of a speaker. Sounds are projected through them and transmuted by their physical properties.


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Thursday, June 28, 2007

Kettle's On

Monday, June 11, 2007

thermoacoustic organ

Two great concerns of mine: sound and energy have spurned my interest towards some reading material I thought I'd share. I have been reading some material on thermoacoustic energy. Here are some great links to learn more:

a video (somebody needs to write this guy a proper piece to play)

his website

the fire organ

heat into electricity

Of course, it's no new feat to turn heat into electriciy. Steam engines have been doing it for more than 100 years... the question is the efficiency and the ability to do it on such a small scale.



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Thursday, March 22, 2007

Heather Frasch

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