Sourced Cities 2014 - A network sourced musical performance
@ PAF IV - UFBA, Salvador - 17.00 (GMT - 4), 30th May, 2014
PAF IV :Pavilhões de Aula da Federação
UFBA - Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil
Sourced Cities 2014 is musical offering that is governed by a specific typology of network performance. A networked sourced approach is articulated within the compositional schematic. Real-time open microphone streams are sourced from an Icecast server, owned and operated by the sound art research organisation, Locus Sonus (www.locusonus.org). Encoded, ogg-vorbis audio streams are accessed by the performer through a bespoke performance system, and then implemented as source material in a real-time musical interpretation. The re-articulation and re-animation of the streams enforces a sense of indeterminacy onto the piece. The composer is only in control of how the audio sources are interpreted and re-modulated, not how they appear offered to him. This indeterminacy ensures a sense of fragility runs throughout the performance, as the composer is not entirely certain of what events will occur within the sound worlds he is sourcing. The fragility is realised through fragments of reality being moulded and shaped into a compositional dream, ensuring processes and fixations obscure natural soundscapes. Moments in time, from distant places and spaces, are distorted and fractured, moulded and revealed; allowing the listener only splinters and slivers of the sound worlds as they are. The listener is transported to worlds, imagined and interpreted by the composer; wormholes into a sonorous sphere rich for experimentation, exploration, and discovery.
Robin Renwick is a current PhD Candidate at the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen’s University Belfast, Ireland. His specific topic, under the guidance of Prof. Pedro Rebelo, is directed at researching a network sourced approach to network music; the concepts, theories, abstractions, and implications of such a strategy. He began his formal academic career at Trinity College Dublin, completing his undergraduate degree in Business and Economics. Following this he completed a BETAC course in Sound Engineering at the Sound Training Centre, Dublin, followed by a two year FETAC course in Theatre and Drama at the Further Education College, in Cork. Upon completing these, he decided somewhat foolhardily, that a more rigorous education path was called for, and so he went on to complete his MSc in Music & Technology at Cork’s School of Music, before applying and being accepted at Queen’s, to pursue his current path.