This is a wonderful video of CHARLES COHEN at The BUCHLA MUSIC EASEL a new short film by Alex Tyson on Vimeo. Since our first meeting back in 1997, Charles has a way with this synthesizer that’s been nothing but a pleasure for me to hear.

This colorful video features sound artist Charles Cohen improvising on a 1970’s Buchla Music Easel. This extremely rare instrument is one of Don Buchla’s 200 series. Buchla (a pioneer of audio synthesis) only manufactured 14 of these units. The entire film was edited from an hour-long set of free improvisation, with audio was taken directly from Charles’ mixing board.

All of the photography and editing was produced by Alex Tyson, a sound and video artist from Pennsylvania. The film was shot in 16:9 720p High Definition format, using the Letus35 Extreme and a 35mm LensBaby 3GPL.

This weekend I’m attending the 7th annual Radio Without Boundaries conference on Radio & Transmission Art in Toronto.

Among the participating artists and producers are Tetsuo Kogawa (Japan), Chris Brookes (Can), Jared Weissbrot (USA), Trademark G (USA), Chantal Dumas (Can), Anna Friz (Can), Andreas Kahre (Can), Peter Courtemanche (Can), Damiano Pietropaolo, and Neil Sandell (Can).

The performances and talks begin Friday evening, May 30th and are streamed live on free103point9.org’s Transmission Art Radio. Use this for the online stream. All this continues through Sunday, June 1st. Visit the Radio Without Boundaries website for the schedule. I plan on participating in the Micro Radio and Text and Sound workshops, using the blog format of this web page to report on what I learn, so please come back and have a look and listen.

About the conference…

Radio Without Boundaries (RWB) is a part of the month-long Deep Wireless Festival, an annual event organized by New Adventures In Sound Art. The significance of the Deep Wireless Festival is in its intensity and caliber of invited artists. It is a month-long annual festival that brings together the world’s most influential artists, composers, producers, and thinkers in radio art and audio documentary. (more…)

Hal Rammel gave me the license to make my own instruments in 1990. Tonight I learned from Hal that a web page is up about the wonderful exhibition of experimental musical instruments he curated, “The Shapes of Sound: Musical Instruments and the Imagination in the Midwest.”

The show was held in late 1997 at Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I was among the 14 artist-inventors who had their instruments displayed. I also gave a brief performance in the show. Visit the page at www.woodlandpattern.org/gallery/shapes_of_sound.shtml

Many photographs from the show are on this page with Hal Rammel’s catalog essay. To learn more about his fascinating writing, visual art, and music, please visit Hal’s homepage, his MySpace page, and YouTube.

More video interviews with students from my 2008 Instrument Construction course at SAIC have been uploaded.

• SAIC Student Rob Martens: Evil Brother Of Snap, Crackle and Pop Martens?
  http://www.gearwire.com/theramin-instrument-construction.html
• (Part 1) SAIC Student Bethany Childs Tempts The Fury Of Neptune
  http://www.gearwire.com/conchshell-instrument-construction-001.html
• (Part 2) SAIC Student Bethany Childs And Playing An Interfaced Conch Shell
  http://www.gearwire.com/conchshell-instrument-construction-002.html

• Stuart Schmidt Is More Machine Than Man, Now
  http://www.gearwire.com/glove-controller-instrument-construction.html
• Cycling 74 Max: Kyle Evans’ Cigar Box Controller Controls Air Traffic Control
  http://www.gearwire.com/cigarbox-controller-instrument-construction.html

And as mentioned previously…

• Chris Burke’s Interactopus: One Man’s Trash Is Another Man’s Interactopus
  http://www.gearwire.com/interactopus-instrument-construction.html
• Jenna Caravello’s Celloharp Promotes Inter-Instrumental Hybridization
  http://www.gearwire.com/celloharp-instrument-construction.html

On Friday, May 2 SAIC’s Waveforms presented videos and performances by students from the Sound Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Gretchen Hasse from Gearwire came and interviewed many of the students in my Instrument Construction course, who opened the evening with an ensemble performance on their new instruments.

The video interviews are being completed now, and the first one up in the series is with Jenna Caravello, who worked all semester on her original acoustic instrument, the Celloharp. As you might guess from its name, this is a hybrid instrument. Jenna’s persistence and resilience in the face of so many kinds of challenges during its design and construction earns my respect and admiration.

The second video is an interview with Chris Burke who took Shawn Decker’s Programming For Sound course this spring. Chris dug deep into Max/MSP and Jitter software, and Ed Bennett’s ArtBus card, to come up with the Interactopus, a hardware interface for the real-time control of sound and video housed inside a warm, flexible fabric body.

Please visit this web page again and soon, as I announce more of Gretchen’s interviews with some of my outstanding student artists and their wonderful instruments.

Tune in and listen to White Noise Phantom Room Hour, a special live radio experiment on Free Radio SAIC.

When: 2:00 to 3:00 pm [US CST (GMT -6)] Thursday, April 17, 2008

Where: http://freeradiosaic.org (QuickTime required)

Produced and performed by students of Eric Leonardson’s Introduction To Sound course.

Travel through space while staying in one place.

Each student will give a tour through a “room” or “place” they have created. There are eleven students and thus, eleven rooms that each will lead you from one student’s radiophonic room to the next for one hour.

We will enjoy hearing your feedback during the show. Call 312.345.3805 or use the real-time messaging.

Bridges, Arts at Large new music series

7:00 pm Wednesday, February 20
Lincoln Park Cultural Center, 2045 N. Lincoln Park West

Chicago, IL 60614 Tel: 773.248.1667
Admission: Free (seating is limited to only 50 people)
Arts at Large http://www.aalchicago.org/

I will be performing on the Springboard, my self-built instrument pictured above, with electronics. This will be my first solo performance since the 2007 Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium, and the first evening length solo since the 2006 RadioRevolten Festival.

To learn more about the Springboard visit my “experimental instruments” page with links to the 2007 Gearwire videos: ericleonardson.org/instruments/index.html

Eric Leonardson on MySpace: www.myspace.com/ericleonardson
Eric Leonardson on YouTube: www.youtube.com/ericleonardson

Carol Genetti (vocals) and I will be performing a duo set at the final show in the Triage Sound Series:

8PM Tuesday, December 18
Elastic
2830 N Milwaukee, 2nd Fl
Chicago, IL 60618
(773) 772-3616
suggested donation

There will also be performances by Series Founders, Mykel Boyd, and Neil Jendon. See the Elastic events page for latest details.