Improvised performance using piano and the iPad application Samplr. Merging technologies from different centuries, composer and sound artist Mikronesia creates a real-time soundscape of sampled and live piano tones.
Camera and lighting: Dan Tabor
Performance and Editing: Mikronesia
More about the App: samplr.net
Sound art installation piece presented at Little Berlin Gallery in Feb 2014. Capsule was part of the show Never Like Like It Is Now which featured pieces relating to ice. For my piece I created a sound capturing device (using an iPod Touch and a custom iOS and Pure Data App) that would record and freeze the audio spoken into an attached microphone inside the cooler. The result was a frozen mass of sound documenting whatever sounds the attached microphone picked up. Below is a demonstration video of someone trying Capsule out.
Edge of Nostalgia or EON is an interactive album application that I worked on for much of 2012 and 2013. It’s essentially an app that uses the microphone on your iPhone to process the sound world around you in a musical way. It’s a seven track ambient music album that blends the sounds around you into the music. A train rides by, kids playing across the street, the ambient sounds of your office all filter through your microphone and blend in with the music, a new musical creation is born. It’s been very well reviewed (including a feature in Create Digital Music). You can download it from the Apps Store for 99 cents.
Edge of Nostalgia from Michael McDermott on Vimeo.
Here’s one of the tracks (without the processed realtime world of the listener)
For The Fidget Fall Experimental Music Festival Nora Gibson and myself were asked to create a music and dance work. We decided to show a work-in-progress for a large media project Antarctica. Antarctica is the story of the end of human data, the end of history, the end of information. It was presented as a 20 minute film projected on three translucent floating screen and with singing by Steve Quaranta.
Below is an excerpt from the film:
ANTARCTICA Development Preview from Michael McDermott on Vimeo.
Live piano and iPad set from Community College of Philadelphia.
Recording below:
Excerpts from a 60 minutes dance / installation piece premiered in 2013 at Wood Street Galleries in Pittsburgh, PA. Dancers: Gia T. Cacalano, Vincent Cacialano, Wendell Cooper, Joanna Reed and Jil Stifel. Original Music by Mikronesia. Video projections by Wendell Cooper.
GIA T – Frequency of Structure and Flow (Excerpts) from Michael McDermott on Vimeo.
This live film score was performed on piano and iPad using the application Samplr to process the sounds from the piano. The mix was recorded from the house sound board by Frank Bellina. The performance was part of the Event Horizon experimental music series at the Rotunda in Philadelphia on June 14, 2013.
video sources are from archive.org and treated by Mikronesia
Full audio recording of concert:
Torn Ivory is a saturated forest of delicate acoustic piano framed by a flickering stream of static textures. The acoustic piano was recorded initially at Marlborough College in the Vermont country side. Over the winter of 2013 the lofi recordings were processed, treated and re-sampled to create a hazy mulch of warm post-digital ambient piano music.
Mastered by Taylor Deupree at 12K Mastering.
Download
Solo Phase by Nora Gibson Performance Project from Nora Gibson on Vimeo.
Choreography: Nora Gibson
Lighting Design: Clifford Greer
Dancer: Melissa McCarten
Music: Mikronesia
Video Editing: Gibson/Greer
Piece for Disklavier and electronics. Performed live at thefidget space for the Experimental Music Festival.
Ghost Tones (Excerpts) from Michael McDermott on Vimeo.