The 5th edition of MusicLab was an algorave (algorithmic rave) featuring Renick Bell based in Japan, Khoparzi based in India, and researchers in Norway. Renick Bell and Khoparzi live-streamed improvised live-coded music on their computers while the audience danced at home. We measured audience members' movement using our new MusicLab smartphone application that uses smartphones' built-in accelerometers and gyroscopes. We also asked questions about the experience of the concert. Navigate with the menu on the left to retrieve the data, review instructions for participants, and learn more about the proof-of-principle research.
Event start
UTC 13:30 / Oslo: 15:30 / India: 19:00 / Japan: 22:30
Approximate schedule (in UTC time):
- 13:30-13:40 Introduction by Solveig with instructions for participants on app
- 13:40-14:10: Renick Bell set
- 14:10-14:40: Khoparzi set (Code released by Khoparzi)
- 14:40-15:00: Panel discussion and Q&A with performers and researchers Qichao Lan and Jonna Vuoskoski. Moderated by Dana Swarbrick
- 15:00-15:10: Data Jockeying by Cagri Erdem
Contributors
- Dana Swarbrick - Moderator, researcher and event organizer
- Solveig Sørbø - Hostess and event organizer
- Cagri Erdem - Data Jockey
- Jonna Vuoskoski - Panelist, researcher and head of project Entrainment, social bonding and pleasure
- Qichao Lan - Panelist
- Kayla Burnim - Data manager
- Alexander Refsum Jensenius - Head of research, MusicLab
- Matthew Good - Project leader Digital Scholarship Center
- Rebecca Josefine Five Bergstrøm (on leave) and Halvor Kongshavn - Legal advisors
About the algorave performers
Renick Bell
Renick Bell is one of the leading figures of the algorave movement. Mixmag magazine has called him “one of [the algorave] scene’s more flabbergasting producers,” and Resident Advisor calls him “Algorave kingpin” and writes that “watching him make his music is just as fun as dancing to it.”
Bell improvises bass-heavy algorithmically generated music full of percussion and noise by live coding with open source software, including software he has written called Conductive. Each performance is new and unique, unheard before the event even by Bell, with his live programming activity projected for the audience to see.
In 2019, he was selected by Aphex Twin for the latter’s first-ever curated event for The Warehouse Project in Manchester, UK, where he headlined the Archive Room stage. In 2018 he released an album called Wary on 2018 Grammy-nominated producer Rabit’s Halcyon Veil label and another called Turning Points on Seagrave Records, which was a critical success, including being ranked 19 out of “The 50 best albums of 2018” by FACT magazine. He has releases on Lee Gamble’s UIQ label, Berlin-based Conditional Records and Saplings Records, among others.
His music practise corresponds with a research practice of writing software and writing research papers on live coding, electronic music, and art, as well as teaching in university and other contexts. Based in Tokyo since 2006, Bell has lived in Asia since 2001. He is originally from West Texas.
Source / Read more about Renick Bell
Abhinay Khoparzi
Abhinay Khoparzi AKA Khoparzi is a multidisciplinary creative technologist who maintains a practice across film, video, music and web technologies. Having always tried to run away from being put in a box he has in turns been a consumer, critic, and maker of tools that allow him and others to make experiences that make us think, play and inform.
He is interested in using technology itself as a medium that can be moulded into various form to tell stories and build experiences. To this end, he collaborates with various artists, and technicians to tackle creative, interactive and technical challenges, and explore various permutations and extensions of art.
As a musician and sound artist he has performed experimental electronic music at venues and events like The Indian Electronica Festival, (Blue Frog, Mumbai), 6 Foot Oscillator in a 4 foot Room (Zenzi Mills, Mumbai), Floatsam with Mukul Deora and Piere-Paolo Allesanderello (Volte, Mumbai), and other collaborative performances with artists like Kargo Pluggy, and Sadahnmo from the 3rd Thought Entertainment roster.
In 2018, filmmaker/visualist Dhanya Pilo and Abhinay co-instigated Algorave India, a collective of artists, musicians, and visualists intent on promoting programming as performance art through Algoraves. As an extension of this he has performed with live coding platforms TidalCycles and Hydra at Fat Finger Mayhem (Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai, 2018 and 2019), Algorave Sheffield (UK, 2018), International Conference of Live Coding (Madrid, 2019), Distributed Culture Conference (Argentina/UK, 2020), Algoritmi Remote Algorave (Torino, Italy, 2020) and organised/curated multiple independent Algoraves in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore.
Since 2018 Abhinay has been collaborating with artists from all over the world with network music performances with the intercontinental live coding ensemble Supercontinent and with remote ensemble Algomech which is a collaboration between CiLC Argentina and Algorave India.