The thing about future shock is, it’s transformative. Even with extended stays on the International Space Station, the time even seasoned human travelers spend in space doesn’t add up to the time they spend on the ground, yet astronauts (and cosmonauts) universally talk about seeing life on Earth differently.

Amon Tobin’s sonic work is literally transformational when it comes to how it makes you hear the world: found sounds become entire albums, as on Foley Room (current TV’s interview below), and samples are consciously, transparently pushed to their breaking point. You can hear reality bending around you. The results aren’t self-referential about the line between tech and organic, as so much recent electronic music has been: the two as inseperable. Tobin’s world has changed, irreversibly. You’ll still wind up dancing; you may just find yourself dancing in ways you haven’t before. Here’s the artist on his most recent album.

When Amon Tobin comes on at 10:15pm Saturday night at Yuri’s Night Bay Area, you can bet people will be dancing all over NASA’s backyard. Thankfully, we have a special mix to share for every other day of the year, when you can’t get into the space program’s hangar.

Having covered CDs, vinyl, and video games, a lot of Tobin’s work is currently focused on live music. He’s shared this Chicago mix from January for the site here. “DJ mix” suggests that this is more like the boring, DJ texting on his cellphone fare we’ve had to live with in certain venues lately. I think, as usual, it sounds more like Amon come back from space.

Download the Amon Tobin Yuri’s Night mix

(there are a couple of samples that aren’t G-rated, just so you’re warned)

Deru laptoping live. Photo: pinkpucca, via Flickr. (CC)

Even in the post-Sun Ra era, artists still care about space.

Deru, aka Los Angeles-based IDM electronicator Benjamin Wynn, is playing Yuri’s Night Bay Area coming off of an injury — a repetitive stress injury. (Seriously.) And little wonder: laptop artists have some serious keying and mousing to do under the best of circumstances, and Deru pushes his computer to self-described cyborg-like technological detail.

Deru is just the kind of person you want to be grooving out to while celebrating Gagarin’s spin through outer space. So we’re delighted he’s given us a 45-minute set into which we can voyage. Enjoy! (And if you throw a virtual party with these mixes, send some photos / Second Life screen grabs.)

Just remember to give your wrists a break from computing now and then - at least until the robotic arm implant is ready.

Download Deru’s Free Mix

What’s the big idea in designing new interfaces for music? Just about everything, judging from the finalist entries for our Futuristic Music Design Challenge. A sequencer with bubblegum balls? A synth that works with surface temperature data and maps? Microtonal guitars, sound-making boxes, Nintendo games, digitally-connected saws and tape on bicycle wheels? Gloves, buttons, lights, strings, turntables? Yep, we’ve pretty much got the gamut here. We told contestants to make the Second Space Age proud. Now we get to see how they hold up.

Check out some of the videos and photos of what’s to come to get a sense of the projects, and if you’re attending Yuri’s Night Bay Area, be sure to get there by 2:30pm to watch these artists compete with each other in front of our expert judging panel. (See the Yuri’s Night Bay Area event schedule.)

Join this event on Facebook — and say hi!

After the show, get up-close-and-personal with the artists later on at the Create Digital Music booth. On the same stage, at 3:30 pm, our friends at Instructables.com have a show-and-tell session for even more DIY goodness. And then there are the installations, acrobats, space things, major scientists and thinkers… and, of course, stick around for a huge lineup of incredible music all night long. I’m going to figure out how I can be three places at once, personally, because there’s loads I want to see.

See you Saturday afternoon, California-bound peoples. Those of you not lucky enough to be in the Bay Area, stay tuned right here for more online coverage following the competition — plus the winner.

The Judges

Roger Linn is a leading designer of electronic music products, and is considered by many to be the father of the modern drum machine, as the designer behind his original LM-1 and the legendary Akai MPC60. He also wrote hits for the likes of Eric Clapton and Mary Chapin Carpenter — and he plays traditional Italian songs on mandolin monthly.

Liz Enthusiasm is the lead singer for indie synthpop band Freezepop, the “sweet and cold and fruity and plastic-y” band that has earned a passionate following among geeks and a spot on virtually every Harmonix game ever made, from FreQuency to Rock Band. And she sings a song with the digits of Phi. And undertakes in-depth studies of Dr. Pepper variants. Yum. (Photo:lisztless.)

Peter Kirn is the creator/editor of Create Digital Music and Create Digital Motion, communities and online zines for bleeding-edge digital creative types making computers into live visual and musical instruments. He’s also a composer, media artist, and classically-trained musician, and quasi-expert on the emerging nerdster scene. (Photo: Chachi Jones.)

Matt Ganucheau has produced music for games, film, and live electronic music, and teaches sound design for video games at the Expression College for Digital Arts. He’s one of the organizers of Yuri’s Night Bay Area. And he made an infamous art installation simulating female orgasm — as musical instrument, no less — and another that challenged our relationship to trees and the environment.

The Competitors

Bubblegum Sequencer

Hannes Hesse & Andrew McDiarmid

The Bubblegum Sequencer is a physical step sequencer that lets you create drum loops by arranging colored balls on a tangible surface. It generates MIDI events and can be used as an input device to control audio hardware and software. Because the output is generated in the form of MIDI events, the Bubblegum Sequencer can be used to control any kind of audio hardware or software.

The Box

Evan Morris

Hardware/Software music system using a custom Reaktor ensemble running on a laptop that re-sequences samples for an actual live electronic music performance. The hardware is designed to give the user LED visual feedback to avoid ever having to look at the the laptop’s screen.

I used the ucapps midibox64 spec for the hardware.

Videos

Brick: Weather Report

Jordan Hochenbaum and Owen Vallis

Brick is a tangible touch interface that allows its users a very new, unique, intuitive, and hands-on approach to computer interaction. It is a blank canvas– and depending on the software it is running, it can be used for many things. We are exploring the many ways to use Brick as a meaningful and musical instrument. Our first use of the table is as an interactive installation called Weather Report, where the user sonifies real-time surface temperature data into beautiful mini-compositions. We are also interested in developing Brick for different live performance settings, to meet our own needs and the increasing needs of the vastly different kinds of today’s musicians.

The Kromatron

Craig Dorety

The Kromatron is a Dynamic Meta-Instrument designed to revolutionize the way musicians interact with performance-based electronic music software. It was designed with aesthetics considered to be a major issue. Most commercially available MIDI controllers are essentially boxes with knobs on them and leave a lot to be desired, aesthetically. I am trying to put some Rock and Roll back into electronic music performance by adding a true sense of style and design. This instrument is a well-crafted and beautiful device. The Kromatron is machined from clear acrylic and includes an internal lighting system that acts as user feedback. It also contains 128 user-defined configuration presets that can be called upon with MIDI patch change signals. This allows for complete and dynamic control of any MIDI based software or hardware. I will be using a CME WIDI wireless MIDI interface to allow for freedom of mobility.

The Thimbletron

The Evolution Control Committee.: TradeMark Gunderson, Christy Brand

For the last 20 years, The Evolution Control Committee has built a reputation as one of the world’s leading bands in sampling, making experimental pop music in a style that has never quite settled on a name. Plagiarhythm? Plunderphonics? Mashup? Collage? Whatever you call it, The ECC assembles samples and sounds into cut-and-paste masterpieces. It’s illegal music, and The ECC has been violating copyright laws since before it was easy.

The cut-and-paste aesthetic isn’t just for the music: Live shows feature custom-built performance equipment like the Thimbletron, connecting ordinary thimbles to recycled electronics, allowing live sample triggering and more. White jumpsuits and lab coats round out the mad science style. In the world of The ECC’s music, Public Enemy duke it out with Herb Alpert while TV news anchor Dan Rather is the new frontman for AC/DC (which earned The ECC a cease and desist order from CBS Network’s lawyers). Copyright violation never sounded so good.

The Looping Pedal

Jen Carlile, with Sasha Leitman, Steven Backer, Jesse Fox

The Looping Pedal is a giant DJ turntable made from abandoned bicycle parts and a dismantled reel to reel tape player.

Two pieces of 1/4″ analog tape are strung along the outside of two bicycle wheels which are mounted on hacked bicycle frames. Also mounted on the frames are two tape heads which pick up the signal from the analog tape. This is a loop in the most literal sense.

The instrument can make a typical “scratching” sound by pushing the wheel back and forth or it can create a different timbre by spinning the wheel freely. In addition to the “traditional” scratching gesture, the right wheel can be rotated using the attached pedal. The result is a sound that builds on the sound of turntable scratching while adding other sonic possibilities.

WaveSaw

Luke Dahl

The WaveSaw is a flexible instrument for creating timbral gestures. As you flex and twist the WaveSaw the shape of the instrument becomes the shape of the sound waveform or spectrum.

Wavesaw paper PDF

Video demo (.mov)

cosmolyra

Carl Lumma and Denny Genovese

2-sided handmade electric slide guitar with 28 strings, tuned in 15-limit just intonation. It’s like nothing you’ve ever heard before. Unless you like Harry Partch or Toby Twining.

ammoBox

Nathan Ramella

The future of turntablism, vinyl control of sample phrases allowing layering and complex manipulation with the aid of MIDI control. It may be a little vanilla for this contest but maybe not. I don’t know who else is entering. I think it’s pretty sick. It can’t even say this is the ‘evolution’ of scratching, I skipped about 3 steps and landed in 2030.

Ed. note: Nathan is the co-creator of the Unofficial Ableton Live API, making him a hero among music geeks.

GrooveStep

Martin Robaszewski

GrooveStep is an innovating music-making program for the Nintendo DS which enables users to quickly create music using the touch screen interface.

Photo credits: Peter Kirn/Create Digital Media; Artists.

“The only thing more beautiful than the mesmerizing design and print work he creates under the ISO50 name might be Scott Hansen’s rich analog signal path. As Tycho, this San Francisco artist has an absolute lock on daydream downtempo, fusing thick, fuzzy beats with lush synths, samples and guitars. Buy the ticket, take the ride. RT - Urb Magazine”

Check out his video for “Dictaphone’s Lament” here:

For further audio/visual treats, you can find streaming audio of all of Tycho’s releases as well as his work as ISO50 here.

Click above for full-size image. With four stages operating simultaneously, you can bet plenty of stuff you want to catch will be happening simultaneously. (It is for me, at least. Hope I can shuffle around a little while also manning the CDM lounge.)

If you haven’t gotten tickets already, they’re still available online, and you can even get a ride from SF.

• B12 - Soundtrack of Space
• Future Sound of London - Ill Flower
• Alexei Zakharov - Peace 3 (X3: Reunion)
• Future Sound of London - Everyone in the world is doing something without me
• Low Profile Society - Example 10
• Vangelis - Rachel’s Song
• Global Communication - 14.31
• The Black Dog - 18 4 3s 555 [Part 2]
• Yasume - Rengoku Condensed
• Mr Projectile - Underneath the Evening
• Abfahrt Hinwil - The Light
• Elegi - Despotiets Vesen
• Cliff Martinez - Wear your Seatbelt
• Bola - Pfane Pt. 1
• Posthuman - Beautiful Beast
• Miles Tilmann - Through the Tubes
• Flotel - Untitled (Norberg live)
• Michael Land - The Madness of the Crystals
• Biosphere - Warmed by the drift
• Digitonal - Antares (Yuri’s mix)

digitonal mix MP3

Ed. Link is not working temporarily; we’ll let you know when it’s back up.

Mixed by Andy Digitonal, April 2008.
digitonal.com for everything, always.

- matt

If a magician is never supposed to give away the secrets to his tricks, someone forgot to tell Bay Area guitarist, electronic musician, and Yuri’s Night performer Christopher Willits, when he took up the offer to create a monthly video blog about home recording for XLR8R Magazine. In the guise of that one teacher you had in high school who commands respect, but who you just know parties like a rockstar, Willits lays down incredibly dense lessons that are easy even for a novice to grasp. Granted, to make the greatest use of the knowledge he is imparting requires a few key pieces of recording equipment, but if you follow along closely, you’ll be sure to pick up a few useful ideas.

Throughout his lessons, Willits proves that he is a master of the technology at hand, and clearly demonstrates how to achieve stunning results with the minimum amount of equipment and tinkering. His methods are simple and effective, while producing material that could easily have taken a far greater sum of money and time in a professional studio just a few decades ago.

As an added side effect of his presentations, Willits showcases his own talent to the audience, which is truly an aural treat. He proves himself to be a musician who possesses an intuitive grasp of composition paired with an overwhelmingly apparent raw creative ability, even in the rough thematic elements he explores in these brief segments. If anything stands as an exciting prelude to his performance in April, this is it.

You can view the first installment of “What You Talkin’ Bout, Willits?” here.

Image sourced from christopherwillits.com. Photo credit: Charis Briley

Update: entries are closed. Stay tuned for the official contestants, and lots more details as the challenge unfolds!

In science fiction and science fact, music has been central to finding a common language to speak to the universe. Music from Bach to gamelan — a mix curated by “DJ” Carl Sagan and his committee — has traveled into space on the Voyager spacecraft. In the digital age, musical interfaces are also often the best way to understand how to interface with technology and information.

Musicians have led many of the most innovative digital technological breakthroughs — the first digital synthesizer (at Bell Labs in the 50s), breakthroughs in modular electronic systems (modular synthesizers of the 60s), pioneering advances in digital storage and processing, unusual wireless interfaces and gestural controls decades ahead of the Nintendo Wii, and touch- and multi-touch tools years before the iPhone and Microsoft Surface.

But that’s all in the past. This is a design challenge for the future. We want to hear the best, most forward-thinking, generally coolest, Second Space Age-worthy instruments and digital music interfaces. If aliens land — as they did when met by a classic ARP synthesizer in Close Encounters — we want to be able to give them a great show.

Need extra incentive? The grand prize winner will take home a Yamaha Tenori-On.

Image: Voyager’s “golden record.” Source: NASA.

How to enter

We’re looking for designs of “instruments” — whether self-contained, electrically-powered devices or hardware interfaces for computers. That can include tangible interfaces, physical computing, hacked hardware, custom-built synths and electronics, and other gadgets. These must use at least some custom software and/or hardware.

You are limited to one computer and one input device — but the “input device” can be as complex as an interactive table. If that sounds vague, just remember — ultimately, the judges and audience decide. Wow them, and all will be well.

Artists must sign up in advance. We will have a limited number of slots. The best proposals will be chosen by the staff of createdigitalmusic.com to compete in San Francisco at Yuri’s Night.

Set up, plug in. You’ll have a limited set up time.

Play. You have three minutes to perform.

Entry form:

Enter via Google Documents, or contact us directly if you can’t access the entry form. (Please send us a quick email note once you’ve sent the Google Docs entry, and keep a copy of everything you enter into that form; we’ve had a couple of people have trouble with the form and don’t want to lose your entry!)

Entry deadline: 11:59 PM Monday, April 7, East Coast time. (No exceptions!)

THAT’S IT! It’s done! We’ll notify official contestants with details Tuesday morning.

(Performance/Competition Date: April 12, 2008; Time TBA)

Judging

A panel of judges with expertise in music and interaction design will judge the entries — and are encouraged to be biased by crowd response. (If you’ve got friends, tell them to cheer really loudly.)

Judging will be in three categories:

• Design and aesthetics: Does it look good? Is it an elegant design solution to the task? How much work went into the project?
• Innovation and originality: Does it break new ground? Is it an original concept? How much original work was done?
• Music and sound: If it sounds good, it is good.

Awards

Winners will be announced at Yuri’s Night, with a grand prize winner and honorable mention awards for each category.

The grand prize winner will take home a Tenori-On provided by createdigitalmusic.com, designed by Toshio Iwai and Yamaha. Runners up will be awarded prizes TBA.

Good luck!

Tenori-On photo: Gary Kibler for CDM.

Space exploration has brought not only views of the outer cosmos, but critical views back of the planet. So, among the new instrument designs coming to Yuri’s Night are at least two music devices built around sonifying data about planet Earth. (I’ll be bringing one, as well — more details soon.)”Weather Report”, by Cal Arts students Jordan Hochenbaum and Owen Vallis, uses a multi-point, tangible interface to surf temperature data and translate it into music. Full details over on Create Digital Music:Weather Report: Multi-Touch + Surface Temperature = Music on Earth

The underlying technology comes from the open Reactivision library, as used in the ReacTable (popularized recently on the Bjork tour).

If you’re bringing a music or visual project to Yuri’s Night, be sure to let us know.

… and around the planet

Bay Area information:

• Tickets
• Event site
• Events schedule

In a collaboration between CDM and Yuri’s Night Bay Area, I would like to welcome you all to YuriCDM.com. Here we will be showcasing the musicians, artists, speakers, and innovating technologies that will make this year’s Yuri’s Night an event unlike any other.

Yuri’s Night is a celebration of space exploration—and mankind’s curiosity, scientific ingenuity, technical achievements, and spirit of collaboration that have made it all possible. Each year, in over 120 places world-wide, Yuri’s Night commemorates mankind’s first venture into space, by Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961, and the launch of the first Space Shuttle by NASA exactly twenty years later. This year, NASA’s 50th anniversary, the Bay Area will be home to the largest Yuri’s Night celebration ever, with 8,000 people joining astronauts, artists, scientists, engineers, and musicians to pay tribute to our global space heritage and to celebrate how much more is out there to be discovered!

Electronic music by:

Amon Tobin in Gent; photo: volume12 (CC) via Flickr.

• Amon Tobin (Ninja Tune, Montreal)
• A special twilight downtempo set by Tipper (HI)
• John Tejada (LA/palette recordings): live set
• Lusine (Ghostly Intl., Seattle): live set
• Scuba (Hotflush Recordings, UK)
• Digitonal vs. Posthuman (UK): with live violin
• [a]pendics.shuffle (LA): live set
• Deru (Merck, LA): live set
• Tycho (Ghostly, Merck): live set
• Mr. Projectile (Merck): live set
• Dr. Toast (False Profit) vs. Ganucheau: live

Live vocal and instrumental music by:

Cellist Zoe Keating, by ekai. (CC)

• Telstar (Featuring: Phil Lesh, Steve Molitz, & John Molo)
• Freezepop (Rykodisc, Boston): indie synthpop / new wave
• Particle (LA): instrumental space-disco-dance
• BLVD w/ Souleye (LA): hip-hop, house, & breaks
• Zoë Keating: avant garde looping cello
• MJ Greenmountain (Hamsa Lila) vs. Yossi Fine (NY): global fusion and afro-tribal funk
• Christopher Willits (12k, Ghostly Intl.): processed guitar soundscapes
• Gamelan X: the intergalactic 17-member percussive melodic marching troupe
• Lulacruza: Argentinan percussion, guitar, and vocals

Speeches by:

Will Wright at the NASA podium. Photo: MysteryBee.

• World-renowned video game designer Will Wright.
• NASA astrobiologist Jonathan Trent.
• leader of the new NASA G.R.E.E.N. team for green technology research Saul Griffith.
• MIT-trained mad scientist and founder of one of the most innovative green power companies today, Makani Power.

Live performances by:

• 60 minutes of heart-pumping, high energy airplane aerobatics by Aeronautika
• Aerial performance and dance by Capacitor.
• Alien insects by Bad Unkl Sista, featuring breathtaking costumes by Anastazia Louise
• Gravity-defying stilt performances by The VonStilt Family

… and this is not even the full list! Stay tuned for more to come.

- matt

Composer/sound designer Matt Ganucheau is one of the organizers of Yuri’s Night Bay Area. He’s co-editing the Yuri’s Night site for createdigitalmusic.com and createdigitalmotion.com.