Just before finals last semester, Matt Roberts and I lead a group of advanced Digital Arts majors to Miami during Art Basel where we performed together as Mobile Performance Group, our student-faculty new media collective and laptop ensemble.  We presented all new material inspired by our surroundings in the bustling Wynwood arts district. You can learn all about the experience from our online documentation or get a taste of things from the video below. Special thanks to Juraj Kojs for the invite.

• online documentation @ mobileperformancegroup.com

MPG Miami 12.01.11 – 5 min, 14 sec

My iTunes library is a wealth of sound material waiting to be tapped. For attack, I explored the possibilities of using this diverse set of songs as a starting point for a sound composition. Using only a short segment from the very beginning of each song (in other words, the “attack”), I have built a piece that is in no way a derivative and yet is in every way a derivative. This contradiction is at the heart of my concept for this piece.

• Recording in MP3 – 5 min, 47 sec
• Score in PDF – 52 kb

Screenshot from my DAW session for this piece.

Three rehearsals later, I was pretty happy with the results.  You can listen to the piece we created for this Feb 20th gig below.  I hope we can get the group together again and make more music in the future.

• G-Ball in MP3 – 6 min, 43 sec

Special thanks to Royce Horak for the invite!  We had fun.

Fuel Efficiency making some noise at half court.

This piece continues my exploration of the potential for laptops in chamber music settings.  The piano controls the momentum by choosing from among the musical materials on each page of the score, and in doing so slowly unfolds a harmonic sequence over the piece’s duration.  The laptop is used to capture and extend the acoustic output, producing textures that at first only fill in the silences between notes and eventually compete with the piano for attention.  The tension builds until the harmonic sequence is finally stated in its entirety, after which the piece unwinds to the final coda.  The overall mood is one of reflection, with moments of peace and passion.

• live recording in MP3 – 16 min, 55 sec
• score in PDF – 1.2 MB

page 4 of the score

Recording of this weekend’s performance is now available.  Thanks again to Juraj Kojs for the invite to perform in Miami.  I enjoyed hanging out with him, Paula Matthusen, Scott Miller, Michael McCurdy and the others before during and after the show on Sunday.

• desire for in MP3 – 9 min, 21 sec

The graffiti sign greets visitors

Combined setup before the show on Sunday

This weekend, I will be performing as part of this three day event that ends the 2009 12 Nights concert series. It coincides with Art Basel Miami, one of the biggest art festivals in North America. The series of concerts was curated by Juraj Kojs, who selected my piece desire for to open up the silence-themed Sunday concert.

A very fitting theme for this quiet piece inspired by distant alphorns my family and I heard one afternoon wafting through the window of our Swiss hotel. It was only after everyone had settled down from the dayʼs activities and committed themselves to silence that the music could be heard and enjoyed. It persisted for such a long time (literally hours) that it was a challenge of remain quiet. Thus the alphorns became a kind of replacement for complete silence the way that a room tone typically functions, but there was something far more pleasing and peaceful about them. Lulls in the conversation would last longer as we would extend our pauses to accommodate the distant, dreamy song. I found myself wishing that all silences could be filled with such beautiful and haunting drones.

With support from the Artist and Lecturers Committee, I invited Panaiotis to visit our campus for several lectures in my courses and an evening concert. This engagement ended up being a reunion with a former collaborator in Nandu Muley and a former student in myself. Each of us brought a different style of improvisatory music to the evening and the resulting combination was a unique and exciting blend of electronic, Indian and experimental music.

• Labyrinth in MP3 – 20 min, 13 sec
• Press release from Stetson

MPG was invited to perform on the diverse program of this showcase concert for the School of Music.  Our performance in the lobby during intermission featured our trademark shopping cart performance rig and utilized the four story atrium to reach audience members on all levels of the venue.  Selections came from our recent performance at UCF.

• Metalik – MP3, 10 min 22 sec
• Step Up – MP3, 7 min 3 sec
• Press release from Stetson

This performance was presented as a Thursday night preview to my presentation on Friday morning.  It allowed the conference attendees to experience MPG in our normal setting so that they had a better idea of what we do.  As is our usual method with Collective Sites, we gathered sounds and images from around campus to use as material for our performance.  The following 3 tracks were the results:

• Metalik – MP3, 10 min 22 sec
• Step Up – MP3, 7 min 3 sec
• Starter House – MP3, 11 min 5 sec

The performance also featured the premiere of our new interactive shopping cart.  This touch-sensitive controller is simple enough to allow audience members to join in the fun.  You can see it in action here:

Interactive Shopping Cart from Matt Roberts on Vimeo.

This piece is a first attempt to couple my laptop performance system with another live musician.  The electric guitar improvises using short motives that are captured by the laptop.  This sonic material is processed and looped to form a variety of textures.  Part 1 slowly builds to form a wall of looping figures that evokes a meditative state.  Part 2 uses chords as the basis for an animated rhythmic pattern that features subtle changes in timbre.  Overall, this piece demonstrates the expressive potential of the laptop in small ensemble settings.

• Part 1 in MP3 – 8 min 30 sec
• Part 2 in MP3 – 6 min 41 sec