Sounddesign for Pole Position

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Pole Position, a project by Marieke Verbiesen, is a game where the physical and digital world come together, born from the human desire to recreate digital environments and reshape them to our own physical world. It’s based on the original classic race game Pole Position, the first full colour racer released for the Atari in 1982. However, Marieke’s version of Pole Position is not quite a usual video game, but rather a fully automatized interactive cabinet. Currently there is an exhibition of it running at Kunsthallen Nikolaj in Copenhagen. Marieke asked me to do the sound design for Pole Position and meanwhile I uploaded some material on my Soundcloud page. For more detailed, conceptual and technical information about the project visit Marieke Verbiesen’s Pole Position website.

Exhibition schedule:
- Kunsthallen Nikolaj, Copenhagen, 9th November – 29th January 2012
- B-There Festival, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, 3rd November – 6th November 2011
- Centre for Visual Art, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, 17th September – 29 October 2011

Blind Date Project in Ohrid Macedonia

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This summer I spent two weeks in Ohrid, Macedonia to participate a project called Blind Date organised by my school in cooperation with ZFAC. Blind Date is basically a two week workshop and cooperation project between musicians from the Netherlands and Macedonia. It was open to music technologists, composers, and players of acoustic instruments to participate. Therefore I had the chance to meet many interesting people from the Balkans and work together with them intensely.

Together with Kosovo based film composer Memli Kelmendi I created a piece that included electronic soundscapes based on sounds we recorded in Ohrid exclusively (such as church bells, mosques, wind-generated waves etc.). The piece was supposed to produce an atmosphere that represents the varied history and geographical location of the place. This soundscape was then combined with traditional Macedonian kaval flute, played by Vladimir Krstevski and the violin, played by Antonio Gorgiev. We also perfomed it live as part of the Ohrid Summer Festival on the last day of the workshop.

Listen to OHRIDSOMNIA:

Soundtrack for Cart Life by Richard Hofmeier

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Richard Hofmeier is an independent game developer from Seatle. His most recent work Cart Life contains music from Pocketmaster, Lo-Bat, Mat64 and 4 pieces of my previously released EP Elements. According to Hofmeier the music was a vivid source of inspiration throughout the whole process of developing the game.

Cart Life is a retail simulation for Windows which showcases the life of street vendors in a small city located in the western United States. The game has a very unique and original charm with lots of fine details included. It potrays a new, interessting space between videogames and real meaning, totally implemented in an 8-bit style!

 
Translated from Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet: Cart Life is a perfect example of how the game industry begins to grow up. It does not take away from the toes to assign you with great environments, shock you with the raw force or entice you with attractive characters. Instead it is a kind of criticism of escapism. Hofmeier seem totally uninterested in the topics and themes that the rest of the game world is so obsessed with. His message is more about how dangerous it is to live an unfulfilled life. For what is it that the main character’s sad life really represent? Well, the pale reality of the American dream. People with hopes and dreams that get stuck in a mechanical consumption circle and breaks on the inside.

More Game Reviews:
- English Indie Games Weblog
- Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet
- Finland based Swedish newspaper Västra Nyland
- French Game Blog Oujevipo

Interactive Soundscape Installation at Art Basel

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Next week an exhibition with some of my audible work will start at Art Basel.

Under the name K.I.O.S.K. I will present an interactive soundscape installation for the audience to participate in real-time. The installation is part of this years Art, Entertainment & Desire showcase and will run each day before noon at a place called Keck, an ex-newspaper kiosk near the Kaserne areal in Basel.

With the possibility of direct involvement the listener gets passed the task to generate the timeline of the piece and to understand the presented compostion as a performance in real-time. More information can be found on the website of the organisers.

Solaris Live Soundtrack Project

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Next week I will play live in cooperation with Motel Aurora (guitar, keys) and Gijs van Viechen (percussion) to create a soundtrack in real-time for the movie Solaris by Andrei Tarkovsky. The project is elementary and will be improvised rather than prepared in detail.

Screening will take place on Wednesday, 23rd March after 20:00 at Delicatessen Zeeburg in Amsterdam.

Benjolin by Rob Hordijk and Joker Nies

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Recently, there was a workshop in Rotterdam by Rob Hordijk and Joker Nies to build an analog sound device called the Benjolin. A friend of mine participated there and brought over the Benjolin to my studio later on. We did some tests and played around with it for quite a while. The 8 potentiometers on board allow to adjust a few interesting sounds and I recorded some material and uploaded samples of it on my freesound page. If you consider to participate this project in the future, these might be interesting to hear.

Basically, the Benjolin circuit contains 2 oscillators with a wide frequency range and a filter part to smooth things out. Signal feedbacks are used in a way to control the oscillators and filter of the circuit and generate random, chaotic, noisy drones. Several Benjolins can be linked together and it’s probably also interesting to connect other audio sources into it.