Ni Hao You Doin’? – A new Hepnova shirt on Zazzle in collaboration with Joey G.

We were hanging out in Little Italy/Chinatown tonight and Joe came up with this brilliant bilingual pun that celebrates the confluence of cultures in a pizza/scallion pancake slice of Lower Manhattan with classic New York wit and attitude.  Here’s to pasta and to potstickers and to Sino-Italian-American friendship! Ni hao you doin’?

Buy the Ni Hao You Doin’ shirt on Zazzle

Ni Hao You Doin’? by Hepnova in collaboration with Joey G

Estrella Intersects The Plane by Matthew Richard

Significant Other by Diego Rioja

The Life Dress by Elizabeth Fuller

I took this photo in Williamsburg on my way to Joel’s dinner party last week.

ZEE Immersive Audiovisual Environment by Kurt Hentschlager  I’m in the testimonial video!

New music for your next ccowboy zombie prom slow dance from Hepnova & JC Cassis

Original version of Again Tonight

More Hepnova Music on Bandcamp

Photos by Daniel in the Lion’s Den via Flickr.

Above: a light sculpture by Matthew Richard.
Below: Thomas the Barrel by Meredith Hasson.

Below: Life Dress by Elizabeth Fuller. Featured in Gizmodo.

More pics on Flickr.

Here is a portrait of me drawn by artist and illustrator Gideon Kendall.  I bartered it in exchange for customizing the theme on his WordPress blog.

Mumbo Jumbo Maracas vs. T.I.

Mumbo Jumbo Maracas vs. Art Kleiner

Mumbo Jumbo Maracas vs. The Plastic Ono Band

Thanks to Yasser Ansari, Paul Paradiso, and Jorge Just for these brilliant mashups!

Mumbo Jumbo Maracas (excerpt) @ ITP NIME 2009, Southpaw, Brooklyn, NY from lee-sean on Vimeo.

Here is an excerpt of my Mumbo Jumbo Maracas piece for the ITP NIME concert at Southpaw in Brooklyn last night.
Featuring Eric Mika on maracas and Arturo Vidich on keytar
Thanks to Meredith Hasson and Tianwei Liu for the video

More video coming soon. Photos on Flickr.

TXTTONE is my final project for Live Web.  It’s a web browser and SMS-based collaborative musical instrument that is meant to be performed in a room full of people with laptops and cellphones.  I wanted to create an interactive and collaborative musical experienced based on the ubiquitous technologies that we normally have with us at all times.  I was also interested in the play between the synchronous and asynchronous and explore the phase effects that result from TXTTONE being played on multiple computers simultaneously.  TXTTONE is programmed in AJAX/PHP, with SMS support by TextMarks.   I did the sound design in Logic Pro; I was going for “wind chimes meets dial tone.”

Check it out here.

Come out to Brooklyn next Tuesday night for the ITP NIME Show! I will be performing my Mumbo Jumbo Maracas piece with Arturo Vidich and Eric Mika.

NIME: New Interfaces for Musical Expression
Creating new performance tools for digital music.

In the eighth annual NIME concert, performers will play a series of newly designed electronic instruments that aim to keep the “live” in the live performance of digital music.

Electronic music is usually played with a keyboard and mouse. Laptop musicians often sit at a desk and give performances that feel like watching someone work in their cubicle. The idea behind NIME is to go beyond the mouse and keyboard and beyond even piano keys and drum pads. It seeks to present performance systems that make the most out of the new opportunities for musical expression that digital technology offers.

This year’s NIME concert will feature such innovations as a musically enhanced sewing machine, sonified floor tiles, performative knitting needles, turntablism for live instrumentalists, electronically controlled cartoon antics, novel realizations of the rock guitar, and a host of other exciting approaches to the creation of music.

NIME is an end-of-semester performance by 16 graduate student artists from the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at NYU.

Entry is $7 (Free for NYU ID holders)
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Doors open at 7, Show starts at 8

Southpaw
125 Fifth Avenue (at Sterling Pl)
Brooklyn, NY 11217
718.230.0236

Here is the score for my new musical composition, Mumbo Jumbo Maracas, a trio for Wiimote MIDI controller playing a custom MainStage patch, keytar, and maracas.  I will be playing the Wiimote, with Arturo Vidich on keytar and Eric Mika on maracas.  We will be playing the world premiere of the piece as part of the ITP NIME show on December 15.  Details coming soon!

Monkey Think
Monkeys often evokes a strong emotional response among people. Monkeys as symbols are also charged with social and political meaning.  We often anthropomorphize monkeys and project our own human anxieties onto them. Monkeys drive us bananas. They are Curious George one minute and the next minute they are giving you Ebola or AIDS or ripping off your face. Horror lies just under the surface of cute. 

I worked this week with Kristin Loeb on Monkeys Watching Monkeys, a streaming web video installation that deals with the mediated gaze, reflections and narcissism as they relate to how people look at monkeys, and how we think monkeys look at people and how monkeys look at each other.

More monkeys / This is is really disturbing / WHOA!

Monkey Do
We started with the Conference.as code that Shawn gave us in class, but we came across some mysterious problems. For some reason the compiled SWFs only worked part of the time on Kristin’s computer and never actually worked on mine. (Does Snow Leopard hate Monkeys or what?) So we moved on to some off-the-shelf solutions, trying first iChat, then Skype, and finally USTREAM.tv to create a series of simian scenarios. The goal was to position webcams and screens in a way to create an “infinity effect” of primate viewing pleasure.

Documentation outtakes on Flickr

Finally, we created the be beginnings of the Monkey Show, a webpage featuring two USTREAM channels and a Twitter widget that displays the latest tweets with the work “monkey” in them. We hope to trick this page out with more live monkey media in the near future.

Monkey Learn
Bandwidth is an issue
There are mysterious bugs in the system
Even off-the-shelf solutions have their limitations
This installation would probably work better and be more aesthetically pleasing with just cameras and monitors (with the laptops hidden)
The installation would probably have worked better with analog video
Lighting and camera placement are tricky
If only our monkey talent were this well trained:

This week I have continued to develop my idea for my Live Web midterm.  My project is called Monkey Watching Monkey Watching Monkey… It combines live streaming video with elements of Nam June Paik’s TV Buddha and The Infinite Cat Project. I want to play with the idea of the mediated gaze, reflections and narcissism.  I have also been reviewing some of the concepts we dealt with in my Animals and People class last spring.  I’ve previously said that I like looking at animals through webcams and in zoos.  But what do animals see when they look at us?  What do they see when they see themselves reflected in a mirror or on a video screen?  I want to create an infinite loop (or more like spiral) of live internet video of monkeys watching monkeys watching monkeys, ad infinitum.  It would be awesome to try this with real monkeys, but in the meantime, I’ll demonstrate proof of concept with virtual monkeys.  Starting off from the Infinite Cat idea, but with monkeys:

Lemur photo by Sandrine Vuillermoz, published in National Geographic.

Imagine the above scenario with live video, multiple computers, and streaming online.  What if I replaced the lemur photo with the last photo with me in it.  Would that create an infinite loop of monkeys looking at monkeys?

I want to do something involving live streaming video that combines elements of Nam June Paik’s TV Buddha and The Infinite Cat Project.  I want to play with the idea of the mediated gaze, reflections and narcissism.  I also want to work with animals, whether real or fake.  Still trying to flesh out this idea…stay tuned.

The working title of the new collection is Transistor Troubadour.  We are planning on doing some more covers as well as some Hepnova originals and to continue to develop the unique electro-acoustic sound that has emerged in previous Hep tunes like “You’re For Me” and “Again Tonight.”

Check out the new Hepnova tracks on Bandcamp. More tracks in the Transistor Troubadour collection are in the works, so check back often for more music!

Lyrics after the jump:

En la plaza de mi pueblo
Traditional

En la plaza de mi pueblo
dijo el jornalero al amo
“Nuestros hijos nacerán
con el puño levantado”.

Esta tierra que no es mía
esta tierra que es del amo
la riego con mi sudor
la trabajo con mis manos.

Pero dime, compañero,
si estas tierras son del amo
¿por qué nunca lo hemos visto
trabajando en el arado?

Con mi arado abro los surcos
con mi arado escribo yo
páginas sobre la tierra
de miseria y de sudor.

Märk Hur Vår Skugga (Fredmans Epistel #81)
Carl Michael Bellman

Märk hur vår skugga, märk movitz mon frère
Inom ett mörker sig slutar
Hur guld och purpur i skoveln den där
Byts till grus och klutar
Vinkar Karon från sin brusande älv
Och tre gånger sen dödgrävaren själv
Mer du din druva ej kryster
Därför Movitz kom hjälp mig och välv
Gravvård över vår syster

Lillklockan klämtar till storklockans dön
Lövad står kantorn i porten
Och vid de skrålande gossarnas bön
Helgas denna orten
Vägen opp till templets skriftprydda stad
Trampas mellan rosors gulnade blad
Multnande plankor och bårar
Till dess den långa och svartklädda rad
Djupt sig bugar i tårar

Så gick till vila från slagsmål och bal
Grälmakar Lövberg din maka
Där ditåt gräset långhalsig och smal
Hon än glor tillbaka
Hon från Dantobommen skildes idag
Och med henne alla lustiga lag
Vem skall nu flaskan befalla
Torstig var hon och uttorstig är jag
Vi är torstiga alla

Thanks so much for your help!

A.G. – Weird erratic/eclectic General MIDI madness
Drama Queen – Smoky night-time eyes, tape hiss, and more drama
Dream – MIDI-powered koto and shamisen Orientalism, oh my!
Fondue – Minimalist mating music for robots
Hymn – A terrifying deconstructed Taiwanese hymn
Last Song – Just when you thought it was over, last but not last
Prozac Piano – Pop a pill before you listen

You know you want to download them all in one ZIP file.

Although the Cunningham living legacy plan aims to preserve its founder’s vision intact as custodian of his intellectual property, that does not mean the choreography will be frozen forever, like an artifact of the past. As a choreographer, Cunningham always welcomed new technology and pioneered countless innovations. Collaboration, chance, and change were the very cornerstones of his approach.

Although the sun has set on his career, a new dawn inspired by his achievement may follow. “Ideas,” as the artist Robert Rauschenberg, Cunningham’s collaborator, said, “are not real estate.”

Neither is intellectual property. It could be a site where past art is not just preserved but fertilizes future growth.

“Dancing is a process that never stops,” Cunningham said when announcing his living legacy plan, “and should not stop if it is to stay alive and fresh.”

There was a mention of Creative Commons in the article’s discussion of copyright issues.  Cunningham was one of the few major choreographers to have licensed his work under a Creative Commons license.  As an advocate of Creative Commons licenses, I applaud Cunningham’s generosity to our collective artistic heritage.  However, I should also note as a comparison that in most folk dancing traditions, sharing and open collaboration are the norms– the idea of ownership is fluid and oftentimes forms and techniques are owned and transmitted collectively.

<tangent>Another scenario to consider: Michael Jackson “owned” the moonwalk in the sense that it is a dance move popularly associated with him.  But what if he literally owned it as intellectual property?  Would the Jackson estate be going after the unauthorized moonwalkers in the Eternal Moonwalk tribute site? </tangent>

The CSM article did not mention Cunningham’s life partner and frequent artistic collaborator, composer John Cage.  The two men’s work similarly combined demanding detailed instructions with indeterminacy and chance operations such as the rolling of dice.  The Cage estate has recently gone after what it considered copyright infringements against Cage’s (in)famous 4’33″ (“The Silent Piece”).

The big Zen koan question then becomes, is randomness and silence copyrightable?

The score of 4’33″ instructs the performer(s) to not play their instruments for four minutes and thirty-three seconds.  But the piece is not really silent.  As I have previously written:

The piece is made up of the hum of the air-conditioning in the hall, the ruffle of programs, the coughing of an audience member; it is an invitation, an invocation, to listen to the ambient sounds all around us.  Cage rejects the distinction between musical and non-musical sounds, and embraces all sounds, regardless of the performers intent, to be potentially musical.  In doing so, Cage completes the break from the history of classical composition and offers up a new model for music in which the primary act of for the composer and for the performer is not to make music, but to listen.

When a critic told Cage that anybody could have written 4’33″, Cage responded with his usual charming wit, “but nobody else did.”  There is no doubt that the provocative and performative nature of 4’33″ is an act of creativity, if not genius.  At the same time, one could also argue that because the piece is about listening to the sounds that exist in the performance space even if no instruments are being played, then David Tudor’s “non-playing” of the piano at the premiere, as well as the noises generated by the audience members present, were all integral parts of the piece.  In that sense, the performer and the audience share a kind of authorship of the piece.  They all ‘performed’ 4’33″ and made it what it was.  By elevating the role of listeners, Cage was in effect bringing back a participatory, interactive element that had been lost in Western “classical” music.

Cage’s 4’33″ also represents a break from the idea of Romantic authorship, where “an author is perceived to be the source of original ideas, transforming the world around him through his own genius” (Authorship Collective).  Romantic authorship would claim that the roll of the composer is to create music out of silence. But Cage’s point is that silence does not exist.

One of the inspirations for 4’33″ was Cage’s experience in an anechoic chamber at Harvard University. An anechoic chamber is a soundproofed room designed in such a way that all the surfaces in the room will absorb all sounds made in the room, rather than bouncing them back as echoes.

Cage entered the chamber expecting to hear silence, but as he wrote later, he “heard two sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation.” Cage had gone to a place where he expected there to be no sound, yet sound was nevertheless discernible. He stated “until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.” (Wikipedia)

Composers cannot create music out of silence because silence does not exist. Even if it did, unless we are deaf, it is impossible to perceive it.  Cage’s 4’33″, like Duchamp’s ready-mades, is a kind of “found art,” comprised of environmental sounds that already exist.  We are all constantly surrounded by sounds, they are unavoidable elements of our environment.  The role of composers and musicians is to organize and present those sounds, which is exactly what  remix and mash-up artists do today when they create new music from the found sounds and cultural artifacts found in our environment.  In a way, the “found-sound” composition 4’33″ is an Ur-remix, a remix of (non)silence and of reality itself, and John Cage an avant la lettre master of the mash-up.

All of this has inspired my latest composition: 433 trees falling in the forest with nobody to hear the sound. (C) 2009 Lee-Sean Huang, published by Hepnova Multimedia LLC.  All Rights Reserved.

Looking at myself in the Self-Centered Mirror

Broken Red Mirror: pieces of a portrait of Red Burns

Broken Red Mirror viewed from the front

Snow Mirror

Mirror No. 5 (Pac Man Mirror)

Mirrors Mirror

More photos on Flickr

I ran some of my YouTube videos through Yooouuutuuube and here’s what I got:

Herbivores by Elizabeth Fuller and Lee-Sean Huang played through Yooouuutuuube.
Original version of Herbivores

ODI et AMO played through Yooouuutuuube
Original version of ODI et AMO

Can’t Stop (HEPNOVA Remix) Music Video by JC Cassis and Lee-Sean Huang played through Yooouuutuuube
Original version of Can’t Stop

Check out Yooouuutuuube before Google shuts it down. See the Rhizome interview with David Kraftsow for more.