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I’m leaving New York for a few shows in Northampton MA, Boston and Baltimore. It’s the first time I’ve done this since 2001. In fact the show I go to play now is organized by Dave Gross who I met at the High Zero Festival, Baltimore 2001 where I played a Symphony for dry ice and we all arrived intense and crazed having come through some kind of 9/11 experience. I am so excited to be going off alone to play small places  in stereo with LiSa, some contact mics, a biscuit tin and a bunch of tuning forks.  My return to this playing place, reminiscent of 1998, is curious and fantastic.  DETAILS .

I’m fine tuning Sonic Bed_Marfa for a workshop with eight local composers this afternoon. Yes, the Bed is upstairs overlooking the performance space at ISSUE and has been here since June 2009 playing “yellow”. I’m staying till 20th to enable others to make pieces for it who can then enable others so adding to the library of Worldwide Bed works, shortly to go online. Fantastic. The Bed project can finally move on here with a team of  NYC Bed guardians. See music for bodies for details and up to date progress.

New York is steamingly hot. My play with “Where are the wild ones?” has found me reshaping sounds and redrawing their motion for the space. I’m using my live version of the Max based Bed instrument plus LiSa as am reprocessing certain strands as they appear. The twelve channel system sounds much better than in 2008, probably due to addition of a pair of fatter subs. Good decision to play this piece. It’s cool, rushing Northumbrian water is heavenly.

I’m at ISSUE Project Room, New York to perform on Thursday and run a Sonic Bed workshop Sunday through to Tuesday. I arrived last night so am pretty off my head re-working  Where are the wild ones for this space all day. Right now, John Butcher is here working out his ideas with Stephan Moore, the curator and energy behind this  Floating Point festival. I met Stephan when playing with Merce in 2006. John is sounding fabulous. It’s the first time I’ve been here since Suzanne died and it’s good.

Its hotter than yesterday and I’m still here to play this afternoon with Phil Durrant.  We’re both past violinists, have known each other for years and have never made an electronics duo together before. We’re playing outside in the grassy courtyard of a small wooden house. I’m playing with extremely processed sounds and utterly matter of fact sounds drawn through the amplified biscuit tin. I love its directness. I love this playing again. We set up around the edge so the audience have to sit in 80 degrees in the middle. We wear funny sunnies to survive and enjoy it. Evan and Chris Corsano seem to too .

Later that night, those 2 make a truly fabulous trio with Nate Wooley, who is written about as being born a formed  musician. Hearing them play I believe it. Its a long time since I’ve felt this.

I am at Kongsberg Jazz Festival to play with Mimeo. Christian and Peter can’t make it so Oren Ambarchi  and Peter Behrendsen are stepping in. It’s as hot and sunny as London but the red brick venue we play in is dark and cool. We had an intention to play as a Scratch Orchestra, but online discussion meandered a little and we have agreed to play an interpretation of the 9 minute Christian Wolff piece “Edges” somewhere within a 50 minute set instead. It’s the first Wolff piece I’ve played since meeting him at Headlands, California, November 2008.

We play a little politely. Some moments but not with the same complete focus as in Wigry in November last year. We’ve decided to make a double vinyl release of that concert. Hopefully by September this year. I’ll let you know when.

I’ve made the soundtrack for Magnus Irvin’s super 8 film “Spiral in spiral out”. The film is based around one idea but is in four sections over 4′30″. Its aesthetic suggests music hall french pianos but I find wind processed kite string glitchings do the job, pulling out the different rhythms and frequencies  and therefore patterns within  for the different sections.

Unfortunately I post discover that super 8 won’t carry much of that detail, although the panning motion will work. It’s for an outdoor super 8 film festival in Germany in September. details to follow.

I am slim-lining  my tuning fork instrument for travel by investigating how much more of the guitar’s wooden body I can remove. However, my efforts somehow destroy its earthing system so I decide to remove the pick-up coils and attach them to jack leads instead. Produces a super lightweight flexible set up and it’s excellent after all these years to finally break inside and understand the electric guitar, but oh fat shame to have to relinquish its presence on the performance table. Maybe this departure could be temporary.

Sonic Bed_London playing Bend by Kaffe Matthews opens at the Science Gallery in Dublin.

Runs noon to 8pm daily till October 1st 2010.

Details

Monday morning and music for bodies is up early in Dublin, exploring the local furnishings for new sonic interface inspiration. We are here to install SonicBed_London(2005) at the Science Gallery for the Biorhythm: Music and the Body show.

There are 14 other artists with a variety of works, all of us taking several days to install. Excellent to find and meet other evolutionarily, vibratory, perceptive development brains at work. We discuss and plan new designs and ideas to build not just immersive, but sculptural, portable interfaces and spaces for audience.  Bring on the Fuller inspired electricity- free sea travelling, element driven expandable music for bodies pod. The essential stage 2 is finding new participants.