From the website of the artist Ranjit Bhatnagar:

“Simple automatic instruments are constructed from local materials and objects on site. The system learns the sounds it can make by trying out its instruments, and then uses its range of sounds to try to reproduce the rhythmic and melodic qualities of sounds such as the voices of visitors. It then loops and alters these imitative sequences into improvised compositions. (That last part’s not done yet, so you won’t see it in the video.)

In this example, the source audio is a bit of the soundtrack from the movie Citizen Kane, and the noisemakers are a set of found object percussion machines and an electromagnetically fretted electric guitar.”

The tech is pretty basic and the conversion to music is largely straight forward but the presentation of the idea is pretty sharp. I would love to see how well the system works with a high noise to signal ratio. Can it only make “music” in a relatively quiet room of two people talking or can it eliminate some white noise to find the melody of a large conversation.

Pamela Michelle Johnson was one of the many (250) artists showing at this years Artropolis Artist Project and was kind enough to give a quick interview.

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The Hipster Olympics have just been held and reports are sketchy but the winner was someone with second hand rumpled clothing, a neck handkerchief, substance abuse subsidized by their parents, a beard that hangs permanently between full and scruff and a caffeine based twitch that just makes their cell texting that much more annoying faster.

So in other words it’s anyone’s game, male or female (just to be clear thats sarcasm not irony).

Improv Everywhere, Richards favorite performance artists are at it again and this time they take the best day ever theme they did a year so so back for a small struggling rock band (that didn’t turn out so well) and apply it to a little league game.

Not wanting to ruin the surprise for anyone but they really pulled out the stops for this event. So much so I am expecting a press statement that this event is the pilot for their new network television show starting in the fall of 2008.

Take a look, enjoy and check out some of their other hits which include the now infamous “Best Buy” event which was held at the Best Buy in lower Manhattan which I was recently in to get a video cable and is surprisingly cramped and dark to pull something like this off.
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