MIM goes sustainable

tsa tsa tsa. our mighty team has new project!
our MIM labs and different projects teached us one important point!
we cant continue wasting energy to question new media art and theatre.
that simple it is!

so, in our new project we will generate all necessary energy on stage using technical lo fi possibilities. piece will be premiered in 2011 in collaboration with Tallinn 2011!
You can join with our new project group in facebook here...

stay tuned - we're back again!

first review

st review...
MIM_review.pdf

MIM in Karlsruhe, day 4, the showing

And here comes our most important day in Karlsruhe, a hectic mess on several previews, fixing the last-minute bugs on programs and hardware setups, cutting the scenes that did not worked out, figuring out the transitions -- and give it all to the audience at 20:00 sharp.

For our surprise the organizers had done a poster for the showing - a nice gesture but was a puzzling to see that most sophisticated new media centre and art school, ZKM is unable to get a graphic designer and they rely on secretary ladies Microsoft Word a design tool instead ;) So Kristjan fixed this: the usual MIMs-style handout (PDF) and flyer (PDF) in a trusty Helvetica.

An important change happened a night before: we killed the concept to revolve everything around bees, bee-comb-pattern lights, bee-dance and bee-songs since the whole bee-concept started to strangle us. "MIM is not about creating a logical, staged and rehearsed performance on topic x, it is about collaboration workshop and showing the results afterwards" we said "If we go for a staged performance, set expectation in such a way that the piece is perceived as a performance it is no way going to be a decent, enjoyable outcome for the public nor us". Instead, we broke the whole thing apart, re-introduced some parts what were scrapped because "not fitting to the concept" and killed some questionable-quality "conceptual" parts.

To death list went the Wii attached to the inside shell of to the plastic trashcan (can be seen on the picture below when watching closely). When putting the trashcan to the side, you will get a nice controller that can be pushed to roll over the stage - and it always stops in the same position because of uneven weight centre. Assign the Wii x-axis velocity to certain MIDI controller value (such as sound) volume allows to built a "thing" what becomes alive when touched and gets quiet again when left alone. Same goes to light control: we played around with the rolling trashcan dimming-undimming the lights while moving and putting it all dark when stopping. But...that was that, we did not manage to develop it further: it does not make sense to just to show the controller for showing controller's sake.

To rebirth list we added some analog electronics: Maike's impressive "circuit piano" - four bended, light-sensitive bleep-and-noise emitting circuits.

Also we added Genoel's little sad wrangling robot: a small LED torch attached to a stepmotor and controlled via Make Contoller board and MAX/MSP patch.

So, the how went the public showing in the evening? A well-know phenomenon that the preview is a complete disaster BUT the premiere itself always works out held true this time too. Every sketch, every transition went smoothly, public did not freaked out, we got the applause, gave some interviews, packed our immense amount of stuff and it was time for a small celebration.

Big thanks for the organizers, see you in MIM4 in autumn!

MIM workshop in Karlsruhe, day 3

Third day: we got the spring finally! zupaa-nice morning with soaking in the sun. Who wants to get into that glass cube anyway?

Well, we had to be there, clock is ticking. We discussed the scenes we came up so far and played them through.

In the middle there was a time for another ethnic restaurant (this time Chinese) an more discussion: how can we keep the workshop side of the event when we are staging the whole ting like theatrical perfomance? What should and will the audience expect? Do we stop between scenes and explain how/why things were done? Or we just do the QA in the end? This are just so different comparing to last 2 MIMs in Estonia - hard to say what the audience really think of event.

Along these everybody kept working on their perfomance elements: circuit chachas and stepmotor walzes, Wiis sunked to rolling garbage bins neverending ukulele sessions.

We ended the day with a massive surround soundscape: Björn provided some smart SuperCollider algorithms what turned a to a eerie jungle 8-channe soundscape: you could spots just every animal out there, even the elephants. Pity the crappy Youtube video below can not give you the real feeling to be inside the creation.

MIM in Karlsruhe, day 2

Second day - still rainy and cold - in our glassy Kubus/Cube we got some more shape to the ideas and also got more wacky instruments to play with.

We worked texts, translations, double meanings, Germans speaking Estonian and vice versa - below there is a duet between Maike reading Päär poem about bees, Taavet is playing sweet green ukulele with delay effects.

Sound and light made a dynamic duo on "Bee Genesis" scene - still sketchy, but possibly a powerful shadow composition. Below is the first rought draft where Päär is making the move. It looks OK, but we need to actually stage it and give it a decent meaning.

The day at Kubus ended with the jam session what happened unplanned but you can not just fight the forces of nature: if you have 6 guys and 1 gal in the room who all have been making sound one way or another you can not just stop the music. The lineup for today: SuperCollider effects and vocal processing, Ableton Live keyboards, a trumpet, ragga-mc, squaking circuits and the grand Yamaha piano.

MIM in Karlsruhe, day 1

This time we have a "special edition MIM", Goethe Foundation sponsored event in Karlsruhe, Germany.

In addition to the regular MIM team we have now extra strike force from Germany - three talented, music-oriented artists looking forward to do something exciting in stage-perfomance-meets-media-art space.

The whole thing takes part of ZKM, a enormous media complex (old warfare factory actually). Our working stage, the "Kubus", is the modern extension of ZKM, an impressive class cube (what I try to photograph tomorrow).

The day started with usual intros, "what do we have brought along" kind of gadget demos (as you can imagine, lot of wildly varied stuff from servomotors to Wii to harmonicas) and initial discussions how the work process will look like and in what framework we will gonna be working.

We are trying to keep the tech side on the sidelines, discussing and messing with it only when needed and spend a lot of time just generating ideas and brainstorming around them. Still some basic stuff we had to set up so we spent the morning making ourselves conformable with the space.

Hooked up the projector; got the lights controlled via USB->DMX inteface; set up 8-channel surround sound via MOTU Traveller soundcard and Yamaha DM2000 digital mixer. It turned out to be quicker to use 8 analog outs to DM2000 instead of ADAT digital 8-out what theoretically a better, digital-domain-only solution. We use surrond in cicrular setup, something like NW, N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W.

Some gear was not working so happily, Wii to Midi utility I was planning to use turned out to be unstable: actually its not the software, but more likely the DarwiinRemote library its based on or my machine's faulty Bluetooth connection. My initial plan was to capture Wii signals, convert them to MIDI using the utility above and then use another free tool MidiPipe to funnel the signals both to my computer and also to via OSX built-in Bonjor-based MIDI sharing network so others can pick up the same signals and use them. We got it running theoretically but in pretty buggy and unstable form so perhaps we go for Wii capture using MaxMSP and broadcast the signals via OSC.

All set, we went for Turkish delights and actually discussing the most interesting part: what we are going to do? What is ticking in everybody's minds? Taavet kept stressing that there is no "no" for ideas, lets let it all out, mess around and eventually some stickier ideas will stay around.

So far we managed to come up two directions now we can go: a dark sound/light/text installation with stress on staged worldplay and light "where I got the honey from" bee-dance (see below). But we can as well scrap these tomorrow and start from the scratch - after all we were promised to have a trumpet and guitars so it is gonna be a morning of raging robot rock. Or mellow algorithmic jazz. Or heartbreakin noise blues.

Next MIM in ZKM

we are happy to announce that next MIM will take plake in ZKM in Karlscruche in march 2008 (25-30). This will be the collaboration between us and our german collaborators.. we're looking foward!

Amateur and Meat are playng live in Milky Way

Taavet will collaborate with Anja Mueller (Berlin/Amsterdam) to make rock-concert-dance-performance in Melkweg theater in Amsterdam. Performances will take place 07, 08 and 09 of december in 2007. You can follow our blogs and myspace sites:
amateurlearns.blogspot.com
www.myspace.com/amateurlearns

meatwaits.blogspot.com
www.myspace.com/meatwaits