I visited U.C. Santa Cruz 'Openlab' for a week long artist residency with John Matthias to begin work on our new orchestral composition project Cortical Songs '2'. UCSC’s OpenLab is a network for collaborative discourse fueled by academic communities, arts and science communities, and industry and in this case provided us with the space and time and resources to begin work on our ambitious new composition.We were welcomed by Openlab co-founder and director [also Associate Professor and UCSC Art Department Chair] Jennifer Parker and project manager for UCSC’s OpenLab [also electro-acoustic composer, improvisor, and tinkerer in sound, kinetic and interactive art] Sudhu Tewari.

Out new compositional experiments began with a Yamaha Disklavier™ upright piano being triggered by neuron firing patterns via midi. We took short 'phrases' from the our neuro-granular-sampler as building blocks and sent event signals through to the piano. We liked the idea and the sound of these neural signals being uttered acoustically and in the conspicious absence of a human performer. See the video above.

As part of our visit John and I gave a public presentation hosted at the UCSC Art Department entitled 'THE SOUND OF SMALL BRAIN CIRCUITS: THE NEUROGRANULAR SAMPLER, PLASTICITY AND CORTICAL SONGS'

We will continue our experiments and compositional process toward a premiere in March 2013. Watch this space...