given the fact, that so much of todays music is produced on every level with the help of computers, there is one question which keeps bugging me since ten years: is it possible to find -besides clockspeed, cpu-power, more bit-depht on the ad/da converters, etc.- something specific to a certain machine, which can pass as an intrumental quality for that model, similar to how e.g. even the cheapest plastic-recorders are different between each opthers?
my research focusses on hardware-specific aspects of certain powerbooks and then goes on to make them playable with max/msp patches and interfaces.
for e.g. when apple introduced the titanium-powerbook series in 2001, the heralded big progress came with some minor sacrifices (no more audio-in) and one very special design-flaw: the microphone was put directly next to the left speaker and thus merrily feedbacking along with its fellow speaker as soon as one tried to use both. this sweet little feature/bug was the starting point for my piece bandoneonbook, which filters and tunes the feedback through a maxpatch, controlled by the keyboard and makes it dynamically playable via opening and closing the lid.
other pieces explore the viola-qualities of an old pismo or try to find out, what happens when maxing out the sound-calculating power of those little wonderboxes. back to main
