Davic Nod presents a new work showing how things become true through our imagination. Combining various futurist visualizations regarding music and sound – the ideas of The Art of Noise by Luigi Russolo, the Creative Commons organization, the Freesound.org sound database and the ReacTable instrument, he designed an interactive piece of work intended for the audience to perform and experiment live, while being forced to be critical with the methods and formulas of the musical world we live.
Davic Nod (ReacTable): Imagining the Future
Davic Nod
Wed, May 15 2013, 7pm
Admission: FREE
Location:
Harvestworks – www.harvestworks.org
596 Broadway, #602 | New York, NY 10012 | Phone: 212-431-1130
Subway: F/M/D/B Broadway/Lafayette, R Prince, 6 Bleeker
Things become real when we can imagine them. What is new comes from our minds, from our imagination. This is what Davic Nod wants to transmit with Imagining the Future. To demonstrate his convictions he devised a piece joining different futurist visions, old and new, so that we must get to reflect on how things are created.
Some years after Luigi Russolo’s manifest in 1913 – The Art of Noise – we can find all sort of noisy sounds tagged on the Net with the same names Russolo provided for a futurist classification of sounds, in contrast to the classification for the conventional orchestra. This is possible thanks to some visionary thinkers like Creative Commons and Freesound, whose importance in this work is worth mentioning.
Imagine the Future is a composition around various sounds downloaded from Freesound and adapted to play them live in the Reactable, alongside synthetic soundscapes designed by Davic Nod.
A futurist live set conceived to arouse audience creativity through their participation in the performance after a little demonstration. The work is presented with the Reactable instrument, a stunning concept that keeps blowing people’s minds, to illustrate one more time the power of imagination.
Excerpt from The Art of Noise by Luigi Russolo:
… This evolution toward noise-sound is only possible today. The ear of an eighteenth century man never could have withstood the discordant intensity of some of the chords produced by our orchestras (whose performers are three times as numerous); on the other hand our ears rejoice in it, for they are attuned to modern life, rich in all sorts of noises. But our ears far from being satisfied, keep asking for bigger acoustic sensations. However, musical sound is too restricted in the variety and the quality of its tones. The most complicated orchestra can be reduced to four or five categories of instruments with different sound tones: rubbed string instruments, pinched string instruments, metallic wind instruments, wooden wind instruments, and percussion instruments. Music marks time in this small circle and vainly tries to create a new vari- ety of tones. We must break at all cost from this restrictive circle of pure sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds. …
Although the characteristic of noise is to brutally bring us back to life, the art of noises must not be limited to a mere imitative reproduction. The art of noises will extract its main emotive power from the special acoustic pleasure that the inspired artist will obtain in combining noises. Here are the six categories of noises for the futurist orchestra that we intend soon to realize mechanically:
Roars, claps, noises of falling water, driving noises, bellows.
Whistles, snores, snorts.
Whispers, mutterings, rustlings, grumbles, grunts, gurgles.
Shrill sounds, cracks, buzzings, jingles, shuffles.
Percussive noises using metal, wood, skin, stone, baked earth, etc.
Animal and human voices: shouts, moans, screams, laughter, rattlings, sobs.
Excerpt from Creative Commons website:
Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools. Creative Commons vision is nothing less than realizing the full potential of the Internet — universal access to research and education, full participation in culture — to drive a new era of development, growth, and productivity. Founded in 2001 with the generous support of the Center for the Public Domain, CC is led by a Board of Directors comprised of thought leaders, education experts, technologists, legal scholars, investors, entrepreneurs and philanthropists.
Excerpt from Freesound website:
Freesound aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps,… released under Creative Commons licenses that allow their reuse. Freesound provides new and interesting ways of accessing these samples, allowing users to browse the sounds in new ways using keywords, a “sounds-like” type of browsing and more.
Excerpt from Reactable website:
The Reactable allows musicians and their audience to experience music in a whole new way. With the Reactable we continue to improve the rich visual and tangible experience of creating and performing music, making the connection between you, your music and your audience distinctive and exciting. Designed to provide direct and intuitive interaction with sound through objects on a multi-touch enabled screen, it is perfect to play live and to unveil your creativity.
The Reactable Live! is the result of many years of research in the field of computer music and human-computer interaction. The Reactable Live! interface is clean and direct, without text lists or endless config menus, it puts the whole music creation process in the hands of the musician. Only by designing the hardware and software together could we create a completely new instrument that truly is a step ahead of anything else in the market.
The way a Reactable works is deeply inspired by modular analogue synthesizers, such as those developed by Bob Moog, and brings them to a whole new level by adding completely new concepts of sampling and digital effects processing. On the Reactable the modules are tangible objects placed on a multi-touch surface and identified by the computer through fiducials. They are managed automatically based on their types and affinities and on their proximity. This allows an intuitive approach to sound creation and control and makes it easy to work with.
Davic Nod
Davic Nod is a musician, pianist, producer and teacher from Barcelona born in 1987. He played at big festivals since an early age, like Sónar (2009) and LEV Festival (2011). Besides his personal projects, he also conceived interdisciplinary shows and audiovisual works in collaboration with other artists, founded Loud Music – a cultural non-profit organization, organized InterACT Festival, launched a music production section in Tallers de Música school in his town, teached music production in several workshops to a wide range of audiences,…
Currently he makes music on his own with various alias and in collaboration with the neoclassical pianist Gabriela Parra, with whom he is working in the Clicks & Keys project. Also he is starting a co-creation label to collaborate with artists from around the world, which is going to be launched soon. Tending to be open-minded in his creations, most of the time Davic will surprise you with unpredictable stuff. He is always trying to evolve and go beyond the boundaries of his comfort zone. http://davicnod.com/
Latest sounds by Davic Nod