CMRC Seminar - Fin O’Hare and Danny Saleeb
Event details
Speech to Mechanical Devices - Fin O’Hare
Early mechanical attempts to recreate the speaking voice may not be convincingly human but are aesthetically interesting – an imperfect representation in which some sonic features of speech remain while others emerge from mechanical limitations. My research develops an experimental artistic practice of deriving musical material computationally from speech, and performance through DIY mechanical devices. Improvisation is central, from experimentation with found objects and actuators, electric motors and software, to performance.
I will present three stages of this research: developing methods of algorithmic transcription and mapping, the use of text models to organise musical material, and the incorporation of generative audio models (RAVE), alongside algorithmic and text-based methods. Each stage contains two devices, designed and built to realise some aspect of speech. With sense-making stripped, focus is directed to sonic, gestural, emotional or structural features, and qualities emerging from the mapping process and devices themselves. While these processes further distance material from its origins, speech features – extracted and transformed – continue to shape the resulting sound.
How not to be an AI: exploring computational processes as a means of becoming a more authentic composer - Danny Saleeb
Recent pieces hello world, O Dowland, We played Tallis, and 
, all explore a number of fascinations and problems that I’ve brought to my research, including: intuitive and computational processes of composition, computer models of cognition, and mechanisms of meaning. In a brief presentation of my research progress, I will show how a pull towards using algorithmic methods in my composition process has led me to think deeply about the conceptual in my work, and about artistic identity.
Can't join the event in person? See the event online instead.
About the speakers
Fin O’Hare is a composer with a particular interest in speech and language as a source of musical material, and DIY mechanical devices using repurposed and recycled objects. He studied composition at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, and the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen.
Daniel Saleeb is a British composer born in 1985. He is a PhD student at the University of York researching the use of computational models of cognition as composition process, supervised by Martin Suckling and Federico Reuben and supported by the White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities. His work explores the tension between computational and intuitive modes of composing, and he makes eclectic work across wide-ranging performance contexts, often working with extramusical media and drawing on disparate musical styles.
Venue details
Contact
ACT Events