Studioforum

August / September 2010

Lectures from "A MAZE. Interact – Jan 29 – Feb 6 2010 ...celebrating the convergence of games, art, and music"

1) LEONARD J. PAUL (CA): Droppin' Science: Video Game Audio Breakdown (Jan 31, 17:30)
2) JULIAN OLIVER (NZ): The Computer Game as Musical Instrument (Jan 31, 19:45)
3) MICHAEL HARENBERG (D/CH): Computer Games as Auditive Virtual Environments (Jan 31, 19:00)

1) LEONARD J. PAUL (CA): Droppin' Science: Video Game Audio Breakdown (Jan 31, 17:30)
Musician, composer, video game audio coder. Teacher at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and lecturer at diverse events like the Game Developers Conference and the New Forms Festival.
Leonard J. Paul attained his Honours Degree in Computer Science at Simon Fraser University specializing in Electro-acoustics. Apart from working on a multitude of games, such as EA's 'Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2' and Rockstar's 'Max Payne 2', he also composed the soundtrack of the award-winning documentary 'The Corporation', and DJs as 'Freaky DNA'.
"Droppin' science is simply giving knowledge on a topic and in this case, the topic is interactive music. A breakdown in music is when the music is stripped down the bare essentials, so this talk will do the same by stripping away the layers around how game audio works down to the core. Related fields of live electronic music performance, interactive audio in art installations and more will also be covered to show how they all share essential elements in the nature of their production and transmission to the audience and participants."
Leonard Paul also gives a seminar on Game Audio Design
www.videogameaudio.com

2) JULIAN OLIVER (NZ): The Computer Game as Musical Instrument (Jan 31, 19:45)
Julian Oliver is a New Zealand-born artist, game developer and lecturer.
He has given numerous workshops and master classes in game design, artistic game development and interface design as well as augmented reality and open source development practices worldwide.
His work is shown at internationally recognized museums and electronic art events. His spatial-memory game, ‘LevelHead’, received an Honorary Mention at the Prix Ars Electronica, 2008 in the category, Interactive Art. With ‘Fijuu2’ (2006), he establishes a strong relationship between his art and music. These audiovisual experiences allow for emerging compositions. Julian Oliver lives and works in Berlin.
In his lecture Julian will draw parallels between contemporary sound-based games and 20th Century experimental instrument design, positioning such games as the grandchildren of early, radical ideas within Western (noise) music.
Abstracting further, Julian will propose that videogames are at their very essence 'instruments' and fulfill a curious role as such...
Fijuu2 is playable at the Jump'n Run Bonus Cheat
www.julianoliver.com

3) MICHAEL HARENBERG (D/CH): Computer Games as Auditive Virtual Environments (Jan 31, 19:00)
Head of the degree program Music and Media Art as well as professor for composition and media theory at the University of Arts in Bern.
Prof. Dr. Michael Harenberg majored in musicology (University of Giessen) and composition (Darmstadt). Later he did his PhD in media studies at the University of Basel. Harenberg works with digital sound culture on a theoretical and practical level. As chairman of the German Association for Electro-acoustic Music, he manages the DEGEM web-radio.
"Computer games constitute media environments for applied nonlinear musical processes. These processes have been proved in formal and compositional experiments in contemporary music, but were not accepted by a broader audience. Early attempts by composers like Iannis Xenakis, Edgar Varèse, Herbert Brün and Gottfried Michael Koenig did not succeed in our actual sound culture which is dominated by digital media. The area of film was the most established and earliest field for experiments with musical time and space in virtual auditive environments. In contrast, microforms of synthetic sound-synthesis, like granular-synthesis or physical-modeling, are using non-linear processes since their introduction.
Synthetic acoustic spaces, as constructed in interactive computer games, are prototypes for new structures of a new digital mediality. Therefore, a quality is added by the integration of the diverse sound cultures in global online networks, implemented in mobile devices such as iPhone or Google Nexus. These mobile „gadgets“ offer these processes a specific hybrid of corporality in the man-machine-interaction."
www.medien-kunst.ch
www.hkb.bfh.ch/macap.html
www.degem.de

ABOUT A MAZE.
By combining courage for experimentation and joy in gaming, A MAZE. celebrates the convergence of computer games and art. A MAZE. is more than simply a festival – it is a series of events as well as a conceptual format that offers a regularly emerging platform for interdisciplinary exchange. Creatives are encouraged to break down the conventional computer game and surpass established concepts of play. A MAZE. emerges regularly with exhibitions, lectures, workshops, or concerts and creates a platform to communicate, express ideas, learn from each other and playfully experiment together. This reveals the creative and cultural potential that lies behind the ambivalent medium of the computer game. Playful interaction encourages interpersonal exchange. Intersections with related media such as film, TV, literature or music offer further sources for inspiration. A MAZE. was founded in January 2008 in Berlin. At their heart all projects realized since then center around the presentation and production of art, culture, and science. A MAZE. combines enjoyment with critical reflection.

The A MAZE. Interact Symposium provides the theoretical backdrop for the theme of convergences between computer games and music. Both media blur the borders between pop culture and high culture. Both are based on the creative design of new experiences. Both can entertain. Both can cause despair. Both thrive from and with other media. Using computer games as a starting point, the lectures of top-class international speakers offer fascinating insights into the networks and strategies applied by a complex media compound, which challenge and alter existing production and reception methods.
The format of the symposium is designed to be both, interactive and informative. Beginning with a keynote by Keiichi Yano on the future of music games, practinioners, artists, and scholars share their insights into their elaborate work. Martin Pichlmair, Leonard Paul, Michael Harenberg, and Julian Oliver all have quite different backgrounds but share a common experience in mixing game culture, game design, game aesthetics, and game theory with music. The host, Barbara Lippe, is a living example of these convergences, as she is a game girl, a game scholar, a game designer, and a game music networker at the same time.
Adding to the content of the presentations and the interventions by the audience, Anne-Kathrin Pheline Binz, David Rusitschka, and Timo Schneider from the MA Sound Studies of the University of the Arts Berlin create a sound scape commenting and conducting the program.

Elektronische Studios aus ganz Deutschland und dem Ausland werden hier portraitiert und stellen ihre aktuellen Projekte, Forschungsvorhaben und Entwicklungsarbeiten vor. Das Studio-Forum dient langfristig dem Austausch zwischen den Studios als Produktionsstätten vielfältiger elektroakustischer Musik und Klangkunst.