I helped the students of the University of Michigan Digital Music Ensemble hack a rotary dial phone for their performance of Robert Ashley’s In Memoriam… Kit Carson. During one rehearsal, I heard Steve Rush say that he considered Ashley to be a minimalist like Reich and Riley. There was an extra phone lying around, and this gave me an idea:

(Apologies for the poor video quality, I only had my mobile phone around to record it.)

I will be running a workshop on Education in NIME at NIME 2011on May 29, 2011, along with my colleague Ben Knapp and Sergi Jorda from the Music Technology Group UPF in Barcelona. More information is available at: http://www.nime2011.org/pre-nime/tutorials/#A%20Workshop%20on%20NIME%20Education.

I was interviewed in December by Jill Rodgers from MIT Press Journals as a part of their podcast series to discuss Computer Music, HCI and the recent issue of Computer Music Journal that I guest edited. The podcast page is available here: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/page/podcasts, or else here is a direct link to the mp3 file: CMJ-Michael-Gurevich.mp3.

First test of my robotic, interactive string instrument, Stringtrees.

String Trees First Test from Michael Gurevich on Vimeo.

Whispering Places (2010) from Michael Gurevich on Vimeo.

Computer Music Journal 34(4), Winter 2010, a special issue on Human-Computer Interaction that I guest-edited, is now online: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/comj/34/4 or http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/computer_music_journal/toc/cmj.34.4.html.

Last weekend, I dragged 4 pianists into the Sonic Lab to play in a pilot for a study on discrimination of expressive intent by motion and EMG data, with Cavan Fyans, Javier Jaimovich and Nick Gillian. We inaugurated the MuSE group’s new Qualisys system and figured out how to sync audio, video, EMG and motion capture data via SMPTE. Desperately required: omnidirectional infrared light source.

Frankenstein at the piano

Robin Fencott and Rachel Oxley at QMUL created a video piece that asked performers to use a plastic cup as a musical instrument, in response to our NIME 2010 paper.