Music, Intuition, and Interfaces

STEIM has been at the forefront of new interfaces for musical expression since 1969, and the presentation will feature some of the work that has been done in the past. But we have come a long way since then. New technologies have not only changed the things we can make, but also how we make them, and, increasingly: why we make them. Today's complex problems are forcing us to rethink the relation between thinking and intuition, between the mind and the body, and between control and surprise. Musical instruments are a good context for experimenting with these issues. The talk will outline current developments in the world of music and musical instruments and interfaces, and will also feature a live performance using new technology from STEIM that will also be available to designer of interactive instruments and installations.

Dick Rijken worked for Apple's Advanced Technology Group while he was involved in the early days of Music Technology and head of the Interaction Design department at the Utrecht School of the Arts in the early nineties. Since then, he was head of the Design department at the Sandberg Institute, he worked at VPRO, a broadcasting organisation, and was CEO of TBWA/e-Company. Currently, Dick Rijken is director of STEIM, a network laboratory for musical instruments, and professor in Information Technology and Society at The Hague University of Applied Sciences where he researches conceptual thinking for complex problems.

Frank Baldé joined STEIM in Amsterdam in 1985 and started his work as software designer in close collaboration with Michel Waisvisz, the artistic director of STEIM, producing a number of music programs for live performance, such as MidiDraw, Deviator, The Lick Machine, LiSa for the Apple Macintosh. His latest development, junXion, can read any kind of ‘real-world’ sensor data and translate it into MIDI or OSC. Currently, he is developing RoSa, a Realtime OSC controlled Sampler, which runs on Mac OSX and on a single-board computer like the Beagleboard. Frank Baldé also teaches at the Sonology department of the Royal Conservatory in the Hague, the Amsterdam Conservatory and the Music Technology department at the Utrecht School of the Arts.