Author: roelweerdenburg

Don’t Mass With My Head

Just finished my month-long Wunderplatz X Skills residency in the Worm / Wunderbar, Rotterdam! Had an amazing time with the cool people who work there! Very inspiring to spend time in this place and to see what an amazing job the involved videoartists did!

Please check the Don’t Mass With My Head page for more info about the artists involved, the process and the result! The official opening is postponed due to corona situations but will take place on the 10th and 11th of June!

Pentacle Soundsystem

This week I started with a residency at STEIM in Amsterdam. The 15.3 Pentacle soundsystem developed by Fedde Ten Berge is installed here and I’m going to prepare a live performance for it. I’m really amazed by working with a powerful multispeaker soundsystem like this, the amplification is on par with soundsystems installed in clubs. It is also very intuitive in its use.

Zielensoep, Zaandam

There was this nice gathering of people, music making machines and soup. You can find some musical evidence here on Bandcamp if you need. My own performance is under the monniker of Rowe.

 

Parallax, made for Wave Field Synthesis

In the past months I worked on a composition for the Wave Field Synthesis system from Game Of Life. This system has 192 speakers installed in a square and is using a custom made DAW to compose in, WFSCollider. Because of this high spatial resolution and things like reverb and distance being implemented, very realistic spatialisation techniques can be applied. A composer is able to place sounds in the head of a listener or next to it,  make it move in circles, at random or in more complex trajectories.
So while listening, please bear in mind that all the sounds of this piece were not cramped together over a stereo signal like you’re most likely listening to it, but spatially arranged over 192 speakers in a room. It is simply impossible to experience this without sitting inside the speaker system.

The composition I made consists of sounds recorded only in the space where the system is situated. This is a relatively small office space in the MOOOF building in The Hague. The sounds are recorded with a Zoom H4N Pro, a Soma Ether and different induction microphones to record the sounds all electronic devices in the room are constantly emitting. All the recordings are processed and editted in Ableton and the results of this are arranged and spatialised in WFSCollider.

Uncloud 2020

Uncloud 2020 is a wrap! I can’t really describe how much fun I had, how good the vibe was with all the people I already knew or met, or how interesting all the works, performances and artists were… You should have been there and if you didn’t, you should be there next year!

For more info and pictures of my work panOptical that was exhibited at the Uncloud festival exposition, check here!

Uncloud Festival 2020

The word is out! I’m working on a site-specific installation at the former Pieter Baan Centrum in Utrecht for the Uncloud Festival expo. Exciting venue, amazing works from a lot of other artists, be sure to come by and check it all!

And of course the festival itself and the Modulation opening concert are some of the things you can’t miss! The very best of Utrecht concentrated in a week of music, sound, installations, workshops, etc. Just be there!

Timetosser / modular demo video

Recently I got an invitation from Tim Walther to come over with my modular and make a demovideo with the Timetosser he developed. This device matches perfectly with the beats I normally make.
In short, it is a delay device with a delay comparable to the one in the Elektron Octatrack, but obviously more compact and in my opinion more intuitive and flexible. It needs some learning, but this the results make it worth while.
I hope that I can integrate it into my live performance setup.

*~ feedback // Multiplied Feedback Studie

This etude is made in the analog studio for the Sonic Design class at University of the Arts Utrecht. Assignment was to make a multiplied feedback patch based on the picture in the video.

Used System:
Synton Holland Modular
Roland System 100
ARP 2600
Eurorack Modular (Erica Synths, Doepfer, Livestock Electronics, MFB)