‘Repetitive Beats, Repetitive Conditionals & the Future of Dance and Music Making’

The biological function of music is still to be understood completely, but music has always been part of human culture.

Obviously the human brain has superfluous capacities, which allows us being touched very deeply by music. The amount of dexterity, the number of rules to follow (or break) when making music is incredible.
The mental capacities of gifted musicians to spell out intense emotions into a series of microscopic interactions with a musical instrument can be breathtaking. How is it to actually make music? And what it is like to experience music? What happens in the mind?

 
 

And how is the situation changing with digital tools? Overwhelming complexity is strikingly simple thing to do on a computer. The repetition of beats has come a long way from being only available at shamanic rituals to being the most trivial thing to click on a drum machine.
Since the popularisation of digital music we have been confronted with musicians on stage who have literally nothing to do anymore other than staring blankly into laptop screens. Each digital tool had pushed music to a new level. What does this mean for music makers and music lovers?

 

Watch the lectures
in full length!

Peter Kirn

Classically trained in composition and piano, he is now focussing on live electronic performance, founded the blog http://createdigitalmusic.com and co-created the open source synthesizer MeeBlip.

Sam Aaron

Computer programming is often seen as an utterly abstract and autistic process, but the composer, scientist and software developer Sam Aaron stages the act of computer programming as a impovised musical performance.

Robert Henke

Live performances of electronic and especially dance music have been revolutionized by a software aptly named “Live” conceived by Robert Henke with his partners at Ableton in 1999.

Gregor Schwellenbach

Gregor Schwellenbach plays twelve different classical instruments, programs electronic compositions for performance spectacles, conducts music for ads, produces radio plays and even wrote an opera about sugar.