Artwork for an upcoming track from Jasmina Maschina entitled ‘corenotions’
EVERYTHING COMES FROM EVERYWHERE.
http://vimeo.com/ilankatin
http://twitter.com/ilan_katin
https://www.facebook.com/ilankatin • ask me...
silant
http://vimeo.com/ilankatin
http://twitter.com/ilan_katin
https://www.facebook.com/ilankatin • ask me...
silant
Oscars will be installed at Chalet on the night of May 29th. Above is the source material.
If you can relax into it you can become attuned to the intricate and finely tuned structures in these tracks that drumpcorps constructs to deliver the punch when it’s needed.
All vinyl & cds are long since sold out, but downloads are available on Bandcamp, Amazon, iTunes, Boomkat, and almost everywhere else.
Utmost respect to the source material. All pieces recorded and mashed by Aaron Spectre in Berlin from 2005-2006. Thank you all family and friends, and massive thanks to the entirety of Berlin Friedrichshain Rigaer Str. for digging the noise, and for contributing plenty of your own.
Artwork and layout by Aaron
Mastered by Lupo at Dubplates & Mastering
Originally released on CD and glorious heavy 12” Vinyl
Live drawing improvisation with composer/pianist John Farah
Purely improvised TagTool iPad performance with John Farrah at King Kong Klub in Berlin. Something we talked about for about a year and never got around to doing. John is back in Berlin for a few weeks and was asked to perform, so he asked me to perform with him. For a Monday night it was a highly appreciative audience. To top it off the host, Manuel Bonik, played The Mothers Dog Breath Variations and a slew of other off beat favorites such as Hey Punk!
I found this laying on John’s keyboard just before we packed it up. It was inserted into a perfectly fitting plastic sheath and I took it out of this sheath so that there would be no glare given that I had to use a flash. Apparently from one of his admirers.
There was a lot of positive feedback. This is to be expected from John’s performances, however we were pleased that everyone in the audience appreciated and understood the live drawing component. One of my favorite aspects of it was having such a small device to plug into a projector. It was almost as if I was part of the audience. It is nice to draw the attention in this way (all puns intended).
Given that I had never performed with John before, there was a thrill to having an open canvas, to let the experiences themselves dictate what could be communicated with the music. Some of the material produced during the sets (we did three separate ones, each containing two compositions) fit so well that it will be exciting to perform them again in a similar way. We plan on doing more performances and hopefully get some of it recorded. John also makes drawings and animations. http://www.johnfarah.com/
SETUP done. Shot on Android Nexus 4.
Tweet from ilan katin (@ilan_katin)
ilan katin (@ilan_katin) tweeted at 0:34 AM on Fri, May 10, 2013: Tomorrow nights surprise gig. I am not on the bill. But no one will forget. 👺👺👺🙊🙊🙊🔼🔻🔺🔽🔙🔜 http://t.co/BLAp7LmZY2 (https://twitter.com/ilan_katin/status/332624758535503872) Get the official Twitter app at https://twitter.com/download
THE SCORE
Collaborative composition project entitled THE SCORE with the artist Jasmine Guffond. On view now at District Berlin until May 27th, 2013.
The video itself will be posted here soon.
Ilan Katin, September 1st, 1972. New York, U.S. Visual Artist
- What is your graphic vocabulary inspired by? A mixture of Bauhaus and Oscar Fischinger (I like to call him Fish Finger)
- Did you ever learn how to play an instrument and how to read classical notation? Yes.
- If so, would you also be able to write musical notes? If so, why don’t you rely on classical notation?
I always had trouble reading them. Once I learned how to play something I would memorize it and never read the notes again. I am sure if I put my mind to it I could have practiced sight reading. I did not get into notation enough to the point where I could write anything. And in the end I was more interested in making images than composing or playing music.
- Why do you choose this particular medium for your notations?
For coming up with ideas for sound, but not even thinking of the sounds themselves, drawing is very spontaneous and instantaneous. Especially forms and even more exceptional when you are freed from trying to use drawing as a method of formal representation such as drawing a flower, something I would love to do but somehow never get around to doing.
- Which musical parameters are you trying to fixate in your notation?
In what I refer to as the ‘transference’ process in this collaboration with Jasmine Guffond, it is for her to interpret how the forms will sound. I have some input on the general direction, and maybe I will point out details, but otherwise nothing for me is quite fixed. Jasmine could continue altering it over and over and I am confident that what she come up with will always match the visual elements.
- Are also you trying to represent SOUND itself in your notations?
No. Sure there are a multitude of graphical examples of what sounds look like. But with the exception of the wave form, I think most, even those so called ‘reactive’ visualizations are all down to how an artist chooses to interpret sound. Some are better than others, but I definitely don’t see any absolutes.
- Would somebody else be able to play your score or is it meant to be played only by you?
I think it would be interesting to hear how other people would interpret it.
- Is it your goal to write a fixed score that enables you to repeat a piece in the same way, or do you aim to put down a basic idea that could be re-interpreted every time? We do plan to make it into a piece that would be performed, and in that respect it could evolve over time. As it is live, we have the tools to mess with it. That would make the piece continuously interesting for me. But I could also get lazy or just really enjoy how it is performed and stick with something fixed as well.
Jasmine Guffond, 1972, Sydney, Australia Currently residing in Berlin, Germany background / profession: musician / sound editor/live sound technician / sound artist
- Did you ever learn how to play an instrument and how to read classical notation?
Yes.
- If so, would you also be able to write musical notes? If so, why don’t you rely on classical notation?
After learning a classical instrument for 10 years or so (approx. 8-18) I noticed that I had never created / composed for myself but had rather always sight read, performing other peoples’ music. I then decided to ‘forget’ my classical training and make the kind of music I was more interested in listening to. For the most part I taught myself and always played by ear (bass guitar & guitar). For electronic music I was more interested in exploring timbre and texture and composing via a process so traditional notation has as yet not been relevant.
- Why do you choose this particular medium for your notations?
Im actually interpreting the score, not writing it…
- Which musical parameters are you trying to fixate in your notation? I would say no set parameters as I could decide to interpret the video notation in any way. Initially I was given sketches for which to start building a sound library, this was the initial stage of the process of interpreting Ilan Katin’s score. It was impossible to approach it in a classical way where certain symbols represent time, pitch or dynamics for example. Rather each picture I was given was for me, a complex sound world in itself.
