Ambient soundscapes

7 MP3 Songs
ELECTRONIC: Ambient, NEW AGE: Ambient



Details:
Space Exploration is a collection of recordings that spring from my fascination with acoustic resonance - reverberation, delay, echo, and harmonic reinforcement.

This album consists of improvisations made in response to the acoustic qualities of four churches - Chartres and Rouen in France and Domkyrkan and Laukyrkan in Sweden. In essence, these are duets, with the space itself as the second player.

There is a third player in these pieces as well - the computer. The spaces used in these recordings exist within a computer. Through the use of a process called 'convolving,' a live acoustic space can be sampled and reproduced within a computer. Convolution has been around for a while, but computers have only just become fast enough to do it in real time. Real time processing was key to these performances, since what I played was in direct response to what the space was sending back to me.

These pieces are just the beginning of what I expect to be a long collaboration between music and space.

About Cinema Volta:

Cinema Volta consists of John Maxwell Hobbs, a stack of electronic equipment, musical instruments in various states of disrepair and occasional collaborators.

John Maxwell Hobbs is an electronic musician and has been working with computer multimedia and telecommunications for more than eighteen years.

For much of the '90s he was the Producing Director of The Kitchen in New York where he produced the work of Philip Glass, DJ Spooky, David Hykes and many others.

He is the Vice President of the board of directors of Vanguard Visions, an organization dedicated to fostering the work of artists experimenting with technology and also serves on the Digital Arts subcommittee of the Mayor's Council on New Media in New York City. His interactive composition Web Phases was one of the winners of ASCI's Digital '98 competition. He has collaborated with artist/programmer Mark Napier on Ripple, an interactive musical instrument.