M Ciglar Outreach Report 2

INTEGRA OUTREACH REPORT Court-Circuit Concert 3, Oslo, Norway Sunday 11 September 2011 Miha Ciglar – Institute for Sonic Arts Research, Ljubljana, Slovenia On September 11th 2011, I attended the world premiere performance of the piece Le Nubia non scoppiano per il peso - by Italian composer Mauro Lanza - which was performed by Ensemble Court-Circuit (‘short circuit’) at the Ultima Festival in Norway. The piece was commissioned by Integra, who also asked me to attend the performance and write this review. Mauro Lanza realised his composition with the help of the Integra Live software, which is being developed within the Integra project.

It was a very interesting piece mixing electronics with acoustic instruments. As part of the performance, Lanza used the innovative idea of a dripping machine, which was operated by a midi score. It triggered water drops to fall on a series of acoustic/resonant objects, so the sounds would mix with the electronics and the ensemble. Another nice idea was for water to drip on hot cooking stoves, which created a longer sound of boiling and evaporating liquid. An important factor was also the visual effect of the evaporating water drops, which gave the whole performance the sense of a spectacle.

As I understand, the main purpose of the Integra Live software is to enable established composers, who work mainly with traditional acoustic instruments, easy and fast access to live electronic music. Additionally, the software is also a valuable first tool for novice composers, who are just starting to work with electro-acoustic music. The software creatively combines the tools of different existing programming languages. One of the main innovations of Integra is to mix the data flow concept inherent to Max/MSP, PD and similar languages with the time-line concepts of more commercial software sequencers like Pro-tools, Cubase, etc.

When I first saw a demonstration of Integra, I was very impressed and immediately invited one of its creators – Jamie Bullock – to present it at the EarZoom2011 sonic arts festival, which we - the Institute for Sonic Arts Research (IRZU) – organise annually in Ljubljana, Slovenia. At the beginning of October 2011, Jamie did a oneday workshop at EarZoom, introducing Integra Live to young musicians, composers and students, who all gave very positive feedback on the Integra environment. I have heard there are still some issues with the stability of the platform and I really hope that the Integra team of developers will continue with the good work and develop a stable and reliable version of the software. At the moment, Integra Live is available only for Mac so I hope there will be a version available for the Linux and Windows platforms as soon as possible, to enable access to this great tool to an even larger group of potential users.

Miha Ciglar Ljubljana