NORTHWEST CYBERARTISTS PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS:

Bret Battey:
Composer and Musician

May 14, 7 PM

Speakeasy Internet Cafe Backroom
2304 2nd Ave in Seattle's Belltown

Bret Battey received a Bachelors of Music in Electronic and Computer
Music in 1990 from Oberlin Conservatory, where he focused on
interactive, algorithmic composition and music for live electronics. In
New York, he worked at the Philip Glass production studio and at Studio
PASS. He is currently completing his Masters Degree in Composition at
the University of Washington, where he has studied computer music with
Richard Karpen. Battey's works have been performed at the 17th Annual
International Electronic Music Plus Festival, Seattle's Center on
Contemporary Art, Northwest CyberArts Synthesthetics Art and Technology
Festival, Seattle Experimental Opera, U of W, and KING FM. In 1994,
under a grant from Seattle's 911 Media Arts Center, he worked in
collaboration with sculptor and juggler James Jay to design the Juggling
Jukebox, which wires a juggler to a computer; generating music
algorithmically in response to motion. The Jukebox has appeared at the
national art and technology conference Beyond Fast Forward, was
demonstrated in a lecture to the Microsoft Advanced Technology Group,
and has been covered by MTV Europe. Battey serves on the Board of
Northwest CyberArts and was the Producer of the group's Interactive
Artzone which appeared at the 1995 Bumbershoot International Arts
Festival in Seattle.

Discussion of Computer Music – Bret will discuss composing with custom
digital signal processing instruments using non-commerical resources
such as the programs CSound (a language for defining synthesis
instruments from MIT) and AudioSculpt (a phase vocoder and sound
spectrum editor from the French research institute IRCAM). For the past
two years, Bret has been using such tools on Silicon Graphics and
Macintosh computers to develop very high quality sounds purely in the
digital realm without being constrained by the limitations of commercial
hardware synthesizers. Techniques have included extreme time stretching,
cross-synthesizing of different sounds, massive layering of sounds, and
spectral shaping. Bret will discuss the great potential of these tools,
how and when they are appropriate for use, and what it takes to learn to
use them effectively.

Presentation of a Work in Progress - Bret will present "First Essay on
the Presence of Water" – a video-audio composition. The sound is being
developed on a SGI Indigo using CSound and the LISP-based algorithmic
compositional tool "Common Music". The video is being developed from
video captures and high resolution stills processed in Adobe Premiere.
He is striving to keep his work in both mediums focused on texture,
gesture, and atmosphere (rather than conventional film narrative or
musical structures). His is conceiving both sound and image in parallel.
He will discuss the ins and outs of this approach and techniques that
have proved useful and effective.

Bret's web page: http://weber.u.washington.edu/~bbattey/
NWCA contact: Burt Webb, President, phoenix@eskimo.com, 729-7410