{"id":941,"date":"2016-06-29T08:43:33","date_gmt":"2016-06-29T08:43:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/?p=941"},"modified":"2016-06-24T09:03:20","modified_gmt":"2016-06-24T09:03:20","slug":"plymouth-university-researcher-collaborates-with-martyn-ware-of-the-human-league-at-port-eliot-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/2016\/06\/29\/plymouth-university-researcher-collaborates-with-martyn-ware-of-the-human-league-at-port-eliot-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sonification of David Bowie at the Port Eliot Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

What does the sonification of David Bowie sound like? You can find out as part of the brand new science programme at the Port Eliot Festival<\/a>, which takes place 28-31 July 2016 in St Germans, Cornwall.<\/p>\n

Dr Alexis Kirke<\/a><\/strong>, who is Senior Research Fellow in\u00a0Plymouth University’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research (ICCMR)<\/a>, and Martyn Ware<\/strong>, sonic pioneer and founding member of both the Human League and Heaven 17, joined forces to create the ‘Sonification of David Bowie’ as part of the Victoria & Albert Museum’s ‘David Bowie is’ events.<\/p>\n

\"David-Bowie-1030x550\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Before playing his and Martyn\u2019s pieces at Port Eliot, Alexis will present a talk explaining \u2018sonification\u2019, how he and Martyn composed the works, and what they might tell us biographically about Bowie.<\/p>\n

Alexis\u00a0and Martyn\u00a0analysed numerical data relating to album sales, key modes and lyrics up\u00a0to the end of the 1980s, and transformed them into musical sonifications. Alexis\u00a0mapped\u00a0statistical analyses of lyric emotion and sales onto musical features such as tempo, pitch\u00a0and loudness and transformed into independent sonic compositions. Martyn\u00a0combined the\u00a0analysis of the keys of Bowie\u2019s songs together with album sales to create his \u201cstrangely\u00a0beautiful\u201d piece on an EXS24 synthesizer.<\/p>\n

To analyse lyric emotion, a scientific databases of over 15,000 annotated words were\u00a0used, giving scores based on their emotional positivity (valence) and emotional physical\u00a0intensity (arousal). This was cross-referenced with a time-ordered database of Bowie\u2019s\u00a0lyrics. The resulting valence and arousal measures were then filtered in an attempt to find longer term patterns, which to Alexis\u2019s surprise seemed to exist.<\/p>\n

Since the original V&A exhibition, Alexis\u00a0has extended his sonifications to include much of Bowie\u2019s later output. He will be presenting\u00a0the resulting music for the first time at the Port Eliot Festival.<\/p>\n

Plymouth University<\/a>\u00a0is\u00a0a Creative and Cultural Partner of the Port Eliot Festival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What does the sonification of David Bowie sound like? You can find out as part of the brand new science programme at the Port Eliot Festival, which takes place 28-31 July 2016 in St Germans, Cornwall. Dr Alexis Kirke, who is Senior Research Fellow in\u00a0Plymouth University’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research (ICCMR), and Martyn… Continue reading The Sonification of David Bowie at the Port Eliot Festival<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":943,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,138],"tags":[96,337,112,355,75,356,37,111,357,170],"class_list":["post-941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","category-public-events-all-welcome","category-transdisciplinary-creative-practices","tag-alexis-kirke","tag-composition","tag-computer-music","tag-david-bowie","tag-iccmr","tag-martyn-ware","tag-music","tag-music-and-science","tag-port-eliot-festival","tag-sonification","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=941"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":948,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions\/948"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}