“Animal Magnetizer” is an interactive musical installation that uses spatial sensing and automated acoustic instruments to allow viewers to collaboratively control the mix and progression of a composition through the presence of their hands and bodies.

Part of the sound art show “Memory Palace” at Knockdown Center.
knockdowncenter.com/

V.2 Sound Installation with mechanical actuators and piano wires
New York Hall of Science Oct 2012 – Jan 2013

NYC Immigration Song from trustynick on Vimeo.

New York City Immigration Song is a data representation in the form of a digitally controlled acoustic sound installation. It features a network of mechanically actuated piano strings stretched from nodes across a wall-mounted map to a central anchor point located at New York. New York City immigration data dating back to 1855 serves as material for an algorithmic musical composition, sonically representing the city’s changing population and the countries to which it is connected through its residents.

The data is represented as follows:
Distance from point of origin to NYC: Pitch of note. lower = longer distance (wires tuned to same tension).
Number of people: Duration of note.
Missing Data Point: Snare hit.

V.1 Screen-based digital interactive

NYC Immigration Song from trustynick on Vimeo.

Data Representation of NYC immigration data from 1855 – 2000.

The data is represented as follows:

Distance from point of origin to NYC (based on latitude and longitude data):
-Pitch of note (lower = longer distance)
-Stereo pan of note (spread from left to right according to how far East or West of NYC the point of origin falls on the map)
-Length and position of line

Number of people:
-Volume of note (louder – more people)
-Number of repetitions of note (1 rep = 1000 people)
-Alpha value (opacity) of line

Data sources:
U.S. Census data as compiled in the Encyclopedia of New York City 2nd Edition, Kenneth T. Jackson(editor).

Join us for a last look at the Spectacularium (http://www.spectacularium.org)and the Cosmorama of the great Dreamland fire. And explore the pre-history of animation and Coney Island spectacle before the show ends on Labor Day weekend.

Artists will be in attendance, as will special guest performers.

Nick Yulman will perform original scores using mechanical instruments for two 1926 films, Now You Tell One and A Wild Roomer by silent comedian and stop-motion animation innovator Charlie Bowers.

Free beer and Wine, including a special Dreamland Fire Brew, hand-crafted by our friends at the Coney Island Brewery and wine by Red Hook Winery.

8PM start. Film at 8:30pm.

$20 in advance or at the door.

Advance Tickets at: http://shop.coneyisland.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=798

Coney Island Museum
1208 Surf Ave.

http://www.coneyislandfunguide.com/Events/Closing-Party-for-The-Great-Coney-Island-Spectacularium-with-guest-Nick-Yulman-_8_25_2012-3428.htm

In collaboration with Jack Kalish

Secondhand Stories is an interactive storytelling project that uses a computer vision activated interface to seamlessly present audio stories about previously owned objects as viewers explore them. Inspired by the uncurated collections found on flea market tables, Secondhand Stories attaches a provenance to these typically anonymous objects, letting previous owners talk about their relationship to the objects and share the associated stories.

Hardware system uses an undermount projector, infrared camera and illuminators to track and display footprints of objects on the table. software is written in c++/openFrameworks and uses the openCV library for blob detection.

rehearsal recording preview of Music for the Films of Charley Bowers — original scores for two silent films by the great comedian stop motion pioneer performed using an ensemble of machines and guitar.

this clips shows a sequence form “Now You Tell One” (1926)
“A wild Roomer” (1926) is also on the program.

this is only about 10% of how crazy these films get.

Sunday April 1st at 3pm

Coney Island USA
1208 Surf Ave
Brooklyn, NY

coneyisland.com

2010, Mixed Media, Sound, Electronics

Song Cabinet
2010
Mixed Media, Sound and Electronics

Song Cabinet is an interactive music piece that users activate by exploring the contents of a set of drawers.  Each drawer contains small digitally controlled mechanical instruments that play varying patterns depending on how far out it is pulled.  By opening and closing drawers, users mix the song, muting and unmuting the various parts and selecting different musical patterns.  The objects contained in each drawer, culled from the artist’s personal collection, are associated with particular places, indicated by the drawers’ labels.  In exploring the collection, users coax these static objects into a rhythmic dialog with each other and create an intermingling of their associated memories.

This version of the piece is a study for a room-sized version with many more drawers, sound making devices and  and combinations of musical parts.

[View with PicLens]

New EP featuring of songs and mechanical instruments created during my residency at the Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle Warsaw’s A-I-R Laboratory

Now Available on Vinyl, CD & Digital Download

Get it!

thanks to Sarah Kramer for the video

The Wave Whistle uses the contours of a digital audio wave form to define the shape of a musical instrument, turning a visual representation of digitized sound into a physical sound making object.

This first prototype uses one on my favorite recordings as source material — Sam Cooke performing “Bring it on Home to Me” live at the Harlem square club in 1963 (audio used in the whistle’s waveform begins at 2:40):

The 3D model was created using Illustrator and Vectorworks and printed on an Objet Connex500 3D plastic printer at NYU’s Advance Media Studio

[View with PicLens]

Created for the group show “Once upon a Time” at the Ise Cultural Foundation Gallery in Soho.
Components in this installation included: xylophone, glockenspiel, reed organ, percussion instruments, mechanically animated artificial tree, horn speakers and radio transmitter.

Goliath beetle Automata

No Bills Selections by No_Bills

No Bills presented audio oral histories about North Brooklyn through listening stations situated in construction fences and on the street. It created serendipitous encounters for passersby, inviting them to engage with the neighborhood’s history while standing at the sites of its developing future.  Starting in the fall of 2010, Yulman and nbART reached out to community members, including long term residents, business owners and community leaders, from around North Brooklyn to record their stories about the neighborhood. From July through September 2011, the project was installed at sites throughout Williamsburg, including the McCarren Park Pool and the Triangle Court construction sites and Ventana244 Gallery.

A closing event for the project was held on  October 16th at  Union Docs  in Williamsburg

http://www.uniondocs.org/no-bills/

No Bills is presented by nbART and is sponsored in part by funding from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts, administered by the Brooklyn Arts Council. The NYC Department of Parks and Recreation and the Open Space Alliance for North Brooklyn provided additional support.

Additional info and site locations can be found here:

http://www.nobillsstories.org/

She Rides THese Hills

I’ll be performing along with my fellow ITPers in this showcase of unusual musical instruments.
It’ll be like a weird music circus.

NIME: New Interfaces for Musical Expression – Creating new performance tools for digital music.

21 and Over. Entry is $10 (Free for NYU ID holders)
Doors open at 7pm, Show starts at 8pm

http://www.facebook.com/ical/event.php?eid=191415680945277

Sunday October 16th 7:30 pm
Union Docs 322 Union Ave. in Williamsburg

http://www.uniondocs.org/no-bills/

No Bills Selections by No_Bills

Nick Yulman and the North Brooklyn Public Art Coalition (nbART) host this event to mark the closing of Yulman’s public sound installation and oral history project.

No Bills presented audio oral histories about North Brooklyn through listening stations situated in construction fences and on the street to create serendipitous encounters for passersby, inviting them to engage with neighborhood’s history while standing at the sites of its developing future. Starting in the fall of 2010, Yulman and nbART reached out to community members, including long term residents, business owners and community leaders, from around North Brooklyn to record their stories about the neighborhood. From July through September, the project was installed at sites throughout Williamsburg, including the McCarren Park Pool and the Triangle Court construction site, a few blocks away from UnionDocs.

This event will feature selected recordings from the project, ranging from family immigration stories to accounts of the 1975 sit-in at the People’s Firehouse, followed by discussion with the artist and project participants.

No Bills is presented by nbART and is sponsored in part by funding from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts, administered by the Brooklyn Arts Council. The NYC Department of Parks and Recreation and the Open Space Alliance for North Brooklyn provided additional support.

2011 with Hope Dector

Coppercussion/Papercussion is a piece created in collaboration with printmaker Hope Dector that uses copper etching plates both to imprint paper and as sound sources electromechanical percussion instruments. The piece responds to viewers’ presence, altering the rhythms it plays as they get closer to it. The triggering mechanisms for the instruments (solenoids) are made up of copper coils.

The piece was created for our shared exhibit at the 2011 Dumbo Arts Festival, which also featured a selection of Hope’s prints and my piece “Song Cabinet” and won the Festival’s Audience Choice Award.

[View with PicLens]

2011 with Ryan Murdock

Grown Music, is a video and sound piece created with Ryan Murdock that uses the time lapse footage of a 5′x5′ garden plot shot over the course of 3 months as a score/data source for creating algorithmic music. The growth and movement of the garden’s plants are reflected in sound generated by a program that analyses changing patterns in each frame of the video. The music uses both electronically generated sounds and recordings of the plants themselves. The video was screened directly above the garden plot that served as the visuals and audio source.

It was created for and presented as part of 5x5x5, a gardening & art project curated by Nora Herting and Ann Chen.

For the harvest celebration at the end of the growing season,  we projected  the video behind the bed of plants that generated it.  The structure framing the image is the frame we built for the overhead time lapse camera:

Covered by NY1
Musea
and Grungecake

August 13 – September 9th @ 92Y Tribeca 200 Hudson St.
http://geekdown.com/