Pieces

Live - Wonderwerp, Den Haag

From my new album 'Processes & Potentials', out on 3LEAVES, 01.10.2013

http://bjarni-gunnarsson.net/processes.html

http://3leaves-label.com


Aukera

From 'Anticlines', released today on Playneutral.

'Digital synthesis based on dynamic waveforms and atomic sound operations.

Sound as behaviour, occurring through operations sequences and generative processes.'

https://bjarni.bandcamp.com
https://playneutral.bandcamp.com

Anticlines

From my album 'Upics', available today for preorders on Flag Day Recordings

https://flagdayrecordings.bandcamp.com

Vacuum (UPICS)

Blocking Behaviours concerns the real-time interpretation of two simulations of complex behaviour through an agent-based system. The simulations enforce a way of thinking that revolves around balancing behaviours. An attitude that considers musical output as something that emerges from an interaction with an autonomous system.

The simulation acts as a generative, rule-based system producing output that is subject to different kinds of observation algorithms. The idea is that evolving processes are set in motion where the creator/composer becomes an observer of various developments. The output can not always be controlled in detail but is instead interpreted and further processed. The interpretation involves a mapping between different modes of representation in order to simplify or combine. In Blocking Behaviours the idea is to explore the boundary of generative behaviour, control and and direct access to computer sound synthesis.

Blocking Behaviours premiered during the ICLC (International Conference on Live Coding) in April 2023.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJQ1mNvPo9k&t=784s 

https://soundcloud.com/bjarni/blocking-behaviours-iclc-example

Blocking Behaviours (excerpt)

Costest

Live recording (excerpt) of 'Wildfires' as performed at the WFS festival on June 5th, 2022 in the New Music Lab at Sonology. 

Stereo reduction from the 192 speakers used during the performance.

Wildfires - (Live WFS, excerpt)

Excerpt from a live performance for the Kraak Helder show by Martijn Comes  on Concertzender Nederland, 08.11.2015.

Live - Concertzender, Utrecht

From album 'Paths' (May 2016), Granny Records.

http://www.bjarni-gunnarsson.net/paths

http://www.grannyrecords.org

Ubieties

Live - LMALC, Bruxelles

Angst

From my new album 'Lueur', published by Tartaruga (Vinyl & Digital) on the 26.11.2018

http://www.bjarni-gunnarsson.net/lueur

https://www.tartaruga.co.uk

https://tartarugarecords.bandcamp.com/album/lueur

Prisme

Live Coding [excerpt], performed at Music, Humans and Machines (ODC 2019), Orpheus Institute, 22.05.2019

'Translation, traces and intervention'

Technical autonomy usually depends on abstraction or attempts to generalize behavior. Generalizing often involves a translation, a mapping between different modes of representations in order to simplify or combine. However, processes of abstraction can distantiate agency from its origin, sometimes introducing a by-product “a remainder, a set of discarded information—the différance, or the crucial distinction and deferral of meaning that goes on between the map and the territory. In ‘Translation, traces and intervention’ the idea is to explore the boundary of software abstractions and direct access to computer sound synthesis.

Live @ Music, Humans and Machines (ODC 2019)

Collaboration with Miguel Negrão. Composed for the WFS system in TU Berlin which contains 2700 loudspeakers on 832 independent channels. Premiered on the SuperCollider symposium in Berlin on the 23.09.2010.  Here in stereo.

'It concerns the real-time interaction and relationships between gradually evolving sine wave drones and dense, dynamic microsounds. The idea is of journey in an indeterminate direction: a global movement carried by an intense current of enfolding sound-masses that get disturbed and affected by streams of high-density subatomic events.'

Fallacies

The first track from my album, 'Safn 2006-2009' released by LMALC in 2010.

Aftur

Samtímis

Fingrafjall

From Volume & Void. Released on Superpang,  September 18, 2020
https://superpang.bandcamp.com/album/volume-void

Composed through experimental scheduling algorithms that explore the duality of immediate, direct events with gradual and evolving processes.

System and sounds created during the summer of 2020 in Scheveningen, The Hague.

Design: Joe Gilmore

Volume & Void

Premiered at the BEAST Festival, Birmingham, England in March 2011. 

Exists also as an audio-visual project with Cedric Dupire. Video here: http://vimeo.com/62161204

Grey Seeds

From the casette 'Cendres', released on SØVN Records in November 2020.
https://sovnrecords.bandcamp.com/album/cendres

Polytree is composed through extensive use of waveshaping processes. It focuses on using composed waveforms for movements in time and formal structures that emerge from lower-level synthesis methods. The majority of the sound material used in the piece was created through experiments with bilateral folding (waveshaping) that is being frequency modulated through audible (high) frequencies. 

Designed as iterative, the digital components that constitute ‘Polytree’, can be recomposed while they run. The importance is not where an ‘intelligence’ takes place but rather how it emerges through an exchange with any surrounding influence. A shared responsibility is favored here, where it is often unclear whether manual action or automated algorithms are behind the perceived activities.

Cendres

Polytree

From 'Context and Scope'
https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/540350/540351

Context and Scope, Ringing

From 'Context and Scope'
https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/540350/540351#context

Context and Scope, Flock

Context and Scope, Grit

From 'Interrupts and Intervention'
https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/543155/543156

Interrupts and Intervention, Blocked

From 'Synthesis & Operation Flow'
Paper at https://2021.xcoax.org

Synthesis & Operation Flow, Pools

From 'Synthesis & Operation Flows'
Paper at 2021.xcoax.org

Synthesis & Operation Flows, Folding

From 'Synthesis & Operation Flows'
Paper at https://2021.xcoax.org

Synthesis & Operation Flows, Bistable

Icelandic Composer / Sound artist. Released numerous LP´s, EP´s, compilation tracks and reworks on labels like Vertical Form, Thule, Uni:form, Spezial Material, Trachanik, LMALC, Shipwrec, 3LEAVES and Granny records.

Perfomed his music in concerts and festivals in Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, Ireland and Iceland. Collections of his solo works can be found on the CDs “Safn 2006-2009” (2010), "Processes & Potentials" (2013), "Paths" (2016) and "Lueur" (2018).

Concerned with process-based ideas. Sounds focusing on internal activity and motion. Compositions that put into foreground behaviors, actions, fluid sound structures, fuzzy materials or forms.

Interested in exploring the contact between composed computer sound structures and space. Has presented/worked in various spatial configurations such as at the WFS system in Leiden (192 speakers), the WFS system in Berlin (832 speakers), the BEAST system in Birmingham (up to 100 speakers), GRM Paris as well as recent 8 and 4 channel formations.

Faculty member at the Institute of Sonology, Royal Conservatory in The Hague and currently teacher of algorithmic composition and computer music. Studied composition with Gerard Pape, Trevor Wishart, Agostino Di Scipio and Curtis Roads at the CCMIX music center in Paris. Holds a masters degree from Sonology completed with Paul Berg, Kees Tazelaar and Richard Barrett.

Currently working with algorithmic composition, generative environments, compositions and live electronics. Also working on new material with his long-lasting electronic music duo Einóma, and for MGBG, a duo of voice and electronics with Marie Guilleray.

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Bjarni Gunnarsson

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