2026-03-26

Review of HiFi Pursuit Listening Room No.3

I arrived at Listening Room No. 3 at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum prepared, frankly, to be underwhelmed. Too often, systems that borrow the visual language of classic horn loaded hi-fi promise romance and deliver nostalgia at the expense of precision. The system by Devon Ojas avoids that trap entirely. It is a rare example of a system that embraces character without losing control.

Horn loaded systems, when properly executed, still outperform most modern PA architectures in terms of transient articulation and midband intelligibility. This installation makes that case strongly. The system is highly coherent across the room, with very few modal hotspots. Stereo width is limited, but that is an architectural constraint rather than a system failure. The payoff is spatial consistency, with energy distributed evenly into all corners without collapse or overhang.

The low frequency section is particularly revealing. Direct radiating fostex 31.5in subwoofers are used instead of folded horn or tapped horn alignments. This choice produces significantly higher group delay control in the upper bass region, and the subs feel notably faster than typical large format horn-loaded low frequency systems. Crucially, they are positioned and delayed in a way that achieves acceptable time alignment with the midbass horn section, avoiding the usual LF smear that occurs when physical path length and electrical delay are not tightly controlled.

The high frequency architecture is where the system becomes most interesting. The super tweeters, simular to the JBL 2405, are not an extension layer but a structural necessity. They offload extreme HF energy from the Altec 1505 style multicell horns, allowing the compression drivers to remain within a lower distortion operating band. The multicell dispersion pattern produces a highly diffuse upper mid and lower high frequency field, avoiding the axial beaming common in radial horn designs. The result is a high frequency image that is not point sourced but volumetric, with a noticeable reduction in spatial collapse at off axis positions.

Tonally, this is not a flat reference system. There is an intentional spectral contouring, with elevated sub bass and a slightly lifted air band. It reads closer to a controlled smile curve than a linear target. That choice is not incidental. It produces a perceptual increase in scale and physicality, particularly in the transition from low bass to lower midrange, where many horn systems tend to thin out if not compensated.

The crossover implementation feels functionally musical rather than purely technical. Each band is isolated into discrete horn or driver systems, effectively segmenting the spectrum into instrument-like domains. The result is a reduction in intermodulation within each band and a noticeable increase in transient separation. Electronic material, especially fast synth sequences and arpeggiated content, remains clean under load, with minimal harmonic intermodulation between bass and midband content.

Room treatment is appropriately aggressive without becoming overdamped. The space suppresses early reflections enough to maintain clarity while preserving sufficient decay to avoid anechoic dryness. This balance is essential in a system of this scale and dispersion geometry.

Where this system becomes more interesting is when considered against contemporary club sound design trajectories.

Venues such as Nowadays demonstrate a fairly successful approach to high frequency management. The elevation of HF elements at the top of the stacks, combined with distributed high frequency dispersion units suspended from the ceiling, follows a design logic consistent with the legendary Paradise Garage sound system topology. sound system era. This vertical HF distribution does a strong job of reducing harsh axial beaming and creating a more even HF field across the dancefloor.

However, the tradeoff is in the low frequency domain. The multi-bin low frequency arrays, particularly the cluster of 2 bass horns or kick bins positioned on one side of the floor, and the 4 bass bins at the bottoms of the quad stacks introduce asymmetry in LF propagation and increase temporal smear in the 40–120 Hz region. The system becomes perceptually slow and muddy in the bass due to enclosure loading, path length variance, and room coupling that is not fully controlled at those wavelengths.The system design at Public Records, also designed by OJAS, can exhibit excessive low frequency energy in an acoustically under-treated environment. The use of multiple large format low frequency W bins introduces significant stored energy in the room and slow bass due to the long horn path combined with the already large room. In that context, the system tends to overpopulate the modal region, making fast tempo material, particularly techno or high BPM electronic music, feel less temporally resolved than intended. The issue is not output capability but decay time and room interaction in the sub and low bass region.

From a systems perspective, there is an interesting design question here around scale efficiency. It is not always acoustically or economically optimal to deploy extremely large diaphragm low frequency drivers in club environments where transient speed and articulation are as important as SPL. There is a case to be made for hybridizing paradigms.

A synthesis of approaches could be more effective. The spatial HF distribution principles of Paradise Garage sound system era and systems like Floating Points’ Sunflower Sound System, combined with the modular midbass horn logic seen in contemporary designs associated with designers like Shorty and newer club system builders, could be integrated with faster low frequency approaches such as dipole configurations or high quality open horn systems in the HOQS lineage. This combination would likely improve temporal coherence in house, experimental, and beat-driven music contexts without sacrificing scale.

Likewise, replacing conventional dome or point-source HF systems with multi-entry horn topologies, fully separated into independently amplified and DSP controlled bands, would allow far more precise spatial tuning of venues and larger sound stages. With proper FIR-based correction and per-band delay alignment, the entire system could be optimized not just for SPL or coverage, but for groove integrity and transient readability.

What becomes clear across all of these comparisons is that the Listening Room No. 3 system succeeds precisely because it avoids the excesses found in larger scale club deployments. Smaller volume, tighter treatment, and more disciplined crossover partitioning reduce phase instability. At the same time, the inherent dispersion characteristics of the multicell horns suggest that in a larger architectural volume, the system could scale into something significantly more immersive, potentially achieving a far wider lateral image without sacrificing coherence.

2026-03-26

2026-02-23

Be the bones of the structure over the river dry to the touch in their arching madness. The sun beams apertures of light through the wooden structure reflecting solemn memoria in the sheen of the grain as it moves alongside the words spoken by the stream below. As I sit under the paper ceiling the sound of the water hugs my ears as if to immerse me in its microscopic world of generative abnormality. Its personality digging, described into the canals of my ears as a parasite of sound riding the walls of my ear like wheels of an ancient story. I feel connected to the ground, the soil burying my feet with the heartbeat of the roots. I have heard the drum, the communicator since the dawn of time. There's a magical nature to the pushing of air as sound. It's a push and pull, a conversation deep in the forest and hiding under car tires under our smoky noses in the bustling city. It's in the pipes, the glass windshields, the frogs, the birds, the songs, the non-speak. It's something that comes on again and again. You hear it often, it's how closely you're listening. The walls build around. Growing from the ground up in a spiral, the acoustics whirling upwards, your echoes growing louder, your voice harmonizing with the resonance of the glass, the walls extruding into impossible geometries mimicking the pedals on a rapidly growing vines that wrap around your feet and pull you into the sky. This experience was made for you. What you hear is what you speak. Sound waits for no one, it's continuous in its nature. You don't see it as sound, this is your daily ritual, your ears, mind and heart thank you. You live here, as you walk the walls change to echo your footsteps to passerbys. You look out of the window to this expanded landscape, flying above a ravine, the wind flapping the skin on your ears, like clouds in freefall, the rain surrounds you. It's a blessing to be here, away. The temple. The songs of angels serenade from the towering ash totems, alive and blackened, playing your sonic agriculture, your sonic act. Your eyes, glass, shattering at every moment of birth. What you hear is almighty, omnidirectional and ambisonic. An impossible gravity keeps you comfortable. Silence is there when asked for. The architecture is the symphony, the walls poetic, the windows : breath (breh), the doors, states of consciousness, gateways into the mind, spiritual in nature. When rooted in reality, in your current timeline, you find yourself in a carefully designed dynamic room, with multiple modes of listening, nodes of desire, smelly toes in wooden floor, nose filled with incense, and a clear mind.

2026-02-23

My Trip to Amsterdam!

On the 12th of Feburary I traveled to Amsterdam for Sonic Acts Biennial Show I was part of. Sonic Acts is an arts organization show that's been having sound art shows since the 90s. I gave taught a two day workshop for the Ciat Lonbarde Lil Sidrassi paper circuit open to residents of the Netherlands and met a bunch of cool people into synth building, most had experience with soldering and it went super well! Decorating the synths at the end were the funnest part. I was staying at one of their residency buildings inside a beautuful courtyard area, called w139, near Amsterdam Centraal Station. The area I was in was pretty touristy but the canals and water were beautiful, with the brick architecture kissing right up against the canal water sometimes. The Red Light District was also near me, with the sex workers in the windows of red lit rooms lining the winding narrow streets. There were a few cool record shops, and a synth store called MIDI Amsterdam that was super modern, up to date with eurorack and a bunch of newer rack and hardware stuff, like the control NYC of Amsterdam or something. I didn't eat much Dutch food but I loved the Stroopwaffel and snack shacks that had churros and crazy sweets. There were a lot of plastic duck store for some reason also, I didn't get any. I had a few Zinger Burgers from KFC, their spicy fried chicken sandwich. Even the food provided by sonic acts was pretty normal. My performance was on the 19th at a bar there called Murmur, which was on the water kind of hidden in the middle of nowhere in the industrial warehouse areas, along with a couple other music venues and office buildings. Murmur was awesome, it was so cozy and small, with an awesome horn loaded speaker system in quad. The sound tech for the show, Danny, also created plate speakers for additional spatialization of the performances. I played in quad from my modular synth and Danny played with reverb and delay effects for the spatial plate speakers. Listening to my ambisonic piece in the listening room was also awesome, even tho it was only 8.2 it sounded way fuller than when I composed it in the spatial studio at RISD. I hope to be back for the next one in a couple of years! If I do come back I want to book a tour around there, and visit Rotterdam, Brussels and Belgium, and Frankfurt.

2026-02-05

Chatism

this work begins with sound leaking out of things that were not meant to speak
concrete retaining walls humming in E♭ fiber optic cables whispering in packet loss wind folding itself
into drainage tunnels
i follow these small transmissions like field recordings made by moss
architecture becomes a kind of long track title:
“underground chamber for softening the anger of traffic into a continuous breath”
“horn for listening to the river rehearse its memories in quadraphonic light”
“public infrastructure re-tuned for private healing”
i build instruments that are also rooms and rooms that behave like unfinished songs
large horns people can sit inside of subwoofer cavities that hold standing bodies like low frequencies hold
air amplifiers disguised as altars
everything is slightly damp slightly glowing slightly buffering
technology is never clean here
it arrives grass-stained water-logged covered in fingerprints and solder smoke
live code runs like rainwater through copper DIY circuits breathe at irregular tempos files are saved as:
final_final_groundmix3_REAL.wav
and still feel incomplete
listening becomes the primary construction material
before drawing, i wait before building, i tune before tuning, i place my ear to the floor
form emerges the way long titles emerge — slowly, accidentally, truthfully
through accumulation rather than decision
these spaces function as rituals without spectacle
places to sit inside sound to feel grief detune itself to let the nervous system re-harmonize with soil, river,
infrastructure, sky
sound is positioned not as art object but as a communal medicine
a low frequency commons
if it must be named plainly (which it resists), then the thesis proposes:
architecture as an instrument for collective healing
but it prefers longer names like:
“environment for safely dissolving into shared resonance”
“a listening practice disguised as a building”
“gratitude ceremony for the ground, in four channels”
and so the project remains slightly unfinished on purpose
like an exported track that still contains room tone
still contains footsteps
still contains the sound of someone sitting down to listen
2006 28yo silicon valley tech twink who hates his job sends these emails to the aether to be lost in binary
limbo while the apple mothers change his diapers and remind him to wear deodorant before going into
work tomorrow.

2025-12-07

Enoz Root's Pointless Machine. *Ca-Chunk!*

2025-10-07

2025-09-29

On Thursday I had a popup beer party for my beer review instagram account. The cloud speakers are finally done so I also wanted to make this an exhibition opening to show them during the party. We also had an event at "The Washing Machine" in the new machine courtyard that we want to do maybe twice a month to raise money for rent: Rinse Cycle at the Washing Machine. Also I moved into a new bedroom! On wood st in providence, near dexter park :).

2025-09-22

Aki is making Heviers

2025-08-11

In boston yesterday I played a show outside, deep in a park near a strip mall organized by Barbie and Tobias, with their awesome TOA 38-sd speakers and Eminance subs. Sounded great, I'm really in love with these speakers and how colorful they are, in paint and sound. I started painting some of my speakers fun colors. We used my peavy speakers as the booth monitors which sounded pretty good! The party went from 8pm to 5am.

2025-07-30

Building HiFi Speakers

Right now I'm building these hifi open baffle hybrid speakers from sub drivers that Hoolihan dropped off at the studio, mid range Page drivers that were used at PA speakers in the ceilings at my studio probably in the offices that occupied the space in the 90s and early 2000s, and tweeters Eli harvested from some studio monitors. This is my first HiFi Build and I'm doing it right, trying to build a nice crossover and everything, I was quad amping it for a while, using my modular to make crossover filters before the amp. The page drivers are open baffle and the BASS (bad ass serious sub) drivers are in a closed box, with no port. Matt Azevedo is helping me do the calculations, I need a windows computer to run Hornresp and RoomEQWizard. And i need to order some more parts for the crossover, but I've harvested some power caps and inductors from old speaker cabinets in the basement of the Firehouse. I'm learning a lot about crossover design and speaker impedance. The page drivers had transformers on the back of them that made me think that they would be a super high impedance but they ended up just being 8ohms. I have been looking at a lot of Japan HiFi Audio listening rooms with crazy compression drivers for the whole system, connected to these insane sculptural horns that spiral the house into the attic to make the length of the horn for bass response and I want to build something like that for my architecture thesis.

2025-06-10

Trip to Georgia for AMIS 2025

On June 5th, 2025, Me and Enzo left for Georgia in his 1973 MG B That he had just finished restoring, building the engine basically from scratch. The engine had about 550 miles on it before we embarked on our journey, and 3573 when we returned to providence on the 10th. The car did very well on the trip, there was a tiny leak from the back seal of the break fluid tubing, and at one point the fan belt became a little loose (which we fixed on the spot). We watched the weather for the radar and listed to the local weather radio, outran a few thunderstorms and baked in the heat for the first couple days. We swam in a lake, river ot beach for at least the first 3 days to cool off. We made stops in Torrington, Stony Point Beach, Gettysburg, Front Royal (Along the beautiful Skyline Drive, with the highest elevation being 3600 ft), Eastover, Dillon, and Georgetown before finally arriving in Savannah. That night we walked along the dock near the water in the fancier part of savannah, lots of candy shops and restaurants along the active port. Some of the boat port buildings had been converted into malls. We watched the lightning in the storm we escaped for a while, past the cranes moving shipping containers, while Enzo explained to me the precision and skill needed to operate these big huge cranes carrying tons of weight. We also talked about tug boats and radioactive material. We went looking for a diveyer bar and ended up at Dew Drop Inn in Forest Ridge. The bartender lady talked about her experience at Woodstock 99 and confirmed everything I heard about it was true. We ate a couple weiners that had been sitting out in one of those dog heating machines at the bar, two weiners per bun, and booked it to a motel in Dublin, where a drunk man in a Trump shirt surrounded by 4 or 5 dogs told Enzo the MG was "running a lil rich", which ended up being true, before directing us to the motel we were actually looking for. On the journey back we also stopped in Athens, Tallulah Falls and slept at our friend Tristain's cottage in Highlands (with a max elevation of around 4000ft). The hight difference took some getting used to. Highlands had a really creepy vibe to it, like the whole town had been haunted and rebuilt after some tragic disaster. All the buildings in the main city looked brand new, as if they were built in the last 5 years or so. We finally stopped in Danbury, where there was an abandoned greenhouse behind the gas station, before arriving in providence on the 10th at around 11pm.

2025-05-10

2025-04-30

Writing Cottage Passive House

2025-04-09

Learning PostScript, a coding language for pdf and page layout design. Dave Fischer useds postscript to make flyers and animate music vidoes for melt banana in the past.

2025-04-04

Saraphina in the Halogen Studio

2025-03-30

Light table dinner party

2025-03-13

RV near the moshassuck river

2025-03-11

2025-03-02

Me and HuiChun's first performance as Yari Kanna Copy Paper, playing sampling and processing balloons.

2025-03-01

Ciat Lonbarde DIY Workshop in NY at Roulette

watch the full thing.

This workshop went incredibly well and opens up a whole world of styles of workshops to teach. It was extremely well documented and streamlined, and 2 people bought the 2 kits that I made for the workshop!

2025-02-18

Blue House

2025-02-15

Dumpster Hot Tub Party

shifting the program of the dumpster, a part of the infrastructure of waste and sewage , into a ritual experience, a community gathering and interaction with water, a public demonstration of the physics of water flow the water not being that hot presented it sort of as an endurance test , the more people that decided to make the plunge at once the mere- warmer the water got reminding me of collective effort and indigenous ritual practices a ritual that gives thanks to the land, through water flow and the body, abstracting the architecture of the 30ft dumpster the flow of water, int terms of where it ends up.

2025-02-13

Today was my first day back at RISD. I just came back from a gap year. I really needed it, i got a lot done. Getting back has been super annoying. With financial aid. I cant afford art school. They put a hold on my registration because I needed to pay an outstanding balance, for my dining, that was their fault, when they switched over to workday from their other payment or mgmt system they forgot to charge me for dining, or something.. idek anymore. There's something unique about the way arch is discussed from a design perspective. From analysis, documantarianiacariumness and representation you can do material studies used in architecture to express certain moments in design, and their applications and functionalities. There is something mysterious and magical about the depths of the drain tunnels. The long echoing acoustics, or short rattles of reverb. These can be captured with convolution, setting off an impulse response in the space, popping a balloon, clapping. this can be used spatially, electronically to playback these sounds in those spaces. Theres an interesting drain of drain drains ion the drains of the drains locally located in water drains.

2025-02-09

Claire and Enoz

2025-02-04

Dax Tree Live @ Ridgewood Presbyterian Church

2025-02-04

Lucas Abela @ Ridgewood Presbytarian Church

2025-02-01

Recently me and Marie Carroll had a duo set at Red Ink

2025-01-30

Today me and Daniel made a 4to1 x2 passive mono 1/4in mixer for the dax tree. It's the new rendition of the femi style sandwich, with thick mulberry sides, and open front and back/or top and bottom, and pater style scrap wood cutting board sandwich face. Instead of the 4 screw corner sandwich. I think I'll do future builds like this, its nice. I want to make a stereo version of this for my gear. I tried to modify a switched passive mixer by adding resistors between all the connections so it wouldn't feed back but I'm not sure I did it right, and I think the unit was already old and not completely working (I think that just entails that there are some rusty contacts/it needs to be cleaned, which is doable, i may revisit it soon, and test along the way, it would be great if it was.)

2025-01-29

Daniel Fishkin and I are playing a duo set on Feburary 2nd alongside Kill Alters, Televangelist and legendary Lucas Abela! Extremely excited for this show, it has been an absolute pleasure working with him over the past few months, and practicing for the show.

2025-01-21

On Thursday I'm playing a show at Machines with Magnets in Pawtucket, RI. Organized by my good friend Clinton Van Arman, who also made this flyer. This set will be focused around Orca, sending midi to my eurorack modular synth. Today I did an amazing practise sesh with Daniel Fishkin in prep for a duo set that were doing at the Ridgewood Presbyterian Church on Feb 3rd with Lucas "Grandpa" Abela, Kill Alters and TV Evangelist.. I'll post this flyer here soon as well.

2025-01-19

Today I made a lot of progress on my personal server! Grief found this old tower computer for me in the RISD E-Waste pile alongside a bunch of old mac laptops and other desktop towers. We gutted it and put in a new graphics card and 5 4tb hard drives, and a ssd to boot from. The server is running linux debian, with no desktop. It's set up in a Raid array. Today we got it hooked up to a network so that i could start uploading files to the server via rsync on the same ip. We had some trouble finding a good 3d print file for the hard drive holder but we just ended up zip-tieing it and it was fine. I used Grief's spellbook to set up most of the raid array and figure out file transferring as we updated it. The 4tb external ssd that had my entire life of files on it was wrapped in gaffer tape along eith 3 other external hard drives, so I had them all in one place. We ripped these apart, in an attempt to extract the ssd from the enclosure for faster transfer times, but the enclosure was too tightly closed, and it seemed as though it would not be one of the drives that would allow us to separate the ssd.

2025-01-17

Today I gave a presentation at RISD in the Digital Media department at the CIT building, followed by an Orca workshop for the students. The wintersession course is taught by Huichun Yang and is titled Livecoding Sound.

2025-01-08

My DIY Cardboard box for my new daxophone!

2025-01-03

Grief's Apartment

2024-12-25

Making Arbrassons with Daniel Fishkin

Here are a few of the Arbrassons I've made with help from Daniel! I've been working with Daniel as an assistant mostly, learning how to make daxophones and design pcbs and enclosures for solar sounders. Woodworking has been very fun. I really like using the planar, and the japanese style hand planes. I'm ready to step up my synth box game now for sure. Also no longer afraid of the table saw. So far my philosophy remains anti-miter and anti-dovetail. AND anti-resin, unless its for a cuprobrassum (led window).

2024-12-14

Orca Workshop @ NYC Resistor

2024-10-25

My multichannel audio piece “for the flowers have lost their scent” originally composed in November 2023 as a demo for Genelec's visit to the Studio for research in sound and technology will be played at the upcoming Waveforms event at the museum of science Boston on October 25th! This piece was composed for the 25.4 system at RISD, and decoded for quad for this event. Tickets are free! More information linked in my bio. WaveForms 2024 presented by Museum of Science Boston and produced by MASARY Curated by MIT Spatial Sound

WaveForms returned after its successful inaugural year to present a multimedia art occurrence at Midway Artist Studios in Fort Point Boston. Presented by Museum of Science Boston the event featured installation artwork, audio visual performance, spatial sound, experimental animation and video screenings. For one night, Midway Artist Studios was alight with an array of artwork activations featuring regional artists from Boston and beyond. Museum of Science Boston is partnering with a unique cohort of organizations to bring the event to life

2024-10-12

A night full of Robots, Bass An Algoritms! German artist Moritz Simon Geist brings his robotic techno performances to East Williamsburg on his US fall tour. Known for creations like the Popcorn Jazz Robot and Robotic 808 Drum Machine, Moritz will transform Hex House into a mad science lab! Char Stiles is a computational artist, educator, and programmer. She works creatively in the lower levels of graphical computational systems & makes jokes about how computers work. She is currently at the MIT Media Lab’s Future Sketches group researching the future of creative coding in performance. Sadnoise is all about Internet data ambience esoterica, music for digital gardens and binary sandstorms. Workshop: Earlier in the day, Moritz will host a hands-on "Robotic Electronic Music" workshop (2-4PM) where participants can build and experiment with DIY music robots. No experience required! Saturday, Oct 12 2PM Music Robot Workshop 8PM Moritz Simon Geist (Robotic Techno live), Char Stiles, Sadnoise

2024-09-26

cancelled.work

cancelled.work is a community of people in the local provicence, RI and boston MA area. It started based on the idea me and Grief had for a server co-op where local artists can host their site or have pages on a local web board. Its an homage to early internet, webrings, neocities etc. with a focus on being a wiki, archive comment board and media hosting platform for local artists. There server lives at grove st in providence, RI.

2024-08-17

Live at Fuller's Speed Shop!!

Fuller's is my favorite secret coffee shop in Providence. Peter started doing coffee popups around 2010 era going to shows with his custom coffee setup before settling down in a co-op type situation in an old building in olneyville, where he has his coffee shop/gallery/book store/bike repair shop.

2024-06-27

Orca Workshop at Red Eel

2024-06-24

Crosswired Festival

2024-06-09

Waterworks Festival

Waterworks festival presented by Non-Event is a festival of experimental sound preformed at the Metropolitan Waterworks Museum. The Waterworks Museum interprets the unique stories of one of the country's first metropolitan water systems through exhibitions and educational programs on engineering, architecture, social history, public health, and Safe Water Access. This space presents incredible acoustics for acoustic and electronic performances. I am always thinking about transforming spaces with sound and this was a unique opportuniy where the space truely transformed my sound and the way I perform. Space and acoustics are extremely important to the work I do as sadnoise and this is a wonderful example of reverb, reflections and natural acoustics in conversation with experimental electronics. Watch the full performance here.

2024-05-19

Slabfest III

2024-04-09

Dogevox V2

This is the second iteration of Dogevox. Dogevox is a collectionn of different ciat lonbarde pcbs: The Lil Sidrassi, Dogvoice and Rolz (4 and 6). I had a lot of fun with this build. The box is a cohiba cigar box, with the sides sawn off and walnut panels screwed in. The top is a custom collage with sharpie drawn to find the perfect 5ths for the layout of the jacks. Lil Sidrassi and rolz is a perfect pair, and offers so much range, especially with the 12 position switches for the hairy caps on lil sid. In the future I think I'de choose some more random values for the rolz, and make led windows out of resin instead of put them right through the top.

2024-04-08

Total ecplipse trip near Adirondack Park with Grief, Enzo, Alyx, Robin and G

2023-10-10

buffreak

2023-10-02

SRST Sessioins 001: Cryptwarblr

Welcome to the first installation of SRST Sessions. SRST Sessions is a video series highlighting local artists in Providence, RI in an attempt to bridge the gap between music academia at RISD and Brown and the local music scene in providence and the surrounding areas. The SRST or the Studio for Research in Sound and Technology is a 25.4 channel speaker array at RISD used primarily for teaching spatial audio and ambisonics, but has become a space for practice, performance and exploration over the years.

Artist Bio: Cryptwarblr (Alex Bernhardt) is a circuit-bending project investigating bent ROM data in a Casio MT-240 synthesizer. Using homemade patch-bay-and-switchboard array controllers, data carrying lines between the ROM & CPU can be cross-connected in various combinations for unusual sonic effects. These combinations can affect timbre, pitch, adsr, tremolo, gliss, texture, pattern, chord, and tuning, in a bizarre but repeatable way, as long as electric parameters are consistent. Alex’s research in electronics is in how to achieve precise control over small levels of resistance in order to clearly define logic levels across the types of cross-connection combinations. To facilitate music-making, Alex has developed their own hybrid music-electrical notation system and has cataloged hundreds of cross-connections. Their music weaves between combinations of connections in an attempt to explore a sonic landscape painted by the instrument’s offerings.

These events are organized and curated by Femi Shonuga-Fleming with special thanks to Shawn Greenlee, Mark Cetilia and all of the wonderful artists in this series including Cryptwarbler for kicking off the series!

2023-09-11

911 Apple Pie

made with stolen apples from the apple tree that no one ever picks from, the apples go bad every year, so i stole all of them this year.

2023-04-22

Studio for Research in Sound and Technology

2023-03-21

I think granular synthesis is a good form of synthesis to relate sound and manipulate sound with the idea of the organic in mind. In simple words, granular synthesis is a form of audio synthesis that operates on the microsound time scale, meaning less than a second. You start with a source audio and various synthesis techniques can be used to chop this audio up into small samples or grains that make up the audio. These individual grains can then be repeated over and over as you slowly scan through the set of grains to stretch the audio out and manipulate the audio as if it were putty or dough that you're stretching across a surface. You can change the size of the grains, and overlap the grains to create unique soundscapes and completely rework the original audio.
I'm drawn to this form of experimenting with audio in this project in particular because as a concept, it's related to nature, generation and generativeness, an initial state of being, and evolution over time.
Granular synthesis reminds me of grains of sand. The wind blows grains of sand in the wind to create a new portrait in the ground. recorded audio is a trim and cut/sample of that moment in time.
representing sound visually, sand and dust
of relation to minimalism and minimalistic moves within composition Granular synthesis reminds me of evolution. You start with a set of genes, that is your audio, your initial state, first generation, and as you stretch that state, that initial audio over time, the longer the audio is stretched, the audio adapts to itself and has to inevitably evolve into a new form of being. Granular synthesis reminds me of raindrops in a storm. Microsound in repetition as time stretches is essentially a ritual practice as the longer the audio is stretched the more the repetition of elements of the audio and the longer the ritual practice.

2023-01-23

SAT 22 April 2023; Cold Spring, NY; Bull Hill
A celebration for our Mother Earth, in the form of a low-impact walk, and performance.
2 miles from the Cold Spring Hudson Line station, near the Cornish Estate Ruins.
Live coding spells will take place in the woods.

Special thanks to Mark Denardo for organizing a beautiful event

2022-08-05

Blast Radio Summer Series

2022-11-04

Ref Mag

2022-06-07

Research in Spatial Audio assisting Shawn Greenlee and Nick Thompson

Foafx - A command line tool for applying spatially positioned audio effects to first order ambisonic sound files

foafx is a command line tool for applying spatially positioned audio effects to first order ambisonic sound files. It is written with Elementary, a JavaScript framework for writing audio applications, and uses its offline-renderer package.

As its input, foafx expects a B-format, 4-channel first order ambisonic encoded file with ACN channel ordering. It supports file normalization either in SN3D or N3D formats.

In order to apply a chosen effect, foafx decodes the B-format file using a simple Sampling Ambisonic Decoder (SAD) into an octahedral arrangement with six vertices that represent virtual microphone positions. Then, the effect is applied with the specified parameters including its spatial position (azimuth and elevation). After effect processing, the six signals are encoded back to B-format, panned to the matching octahedral positions of the decoder, and rendered to an output file. The result is an ambisonic wet/dry effect mix with wet focussed in a specific area of the sound field.

2022-04-06

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2014-10-23

The Stoneskippers

My dog died yesterday, my girlfriend dumped me this morning, I choked on a pushpin (don't ask how), I got lost in the rain in the middle of manhattan with no money and a dead phone, and i almost got robbed by a crazy homeless person. It was the worst day of my life. After my mom died, I decided that there was nothing more to live for. So... I decided I would rather die and live a great life in heaven than suffer in the sorrows of my memories.

I jumped. I picked the highest place in the city so that I would have time to think about my life, but it was over in seconds. I felt a shock through my spine as my bones cracked and blood rushed out of my body.

I saw my moms face, and I woke up screaming in a white bed with white walls and a mirror as a ceiling. Where was I? I was definitely dead! I open the drawer next to my bed. Inside we're a few rocks and a glove. I put the let her glove on and picked up the rock. I threw it at the mirror, thinking it would break and flinching, but it went right thrugh. What!? I jump into it and get pulled into the same room I was in originally. Hmmm... I wondered. I pulled open the drawer. Inside was a note.

"Hello. Welcome to training facility a1. During your time here you will be training to kill nightlirkers" nightlirkers? What? I heard about then but never thought I would be training to kill them? Well... It's better than going to hell.

Targets appeared on the wall. They were black figures that were small and moved slowly. The guns were heavy, but I learned to get used to it.

"Luke... Help me" a voice said. It sounded just like my mom.

"Come. Here." It said. I turned around. The room was black. I couldn't see anything.

"Come... Closer" it said. I followed the voice.

"Don't listen to them!" Another voice said. It was more clear. The room turned white again. A hand came out of the mirror, then a face. She was beautifully. Her hair was blood red. She had blue eyes and small freckles. "Grab on!" She yelled. I grabbed her soft hands and she pulled me into a place much more complicated than the testing chamber. There were air ducts everywhere with poles and tubes poling out of the walls. It was like a Costco with no food or anything for that matter. "Follow me" I followed her through the maze to a door the size of a bank vault. She took the glove off of my hand and pressed numbers on a keypad next to the vault. The door opened slowly, as if it were 1000 pounds. "Ok, you ready" she asked. I blushed when she looked at me. "We're going to jump on three ok" I looked down were about 10 Empire State Buildings high and u could see almost the entire earth from here. I had just jumped and now I had to jump again!? What a drag. "1...2...3!" She jumped. Then I did. It was a Long way down. But before I could tell what was going on, we fell through a mirror and ended up in that white room again. I was about to have a heart attack. So much things were happening at one time. I had to relax. I took a deep breath and asked her what was going on.

"We have to escape from here" she said.

"From where, where are we?"

"We are in limbo"

"Seriously. Limbo. But Isn't that between heaven and hell?"

"Yeah, why? You died remember"

"Oh..." I said. I had already forgotten.

"Let's go!" She grabbed my hand and pulled me with those soft hands of hers yet again.

We finally got to safety, or what she calls "safety." An old abandoned fisher and cabin in the middle of the woods right outside of a mental facility factory? Yeah that's safe...

The cabin was small with a few windows and a small bed in the corner next to a tape with a lamp on it. There were newspapers on the walls about metal facilities and articles on limbo and dark magic. Grass grew between the plank of wood on the floor. There was an old torn up little box in the corner that read "time-skips." I opened the box slowly as blue dust or steam escaped it. It was full of rocks with alchemy symbols on it. I noticed a note that said instructions in scrip, as if it was written in a hurry.

I took the box to the lake and read the instructions which were already printed on a small piece of paper:

“A Stone-skip is the amount of times the stone skips on either water or air. This will have different effects based on the stone that you choose and set the time you want to go to. Some of the stones are elemental and can be used on those elements. Each stone you choose will result in a different outcome and effect in time. Some stones are heavier and some are lighter, so choose wisely. If you are reading this, you are most likely already in limbo, how these stones will help you get out is up to you. There are 20 stones in the box. 20 Time-skips. Use them wisely. Good luck. -Gregory Warm

I took the stones out of the box, examining each one. There was fire, water, earth, and air. 5 of each.

2014-09-20

The Train

Today was the worst day ever. Everyone in my family died including my dog and one of my cousins. I cried as I took the train home from school. The train suddenly screeched to a stop. No one reacted because we thought this was normal living in NY. Then the lights turned off. People looked around as the only thing that lit the train were the ominous dim lights in the tunnel. I looked out the window and couldn't see a station from the angle I was at.

I walked through the cars to the front of the train where no one was. I had had soccer practice so it was about 7 I think, but I have no concept of time a stranger once yelled at me. I only remember because he gave me Skittles. I will never take Skittles from a stranger ever again, I soon learned.

It smelled like death. And I would know what death smelled like because of all of the coincidences in which I was forced to watch death happen. I opened the cockpit to a dead man’s head hanging from a rope and a body stuffed in the corner. The glass was broken and there was a shoe on the control panel.

I didn't want to ruin my life any more than it already had been, so I continued to look for the power switch. I looked at the words smudged in blood as I tried not to look at them, which took me longer than I expected. When I finally looked up at the switch it looked as if it had been smashed with an ax. The numbers 21, 9 and 10 were engraved into the bottom of the keyhole. What did it mean?

I took my death book (I keep a death book. Yes, there are so many people and pets that died in my life that I keep a list of all the names and dates when they died. It's only 4 pages long but it's filled with names—hundreds of names that I don't want to remember).

"21, 9, 10," I said to myself slowly as I wrote the numbers down in the back of the book.

I decided to sleep. Sleep was the best thing for me because it gives me good memories of the times I had with mom and dad before they died. I left the dead body there to rot.

There was no way to tell what time it was. All of the clocks and watches spun through a cycle of 24 hours in 2 minutes. I went back to look at the faces I had seen the day before, adjusting to their attitudes and names that I wrote down in my death book in the "alive" section I had just made.

I saw a couple trying to pry open the doors and decided to help. I pulled as hard as I could. I wasn't really good at soccer so that didn't help. I told them that and they told me to stay positive and think positive thoughts. I called them hippies and walked away, crossing them off my list. I realized there was nothing to do so I went back to help them. Luckily, they were still there.

When we finally got enough people to help, the doors smacked open. There was the fat black man with unlimited amounts of donuts in his bag, the white girl that's always the first in every horror movie, the crackhead who sits in the corner talking to himself, and the old man who never talks.

We walked out into the dark tunnel. There was a door, but everyone was too scared to open it. It had the same numbers on it so I was guessing it was for that train. I pressed the red button beside it as it opened slowly, dust falling from it as if it hadn't been opened for years. Everyone stood back except for me. The hippies looked as if they were going to shit their pants.

The room was dark. I found a light switch and flicked it. It was heavier than any other switch I had seen. The room seemed empty as yellow lights revealed thousands of switches and equipment. There were shovels, jackhammers, chainsaws, and almost anything you would need to survive a zombie apocalypse. Even food.

We stayed there for a while, eating food and getting to know each other. We searched for ideas on how to escape, but it felt like we were miles from any type of civilization, even though...

2013-12-13

Falling into Space

I was floating in space. No more earth. No moon. Just black dead space. I check my oxygen level, 23%. I turn around looking for a light but not seeing anything. I see a tiny star in the distance. It looks so close yet so far away. I push myself towards it but never made it. Wait. It’s getting closer. The light. No, not a star. A ship. Yes, a ship! “Over here!” I yelled, knowing that they can’t hear me. I see the shape of the ship start to form as it gets closer. I hear a beeping sound. 1% oxygen. I start to suffocate. I faint out into darkness. Eventually, when I wake up, I see 3 Medibots in front of me. ”wh-what happened” i asked. In a loud robot voice it said "We see you in space and took you to ship. we see you sleep so we give you... wake up pill." "What? WAKE UP PILL? That's not what its called you dumb robot. They don't even know how to program robots right anymore, stupid SAC(Space Association of California). I started to get up. "No miss, please sit down!" i heard his voise fade away as i fell back into the bed and woke up a few moments later.