Music for Dance or Movement

Music For Dance or Movement (2011) is a piece I originally developed not for dance but for modular audio/video synthesizer. The title suggested itself by the piece’s character of constant, elaborate motion, as well as by its audio source material: a recording of zills, the finger cymbals used in belly dancing and other Middle Eastern dance forms. I plan to create future versions of this piece in collaboration with one or more movement artists (possibly belly dancers).

I created the piece using a handmade analog synthesizer from Flower Electronics and a Eurorack-based modular hybrid audio/video synthesizer of my own design. I drew additional audio material from the aforementioned zills as well as a set of children’s toy handbells. The video source was a small security camera aimed out the window, down to a darkened street in Boston’s Fort Point. The audio and video processing was controlled entirely by control voltage, and the two synthesizers passed control signals between each other.

Here is a video clip of the first performance, where you can see a portion of the live video being generated.

Here is the complete audio, recorded directly from the board onto a Sony PCM-M10.

Performance: instruments, engagement, practice

I perform music and visuals using a variety of analog, digital, and acoustic media. Since 1995, my performance practice has been centered around improvisation. In the sound realm, I play contrabass; modular synthesizer; software platforms including Max/MSP, Ableton Live, and SuperCollider; and variety of handmade sound objects and modified string instruments such as banjo. For live visuals, I use a hybrid video/audio modular synth and VDMX video performance software.

I have always found improvisation to be the most productive zone for me in my artistic practice; I use improvisation at various stages of the creative process, and complement it with process-oriented actions, phonographic/videographic investigations, and indeterminacy.

My long personal history of live performance informs the rest of my body of work as well, whether it be my drawings about (or made with) sounding objects, my installations with performative aspects, or my writings about non-standard performance practices.

The Please: multimedia at Issue Project Room, 2010

The Please at Issue Project Room, 2010

The Please is:

Linda Aubry Bullock: guitar
Brendan Murray: drums
Michael T. Bullock: bass

Accompanying video/audio composition by MTB, with additional sound and video from B. Murray and L.A. Bullock.

The Please at Issue Project Room from Michael T. Bullock on Vimeo.

PONDER 1 & 2

PONDER 1 & 2
2008 and 2009
With Michael Pestel, Bryan Eubanks, Andrew Lafkas, Vic Rawlings, Linda Aubry Bullock, others

PONDER is a full-day festival of performance and site-specific works taking place in and around the Prouted Pond and Barn in Middlebury, CT, and hosted by Michael Pestel. For PONDER 1, I joined Eubanks, Lafkas, and Rawlings in creating long-duration performances of up to 6 hours, as well as continuously running sound installations. My installations included several small solar-powered droning devices that floated on the pond; and a Max/MSP-based system that recorded sound from inside the barn and replayed it through transducers attached to the barn’s windows.

For PONDER 2 we were joined by Linda Aubry Bullock. Together we created a sound installation in which an electric blower motor resonated an 8-foot wood organ pipe. Field recordings were also played into the pipe via a small speaker. The combined sound was gently amplified.

Selected recent performances