Tonight I’ll be giving a short presentation at the Pecha Kucha Night in Dundee. Organized by the wonderful folks over at Creative Dundee, it promises to be a fascinating night of rapid-fire unrelated talks. My presentation will be about the History of the Branding of Lothian Buses (very similar to the Pecha Kucha Edinburgh I did in February). For the non-Scots in the audience, Lothian Buses is one of the main bus operators in the Edinburgh area.
On the surface, my talk has nothing to do with any of my current projects. However, I would argue that it is about interface, audience, and history, which are three things that I try and approach in all of my work.
The event is at 7pm tonight, 22 May, at Chamber East in Dundee. See you there!
I’m super excited to be headed off to Manchester today to play the One Pig show with Matthew Herbert at FutureEverything. Show details are here. This follows on from recent gigs at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, SOS48 in Murcía Spain, and at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. It’s been an amazing adventure, and I’m looking forward to more. Coming up we also have Brighton on Monday the 21st of May, and then two shows in Portugal at the end of June.
Here’s a video someone took from the crowd in Spain…
Here’s a trailer for some upcoming Matthew Herbert One Pig shows…we’ve been doing loads of gigs around Germany and France, and in the coming weeks we are hitting up England, Spain, and Portugal, with a show in Poland in August too.
The footage in this video comes from our debut Royal Opera House show, which seems like ages ago now!
Come see us in Murcia (5 May), London (9 May), Manchester (18 May), or Brighton (21 May), and be sure to say hello.
Droplets is a water-reactive art installation which I recently installed in the Travelling Gallery as part of the Alt-w Shortcuts show.
The Travelling Gallery is an amazing project run by the City Art Centre here in Edinburgh, which aims to bring contemporary art to far flung destinations all around Scotland. It does so with a very impressive specially designed gallery bus, which brings the art to you! I’m very flattered to be involved in the current show, which is comprised of artists who have been supported by New Media Scotland with an Alt-w award in the past, as I was with the Secret Sounds of Spores.
For this show I took certain elements of my Weather Gage piece and modified them to work in the Travelling Gallery, this time using water rather than wind. Pieces of hand cut Maryland cherry wood are spread along the wall, each fitted with a custom built solenoid and LED circuit. These are triggered by a watering can which is placed at the base of the installation, allowing visitors to bring the work to life themselves.
I’m very pleased with how it’s turned out, and I’d like to thank Alison Chisholm and Mark Daniels for supporting this project. If you are in Edinburgh today or tomorrow please go and see it down at the City Arts Centre on Market Street, or on Thursday at Waverley Court. Otherwise, check the tour dates to see when it will come to you!
A few weeks ago I was invited to speak at Mediamatic in Amsterdam as part of their Ignite series of presentations. It was Ignite #15 and I had a great time! Many thanks to everyone involved for having me over. Many thanks as well to my friend and sound artist Nanny Roed Lauridsen, who recorded my talk and posted it on her website (a site which is, incidentally, full of great recordings like the sound of ice skaters on a canal in Amsterdam recorded from underneath using a hydrophone).
Here’s the mp3, it’s a very quick 5 minute presentation where I go through the whole story behind the Secret Sounds of Spores and talk about why I did it! Yann Seznec – Spores, Ignite
The installation is looking great, too, here are a few more photos for you…
A few weeks ago, at the end of a batch of One Pig shows in Germany, I went over to Amsterdam to install my Secret Sounds of Spores piece at Mediamatic. You can see the project page on the Mediamatic site here.
It will be in the gallery until around the end of April or so.
What a great place! It was super fun and I’m really pleased with how it turned out. My work is part of the Paddestoelen Paradijs show, which features a number of fungus-themed artworks in their amazing gallery. One huge advantage of this is that there are plenty of mushrooms to use in my piece – so every few days a new one is put in the jar to drop some spores through the laser.
Here are a few pictures of the setting up and final product:
I’ll be heading back next week to present the project at Mediamatic as part of their Ignite series. Please come by if you are able – you can RSVP at that link, it starts at 8:30pm.
It features the same adorable and hilarious Pug characters from Pugs Luv Beats, this time doing nothing but singing to their hearts content. In other words: it’s a super fun synthesizer and drum machine – changing their costumes and hats changes the sounds and drums.
Here’s a short video from Reuters about the One Pig project I’m involved in. It goes into some background of the album, as well as the live show and the styharp, together with some footage of us rehearsing for our recent show at Cafe Oto.
You can also check out this great review of the gig from Clash Music and see a lovely gallery of photos here.
Pugs Luv Beats, a music composition game for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, is now available on the App Store!
My company, Lucky Frame, has been working on this project for a while, it’s very exciting to have it out! We’ve even made a great promo video for it:
Focusing on musical creativity, Pugs Luv Beats offers a refreshing change from the standard karaoke-style music games currently on the market. Instead of forcing a player to accurately recreate an existing song, the game encourages exploration and musical composition – playing the game will create original music, different for every user.
In the game, the player controls an alien breed of pugs. Once the masters of a wondrous and highly advanced civilization, these pugs are the victims of their own greed. They loved nothing more than to collect beats, which they cultivated with their special brand of “luv”. But an ill-advised scheme to grow the biggest beat of all time spun wildly out of control, and their home planet was destroyed. The player must help the pugs to grow more beats so they can rediscover new planets, build houses, and recover their lost technology.
Head over to the Pugs Luv Beats website to see lots of videos, screenshots, and information. Give it a download and let me know what you think!
The Amazing Rolo is Yann Seznec, an artist, sound designer, musician, and entrepreneur in Edinburgh, Scotland. He specializes in making fun and intriguing musical instruments, software, and installations. He is founder of creative studio Lucky Frame , releases music with The Seznec Bros and is currently on touring as part of Matthew Herbert's band.
