The UBC SUBCLASS is a collaboration of programming musicians, visual artists, dancers, and engineers and we work on live interactive pieces that utilize various forms of gesture tracking with Max MSP. Some examples of gesture tracking we use include the KiCASS system with kinect infrared tracking, colour tracking, pitch tracking, Touch OSC, and re-purposing other game controllers. I have also worked with DMX lights. Due to my diverse background in the performing arts, my involvement with the group includes programming, violin playing, and dancing. ​
Class blog 2016/2017: https://ubcsubclass2016.wordpress.com/ 
Class blog 2017/2018: https://ubcsubclass201718.wordpress.com/

Sustained Pizz

Anders Grasdal, ​Breanna Picard (bassoon), Chantelle Ko (dance and pizz samples). All three of us programmed. 

Flesh

Two soloists are presented, one is timid of her own sound, the other boisterously enters the stage. Gradually they learn from each other and achieve a happy medium. 

We used the kinect to measure the distance from either one of my hands to my spine. The threshold for when I reach out one of my hands bangs a single plucked violin sample. In the beginning, the bassoon was only coming out of the left channels and my pizz was only coming out of the right. ​Breanna and I programmed the sound effects and presets for our respective roles. ​When each preset was banged by Anders, our sounds gradually became louder in the opposite channels. By then end, both of our sounds were coming out of all the speakers. 

​Chantelle Ko (dance and programming) , Zoe Nichele (dance)

​ Nowadays, people attempt to manipulate and prolong their youth.  Flesh addresses the artificiality of cosmetic beauty, and the struggle to maintain it.  However, as reflected in the dancers’ movements, it will always succumb to the natural aging process. 

​I used Touch OSC on my tablet to trigger the "artificial" samples and to start the cross fading between the two images of skin. The cross fading and the increased use of sound effects were both timed. I used the Kinect to track my partner's right hand, which is what was triggering the "natural" samples.  

The original video my professor recorded was really dark, so I brightened it. However, the brightening made the screen in the background difficult to see. Therefore I have provided both the original and brightened versions.  

Pure Gliss.

Alec Korchev (programming), Briana Smirfitt (dance), Chantelle Ko (violin and programming)

Pure Gliss explores how the acoustic, traditional sounds of the violin can be mutated and conform to the synthetic, modern sounds of technology. As the synthetic sounds become denser, the playing style in turn becomes more perverted, and by the end there is a return to tradition and the origin of the sound source.

​​The patch was continuously recording and playing back my violin with extreme effects. There were no other sound sources. The dancer was controlling the perimeters on the effects. 

Polarities

Chantelle Ko (programming and controlling the recorded samples live), Greg Thomas (guitar and programming), Micki-Lee Smith (violin), Briana Smirfitt (dance), Sarah Wasik (dance)

Through magnetism, opposites are bound together or repelled.  The dancers represent this tension through their movements as metals crash together and fall apart.  Likewise, the guitar and violin inhabit diametric sonic spaces.

​We used the kinect to track the distance between dancers and used that data to control the filtering on all the sounds. I used a MIDI keyboard to trigger all the metal sounds and I used a dial on the keyboard to control the playback speed of those sounds. 

Layers From Ayekazule 

Briana Smirfitt (dance), Chantelle Ko (recorded violin), Julianna Bouso (recorded violin), Micki-Lee Smith (live violin), Melissa Liang (video). 
Everyone except the dancer programmed.  

This piece was first premiered at the opening night of "Layers of Influence" exhibit at the Museum of Anthropology. The musical material references Ayekuzule, which is a song by the Sumi Naga tribe in India. It means “the process to make one’s clothes” and is sung while weaving cotton.  The four sections of the piece represent the four themes from the MOA's exhibit: Pride, Power, Prestige, and Protection. The dancer portrays these themes by interacting with the video and music. 

There were four programming musicians collaborating for this piece, and since we had agreed on making four distinct sections, we each programmed/composed one section on our own. My section was the third one, "Prestige", which was represented by the green image. I had made recordings to harmonize the main melody from "Ayekazule". In performance I had individually faded in all the different voice parts, played them on loop, and then gradually faded them out. Effects were also added with Max MSP.   
​  ​
For the Bang! Festival we decided to add an intro section. For this part I had programmed a patch that could make five recordings of the live violin and play them back live. I was controlling it with a logitec game controller and I programmed it so that the same button could make a recording and make it playback by being pressed a second time. I also used the logitec to control the presets for the effects.  

 ​