Markus Popp
ovalprocess is an interdisciplinary, modular, dynamic music project, comprising a software application, a series of audio CDs, a lecture, and (as of April 2001) three interactive sound installation objects of varying size and dimensions. All components are conceptually interwoven and modeled after the unique oval strategies to sound, structure and musical aest
hetics.
ovalprocess as a whole is an attempt to suggest a model for one possible alternative approach to audio productivity in contemporary electronic music along the lines of a definition of music-as-software. Formatted as a series of retail CD formats, sound installation objects, concert events and lectures, its ambition is to represent a discursive, engaging and user-centric, potentially controversial effort, in order to propose a new dialogue and to shift the focus of attention to problems and questions of software design, ergonomics and multimedia authoring, in order to suggest additional criteria to electronic music discourse.
The process project was publicly launched with the release of the ovalprocess audio CD album in May 2000 (Zomba Records, RTD 176.2914.2). This was accompanied by several public showings of the process sound installation objects in both Europe and the US and further explored by a series of live concerts and guest lectures in the USA, Canada, Hong Kong and Japan across a wide range of occasions and contexts, both academic and non-academic.
Ovalcommers is the follow-up to process, slated for a May 21, 2001 release (Zomba records, RTD CD 176.2932.2).
ovalprocess and its sequel, Ovalcommers, are more than just spin-off products, but rather audible milestones, documenting the ongoing development of the oval audio content workflow, the process software application, and its sound installation counterparts. The audio CD releases both represent works in their own right, each pursuing a distinctive, contrasting musical rhetoric. Each CD aims to interpret and at times fundamentally transform the underlying tech specs and formal boundaries of the process concept.
The actual process software application - currently exclusively designed for the MacOS and implemented by programmer Richard Ross, based in San Francisco - is a first attempt to represent a model for a typical workflow in contemporary digital audio productivity, while at the same time precisely delineating the underlying musical strategies behind oval - as applied on the various oval recordings past and present - as well as displaying the inherent deliberate limitations of this particular musical approach.
The process sound installation objects were created in cooperation with architecture company sko-toparc, Berlin, and are designed to serve as a tangible, interactive front-end to the process software and the included original sound-file content. They effectively enable the user to re-structure the latest work-in-progress from the dynamically evolving oval audio research, shifting the overall impetus from a conventional music presentation / distribution format towards a personalized work environment.
Software
In short, the ovalprocess software is an interactive authoring environment for personal contemporary desktop audio along the lines of the unique oval approach to electronic music. It is designed to offer an accessible, directly manipulable, fully iconic, object-oriented user interface operating in real time.
The applications' workflow focuses less on the typical sampling, mixing and editing functionality of generic productivity software, but instead offers detailed means for structural changes to the included oval soundfile archive. By effectively enabling the user / audience to configure, layout and perform customized recordings oval-style by radically restructuring the provided sound files via an intuitive, color-coded user interface, process proposes a dialogue on time-based software environments.
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