9.7.07

Remember Godfried Willem-Raes, star of Peter's wonderful GW-R Week some time ago? Godfried is still going strong. He recently discovered YouTube, posting up numerous amazing videos. The awesome clip above shows Godfried and a friend playing QT, his automatic circular pipe organ using Picradar movement-to-midi system (contains full frontal male and female nudity, BTW). Then there's the sensopole, which is absolutely the most unlikely combination of art, music and full-nude pole dancing you'll see this week.

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2.3.05

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G-WR Week Part 3: The Man and his Machines

This page lists the 70+ instruments that Godfried has built, most of which he invented. In 1971 he built the Dodekadent - a 12 voice modular synth with over 200 controls, but he soon moved on to weirder stuff like Singing Bicyclies, Talking Flames, and the Pneumaphones, strange new wind instruments powered by people jumping or sitting on giant air-filled cushions (top left pic). In the '90s he started building a robot orchestra of electro-mechanical instruments, ranging from an automated sousaphone to a midi-controlled rain machine.
Godfried and friends perform with these instruments in as the M&M Ensemble, in their specially built 150-seat auditorium, The Tetrahedron in Ghent. Their next concert is on Tuesday 15th March 2005. Flights to Brussels (one hour from Ghent) cost £76.80 from London, around $450 from NYC, or Eurostar goes direct from London to Ghent for £119.

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1.3.05

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G-WR Week: Part 2: The Invisible Instrument

Here’s Godfried using The Invisible Instrument, a kind of giant theremin which uses either radar or sonar waves to translate a performer’s movements into music. There’s a very technical explanation here, complete with schematics. Godfried has used the invisible instrument in a number of his performance pieces over the years, including Songbook illustrated above, and the ongoing electronic opera TechnoFaustus, which also uses "pressure transducers, contact microphones, acceleration-sensing devices, pyroelectric transducers... and 1 to 3 naked techno or break dancers".
CLICK FOR PART THREE: THE MAN AND HIS MACHINES

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28.2.05

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Godfried-Willem Raes Week. Part One

A week ago, I'd never heard of Godfried-Willem Raes. Then Peter sent me an email telling me he'd discovered an amazing Belgian composer, performance artist, programming-language writer and instrument pioneer. A man whose friends call him God. I asked him to make sure that he wasn't a hoax (he isn't), and I'm very proud to hand you over for the first part of a week of special reports:

Five Reasons why Godfried is a MT Hero:
1: He was thrown out of Ghent Royal Conservatory in 1971 for being ‘antimusical’ because of his experiments in electronic music. He is now professor of experimental music composition there.
2: In 1968 he founded the Logos Foundation, which explores new musical interfaces, including “wireless gesture control, microwave radar, acceleration sensors, pyrodetectors, lightsensors, myoelectric devices, brainwaves, EEG and ECG”.
3: He’s created his own computer language for music composition, GMT which he uses to drive an orchestra of robot instruments (of which more later).
4: He wrote a symphony for bicycles
5: He has a fantastic beard, smokes a pipe, and is usually nude during performances (unless he's wearing a silver jumpsuit).
MORE GODFRIED IN PART 2: THE INVISIBLE INSTRUMENT

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Probably the strangest music videos you will ever see

G-WR Week Part 3: The Man and his Machines

G-WR Week: Part 2: The Invisible Instrument

Godfried-Willem Raes Week. Part One