AudioCubes at KYMA International Sound Symposium 2015

İlker Işıkyakar is a composer, sound designer, and multimedia specialist based in New York City. Together with his partner, producer and filmmaker, E. Zoe Schutzman, they run Cloud 18 Productions, a post production company in NYC.

As a sound designer, İlker has been involved with Symbolic Sound-KYMA system for many years, and he and his partner have participated in several KYMA International Sound Symposiums. In August 2015, the KYMA International Sound Symposium (KISS2015) took place in Montana, USA.

İlker and Zoe’s proposals were selected for a presentation and performance at KISS2015. In both works they used the KYMA sound system together with the AudioCubes.

An abstract of İlker and Zoe's presentation at KISS2015 can be found here. İlker describes their presentation piece as follows:

“The audio accompanying the video is a composite of my piano pieces and a few lines from T.S. Eliot. The lines were read by three vocal talents and processed by KYMA using the data gathered via the AudioCubes. I continuously recorded MIDI during the process and then reconstructed these streams to use inside KYMA.”

Check out the video that was embedded in their presentation below.

Besides the presentation, İlker was also invited to do a performance piece at KISS2015. An abstract of his performance can be found here. This is how İlker used KYMA and the AudioCubes during his performance:

“I essentially used the cubes as MIDI controllers to manipulate the Timeline inside KYMA and accompany a video I had created titled, How The “Glitch” Stole The Party. The cubes were used to bring the elements in and out of the composition just like you'd do in an Ableton environment but with KYMA. I also used the cubes to do some other fancy numbers like opening and closing filters, etc.”

Check out the video of his performance below.

İlker and Zoe received a lot of positive feedback from the audience on their performance and presentation at KISS2015:

“The main thing was, people were so intrigued by me doing live mixing and manipulation with these cubes that changed color in relation to each another, reacted to each other and to my hands. Thanks to almost non-existent lag time (it was a triple tier workflow from MIDI bridge to OSCulator to KYMA via firewire), they were able to connect my movements to the sounds and loops that changed smoothly from one to another as I performed to the silent video!”

About İlker Işıkyakar

İlker Işıkyakar studied Civil Engineering and City Planning in another life! Upon graduating from Istanbul Technical University, he worked in multimedia for several years and moved to Boston to pursue his passion for music and the drums. In Boston, he earned a degree in Music Production and Sound Engineering from Berklee College of Music and then relocated to New York City. Since his arrival in the Big Apple, he has not only composed, performed, taught and produced music, but has pursued Kyma Programming Environment Studies at NYU and Film Editing at The Edit Center (where he completed their intensive “Art of Editing” program and emerged an Apple Certified Final Cut Pro Professional). He currently works as film and sound editor, post production specialist, as well as composer and sound designer. (Source: http://www.cloud18productions.com/#!about/c240r)

About E. Zoe Schutzman

E. Zoe Schutzman grew up in Seville (Spain) and moved to Connecticut where she completed her undergraduate degree in Chinese Philosophy and Architectural Design at Wesleyan University. She pursued graduate studies in Linguistics at The CUNY Graduate Center and Translation and Interpretation Studies at Hunter College (both in NYC). As Linguist, she has taught at numerous institutions of higher education, provided multi-lingual interpretation and translation in various arenas, and contributed to sociolinguistic, language acquisition, and language documentation research projects. Her affinity for the power of image and sound to tell a story has permeated her existence since childhood, when her father first planted the seed by taking her to see films such as Nosferatu and Casablanca (to name two). Presently, she writes, produces, and collaborates on projects with her partner in crime, İlker. (Source: http://www.cloud18productions.com/#!about/c240r)

More information about the work of İlker Işıkyakar and E. Zoe Schutzman: Cloud 18 Productions