At Coded Matter(s) #2: Sound Hackers, Soundlings members Tijs Ham and Roald van Dillewijn performed together with Gareth Davis in an exciting interdisciplinary performance. The performance investigates the laptop and code as an instrument, playing together with the acoustic sounds of the bass clarinet played by Gareth Davis. Both Roald and I developed custom software to turn our laptops into expressive musical instruments.

In Kimberly Waldbillig’s words:

“…A live performance from Soundlings & Gareth Davis followed, which decidedly removed the idea that sound is a function of harmony and music and has to be linear or, in fact, organized at all. Davis played his shiny bass clarinet, flanked by two MacBooks and Soundlings Tijs Ham and Roald van Dillewijn, who would modify his sound sampled in real-time. The Soundlings broadcasted GUIs they’d created onto the white screen behind them, but I couldn’t recognize the syntax of the language being used for live coding; only after the fact I found out it was a mashup of Max/MSP and Javascript outfitted specifically for the occasion. Supercollider code turned the ‘normal’ built-in trackpad into a haptic modulator to stretch and bow the alternating breathy and sharp pulses from the bass clarinet. The trio fulfilled the task of the truly experimental composer – designing a set of parameters in which sound can be created and letting them unfold on their own…”