CAVE – Cork Audio Visual Ensemble – live multimedia performance

The Cork Audio Visual Ensemble

hands on digital media art performance makers

The Cork Audio Visual Ensemble’s outward focus is on performing and creating contemporary audio-visual compositions. Aesthetically, through both performance and creative practice, CAVE seeks to explore the relationship between the physical (carbon-based) and the digital (silicon-based) worlds. Part of CAVE’s mission is to seek out the challenging intersections of data, art, and performance. Out of these intersections emerges an aesthetic leaning toward a better understanding of how we shape our world. This is accomplished through both visualizing and sonifying the data and audio-visual media collected and musically manipulated by the ensemble. CAVE strives to challenge what is known and relates its findings to the world through creative expression.

CAVE was co-founded by Jeffrey Weeter and Derek Foott in 2014 and is currently directed by Jeffrey Weeter. CAVE was founded in part with funds from UCC’s Strategic Research Fund and has been based in the School of Film, Music, and Theatre at University College Cork, Ireland.

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CAVE Art

Pattern Portraits: Cork

Pattern Portrait: Cork is an audio-visual composition continuously developing its form through the musical and visual exploration of the rhythmic cycles and patterns generated by the traffic data of a Cork City motorway and the water levels of the River Lee. Each automobile on the highway at a given time is represented by both a note and an image. The river levels determine the drone volume. This data is sent to each Possibility Box where the performers improvise with synthesis, timbre and real-time video.

Pattern Portrait: Cork was composed for CAVE (Cork Audio Visual Ensemble). The ensemble performs this piece using the Possibility Box, a newly designed real-time instrument in a wooden box featuring potentiometers, switches and distance sensors with a Raspberry Pi at its core.

Samples from previous performances

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CAVE Tools

Designing a musical interface for media performance

A major aspect of the ensemble has been the design and fabrication of performance interfaces or instruments designed for multimedia performance. This is where the transcoding of the samples, images, video, data, etc. that we use to form the building blocks of our pieces happens. The data can now be manipulated by the hands of our performers. Here are a few of the instruments we’ve worked on.

The Box – The first CAVE controller

This instrument utilised piezo transducers along with temperature and light sensors. We could play with light and fire! It also had a webcam inside tracking hand movement.

The Box rev 2

The first controller turned out to be a too fragile for travel and performance. Upgrades included a wooden box that could be assembled and disassembled, reliable switches, and a Leap Motion controller.

The Possibility Box

This instrument is a further realisation of the original CAVE manifesto. I’ve always strived to eliminate the need for the visual interface or the screen of the computer. With the Possibility Box, you can plug it in, jack it into an amp and start playing. If you have more than one, they will find each other on the WiFi and you can perform in sync. In fact, it uses Ableton Link to sync so you can even perform with others who are perhaps using Ableton Live on their computers. This makes the ensemble incredibly mobile. It also allows for more casual improvisation and development of technique.

The box itself has 8 potentiometers, 1 distance sensor, and 10 buttons. A digital encoder controls a menu allowing you to select and load an instrument patch. Inside the box is a headless Raspberry Pi computer, and Arduino, and a USB audio interface. The sound generation patches are built in PD or PureData, allowing for endless possibilities in how the instrument sounds and reacts to performance. If you desire a musical keyboard or more controllers at any point, you can simply plug in a USB MIDI controller of your choice to extend functionality.