from
Canada experimental underground 016 survey,
released March 4, 2016
Shawn Bell is a composer, educator and interactive media artist dedicated to creativity and multidisciplinary collaboration. He is interested in constructionist approaches to new media education, in particular, how interactive technologies and complex systems theory enhance and expand the creative process in the traditional arts, computation arts and game design.
Shawn codesigned and is currently teaching in the “Interactive Media Arts” profile at Dawson College. IMA unifies the study of the diverse forms of interactive media through emphasis on creative thinking, systems thinking, and active learning pedagogy (2011–).
He spearheaded and helped develop Dawson's “Independent Video Game Design” program in collaboration with Industry and the indie community, a firstofitskind program that combines game design, programming, art and entrepreneurship for those planning to start their own independent game studio (2012).
He codesigned and directed the “Montreal Games Incubator” and helped develop its successor: “Critical Hit: Games Collaboratory”, in partnership between Dawson College and the “Technoculture, Arts and Games Research Centre” at Concordia University. The focus of the Collaboratory is on the development of innovative games motivated by contemporary sociocultural concerns (2010–12).
Finally, Shawn coordinated the "Video Game Level Design" and "3D Animation for Video Games" programs at Ubisoft Campus and l'École de technologie supérieure for Dawson College (2008–12).
As a guitarist, Shawn has performed solo, in small ensembles, and in collaboration with dancers, theatre troupes and the Concordia Electroacoustic Composers’ Group.
As a guitar teacher, he began composing pieces targeting the pecific technical and musical needs of his students. By 1989, a number of his pieces had been selected by The Royal Conservatory of Music for its Graded Guitar Curriculum, many of which are still included in
recent editions. Five volumes of studies and his concert pieces have been published by “Les Productions d'OZ.” (
www.productionsdoz.com/en/)
Among Shawn’s instrumental compositions, “Currents I” and Currents II” have been featured on William Beauvais’ CD "Traces" (1995), Steve Thachuk's CD "Classical Guitar Currents" (2003),
arranged for electric guitar with processing by Sundar Subramanian (2005), and performed at national and international festivals.
His computerbased compositions have been used in film and television, including Michael Crochetiere’s experimental film, "Subterranean Passage" which premiered at The Toronto
International Film Festival (1999).
Shawn’s interest in computational creativity and metacreation dates back to “Voices From The Edge of Chaos” (1998), a CD of emergent, self–organizing computer music based on cellular automata and asynchronous random boolean networks. He received a FACTOR international distribution grant for this work and was subsequently awarded a residency at Lovebytes Labs in Sheffield, England (1999) to produce a piece for "Digital Space" a CD and CD ROM of “innovative new work using digital sound and multimedia” (1999).
In an attempt to bridge the worlds of control data and sound data, he developed ~zomes, a bitlevel sound synthesizer based on cellular automata for which he received a grant from “Le Centre interuniversitaire des arts médiatique” and was subsequently asked to sit on the awards jury (2005/06).
Since 2010, Shawn has been developing NetWorks, both a body of musical work as well as an interactive music generating system based on scalefree network theory. To date, he has published two albums: “NetWorks 1: Couldbe Music” and “Networks 2: Phase Portraits”, both of which are available on iTunes, Google Play, Bandcamp, and Loudr among other distributors.
Notes on “… between shadows …” Constraints on the connections and interactions between the entities of systems are central to
what defines them. This is true of the interactions between the entities that make up matter, cells, societies, ecosystems, planetary systems and so on. It is also true for games and art.
Constraints are what define, and how we recognize, musical genres and are key in the process of creation. “... between shadows ...” is an example of the diverse, self organizing musical forms that information sharing over simple networks can produce. NetWorks is a virtual network of 64 nodes that share music performance data including pitch, duration, velocity, and entry delay. Articulations such as legato, staccato, etc., as well as pedalling and various synthesis parameters are also often determined by the network. The NetWorks network has been “tuned” to generate patterns at "the edge of chaos,” that is,
balanced between variety and harmony (through repetition, for example). Although not explicitly programmed, one can often hear motives that repeat, vary, develop into melodies, diverge and
return, all through simple interactions between nodes. If constraints define genre, NetWorks is a search for new genres and crossgenres.
To modify a phrase of Christopher Langton’s (a pioneer in the field of Artificial Life), NetWorks is the study of “musicasitcouldbe.”
The approach taken to mapping the patterns to sound is to ensure their clarity, not to obfuscate them by complex synthetic textures or other effects readily available during mixing, for example by applying an echo effect. No notes were harmed in the mixing of these pieces! Since the music of NetWorks is selforganizing, sampled instruments were often chosen to include the “human touch.” The sounds chosen to manifest the musical patterns discovered by the network attempt to
reflect the mystery and wonder that virtually unlimited diversity can come from such small beginnings and such simple models of interaction. "NetWorks 1: Couldbe Music" is good for focused listening, ambience, a background for work, mediating and falling asleep. A decent pair of headphones is recommended for focused
listening.
More info at:
soundcloud.com/zomes
