Tired of playing Ableton Live sets over loudspeakers?
Maybe it’s time to consider creating Live sets for 2.5 ton flamethrowing musical sculptures – like Syzygryd:
Syzygryd is a soaring metal sculpture, measuring 60 ft in diameter and 13 feet high, that spirals out to three touchscreen-operated controllers that anyone can use to dynamically compose music.
The interface is intuitive and visual, allowing anyone from a 5 year old to a 105 year old to become a musician.
The sculpture itself consists of three curving metal arms which spiral towards the center of the space into a tornado of increasingly larger and larger aluminum cubes. The cubes are lit from within by 1.5 kilowatts of LEDs, and the lights are sequenced to the music as it is created.
The entire sculpture responds to how you play it!
Syzygryd is headed to Burning Man 2010 – and you can create music for it.
That’s right – you can get your Ableton Live set performed at Burning Man on a 2.5 musical flamethrower!
Details below.
Creating Ableton Live Sets For Syzygryd
Organizers have published a musician’s developer kit for you to use when writing music for syzygryd.
The MDK includes sample Ableton Live sets, sequencer, controller and MIDI mapper software. The sequencer, controller and MIDI mapper software let you simulate the user experience of interacting with syzygryd.
When writing music for syzygryd, take these constraints into consideration:
- Try to keep your sets under 1GB as large sets may take a while to load.
- Set length is 20 minutes to an hour long.
- Design your set around the step sequencer as an input method.
- Remember, this is for a sculpture for Burning Man and possibly other international festivals. Make your music/set appealing to a wide variety of tastes, but also don’t be afraid to push the envelope. Although we do plan to deploy syzgryd at other festivals, we invite you to use the Burning Man theme “Metropolis” as inspiration for sets.
Details at the syzygryd site.
This is the coolest thing I have ever seen 🙂 Thanks for this !
Looking forward to seeing this in action.
I'm glad you guys are psyched for it! We're having a blast making it~!
We're still looking to raise the money necessary to build out the fire, and we're doing it through Kickstarter. If you have a bit to spare, we've got some rad donation bonuses!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fire/syzygryd
Hope to see you guys submitting sets soon!
I stopped watching after "you buy us the parts…". Booooring, starts to smell like spam simply dressed in a way to attract geeks. I mean; I'm 80% through the movie and you still failed to make it clear where the (musical?) interaction should be taking place or what exactly is happening.
All I see and hear so far is "flamethrowers, flamethrowers, flamethrowers". Maybe nice for people who know you guys, but for others its a "WTH?" kind of experience.
IMO that is.
Now to get back to synthesis 🙂
yeah, the kickstarter is a fundraiser for the fire. however! we have lots of other great content and an entire site devoted to music. check it out here: http://music.syzygryd.com
I still think this is a fantastic idea… but I wont be submitting anything for several reasons, FYI 1) no support for 3d party VSTis/plugins 2) complicated setup 3) I dont think my music is compatible
Also, what happens if someone spends a whole bunch of time making an ableton live set but you guys dont get enough funding? That would be disappointing. Good luck though, this is an awesome idea!!!