Stefan Powell

@spduchamp.bsky.social

80 Followers 54 Following

Guy who makes things that make sound and then makes sound with those things. Electoral Reform advocate. Applied and Arts-Based Research Associate at RE/Lab@TMU. Co-founder of Common Sort.

Video of hands playing a small 4 string Dr. K electric guitar. (Thank you Jason Nolan for lending it) The guitar is in open E tuning and the person playing actually can't play guitar but is having a lot of fun in a basement making noise.
A black&white of photo of a building demolision showing the exposed interior walls and staircase.
A hand is rapidly tapping on the number keys on a laptop which trigger chord changes in a guitar sample player. The screen show a Plugdata patch of the Kellycaster Chord Engine playing a strum pattern on each chord change.
A tree diagram of proposed phylogeny of occlupanida. (bread bag closer thingies)
Shows a screen with a Plugdata patch. A slider with markings that represent guitar strings. The mouse drags the slider across the "strings" to play them. A graph let's one draw a strumming pattern. Then chord changes are played with the strumming pattern.
An electric guitar is being strummed while a small MIDI keyboard controller attached to the fret board is being used to select chords from a chord palette.
A Plugdata patch with a audio input (the laptop mic) feeding into two granular synthesis pitch shifters, each of those feeding to the left/right laptop speakers. The pitch shifters are controlled with horizontal sliders that have a range of -2000 to 2000 representing cents of pitch shift. One pitch shifter is shifting things lower and the other is shifting things higher.
Guy on stage sitting in a chair with a Macbook Pro on his lap and he is tapping and stroking the mic on the laptop and waving his hand in front of the laptop speaker to modulate the sound of the feedback.
Colby Richardson manipulating pulsing sounds of compact fluorescent lightbulb with bare guitar cables. No effects.
A room full of people sitting on the floor attentively watch as Colby Richardson blows their minds with the sound and lights of dimmed florescent light bulbs.
A hot wire bow cuts through white PVC ceiling tile with nasty smoke and burnt edges.
Kinova Jaco robot hand holding a saucer with a teacup. A chopstick attached to a drone motor poised to strike the cup.
A chopstick striking a syncopated beat on a two stringed instrument.
A chopstick attached to a drone motor rhythmically hits one string of an electroduochord (two stringed electroacoustic instrument). The rhythm is being manipulated by some guy sitting in chair with MIDI slider controls.
A robot arm moves a saucer with a teacup while a chopstick attached to a drone motor taps out a rhythm on the teacup.
A slow motion black and white video of chopstick attached to a drone motor slicing a teacup in half when the chopstick strikes it at high speed.
A hand moves a toy tambourine under a MIDI controlled drumming chopstick creating polyrhythmic patterns.
BEFORE SHOT - Parking lot with garbage from illegal dumping piled up and strewn about.
Wires with harness knots that take a rocket scientist to understand.
Diagram of how to tie off a wiring harness. I wish I had the words.
Two land line telephones connected by a Teletone phone line simulator box. The handset is raised on a beige Northern Telecom 2500D touch tone phone and 555-555-5555 is punched into the keypad. Then the Clear Telemax phone beside the box rings a couple times and then the beige phone gets hung up.
Close up of computer screen show log of MIDI data note, slides, and pitch bends being streamed. Audio is Hard Rock Guitar in GarageBand interpreting the data.
Robot fingers gripping and rotating a tea cup by the handle with aid of beeswax pads on the fingertips.
A chopstick hitting a drum with an unusual rhythm. Chopstick is being controlled from Pure Data
Video showing a rotary magnetic bow (wheel with magnets in it) spinning near a wire rack with two guitar pickups underneath the rack. Signals from pickups fed to effects pedals. (Platform compressor, RAT, Phil's octave pedal, Ventris reverb)
A heat gun on low sweeping over clear plastic weather seal on a window as wrinkles in plastic are vanishing.
Selfie of Stefan Powell and Nicole Babin just before locking up and leaving the old Common Sort Annex location.
A close up of end grain on a 2x4 showing the centre of the rings and branching out in 4 directions
Mannequin torso, limbs, and hands piled up on a floor.
Off cuts of white vinyl drop ceiling decor panels.
CANDU nuclear reactor cut-away diagram.
Numerous network cables being snipped with wire cutters.
A screenshot of Meshtastic showing the LongFast channel with a message from some unknown node broadcasting "Born like this, into this As the chalk faces smile, as Mrs. Death laughs As political landscapes dissolve As the oily fish spit out their oily prey We are born like this, into this...."
Camera enters a room thick with smoke like dust suspended in the air. Shows the grinder on the floor and then turns to the culprit, wear ventilator and goggles.
Stefan wearing respirator, goggles, and hearing protection in a dust filled room.
Computer screen showing plotted values that track the amplitude of vibration of a plucked guitar string.
Movie poster from The Warriors, featuring the most terrifying baseball players of any movie.
Kinova Jaco assistive robot arm manipulating a enameled metal cup while the cup is being struck with a chopstick attached to a motor controlled using rhythm synthesis in Pure Data
A chopstick attached to a motor playing rhythmically on a rubber band attached to a cardboard box
Chopstick mounted on drone motor rhythmically hitting an enameled cup
Drone motor with chopstick attached spinning rhythmically with great speed and force.
MIDI keyboard controlling the strike of a bamboo chopstick on an enameled cup.
A 21" Roma pizza box being carried down a grocery isle. The box reads "TASTE THE DIFFERENCE" ROMA PIZZA THE ORIGINAL BREAD PIZZA
Close up of place mat show illustration of how to eat lobster. A pair of hands hold a lobster and the instrustion "1. Twist off the claws." The word "Excellence" in red script in lower right corner.
ALAN LAMB - RECORDING METHODS 1) Recordings: about 20 hours over a period of about 10 days. Primal Image recordings November 1981, Beauty April 1983. 2) Catalogue and memorise recordings. Cataloguing involves matching pitch, melody, harmony, "mood", timbre etc. 3) Selecting passages which have potential for including in composition. 4) Laying down stereo tracks of selections in order chosen by the "feeling" of where the sound is going, ie. a section of the recordings sounds as if it should lead to the next section (very subjective) In Primal Image there were about 15 sections used for the 1988 version. 5) Finding the correct order of sections 6) finding ways of bridging sections to make the composition "seamless". Various methods eg. overlaying end of one and beginning of next or using bits of recording from elsewhere in the 10 day recording session to make the join. 7) Heavy use of EQ to balance harmonic densities one section to another and within sections eg. up to 12 dB boost or attenuation on occasion using both parametric and graphic equalisers. Also to try to get rid of noise especially hiss (due to ancient equipment I was using at the time). 8) Experimenting with different possibilities until it sounds right (never ending) 9) 4 track master on reel to reel (Tascam 44) 10) Play down onto 2 track stereo adjusting EQ, loudness continuously for final version. To give you an idea of length of sections in Primal Image, the 1st four minutes is one intact section of recording with no breaks or addition. The climactic section about 2/3 way through is about 7 minutes unbroken (just using EQ for balance) etc. Same in Beauty. I use very little overlay except to make transitions, one section to another. Octave drops and jumps don't work so I don't use them. I do not use any other kind of manipulation.
Small section of giant geometric aluminium sculpture with florescent tube lighting.
Young talented mustachioed man in black waves a strobing LED camping lamp over a small solar cell audio device plugged into effects running on a laptop.
Green silhouette of guy wearing glasses playing a black stick wireless controller with a large projection in the background showing a knob labeled CUTOFF
Cover of Snake Church album - Grey scale image of what appear to be 7 vertical rectangular lights with the words SNAKE CHURCH in scratched lettering.
DIY silk screen setup with oiled laser pring BEHEMOTH MACHINE logo on glass laying across 2 chairs with a 50 watt UV light on floor facing up
Left page of booklet: On a recent train ride, the passenger next to me explained that he worked at a tech company. As a former tech-nerd that forgot to pack a book to read, I was intrigued. He explained that his company employs dozens of programmers that train A.I. to generate endless streams of music for movies and retail stores. Normally this sort of thing would have upset me, but I'm tired and out of fucks to give. Welcome to Darkroom, a secret space to develop new sounds, new ideas, new instruments and new connections. for more information and audio recordings visit therevox.com/darkroom Right page reads: Sumac! Sumac! is a musician and creative technologist who specializes in diy instruments and electronic music. Her work revolves around re-use and recontextualisation combining analog synths with modified acoustic instruments to create performances that transcend the limits of both. Transformation is at the core of her work. She doesn't want to create something new from nothing she wants to show the potential of what already is. IG: sumac.zealot
People sitting in a red illuminated room as some guy plays electroduochord.
Room lit with red light, laser projector, tables with synth gear, and electrlduocord. Laser testing.
A dark room with a red light, a coat rack with 2 strings and pickup (electroduochord), a boom standnwith a rotary magnetic bow, a stand with guitar pedals and mixer.