The Ghost in the Machine (2018)

While the airwaves are filled with news that computers are vulnerable to the Meltdown and Spectre attacks, something incredible happened deep inside my own Yamaha synthesizer.

I have been playing on this keyboard since 2002 without a glitch. Last year, after a gig, I mentioned to someone that my synth was a workhorse; after fifteen years of composing and playing music, it was still going strong. That must have been the signal for something to go wrong. Suddenly, the up and down arrows stopped working. Without these, I lost access to crucial functions in my workstation. I contacted a local electronic service center and brought the keyboard in for an emergency visit. The technician found that one of the PCM boards was not working and a replacement part was purchased from Japan. After weeks of waiting, the part finally arrived and the keyboard was healed. This renewed vitality was more like a short remission as the arrows soon lost their power for a second time. I brought the keyboard back to the shop but nothing else could be done. My beloved sound-making machine looked like it would never be the same.

The keyboard still worked, it just wasn’t what it used to be. As time went on, I learned how to live within its reduced capabilities. Then a few days ago, I turned it on, selected the piano voice and started to play, but the machine seemed to have another idea in mind. It kept cycling through voices and parameters. The yellow, red and green lights on the controls were flashing on their own. I tried to regain control but was unable. In desperation, I hit the surface of the keyboard with my fist to power it off. I thought this could be the death rattle of it, the end of music.

I waited a few seconds and turned it on again. The lights flashed once more, the names of voices on the LED window kept cycling around and around. And then, all of a sudden, all of that madness stopped. I looked at the keyboard as if it was a wild animal, unsure if it was going to jump at me or burst into flames, but nothing happened. I touched the keys; the piano was there. I played a little something. Everything sounded okay. Then I noticed that the up and down arrows were working! I played some more, accessing things that were not optional since the breakdown. I was shocked. I thought that these reemerging sounds might be the last to come out of my machine; if I closed it, it might die. I was afraid to power it off, so I played all day thinking that it was the last day.

Then, at some point, when I was ready, I shut it down. I waited a few minutes and put it on again. It was still working, and it is still working now, days after the incident. I don’t know what happened, maybe the ghost in the machine decided to make a move, or a speck of micro dust stuck under something fell off when I hit the keyboard. What do I know of the secret lives of microprocessors? Maybe I will never know, but for the time being I am ecstatic, enjoying the return of the way things were.

Daily Sound Work (2010)

Daily Sound Work, NET
• Sound Stations – Sonic Vigil V, St Fin Barre’s Cathedral, Cork, IE

The idea of doing a creative activity on a daily basis is something that I have always found exciting. I like the idea of discipline and of ritual that is attached to the challenge. In a way, the Daily Sound Work is my morning stretch, my half hour of playing on the keyboard, before going out into the world. The pieces created are posted on this website much as in a sketchbook, some are complete – perfect little sonic units, others are outlines of patterns or melodies to be used later on. They are for the most part – short, unrehearsed and unedited.

March 5, 2010

March 24, 2010

February 12, 2010

February 13, 2010

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(FMK) Karaoke du marché libre (2007)

Free Market Karaoke (2005-2009) from Daniel H. Dugas on Vimeo.

• Subterfuge – Galerie Sans Nom, Moncton, NB, 30 novembre 2007

Paysage sonore crée lors d’une performance à la Galerie Sans Nom, Moncton, Nouveau Brunswick dans le cadre de l’exposition de groupe célébrant le 30 e anniversaire de la GSN. La pièce a été crée avec de l’information des marchés à termes (futures market)

8 improvisations pour Valbert (2006)

Il y a quelque mois mon père, Valbert célébrait ses 80 ans. Pour l’occasion je me suis assis au piano et j’ai enregistré 8 improvisations en son honneur. Valbert a toujours eu une appréciation pour les arts et la musique et c’est avec plaisir que je lui offre ces morceaux choisis.

• Improvisation8

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FMK (2005-2007)

• Transitio Festival, Mexico City, MX, 2007
• Galerie Sans Nom, Subterfuge, Moncton, NB, 2007
• Mayworks Festival, Calgary, AB – May 1, 2005
• Sound Bites, NSCAD + Centre for Art Tapes, Halifax, NS – July 15, 2005
• Faucet Media Arts Centre, Sackville, NB – July 17, 2005

Free Market Karaoke (FMK), is both a series of real-time interactive soundscapes and a computer program. The program allows me to create real-time interactive soundscapes based upon the financial data of companies trading on the Dow Jones Index. Companies generate wealth for their shareholders and an abundant flow of data. This information is continually streaming out in real-time (minus a 15 minute delay) from the World Stock exchanges and is displayed on various web sites on the Internet. Investors and brokers are in this game to make a buck, to make their investments grow as much as they can; the bigger the better as the saying goes. They do not usually orchestrate their movements with one another to create sense on a language level. The money is the meaning of their entreprise, the only pattern worth wearing, the reason to exist. My role in FMK is mainly that of a remixer. My decisions are directed in the reorganization of incoming data into musical events. I am on the lookout – ‘the ear-out’ – for rhythms, textures, ups and downs, anything that seems to be talking. I want the digits to sing and dance, to laugh and to cry. I want to see life-savings sounds roll in and out like a fog bank that envelops a small coastal town. I want to hear the investors’ roar like the turbines of a space shuttle racing through the earth’s atmosphere upon re-entry. I want to transform big time brokers into bees flying in a field of brightly colours flowers, into dust trapped inside the vacuum of a Dirt Devil, into oil seeping out of the ground, into the wind blowing inside a cave, into the electricity singing through wires.
These soundscapes were created with the software Max/MSP in conjunction with Charles Hines’ QuoteFiler 1.31. I used the output data from: YAHOO CURRENT QUOTE VARIABLES, the Last Trade Price, the Day High, the % Change of a share and so on, to manipulate audio signal and MIDI information.

iTunes

The New Pandora’s Box – soundtrack (1991)

Soundtrack produced for the installation The New Pandora’s Box during a residency at Sculpture Space in Utica New York in 1991.

Voices: Richard Baillargeon, Keith Donavan, Lorne Falk, Sylvie Gilbert, Noreen Gobeille, Lisanne Nadeau, Bille Ritchie, Ruth Scheuing, Jaclyne Shoub, Shawn Thomas, David Ulmoltz, Keith Wallace.

• near death experience 2:27 min

• hunting 4:09 min

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The New Pandora’s box – an installation-projection about television.

I left Canada for England with a grant from the Canada Council – August 1, 1990 on the first leg of a world research trip. The idea was to revisit the myth of Pandora’s Box and to capture ‘evils of the world’ through video and sound recordings. The invasion of Kuwait by Iraq on August 2 forced me to change my itinerary and to reconsider the parameters of my research. During the 40 days of my travel, I saw a world glued to television sets, waiting for something to happen. Television as medium evolved to be both topic and base for my project.

The Installation was made of 5 elements, four buoys: rocking structures made of wood and the control cabinet: the disc. Each buoy was fitted with a slide projector and a cassette deck connected to the disc. Visitors could activate projections and soundtracks by opening the drawers of the cabinet.

The slides and the soundtracks were constructed with material garnered from television itself, photo stills and sound bites taken from talk shows and daytime TV.

The construction of The New Pandora’s Box took place at Sculpture Space from December 2, 1990 to January 30, 1991. Operation Desert Storm began with an aerial bombardment on 17 January.

Dimensions
4 pieces: 75 in h. X 24 in w. X 20 in d.
1 piece: 24 in dia. X 5 in h.
Soundtracks duration: 45 minutes
240 slides

More info: http://juicyheads.com/jh/articleSearch2.php?i=155&m=P#.TtJ0rGCt-FV

Cowboy-Caruso – soundtrack (1990)

Cowboy-Caruso est une figure mythique qui veut le meilleur des deux mondes; la liberté et les grands espaces du cowboy ainsi que le raffinement du monde de l’opéra. L’oeuvre est basée sur l’histoire de Ted Wilson, un ancien cowboy du Texas et travailleur dans les champs pétrolifères du Nord de l’Alberta qui est devenu chanteur d’opéra dans les rues de Calgary.

• mescaleros 3:02 min

• sleeping 3:26 min

• gun 3:27 min

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Ça parle allemand dans nos têtes (1989-1990)

Audio crée au Banff Centre en 1989-1990

• vostell 2:57 min

• dolby 3:08 min

• ready made 3:17 min

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Naïvement (1988-89)

audio created in 1988-1989:

• ici on tue l’ennui 3:07 min

• i use to be 2:45 min

• get married 4:10 min

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