FluCoMa Podcast #11: Laetitia Sonami

by Jacob Hart

In this episode of the FluCoMa Podcast Jacob Hart talks with sound artist, performer, and instrument maker Laetitia Sonami.

Laetitia Sonami

The Podcast

Chapters

1. Introduction (0:0)

2. Background and getting into the field (1:35)

3. Synthesis and curating sounds (3:42)

4. Physicalities of an instrument (7:30)

5. History of The Lady’s Glove (13:45)

6. The agency of the instrument (21:43)

7. Relationship with the audience (26:40)

8. Political instruments (30:0)

9. Discontinuing an instrument (35:40)

10. Spring Spyre (41:35)

11. Approach to neural network training (47:40)

12. Neural network regression and synthesis (54:16)

13. The subtleties of sound (57:57)

14. When does a controller become and instrument? (1:2:25)

Overview

In this episode of the FluCoMa Podcast I talk with sound artist, performer, researcher, and instrument maker Laetitia Sonami. Laetitia has been working with FluCoMa-related technologies for much of her career, notably MLP regression and feature extraction. In the podcast we first take a historical look at her instrument Lady’s Glove which spanned over 25 years of development. Then, we explore her more recent instrument Spring Spyre which was built specifically around MLP regression and comes to answer the questions, frustrations and dreams that emerged from Lady’s Glove.

Links

Here are the links to some of the things that were discussed during the podcast:

• Presentation and performance with the Lady’s Glove at NIME 2014:

• NIME 2014 Goldsmiths: Artistic Keynote: Dreams of Control, Dreams of Chaos

• The Putney VCS3 synthesizer.

• Eliane Radigue’s Triptych (1978):

• The ARP 2500 synthesizer.

• Rodrigo Constanzo’s work on the project.

• The Power Glove controller.

• Mechanization Takes Command with Paul DeMarinis (1991).

• STEIM Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music with Michel Waisvisz.

• Bert Bongers.

• Keynote at NIME 2014.

• Thor Magnusson on the FluCoMa Podcast.

• Requiem for the lady’s glove

• Spring Spyre at NIME 2014:

• David Wessel at CNMAT.

• Rebecca Fiebrink’s Wekinator and her FluCoMa Keynote:

• The Lady’s balls instrument.

• Francesco Di Maggio.

• Miller Puckette’s PAF (Phase-Aligned Formant) synthesis.

• Pink Noise, Tara Rodgers (2004).

• Reflections on Eight Years of Instrument Creation with Machine Learning, Fiebrink and Sonami, NIME 2020 (2020).

• Archival Footage from the 90’s:

• Roulette 2000 Performance with the lady’s glove and interview:

• The ear goes to the sound - The work of Laetitia Sonami by Renetta Sitoy.

• 1998 Steim Archive: Interview and Demo of the lady’s glove: