A Synesthete's Atlas: Real time cartography performances

Community Made with Open Stage Control
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A Synesthete's Atlas

Real time cartographic improvisations using projected, manipulated digital maps by Eric Theise, in live collaboration with improvising musicians and other time-based artists . A visual wash of street grids, land masses, water bodies, and curiosities from built and natural environments. Saturated colors. The subtlest of tints. Glitches in crowdsourced data. Jittery zooms and pans. Orphaned information and free-floating symbology.

Performances typically last 50 minutes and occasionally introduce strobing effects that may affect photosensitive viewers.

There's additional information, including video, in the performances section of my site and there's a larger video archive at Vimeo.

These performances were given in 2022:

21 Apr 2022, 8p. Free.
with cellist Helena Espvall
Hangar: Centro de Investigação Artística
Rua Damasceno Monteiro, 12, Lisbon, Portugal

23 Jun 2022, 7:30p. Free.
with saxophonist/flautist Ken Field
Magazine Beach Powder Magazine
719 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, Massachusetts

28 Jun 2022; 8p. $5-15.
with saxophonist/clarinetist/shakuhachi player Ned Rothenberg
Millennium Film Workshop
167 Wilson Av, Brooklyn, NY

30 Jun 2022; 7p. $10-20.
with multi-instrumentalist Jim Ryan and drummer Darien Baiza
Rhizome DC
6950 Maple St NW, Washington, DC

15 Sep 2022, 8p. $20
with composer/performer Carl Stone
Indexical
Tannery Arts Center, Santa Cruz, California

25 Sep 2022, 7p. $10-25 sliding scale.
with oboist/composer Kyle Bruckmann
Shapeshifters Cinema
567 5th St, Oakland, CA

22 Oct 2022, 7:30p.
with upright/electric bassist Liz Draper
MirrorLab Studios
3400 Cedar Av S, Minneapolis, MN

5 Nov 2022, 8p. $7.
with percussionist/samplist Kevin Corcoran
Other Cinema
992 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA

13 Nov 2022, 7p. $10-25.
with instrument builder Krys Bobrowski on Gliss Glass and Sliding Speaker
Mosswood Sound Series
3630 Telegraph Av, Oakland, CA

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Prior to the Minneapolis gig with Liz Draper I gave a presentation at the North American Cartographic Information Society's annual meeting. They've made the video available in their YouTube channel. I regret walking away from the microphone to point at the screen a few times but I'm pleased that I managed to talk about all the key points and still have time to take one question.

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I'm beginning to line up 2023 performances. I'm giving two in San Francisco at the beginning of March.

1 Mar 2023, 8p. $10-20 sliding scale, NOTAFLOF
with Headboggle
Luggage Store Gallery New Music Series
1007 Market St (@ 6th), San Francisco, CA

2 Mar 2023, 7:30p. Pay what you will.
solo. Soundscape inspired by the Library's cartographic and geographic holdings.
Prelinger Library
301 8th St (@ Folsom), #215, San Francisco, CA

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Later in March I will perform at several venues in Colorado in advance of a technical talk at the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting in Denver. Working on the details of other performances but here are the first three:

10 Mar 2023, 7p. $12-20 sliding scale, NOTAFLOF
with cellist Daniel Zamzow
presented by Radical Open Science Syndicate (ROSS) and the Geospatial Centroid
Wolverine Farm Publick House
316 Willow St, Fort Collins, CO

12 Mar 2023, 7p. $5-10 sliding scale
with Bob Marsh's Spontaneous Combustion Arts Performance Ensemble (SCAPE)
Blo Back Gallery
131 Spring St, Pueblo, CO

18 Mar 2023, 8p
with noise magician Brett Darling (aka Spider Lights)
Noise Floor 8
Art Lab Fort Collins
239 Linden St, Fort Collins, CO

23 Mar 2023; doors: 7:30p, performance: 8p
with Carl Ritger on prepared lap steel guitar & modular sampler
Counterpath
7935 East 14th Av, Denver, CO

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I am also lining up April performances in the midwest. Working on the details of other performances but here are the first two:

5 Apr 2023
with upright bassist Ari Smith
Mills Folly Microcinema
Arts + Literature Laboratory, 111 S Livingston St, #100, Madison, WI

7 Apr 2023
with multi-instrumentalist/composer Ben Zucker
Block Cinema
Northwestern University, 40 Arts Circle Dr, Evanston, IL

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Wow! This is so cool!! So you convert the images to Base 64 and manipulate and show them using Open Stage Control❔
How is your workflow❔ If you don't mind me asking.

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Thanks for your enthusiasm @rafaews. It's all live vector graphics running in a browser. The main pieces are OpenStreetMap data (I have the whole planet on my laptop), MapLibre (a fork of Mapbox GL JS), and Open Stage Control. I've written a few thousand lines of JavaScript that turn the OSC messages into style and behavior instructions for the map.

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A lot more complicated that I thought! Hahaha
Thank you and congratulations (:

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Edited earlier posts to include a just-scheduled Denver show with Carl Ritger (prepared lap steel & modular sampler) at Counterpath on 23 March and to update the link to the show with Ben Zucker at the Block Museum on 7 April.