Programs

The second Bleep / Blorp Festival of Synthesis and Electronic Music will take place on March 18, 2023 at UMass Lowell's Durgin Hall. The festival runs from late morning through the evening and features numerous performances, performances, and hands-on installations.

All events will take place in Durgin Hall, 35 Wilder St., Lowell MA
Parking is available in any campus lot (Wilder Lot recommended).

Performances

TimePERFORMANCES IN CONCERT HALL
Click links to visit artist pages.
Station
10:40AMxperseai is an electronics hobbyist and DIYer, obsessed with ambient tape loops, heavy reverb, and spacious pads.B
11:00AMWizard Peter: Wizard Peter takes a journey from the origin of the universe through joy and grief in the magical year 202E to the final mystery of being human: information security. C
11:20AMEric Lennartson: PureData + oscilloscopesA
11:40AMDave Seidel: Hysteresis explores dyadic harmony in two voices. As each note enters it overlaps the preceding note, creating liminal zones of acoustical interference that eventually resolve into pure intervals.B
12:00PMMetal Tiger: a combination of FM, analog, virtual Analog, physical Modeling, and sampling, all done in the hardware domain.C
12:20PMEvery Constant Is Obsolete (Olga Vechtomova) will perform on analogue synthesizers compositions from her latest album “Where the shadows become us”. For the last piece of her set, she will be joined on stage by an AI performer LyricJam Sonic.A
12:40PMDeathonator: Model Cycles and a Moog Mother 32B
1:00PMBreak (no performances)
2:00PMBen Grenier: Reflection and Revolution – In the world we live in, so rarely do we get a chance to process and reflect on what we are presented with, as we are continuously bombarded with tragedy after tragedy. Not only should we reflect upon these feelings of frustration and betrayal, but we should use them to ignite something greater
Mad utilizes the entire concert hall to create a unique atmosphere
that surrounds the audience members. Performed by: Kevin Gallagher, Connor Wallowitz, Micah Ross, Aidan Lizotte, Eliot Piper, Jack Bruntrager, Aidan Kelly, Lucas Keyes, Jack Lasoskie, George Danahy, Andrew Ouellette, Jacob Anderson and Bryce Maher
C
2:20PMRenee Zon: dark ambient performance on Korg Prologue, Yamaha Reface DX, vocal pedal/mixerA
2:40PMTravis Johns: Travis Johns is an educator, composer and instrument builder from Ithaca, NY. A few months back he jokingly wondered if there was a way of bypassing his central nervous system with EEG-powered electronics while playing bass. Then for some reason he started building the machine to do just that. And now here we are.B
3:00PMAndrew Bandar: A finger drumming performance using the Akai MPD218 controller and Ableton to trigger samples from various songs and instruments including drums, bass, and keyboard.
Autumn Ate Everything (Ramon Castillo) will play Minecraft as expressively as possible.
C
3:20PMRalphykeys: Join Ralphykeys for a Synthwave journey to the 80s and back to the future, featuring vintage analog synths and modern controllers. 

This high energy performance also includes cutting edge in-the-box Synths, banging drum beats, and searing vocals.  Ralphykeys Music is uplifting and will  put a smile on your face, sure to leave you joyful and ready for what comes next….
A
3:40PMBob Familiar will be performing an original composition entitled ‘Dissolution’. This piece is inspired by the works of Edgar Allen Poe and features the Make Noise Shared System and the Erica Synths Perkons HD-01.B
4:00PMSnowbeasts create haunted synth-experimental electronics, blending ominous cinematic ambience and darkly moving harmonies with powerful modular squelches and hypnotic distorted beats.C
4:20PMA. Campbell Payne: Drawing inspiration from dance, history, astronomy, and mathematics, Payne creates sonic environments that are at once approachable and disorienting.A
4:40PMAndrew Neumann: Buchla Music Easel with a small Eurorack system. A module interface allows both systems to communicate with each other, allowing for a complex algorithmic patch.B
5:00PMAidan Walsh: performance on Roland Boutiques and Korg VolcasC
5:20PMDominique Cyprès: Primarily in the softsynth domain, but with a short exploration of contact microphone processed through a melodic resonator. A mixture of sequenced arpeggios, generative cord progressions, improvised melodies, and tactically deployed samples of speech, all drenched in effects. Featuring a brief interlude of a fully-sequenced Saint-Saëns arrangement.A
5:40PMDarth Presley: A300, DC9, & 747 are from the forthcoming Darth Presley album Rotate, a collection of nine pieces that are homages to commercial aviation in the 1970s. The individual pieces are not traditional songs, as there are no set melodies or chord progressions, rather they are platforms for live improvisation over a computer-generated accompaniment.B
6:00PMTotoRobyn: Robyn Alman a.k.a TotoRobyn is based out of Boston, MA and loves all things synths and swords. She loves the journey and exploration of electronic music, primarily composing ambient, downtempo and dance music. C
6:20PMWill Auringer, Thomas Hiscock, AJ Smaha, Sam MarstonA
6:40PMScott Barton: In this work, human musicians improvise with robotic ones built by WPI’s Music, Perception and Robotics Lab and EMMI. Human control of higher-level musical elements (i.e. meter, rhythmic subdivisions, pitch set) and machine control of lower-level ones (e.g. pitch, temporal position) allows the performer’s attention to shift and roam, and thus highlights a way in which human expressive abilities can be augmented via physical computing technologies.B
7:00PMeMBee (Mike Bierylo): modular synthesizer with live visualsC
7:20PM
7:40PMAYLNN & SunJessie: 厄 땜 ACT (厄): DANCE: Inspired by the culture background of DJ/Audio artist (AYLN) from Taiwan and Visual Artist (SunJessie)’ from South Korea.
Join us for a Taiwanese and Korean culture solemnity in get rid of bad luck and ghost. 
It it aTechno oriented sample based performance using Max live generative Visual. 
C
8:00PMRishabh Rajan: Ableton Live, MIDI Fighter 64 and MiMu GlovesB

Presentations

TimePRESENTATIONS in room 204
Click links to visit artist pages.
1:00PMOlga VechtomovaAI music composition tools for inspiring the creative process
2:45PMEric LennartsonA Brief History of Oscilloscope Music + Art
3:30PMTravis JohnsA brief exploration on the intersections of brainwave music performance, electroacoustic free improvisation, Renaissance-era microtonality and other electromagnetic phenomena, which is apparently actually a thing.
4:15PMRalph KinscheckIntro To Eurorack Modular Synthesis – A guide to setting up your First Eurorack Modular System:
During this talk, Ralph will take you through the steps of putting together a Eurorack Style Modular Synthesis Rack. From deciding on the basic modules and rack size to how to connect them both to the case and then wiring to make sound. By the end of this talk you’ll be confident that you can build a functional setup, hook it all up and be making sounds in no time. For the beginner to intermediate user.
5:00PMMichael BieryloStrategies for Developing Live Modular Performances

Installations and Hardware Petting Zoo

Installations
Jaina CiprianoTiny Room
Alexander WuJingle Bach is a generative audiovisual installation built upon two ideals—the baroque ideal anchored to faith and the postmodern ideal reinforced by its own commodification. It does not seem too far-fetched to intertwine the two (though it is not my intention, a cynic might argue a Bach chorale has the same ambition and objective as a Coke commercial), resulting in an iconoclastic rendition of Bach performed by rarefied commercials. The reconstruction and fragmentation make it inevitable for both Bach and the commercials to be taken literally here—the former is reduced to a combination of musical notes, the latter a visual representation of the products—even though, as Neil Postman puts it, commercials are “about products only in the sense that the story of Jonah is about the anatomy of whales.”
UMLMUSICInteractive jukebox with music/videos from UML students, alumni, and faculty
Petting ZooTry out numerous synths and hardware devices. Bring wired headphones!
Eric Crawley (curator)ExpressiveE Osmose, ARP 2600, Roland SH5 with aftertouch,Korg Opsix, Korg Modwave, , Korg Wavestate
Max ProskauerMinidrone (homemade drone box), Dreadbox Erebus Reissue
Bob FamiliarMoog Subsequent 37
Travis Johnsinstruments & modules designed/constructed for Cornell’s intro to electronic music classes
Randel OsborneOberheim Xpander, LinnStrument
Luke Stark3rd Wave, Iridium
Ramon CastilloCritter & Guitari Organelle