MICE

One of the most unique classes I have come across so far is Professor Matthew Burtner’s (for full bio, click here) Mobile Interactive Computer Ensemble. When I first saw the signs for a MICE show to be held outside on Deck 7 of the MV Explorer, I went not knowing what to expect. To be honest, even after seeing the show, I still had no idea what was actually happening on stage.

Last night, Matthew and his class gave a great presentation though, which cleared a lot of this up for me. MICE, which is a program that Matthew also runs at UVa, focuses on Interactive Acoustic Ecologies. In essence, he and his students are able to harness the natural world to make music. Originally from Alaska, it was Matthew’s home growing up that inspired him to fuse together nature with music.

How does one “play” the wind? Sand? The students of MICE know how. The technology that they use to achieve this is truly impressive. The special microphones and computer software, which they themselves have written, allows the MICE students to directly capture and input the sounds of nature to the computer, allowing them to then “own” the sound, synthesizing it with musical instruments or other acoustics and enabling the MICE to change the pitch and tone of all of the inputs instantaneously. Justin Thompson, a student from University of Vermont, remarked that the course is “completely unconventional for any kind of music you could think of and it opened my mind up to all of these natural elements being music.”

The process is basically as follows. After capturing the sounds of nature, as they did on board the ship by placing a special microphone in the wind and in Namibia by burying special microphones beneath the sand, the sound is then sent to a computer. Acoustic instruments are also added in and the students manning the computers filter the sound and using their self-designed software, which can interpret their movements and gestures, meld it together. Then, other members of MICE, using “instruments” like a percussion control, can add beats and melodies to further control the sound.


This course really allows students to use music to connect with the environment around them. In the words of Andy Goldsworthy, a British artist who produces art in natural and environmental settings, “You feel as if you have touched the heart of the place.” The students of MICE 2009 have staged concerts on board the MV Explorer, in the middle of the Namibian desert, gave a show at the Cape Town waterfront and the team has announced that an underwater show, utilizing the sounds emanating from the ship’s pool, is in the near future.


Photos #1,2, and 3 by SAS Photographer John Weakley