Coppice was founded by Noé Cuéllar and Joseph Kramer in Chicago in 2009, as an inquiry into the capture and generation of music and its relationship to its physical sources.

Its compound studies include Bellows & Electronics (prepared pump organs, shruti boxes, and tape processors) between 2009–2014, and Physical Modeling & Modular Syntheses between 2014–2018; focusing on the interactions between direct and reproduced sound, and the perceptual links between original and emulated sources, respectively.

Its third study in Phonography & Fiction (in progress since 2018) scrutinizes the dynamics between its previous two studies, and their relationship to architecture and time: the acoustic preservation and obsolescence of the Yerkes Observatory’s refractor and reflector telescopes in Williams Bay being the locus of investigation.

With sustained interest in sound’s capacity to cross domains, Coppice crafts pathways between music and technology in a cross-disciplinary language, resulting in work that is an overarching documentation of experimental music in-formation. Operating in cycles of instrument construction and modification, recordings, and live presentations, its productions incorporate sound design, sculpture, installation, software, images, and video.

Sister

Originally a USB Playstation-style video game controller device with dual thumb sticks and multiple buttons that was fully reembodied and repurposed as a performance controller. Four rings on strings are slid along the length of the primary channel to provide continuous control of assignable parameters in software. Silver tabs act as assignable buttons and a rotary knob in the middle selects operating modes. Driver software written in Max/MSP provides assignable MIDI output.

Present in:

Vinculum (Courses) [Version Baschet]

Origin: Designed and constructed by Joseph Kramer
Year: 2011