This duo was formed in Athens for the ImproTech 2019 Festival, which is dedicated to improvisation with intelligent digital systems. The challenge of Gnawa Machine is to integrate the computer in a particular cultural context, that of the Gnawa Brotherhood in North Africa, of which Camel Zekri is a member. His modal guitar playing is accompanied on keyboard by Marc Chemillier, assisted by the Djazz system, which learns automatically by expanding its memory and follows the tempo thanks to a score- following algorithm. The guitar is then transformed into a controller equipped with motion sensors. It controls a second system, Le Cercle, which dialogues with the first one. The two machines listen to each other and improvise on what the other is playing. Djazz records with long-term memory, while Le Cercle captures small fragments on the fly.
Video
Credit: tom mesic
Credit: vog.photo
Project Credits / Acknowledgements
ImproTech Festival, IRCAM & CAMS-EHESS (Djazz software, http://digitaljazz.fr), LISILOG (Le Cercle software)
Biography
Camel Zekri
Director of Les Arts Improvisés in Normandy (France), Camel Zekri has been developing creative spaces for traditional musicians and musicians playing with augmented digital sensor devices around Le festival de l’eau. His repertory consists of traditional and contemporary music and improvisations. He has played with, among others, Diwan de Biskra, Christophe Lebreton, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, Jacques di Donato, Benat Achiary, Jon Hassel.
Marc Chemillier
Marc Chemillier is a musician and researcher, and the Director of Studies at the EHESS in Paris (School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences). He has been conducting ethnomusicological fieldwork in the Central African Republic and Madagascar. In collaboration with IRCAM, and together with Bernard Lubat, he is developing a family of improvisation softwares and using them in various artistic projects related to free improvisation in traditional Malagasy, jazz and electronic music.
