N.K.

Long Division is a collaboration between Arthurs, Bown, Britton and Ohlmeier for two instrumentalists and two computers pre-programmed from afar, that was originally commissioned for a performance at the North Sea Jazz Festival. Only Arthurs and Ohlmeier will be on stage for the performance, interacting with a computer system that has been programmed to react and improvise with them.

Simultaneously a challenge and a proof of concept, the computer will act autonomously without a score or a determined progression, orchestrating a path around and through the music developed by Arthurs and Ohlmeier whilst also proposing structures and themes of its own. The software’s autonomy is needless to say of a limited sort, and encodes the creative decision-making of its programmers.

The collaboration is both a continuation of the free improvised electroacoustic performance styles explored by Arthurs, Bown, Britton and Ohlmeier in the various onstage incarnations of the Not Applicable Artists, and a more formal, albeit risky, set of software studies carried out by Bown and Britton into generative and interactive music systems, for which Arthurs and Ohlmeier are the willing and highly capable subjects.

The groups interest in and exploration of autonomy is multifaceted, viewing it in the light of new approaches to the structuring of a live musical work, experimentation in interactivity, and also novel approaches to remote collaboration, where one or more participants contribute to a performance by proxy, in the form of the behavioural software created by them.

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Lothar Ohlmeier
After studying clarinet in Hannover and saxophone and bass clarinet at the Amsterdam Conservatory with Tim Armacost and Harrie Sparnaay, Lothar became a prominent member of the improvised music scene in Holland, recording a performing with numerous groups and labels. In 2000 he formed Azilut with Julie Sassoon and relocated to England. He has since recorded for Babel records in London and continues to perform all over Europe. Lothar has worked with a great variety of groups in Jazz and modern classical music: Steve Arguelles, Benoit Delbecq, Guillaume Orti, Jim Black, Ingrid Laubrock, Dylan Bates, Jorrit Dijkstra, Julie Sassoon, Sandip Bhattacharya, Mohammad Gomar, Latif Saad, Jaap Blonk, Tjitze Vogel, Johnson Gabriel, Anton Goudsmit, Damien Cluzel, Achim Kraemer, Milo Fell, Tim Giles, Harrie Spaarnay etc.

http://www.not-applicable.org/?page_id=24

Tom Arthurs
Currently the second BBC New Generation Artist for jazz, winner of the Peter Whittingham Award, thrice-nominated in the BBC Jazz Awards (Best Instrumentalist and Rising Star), and a previous participent in the Serious/PRSF/Jerwood Take Five scheme, Tom has been featured extensively on BBC Radio 3 as part of the New Generation Scheme and beyond, and has performed all over the world, with festival credits including Berlin, Cheltenham, Moers, Bath, Jazzd’or, London, Manchester, Belfast and Jerusalem.
As a composer, Tom has recently been awarded commissions from the BBC/RPS for both the City of London Festival (Postcards from Pushkin with Richard Fairhurst), and the BBC Proms (And Distant Shore, with Richard Fairhurst and ace classical trumpeter Giuliano Sommerhalder), as well as the Geneva Downtown Orchestra for a suite of music for a 9-piece ensemble with Arthurs.Høiby.Ritchie at it’s centre.
2010 sees a comission for an orchestral work to be performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra.

http://www.not-applicable.org/?page_id=22

Ollie Bown
Ollie Bown is an electronic musician, programmer and researcher working in live electronic music performance. His musical output is best known through his work in the band Icarus (Leaf, Output UK) with his cousin Sam Britton, remixing the likes of Fourtet and Murcof, and he has previous and ongoing projects with Tom Arthurs and other members of the Not Applicable Artists. He has also collaborated extensively with multi-media artists Squidsoup. He recently completed a PhD at Goldsmiths College in London looking at theories of the evolution of cultural behaviour such as music, using simulation models. He has worked on systems for music information analysis and live software improvisation. He is currently at the Centre for Electronic Media Art, based at Monash University, working on the use of ecosystemic principles to develop generative artworks.

http://www.not-applicable.org/?page_id=5

Isambard Khroustaliov
Isambard Khroustaliov is the solo alias of Sam Britton from the electronic group Icarus. Sam trained as an architect at the Architectural Association in London, but took up music full time after securing a recording contract as an undergraduate. Since 1997 he has recorded and released music for a number of independent electronic music labels in the UK and the US (Output Recordings, Temporary Residence, Domino and The Leaf Label) and continues to perform as Icarus (with Ollie Bown) all over Europe. In 2006 he completed a masters course in electronic music and composition at IRCAM in Paris and he is currently researching a PhD in composition under the supervision of Richard Barrett and Peter Wiegold at Brunel University.

http://www.not-applicable.org/?page_id=6

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Not Applicable

Not Applicable is a group of musicians, composers, visual artists and filmmakers collaboratively developing new approaches to their respective artistic pursuits. Not Applicable is an open-ended framework which encompasses both the realisation and documentation of these collaborations in the form of performances, installations, CDs, DVDs and on the web.

Not Applicable started in 2002 when the electronic duo Icarus (Ollie Bown and Sam Britton) decided to temporarily take on the complete production and release of their own music, enabling themselves to draw a line as freely as possible under periods of musical experimentation by producing a publicly available document. The label itself served as a platform independent of industry dictated procedures, where it was possible to publish work simply and distribute it locally.

The first releases (2002’s ‘Misfits’, ‘Soviet Igloo’ and ‘8 minutes’) were predominantly experimental in nature and attempted different solutions at packaging in order to reduce overall costs. With the limited coverage they received, owing to vastly scaled down distribution and publicity, these releases could safely be described as underground, aiming primarily at delivering a form of continuity in Icarus’s constantly evolving sound world. The internet proved a useful ally to the cause and ‘Misfits’ gained a degree of classic status in electronic music circles, which ultimately resulted in the duo signing to the Leaf Label in 2003. Post ‘I Tweet The Birdy Electric’ (Leaf 2004) and its associated accolades, the Not Applicable theme was picked up again to present further sonic evolutions in the form of 2005’s ‘Carnivalesque’, whose packaging consisted of recycling discarded album art from old promo CDs.

The label and the list of cohorts has since expanded as the musical ideas pushed further. 2006 saw the duo working their way from the underground, independent, commercial music world in which they started working, into improvised, academic and research circles, offering different points of view on music and culture. The result of this exposure has led to a set of innovative electro-acoustic collaborations who’s documentation started with the Tom Arthurs and Ollie Bown ‘Electric Duo’ EP and has continued with ‘Five Loose Plans’ and ‘Nowhere’, releases which combined Isambard Khroustaliov with Maurizio Ravalico and Lothar Ohlmeier. Filmmakers Martin Hampton and Britt Hatzius also began working with Not Applicable on visual accompaniments to their performances and on a series of experimental short films exploring the combined possibilities of sound and image.

With the help of PRSF funding, 2007 saw the touring of the Not Applicable Artists as a whole group and the beginning of a London residency showcasing new collaborations: Appliances. The results of all this activity are documented on the compilation ‘N/A – An Intorduction to Not Applicable’ which was released in September 2008 as a free download.

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