Month: July 2013
Workshop: Drawing, Weaving, and Speaking Live Generative Music
Some more details about my workshops coming up in Hangar Barcelona. Signup here.
This workshop will explore alternative strategies for creating live sound and music. We will make connections between generative code and our perception of music, using metaphors of speech, knitting and shape, and playing with code as material. We will take a fresh look at generative systems, not through formal understanding but just by trying things out.
Through the workshops, we will work up through the layers of generative code. We will take a side look at symbols, inventing alphabets and drawing sound. We will string symbols together into words, exploring their musical properties, and how they can be interpreted by computers. We will weave words into the patterns of language, as live generation and transformation of musical patterns. We will learn how generative code is like musical notation, and how one can come up with live coding environments that are more like graphical scores.
We will visit systems like Python, Supercollider, Haskell, OpenFrameworks, Processing, OpenCV and experiment as well with more esoteric interfaces.
Schedule:
Session #01
Symbols – This first session will deal with topics such as sound symbology, mental imagery, perception and invented alphabets. We will try out different ways to draw sounds, map properties of shape to properties of sound using computer vision (“acid sketching”,https://vimeo.com/7492566), and draw lines through a sound space created from microphone input. This will allow us to get a feel for the real difference between analogue and digital, how they support each other, and how they relate to human perception and generative music.
Session #02
Words – Some more talk about strings of symbols as words, being articulations or movements, and relate expression in speech (prosody) with expression in generative music. We will experiment with stringing sequences of drawn sounds together, inventing new “onomatopoeic” words. We will look at examples of musical traditions which relate words with sounds (ancient Scottish Canntaireachd, chanting the bagpipes), and also try out vocable synthesis (http://slub.org/world orhttp://oldproject.arnolfini.org.uk/projects/2008/babble/), which works like speech synthesis but uses words to describe articulations of a musical instrument.
Session #03
Language – This session will explore the historical and metaphorical connections between knitting and computation, and between code and pattern. After some in depth talk about live coding, and the problems and opportunities it presents, we’ll spend some time exploring Tidal, a simple live coding language for musical pattern, and understand it using the metaphor of knitting with time.
Tidal: http://yaxu.org/demonstrating-tidal/
Session #04
Notation – Here we will look at the relationship between language and shape, and a range of visual programming languages. We will try out Texture, a visual front-end for Tidal, and try out some ways of controlling it with computer vision, that create feedback loops through body and code.
Texture: http://yaxu.org/category/texture/
Session #05
Final presentation and workshop wrap up.
Level: Introductory/intermediate. Prior programming experience is not required, but participants will need to bring a laptop (preferably a PC, or a Mac able to boot off a DVD), an external webcam and a pair of headphones.
Language: English
Tutor: Alex McLean
Alex McLean is a live coder, software artist and researcher based in Sheffield UK. He is one third of the live coding group Slub, getting crowds to dance to algorithms at festivals across Europe. He promotes anthropocentric technology as co-founder of the ChordPunch record label, of event promoters Algorave, the TOPLAP live coding network and the Dorkbot electronic art meetings in Sheffield and London. Alex is a research fellow in Human/Technology Interface within the Interdisciplinary Centre for Scientific Research in Music, University of Leeds.
[ http://yaxu.org/ ]
[ http://slub.org/ ]
[ http://algorave.com/ ]
[ http://chordpunch.com/ ]
[ http://toplap.org/ ]
[ http://icsrim.org.uk/ ]
[ http://music.leeds.ac.uk/people/alex-mclean/ ]
Dates:
Tuesday 23.07.2013, 17:00-21:00h
Thursday 25.07.2013, 17:00-21:00h
Saturday 27.07.2013, 12:00-18:00h
Monday 29.07.2013, 17:00-21:00h
Wednesday 31.07.2013, 17:00-21:00h
Location: Hangar. Passatge del Marquès de Santa Isabel, 40. Barcelona. Metro Poblenou.
Price: Free.
To sign up, please send an email to info@lullcec.org with a brief text outlining your background and motivation for attending the workshop. Note that applications won’t be accepted if candidates are unable to commit to attending the course in its entirety.
+info: [ http://lullcec.org/en/2013/workshops/drawing-weaving-and-speaking-live-generative-music/ ]
This workshop has been produced by l’ull cec for Hangar.
Death of algorave
Here’s a room recording of xname and I playing a post-algorave set at Audacious Space in Sheffield. We start making sound from about 4 minutes in.
Xname performed using handmade circuits controlled with strobes and other lights. I used my livecoding DSL Tidal, which also sent flashing patterns to a monitor flat on the table, so xname’s system could be in sync with mine. She also directly beatmatched strobe frequencies, it turns out she has a secret DJ past.
I was pretty much hypnotised by xname’s strobes while live coding and didn’t really know how it went at the time, but am really happy with this recording. You’ll have to imagine the strobes.
Residency in Barcelona
I’m very happy to have a month’s residency in Barcelona coming up, starting 22nd July 2013. I’ll be running workshops (probably at the beginning, while locals are still in town) and working on some new things. It’s produced by L’ull Cec for Hangar, in the context of the Addicted2Random project, which is funded by the European culture programme. It’ll be really great to get some real focus on things I’m desperate to get done.