Alex McLean

Projects

Research and practice

Recent and upcoming events and performances are listed over here.

• I research algorithmic patterns as part of Then Try This funded by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship.
• I made the TidalCycles live coding environment, now an active free/open source project
• I make music and other performances (including solo work as Yaxu, slub live ambient gabba with Ade Ward and Dave Griffiths, Aalleexx with Alexandra Cardenas, Sound Choreography <> Body Code, with Kate Sicchio, CCAI livecode duo with Sam Schorb, Epiploke livecode duo with Lucy Cheesman, xynaaxmue audiovisual noise duo with xname, Canute, a live coding + v-drum project with Matthew Yee-King)

Older things

• I co-founded the international Live Interfaces and Live Coding conferences, and still involved with them in a steering capacity
• I co-founded the TOPLAP live coding and Algorave movements
• I co-founded and co-organised three editions of the AlgoMech Festival of Algorithmic and Mechanical Movement
• I worked as a postdoc on Ellen Harlizius-Klück‘s PENELOPE project at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, from 2016-2021.
• I edited the Oxford Handbook on Algorithmic Music with Roger Dean
• dorkbotsheffield and dorkbotlondon meetings
• I once chaired the FARM workshop, and was on the steering committee for some years.
• During 2016 I was sound artist in residence at the Open Data Institute in London, supported by Sound and Music
• PhD Arts and Computational Technology at Goldsmiths College, University of London (thesis available)
• runme.org software art repository with Amy Alexander, Olga Goriunova, Alexei Shulgin and others
• Live Notation with Hester Reeve, funded by the AHRC
• A Sound and Music Composer-Curatorship from March 2014-March 2015
• Hession/McLean Duo, a free jazz improv project with Paul Hession
• Declaration Kriol, giving voice to an avatar with the roots band Rafiki Jazz
• Silicone Bake with Jake Harries
• Chordpunch recordings with Nick Collins
• Weaving code: learning computer programming through pattern and craft, a collaborative project with Becky Parry, Kia Ng, LoveBytes and ArtBoat. This is spun off from a research theme lead by Ellen Harlizius-Klück, who is a project partner along with Dave Griffiths.
• Communications making installation art with EunJoo, Shin
• Research Fellow in Human/Technology Interface and Deputy Director of ICSRiM, School of Music, University of Leeds. Part of the Culture, Society and Innovation Hub.
• The Live Coding Research Network funded by the AHRC, co-lead with Thor Magnusson
• Weaving codes – coding weaves, Principal Investigator of an AHRC Digital Transformations Amplification project running for 18 months from September 2014.