Društvo LJUDMILA
Rozmanova ulica 12
1000 Ljubljana
Slovenia
Prostori: osmo/za

Mappings between synthesized sound and physical input

Date: Monday, 3rd October, 10 am – 13 pm

Mentor: William Brent

Location: Ljudmila, Rimska 8, Ljubljana

About the workshop: The task of mapping relationships between sound synthesis parameters and a physical source of control has become very approachable in recent years. As a result, artists with a wide range of technical experience can pursue the design of novel digital musical instruments. This three hour workshop will focus on widely available options for achieving mappings between synthesized sound and physical performance gestures as captured by a variety of sensors. Sources of control data to be covered include: built-in laptop hardware, multitouch surfaces, the Wii remote, the PS3eye camera, and the Kinect sensor. If possible, participants should bring laptops installed with standard software development tools and Pure Data (Pd)—a programming environment for synthesis and multimedia. Using DILib—a new Pd library for simplifying access to physical control streams—we will explore the workings behind instruments that make use of accelerometers, multitouch surfaces, infrared fingertip tracking, and full body tracking.

About the mentor: William Brent’s creative work is spread across the areas of experimental music performance, sound art, and sound design. These projects involve various combinations of human- robotic- and computer-realized sound, and are controlled by software written in the SuperCollider and Pd programming environments. In addition to concert-based projects, William is also active in the areas of remote network music performance and interactive sound installation. His current research areas are the relationship between gesture and sound in the performance of live computer-based music, and signal processing techniques for timbre identification. As a programmer, he has developed various tools for use in Pd, including timbreID: an open source library of objects for real-time timbre analysis and identification.