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I just received this brief announcement via Pd mailing list.
Sounds interesting, if you’re in the UK, might be worth trying to participate. Some time after this the Linux Audio Conference will take place in Dublin too.

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The Department of Music is pleased to announce a Pure Data mini-Conference taking place 4-5 March 2011 in House 5, Trinity College Dublin. It will > feature lectures, papers, workshops and an evening of pure data music performed live.
Please submit abstracts/proposals by email to richard.duckwo…@tcd.ie.
Deadline is January 25th, 2011 – with notification a week later.
Information and schedule of events will be posted on this blog:
http://bluespetroleum.blogspot.com

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Rich Duckworth
Lecturer in Music Technology
Department of Music
House 5
Trinity College
Dublin 2
Ireland

In November I had the great pleasure to take part in the Piksel Festival 2010. I presented the work Golden Shield Music, a sonification of IT censorship technologies during a talk focused on the current state of IT censorship techs.

Piksel “is an international event for artists and developers working with Free/Libre and Open Source technologies in artistic practice. Part workshop, part festival, it is organized in Bergen, Norway,and involves participants from more than a dozen countries exchanging ideas, coding, presenting art and software projects, doing workshops, performances and discussions on the aesthetics and politics of free technologies & art.”
I would also outline that Piksel is above all a living community, both on-line and off-line, as in the “real world”; this is probably what most made me feel close to the spirit of the festival because it recalls the same approach we foster at the Live Performers Meeting annual event.

So here you go with a brief and picture-ful report.

At first sight Bergen looks like the perfect Christmas postcard: snow, mountains, frozen lakes and small lovely houses. However once you get in the “pikseler” state of mind, the city start changing too. The reception and communal venue was located at the Knipsu; this was the first meeting point for all artists, the place where you want to go if you wish to get in touch with people, see old friends, buy some very interesting FLOSS gems or have lunch!
Knipsu was also the home of some of the guerrilla, low cost, sound/radio art installation by Julien Ottavi and Jenny Pickett, which nicely dispersed sounds around the city.

Sadly I arrived in Bergen only on Friday, so you’ll miss here pictures and words from the first day of the event.
On Saturday at about 11.00 the Exquisite Code team met up at Knipsu to plan their day out, writing, feeling, perceiving space and share their experiences and words.
“For the performance at Piksel 2010″ they executed “a new distributed parallel algorithm where the writers are dispersed around Bergen within and without the festival space. Analog lookup tables dictate the physical routing or dead-drop of text-chunks.” At night, at the end of their exploration “writing is made visible via periodic reading machine interrupt processes which rupture the pedestrian life-program flow” and a bottle of wine (?) helped us celebrating.

In the same morning Alexandre Torres Porres hosted a workshop dedicated to Spectral Analysis and Processing in Pure Data.
The workshop was very interesting and stimulating; Alexandre prepared some beautiful patches and examples which nicely led participants through such quite complex topic.
Interesting, well planned and very useful in order to shed some light on a topic which is often not that easy to grasp.

Following Alexandre workshop I presented a research about the actual state of IT censorship technologies and a related work of mine Golden Shield Music. Piksel team published a full video of the talk on their blip.tv channel. You might want to check it out here or you might find interesting to dedicate few minutes to the reading of the accurate report of my presentation by Regine Debatty for WE MAKE MONEY NOT ART.
Aymeric Mansoux, Dave Griffiths, Marloes de Valk then talked about Naked on Pluto, a brand new multi-player text adventure game they developed for Facebook, and which is spreading right now among our FB profiles. Really worth giving it a try and read more about it.
The first evening performance FRUIT+EMOTION=NOISE, is an audiovisual show by Oscar de Carmen and Victor Mazon which deploys a 3rd generation hardware “capable of processing into sound the energy contained in fruits and vegetables discarded by supermarkets, through an electrochemical reaction.”

At 21.00 Eleonora Oreggia aka Xname opened the formal night event at USF, the venue dedicated to live audiovisual concerts and presentations.
Eleonora performed Phantasmata, concisely described by the author as “Empiric noise-at-a-distance, electronic circuits, pulsating lights.”  A truly scary experience in noise and lights. Inspiring.

Last performance hosted by Cristiano Rosa can be described as an orgy of DIY tools, hacked toys and whatever can produce sounds. A nice set supported by Servando Barreiro’s live videos. The night ended with a party, some dancy music, some nice glitchy sounds and lods of people having good times. Live stop-motion animation by Alexandre Quessy’s ToonLoop constitued an interesting highlight of the night party.

Sunday, the last day. The schedule was pretty busy, so after a couple of workshop in the morning three different presentations took place. First off one of my favourite artist Alejandra Perez aka El Pueblo de China talked about Cartografia Sonora Antartica, an audiovisual project about a travel to Antartica, underwater field recording and a critical observation about the role of water and its commercialization worldwide.
Next was Claudius Maximus a Pure Data guru among his other manifold skills, as many of you might already know. He presented the amazing RDEX project “an installation and performance piece that explores in an autonomous hyperspace mathematical model, searching for interesting emergent behaviour (life-alike, alife).”

The following talk demonstrated the potential of “CHEAP, FAT + OPEN: an open source platform for musical exploration, composition and performance” by Jacob Sikker Remin and Jakob Bak. “A combination of the old and new: the raw 8bit / chip tune approach combined with wireless connectivity, state of the art open source hardware, and expandability – gives us that FAT sound.”
Night performances were great. First was HYLICS by Ryan Jordan and Geraldine McEwan: a blast of noise, distorted violin and strobo light, which I believe deserve to be indicated as the best live act at Piksel along with Slub, a breathtaking live coding performance by Alex McLean and Dave Griffith. Then we had the RDEX performance, the strong and disrespectful poetry/noise concert Degenerative Illetrism by Joachim Montessieus, Dystophonia, a stop-motion audiovisual performance by Quessy and Matthews and finally UKI, a viral performance by Shu Lea Cheang with Martin Howse and live improvised soniscape by various artists participating to Piksel, including your reporter here; personally the UKI experience has had a strong impact. We performed in a group of 7/8 artists, we didn’t have any rehearsal before the gig and, although we knew each other, not all of us knew perfectly what to expect. Eventually the audience seemed to have really appreciate the piece, which is very satisfying if you think that the whole performance last 70 minutes. More than one hour of noise, drone, cuts, screams and viral videos. Thanks to Shu Lea for organizing such amazing event.

I think there couldn’t possibly be any better closing for the Piksel Festival. After being submerged by 70′ noise sound wall, we all gathered at the hotel and spent the night over some drinks, saying goodbye to who had to leave and exchanging last ideas and some Brazilian music (Thanks Alexandre!!).
Overall, I have to say I was positively impressed by the quality of contents and projects presented at Piksel. It’s surely one of the place to be if you are one of us geek interested in technological freedom and constructive criticism. Besides Piksel gives a great overview about the current state of the art of the audiovisual and new media field, with a special highlight on all those kind of works which you will never happen to see in any other major festival around.
Thanks so much to Elisabeth and Gisle and all the other people involved in the event.
Next year, get your flight ticket ready for Norway!

Via Openlab List

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(You can find the most current information online here: http://openlabworkshops.org/january-march-2011-schedule/)

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We’re very pleased to announce our new schedule of workshops for early 2011! For starters, we’re offering three multi-week workshops on the ever-popular topic of Interactive Lighting, a new foray into 3D Animation, and an update on the classic introduction to Processing & Arduino. All workshops will take place form 7-9:30PM at SPACE STUDIOS, 129—131 Mare Street, London E8 3RH. More details and a payment like is below, or if you’d like more information, would like a concession rate, or would rther pay via bank transfer or some other method, please email us at reserve@openlabworkshops.org.

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Also, we’ll soon be announcing a weekend of workshops at London’s premiere digital art fair, the Kinetica Art Fair, coming up February 4-6, 2011! Keep up to date with us via the email list (link above) , Twitter feed, or right here on the blog.
Workshops for January to March 2011:

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1) Make your own Interactive Lighting Artwork with Daniel Hirschmann (using Arduino and DMX).

Hands-on strategies for controlling lighting in art, architecture, and beyond.

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There has been an explosion of LED lighting installations and interactive technologies in the art world recently. This is inspiring artists and designers to use interactive elements in their own light-based works. If you’re equally inspired, this course is for you.

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By demonstrating methods and technologies for using existing interactive systems, this course will help you create your own responsive light art works. Using the open source Arduino as our platform, we will:

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* Cover the DMX lighting control standard in depth
* Offer strategies for building responsive lighting systems
* Use off-the-shelf controllable DMX fixtures
* Explore a variety of sensors

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By the end of the course, you will produce your own interactive lighting project.

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Level: Mixed beginner. Very basic familiarity with any kind of programming is recommended.
Cost: 165 (includes most required equipment)
Schedule: 5 x 2.5 hr sessions on Wednesdays starting January 19th, with a one-week break for Kinetica

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2) 3D Animation using Processing with Olivier Ruellet and Evan Raskob

The basic concepts and techniques of 3D animation, presented in Processing.

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This course is for people wishing to push their animation practice using free, open source software. During the course, we will:

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* Cover the practical aspects of handling 3D data and transformations
* Explore procedural methods of animation
* Get to grips with 3D-related concepts and methods (3D coordinates, cameras, lights, shapes, movement)
* Apply all of this to a project of your choice

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Level: Intermediate. Basic experience of Processing necessary.
Cost: 85
Schedule: 4 x 2.5 hrs sessions on Tuesdays starting February 8th

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3) Introduction to Processing and Arduino with Evan Raskob

Hands-on starter kit for anyone interested in interactive art

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This course is for complete beginners who have an interest in the possibilities of interactive art. We will introduce how to create interactive art using both computers (screens and projection) and hardware (sensors, motors, servos, LEDs).

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We will use the free, open source software Processing for computer graphics, the open source hardware platform Arduino and the Firmata library to create our own physical devices that control light, sound, and video. By the end of the course, the goal is to create a device that interacts with the physical world.

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Level: Beginner. No experience necessary.
Cost: 85
Schedule: 4 x 2.5 hrs sessions on Tuesdays starting March 1st
Reserve a Space!
You can reserve a space by emailing us at reserve@openlabworkshops.org or by following the “pay now” link at the bottom of the event page on our website:
http://openlabworkshops.org/january-march-2011-schedule/

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Follow us on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/openlabworkshop

Piksel team just released a full video of my recent presentation in Norway for Piksel 2010.
The talk focused on the current state of IT censorship technologies and a related sonification work titled Golden Shield Music.

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Piksel team published other videos related to the exhibition, performances and presentations hosted at Piksel 2010.
You’ll find many interesting projects on the Piksel blip.tv channel.

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Among the other projects you will also find the full video of UKI – a viral performance by Shu Lea Cheang with Martin Howse.

Sonicscape with participation of Piksel10 artists Oscar Martin Correa, Marco Donnarumma, Joachim Montessuis, Alejandra Perez, Eleonora Oreggia, Julien Ottavi.

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Piksel Festival: http://piksel.no

via Piksel list

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Call for live coding videos commissioned by the Computer Music Journal. Below the original announcement by Alex McLean

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Hi all,
Thor Magnusson, Nick Collins and I have been asked to get together some live coding videos for a forthcoming issue of Computer Music Journal.  We’ve put together a formal call here, feel free to share it around:
http://tinyurl.com/dvdcmj

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The deadline for brief proposals is 20th December, with notification hopefully by the end of the year.  The deadline for submission of videos will be 1st April.

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If you’re not sure what live coding is, these websites may help:
http://toplap.org/
http://livecoding.co.uk/
http://toplap.org/uk/about/

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Cheers!
alex

Via Pd-announce list.

Here you are the latest release by noise artist Noish~.

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Noish~ ::”AQHG”::…> UZUCDR-10

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Coded, edited and mixed at Txcucrut Studio Bcn.
Field recordings, synthesis, diy software pure data
Experimental generative techniques for de-composing.
Graphic ///lcpino///

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:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::———track_A
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::———track_B

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Uzusounds >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>http://www.uzusounds.com
Net//Cdr label managed by Aurel {zorei}, where you can find people like Kenji Siratori,
Phroq / Francisco Meirino,Manuel Knapp & Tim Blechmann, the tropicals fish(s) of the
bilbao’s RIA “”Mubles””,and more..

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full download here: http://www.archive.org/details/noish_aqhg

This is a free work, you can copy, distribute, and modify it
under the terms of Yves Degoyon's license

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the noise published here can be studied,
modified, used by anyone that
provides all the original credits
and sources in derivative projects.

there are restrictions on its use,
it cannot be used for :

* military amd/or repressive use
* commercial installations and products
* any project that promotes : racism, nationalism, xenophobia, sexism,
homophobia, religious hatred or missionarism .. ( expandable list)

this is not a standard license.

sevy.

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via Rhizome Announce

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Multiplayer Text Adventure Game on Facebook

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“You are 4.3 billion kilometres away from the nearest human, what would you like to do?”

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Naked on Pluto is a Multiplayer Text Adventure Game on Facebook. You wake up on Pluto, in a city under the rule of Elastic Versailles revision 14, a corrupted Artificial Intelligence and former entertainment colony. It used to be the Las Vegas of the Solar System, a true paradise for consumers and corporations alike. Until something snapped… What happened and how to escape?

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Versailles is a capital of convenience, a non stop 24hr zone of endless pleasure, provided by Pluto’s huge entertainment corporations. Amuse yourself and your friends for hours on end collecting meaningless tokens, talking to our bland robots, or simply relax and take in the staggering conformity of your new home. Take absolutely no notice of the areas you aren’t allowed to go into, even if it were possible to break out of the zone around the Palace, why would you possibly want to – or indeed why change the core structures of this world when they have been so excellently taylored to fit your every desire?

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The game explores the limits and nature of social networks from within, slowly pushing the boundaries of what is tolerated by the companies that own them, carefully documenting this process as we go. Story and play are combined with an investigation on how exposed we are on social networks, and how our data are being used.

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Naked on Pluto is developed during a shared residency at NIMk, BALTAN Laboraties and Piksel, between June and November 2010, by Dave Griffiths, Aymeric Mansoux and Marloes de Valk. The project is licensed Copyleft.

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The research and development process is documented and can be followed on http://pluto.kuri.mu and http://facebook.com/is.so.convenient

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The game can be played on http://naked-on-pluto.net

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Naked on Pluto is also part of the international touring exhibition Funware now on show until January 16, 2011 at MU Eindhoven.

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Netherlands Media Art Institute
Keizersgracht 264
1016 EV Amsterdam
T 020 6237101
F 020 6244423
http://www.nimk.nl

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Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NIMk.Media.Art
Twitter: http://twitter.com/NIMk_nl
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nimk
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/NIMkartchannel
Media Art Platform: http://www.mediaartplatform.nl

Hans Christoph Steiner just posted his latest collaborative project Undervine to the Pd-announce mailing list.
Data sonification made in Pure Data.

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Here it goes…

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Under Vine from Stewdio on Vimeo.

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Below the original message by Hans.

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Working again with Bobby Pietrusko and Stewart Smith, I created sonification for visualization of data about the global wine industry.  It opened recently at SFMOMA in San Francisco.  You can see a little snippet here:

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http://at.or.at/hans/undervine/

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And here’s a chunk from a scene that didn’t make the final cut be we like anyway:
http://at.or.at/hans/blog/2010/11/21/highlighting-data-with-sound/

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“Wine is a potent force in contemporary life, perhaps the only comestible to produce its own visual culture. How Wine Became Modern, the first exhibition of its kind, looks at the world of wine and the role that architecture, design, and media have played in its stunning transformation over the past three decades. Developed in collaboration with the New York architecture studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the exhibition features historical artifacts, architectural models, multimedia installations, newly commissioned artworks, and even a “smell wall” to provide a richly textured experience in the galleries. Come discover how important cultural preoccupations of our day, such as the meaning of “place” and “authenticity” in our increasingly global and virtual world, play out at this uniquely fertile intersection of nature and culture. At once a nuanced investigation and a vivid sensory and aesthetic experience, this exhibition presents wine as you’ve never seen it before.”

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November 20, 2010 – April 17, 2011
http://www.sfmoma.org/exhibitions/406

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http://www.sfmoma.org/press/releases/exhibitions/829