Report PureData workshop AgitMedia Italy
November 24th, 2009I just came back from Brescia where I held a two-days PureData workshop. Our class featured 16 students from North Italy and for almost all of them was the first time they get their hands dirty with a graphical programming environment.
I introduced the Pd language, therefore we went through an introduction to sound creation with sonic dataflow processes.
The most interesting aspect of the workshop has been to open up the student’s minds to the unknown field of free creation. Some of them were already doing music and few experiments in sound with proprietary softwares, but none of them was actually aware of the potential of a free environment for sound design and music production and the completely different approach it requires.
Their reactions has been diverse, but in general most of them were pretty excited about the idea to be – so unexpectedly – free to practically draw on a canvas the ideas they had in their mind. One becomes aware that he doesn’t have to do what Ableton or Reason tell one can do, instead one can take over these closed paths and re-think from scratch his own concept of “creation”.
These two days were only the first half of the whole workshop we planned together with Husk (Italian Pd developer and hacktivist). On 5 and 6 December he’s going to introduce the Pd video libraries, i.e. GEM, PDP and Gridflow. In the end of the four days participants should have a basic, solid knowledge about Pd environment and hopefully some of them will bring forward the project they started during the course.
Special thanks to Davide Anni and Anna Guzzi (Ualuba Association and LABA) for their awesome hospitality and their great efforts in making this workshop happen. Unfortunately most of the italian educational institutions still seems to be allarmingly blind towards open/free tools for artistic creation, even though they are nowadays commonly used by many artists in different fields of research. I hope someone “up there” will finally open his eyes from now on, setting italian students free to learn.
February 13th, 2010 at 11:20 am
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