THESADDJ.COM new media art and open source culture » Workshop

Scotts Pure Data Users Group, come join us!

Marco Donnarumma — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:52:15 +0000

I’m really glad to invite you to join us at the Scotts Pure Data Users Group.
Following the workshop we held at Electron Club, we just set up a mailing list for future discussion, activities and events related to Pure Data in the Glasgow/Edinburgh/Dundee/Aberdeen area.
At the moment we plan to establish a regular Pd Users MeetUp at the Electron Club, Glasgow.

We just started and we warmly welcome you to join us and share your ideas or propose initiatives.
You can subscribe to the Scotts Pd Users List at http://lists.electronclub.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pdusers.

A10Lab – Live Media and FLOSS Workshop, London

Marco Donnarumma — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 11:01:31 +0000

A10 Lab presents

Live Media and FLOSS* Extended Production Seminary
with Marco Donnarumma

*Free/Libre Open Source Software

Monday 26th – Friday 30th July
17:30-22:30 daily

@ C4CC, 16 Acton Street, London, WC1X 9NG

80 pp
The workshop is limited to 20 participants.
Please register by sending an email to info [at] a10lab [dot] com with the subject heading “Live Media and FLOSS workshop”.

Full information here http://www.crealab.info/digitalab/?p=393

In-depth Theoretical and practical audiovisual live performance seminary using FLOSS.
Pure Data audiovisual real-time processing, tricks and tips to create your own performance tool.

Description

The seminary consists of four parts. During the introduction the participants acquire a basic theoretical knowledge about Live Media. The introduction is extended through a review of selected audiovisual
works in order to explore and analyse the potential of the audiovisual research.

Therefore participants are introduced to the concept of FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software), they familiarize with few FLOSS software as they understand its practical and theoretical keystones.

In the second part participants learn the meaning of real-time audio-video data processing reviewing the most common production tools. Eventually they deal with the process of an audiovisual performance pre-production using FLOSS: from brainstorming and concept design, through planning of the audiovisual
format, to the collection of support materials such as texts, tutorials, and the drawing of sketches representing the logic structure of data processing.

The third part focus on Pure Data graphical programming environment.
Participants learn to communicate with Pd and how to surf through the audio and visual processing libraries. They build basic processing structures and discover tricks and tips to create their own
performance tool.

For the last part the work group is split in smaller groups. Through practical individual exercises participants acquire the technical know-how about the creation/collection of moving images and sonic
events within the Pure Data graphical programming environment, thus they develop an original software, following the standard realisation steps: beta-testing; analysis of errors and its correction; and final testing during a collective jam performance.

Aim

The seminary seeks to give the participants who don’t have previous experience in programming and Live Media practice the needed theoretical and practical knowledge and skills to feel comfortable
within the FLOSS creation environment. The classes’ aim is to make the participants able to understand and assimilate the diverse passages of the creation process of software ad-hoc in order to be independent during the planning and development of a FLOSS project (musical, audiovisual, multi-media or theatre pieces) using the audiovisual language.

Who’s it for

Musicians, producers, live visualists, film-makers, programmers, sound designers or passionates of digital arts or electronic music and experimentation who want to enhance and extend their skills and tools will find this seminary inspirational and fundamental for the further development of their works and creative ideas, free from the limitations of user-friendly and proprietary software.

No previous programming experience is needed.

What to bring

Participants are invited to bring their laptops and encouraged to bring musical instruments, cameras, photo cameras, webcam, microphones, sensors, MIDI devices and fresh, unusual ideas!

Primary personal website and portfolio:
http://marcodonnarumma.com/

Personal blog dedicated to new media art, digital freedom and music:
http://www.thesaddj.com/

C::NTR::L
Interactive environment for audiovisual performance with physical computing:
http://cntrl.sourceforge.net/

Pure Data Intro Workshop, 15-16th July, Electron Club, Glasgow

Marco Donnarumma — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 14:34:42 +0000

__PURE DATA WORKSHOP__

Thursday 15th and Friday 16th July 2010, 3pm-7pm

Electron Club
CCA – Centre for Contemporary Arts, 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow G2 3JD

Electron Club presents an introduction to Pure Data, a real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing.

Pure Data is the third major branch of the family of patcher programming languages known as Max originally developed by Miller Puckette and company at IRCAM. Pd is free multi-platform software.

This two day workshop will bring participants through the basic idioms of dataflow, real-time audio and visual processing and networking. It is lead by Edinburgh based new media artists Marco Donnarumma and Ioann Maria.

What:

Participants will learn how to communicate with Pd and surf through the audio and visual processing objects libraries. Together we’ll build basic processing audio and video structures and discover tricks and tips to create our own performance tool.

No previous programming experience is needed.

A sample of the workshop program can be viewed online at:

http://marcodonnarumma.com/teaching/pd-aka-pure-data-intro/

Who for:

Musicians, producers, live visualists, film-makers, programmers, sound designers or passionates of digital arts or electronic music and experimentation who wants to enhance and extend their skills and tools will find this workshop inspirational for the further development of their works and creative ideas, free from the limitations of user-friendly and proprietary software.

When & Where:

Thursday 15th and Friday 16th July 2010, 3pm-7pm
Electron Club
CCA – Centre for Contemporary Arts, 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow G2 3JD

How:

The workshops are free, but participation is limited to 20 people. To register a place, please send an email giving some info on your interests and current knowledge of Pure Data to:

pd [at] electronclub [dot] org

Participants should bring their laptops with Pure Data installed.
The most recent Pure Data stable release can be found online at:

http://puredata.info/downloads

We also encourage people to bring sensors, USB game controllers, cameras, photo cameras, webcams, microphones, sensors, MIDI Devices.
We’ll learn by experimenting!

Instructors:

Marco Donnarumma is an independent new media artist, teacher, composer and performer. The understanding and the deconstruction of the semantic relation models among nature, man and technology is the main focus in his artistic research. The aim of his work is to highlight the communicativeness of human action through the use of self-designed responsive systems and physical computing technologies. His audiovisual real-time performances, interactive participative installations and electroacoustic compositions have been exhibited and performed in 19 countries across South America, Europe and Asia. He is a MA Professor of Sound Design for Sensitive Environment with FLOSS at LABA – Brescia Academy of Fine Arts, Italy. He is a researcher at FLxER.net and member of the board of directors of Live Performers Meeting, an international gathering of new media artists.

http://marcodonnarumma.com

Ioann Maria – new media artist, instructor, filmmaker, live video performer.
An active member of FLxER team and Dorkbot Alba -people doing strange things of electricity-, an organizer of LPM Live Performers Meeting – the world’s biggest annual meeting dedicated to live video performance. With her wide background in multimedia arts, she now works with new media technologies and interactive arts, exploring new possibilities in creative artistic-scientific demonstration. In her recent solo and collaborative projects she investigates the issues of physical computing and human-computer interaction. Being passionate about numbers, she’s particularly interested in linking the pure mathematical understanding with the beautiful sensation of experiencing sound and image in the new coherent audio-visual artistic expression.

http://ioannmaria.com

__ELECTRON CLUB__

The Electron Club is a voluntary run space where people interested in things like free open source software, circuit bending, hardware hacking, computer recycling, streaming, audio and video editing, green technologies, and amateur radio can meet, use equipment, and share and disseminate their skills and ideas.
All are welcome.

http://www.electronclub.org

Pure Data for Live Media workshop Cagliari Conservatory

Marco Donnarumma — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 22:32:24 +0000

Just came back from a three days in-depth workshop at Pierluigi da Palestrina Conservatory in Cagliari, Italy. This time the course focused on dataflow practices for Live Media.
The course has been organized by Spaziomusica Association during the annual festival Music in Touch, which every year creates new connections among traditional musical composition and new technologies featuring concerts and installation projects by established composers and new media professionals.
The atmosphere in Cagliari was cozy and warm. We could enjoy an early spring, a shiny sun and almost 20 degrees.

Participants were MA students of the Electronic Music, Music and New Technology and Electroacoustic Music courses. They were extremely interested in Pure Data and dataflow techniques, although for most of them it was the first direct approach with a graphical programming environment. After a brief audiovisual review of some interesting works ranging from live performances to experimental videos, we started with the basic of Pd, building simple processes in order to give a clear idea of real-time data processing.
Then I slightly forced them to get their hands dirty with some real-time video processing and few common idioms for audio synthesis and manipulation. I used the term “forced” because I did not give them any ready patch, but explaining step-by-step simple processes we built together useful examples.

Their responsiveness was awesome and with my great satisfaction we went through the main topics of the course pretty fast. In the end we also had time to have a chat about network data exchange, i.e. OSC, wi-fi server and client communication protocols, and later on few participants were already having fun exchanging data through the conservatory network or talking to a Monome.

In the end I made a brief talk explaining the most typical setup for live audiovisual performance and how to implement all the techniques we just learned into an actual audiovisual concert; single player with a musical instrument controlling MIDI and/or OSC hardware, two players exchanging audio and video data over a network and a quintet including different instruments, a server machine receiving and organizing data coming from few clients, creating feedback interactions among each player of the group.

On the first night I also had the chance to attend to an amazing concert of a traditional choir from Sardinia. Apart from the breathtaking location – S. Saturnino’s church – the experience of listening to a live performance of this kind is something unbelievable. The strength of their five voices, the incredible harmony they were able to create was something I can’t describe. Perhaps I felt the same feelings when for the first time I had the chance to listen an organ playing in a cathedral. Your body physically “feels” the sound, the acoustic energy in all its force.

I have to say I really enjoyed my time in Cagliari, probably I was missing a beautiful sky and a “normal” temperature, but for sure the wonderful hospitality of few friends played the most important role. Thus I have to say thank you to the Signorafranca guys and Riccardo, and Fabrizio Caglia for the excellent organization of the course. Hope to come back soon to Sardinia and maybe see some works of my students…

MA Sound Design with Pure Data and more

Marco Donnarumma — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 10:20:00 +0000

Here I am, back in Italy for some time. Next week I’ll be teaching the first lesson of a course in Sound Design for sensitive environment at LABA, Brescia Academy of Fine Arts. The course is included in the study program of a Master of Art in New Media and New Technology for Art.
Along with the usual sound design techniques the course includes excursions in soundscape studies and sound art. Students use only free software for audio real-time processing and interactive sonification such as Pure Data graphical programming environment.
The LABA MA also includes courses held by Massimo Banzi (Tinker.it/Arduino), Otolab, Luca Carrubba.

When Davide Anni, department director at LABA, contacted me a while ago, I was positively surprised by his strong wish to bring free software inside the university program. His efforts did not start only recently, in fact the Academy already uses a free-software-based Wi-fi Internet connection, computers running Linux flavour are available to the students and events and workshop about FLOSS world take place on a regular basis, last event AgitMedia included a conference by Richard Stallman, Arduino and Pure Data workshop.

I imagine this is probably nothing new to my international readers, but I can confirm it represents a promising exception to the hyper-conservative rule of today Italian universities, especially in this time while Italy and its culture seems to be falling in an endless black hole.
I am looking forward to start this venture and I hope to publish patches, files and texts along the way, to document this experience… so watch this space.

Pd workshop and Live performance @ AHAcktitude

Marco Donnarumma — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:28:08 +0000

I have been away from the blog for a while now, my apologies. January became definitely busy since its first day and I didn’t have time to proper dedicate myself to writing. Let’s also say I deserved few holidays…

Then let’s start where we left.

It’s December 2009 and I’m flying to Milan to participate to “AHAcktitude ‘09, the second collective meeting of the aha@ecn.org mailing list community, one of the lists hosted by the historical independent server Isole Nella Rete (Islands in the Net), and funding element of the networking project AHA:Activism-Hacking-Artivism.
By adopting the same strategy as Hackmeetings, AHAcktitude is organised and managed directly by the participants who can propose and share seminars or projects via the aha@lists.ecn.org list. AHAcktitude began as a space for dialogue and sharing, with the purpose of learning and spreading practices and knowledge in a free environment.” via AHA website.
I contributed to the event holding a Pd workshop at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts together with Luca Carrubba – Husk and Eleonora Oreggia – xname – we presented our self-designed sofware for audiovideo processing ans streaming (C::NTR::L, Qeve and Virtual Entity) and I also had the chance to perform the latest version of ‘I C::ntr::l Nature’ alongside with Otolab and MSST (Glerm Soares, Ricardo Brazileiro and Husk).

The programme of the event was full of contents and activities, panels and workshops, you can get a glimpse here.

Live Media Updates Nov09

Marco Donnarumma — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 12:17:53 +0000

Here you are the second issue of my online newsletter: New Media/Open/Free/Software/Hardware/Culture/Audiovisual.
Read it here http://www.thesaddj.com/newsletter/nov09/

Report PureData workshop AgitMedia Italy

Marco Donnarumma — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:01:01 +0000

I 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.

Agit Media – Pure Data workshop real time audiovisual processing

Marco Donnarumma — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:03:39 +0000

original img by noisybox.net

I’m spending these last days preparing the material for the upcoming workshop in Brescia, Italy on 21-22 / 5-6 November.
Together with the dear friend Husk we conceived a intensive workshop about real-time audiovisual processing in Pure Data to be held during the event Agit Media – organized by Ualuba.org. Agit Media is promoted by Centro A&T (Arte & Tecnologie) with partnership of LABA Academy of Fine Arts, Brescia and curated by Davide Anni.

The event is structured with multiple happenings focused on digital creation with free and softwares: speech with Richard Stallman, Davide Tanzj, Melih Bilgil, Dvasgamerteam, an interactive intervention by Sapolab, plus our Pure Data and Arduino workshops (with Massimo Banzi).

The Pure Data class is dedicated to professional musicians, videomakers or passionate with no previous experience in programming includes a 4-days in-depth exploration of the audio and video dataflow and processing for the creation of live media works.
On 21-22 November I will talk about Pd and its community, later I’ll introduce the audio objects and the most common idioms for sonic processing. Therefore together with the participants we will build up a collaborative sonic laboratory, creating simple processes ( i.e. real-time audio synthesis, custom processing strctures, sequencers and sample players) which will be then implemented in the structure of a couple of more complex softwares.

The second part of the workshop held by Husk on 4-5 November will follow a similar structure focused on the video libraries of Pd and the manipulation of video streams.

Program:

21-22 November (Audio – Marco Donnarumma)

Pd and its Community
Pd works review
Pd Language
Audio objects and idioms
Sonic Laboratory
Principles of audio video interaction 1
Collective briefing
Collaborative software development

5-6 November (Video – Luca Carrubba)

Video Libraries introduction
Video Review
Video reproduction and basic manipulations
Video Effects
Generating visuals and advanced processing
Principles of audio video interaction 2
Collective Briefing
Communication protocols
Sofware production Laboratory

The feedback to the call for the workshop has been really great – we had to increase the number of participants to 20 – and at the moment only 8 places are still available. Subscription costs 30 euro for students and 60 euro for professionals, if you wish to catch the last positions available please write to info at ualuba.org.
More infos: Ualuba.org

Looking forward to meet some of you there!

Report Pure Data Workshop, Gotland University, Sweden

Marco Donnarumma — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 19:16:29 +0000

Here you are the photo report from the Pure Data workshop i held with Deftoo at Gotland University, Institute for Technology, Art and New Media in Sweden.

It has been an intensive experience, 10 participants, 2 days, 16 hours and a lot of lab sessions.

I had the pleasure to show the potential and the basic dataflow strategies of Pure Data to the professors of the wellknown swedish Game Development & Design department, infact the workshop was focused on real-time audiovisual processing for Game Development and Narrative Media.

Special thanks to Iwona Hrynczenko for organization and to UlfBen for additional pictures

Click here to see the photo gallery: http://www.thesaddj.com/pics/

PureData Workshop July Sweden

Marco Donnarumma — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 08:00:43 +0000

I’m finally going to the North, can’t wait!
I will be holding a Pure Data Workshop together with Deftoo at the Gotland University – Institute for Technology, Art and New Media – in Sweden.

It will be an intensive workshop (mostly for who doesn’t have any previous experience in graphical programming) and it foresees a theoric introduction and much, much laboratory work.

The workshop will be focused on GEM (the most used Pd video library), Sonic Art, Audiovisualism, Human-Computer Interaction.
The aim will be to create intermediate knowledge about the production of contents and tools exploiting audiovisual real-time processing in an open-source enviroment, in order to apply this techniques and/or contents to Game Design, Narrative and Time-based Media.

Unfortunately, subscriptions for this workshop are reserved to the University’s professors, anyway i hope to get you involved soon posting some tasty pictures.

Infos
Pure Data Workshops: ../workshops-training-courses-youth-projects/#live_av

Gotland University: http://mainweb.hgo.se/adm/about_en.nsf/

Pure Data: http://puredata.info/

Klab_03

Marco Donnarumma — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:22:42 +0000

via: www.klabbing.net

“The new technologies are not anymore an exclusive domain of a close elite, its are already present in all the aspects of our life.

Klab_03 offers the chance to get closer to some of this applications used in the world of music and images…”

PROGRAM – Pamplona, Navarra Spain. 14/15 November 2008:

Workshop CUSTOM MADE HARDWARE: create your own audiovideo controller.
Servando Barreiro, Whiteemotion, The !S.A.D!
Multimedia space where you can build your customized hardwares for the audiovideo creation.
Friday and Saturday, from 22.00 to 02.00 at La Salita. Subscription is necessary, submit here
Demonstration, concert and meeting REACTABLE.
Sergi Jordà, Martin Kaltenbrunner, Günter Geiger, Marcos Alonso
Talk about the creation and diffusion of the Reactable. Concert by Carlos Lopez Campmany. All day long live demonstration of the tool.
Demonstration: Friday and Saturday, from 21.00 to 02.00 | Concert and meeting: Friday at 23.00 at La Nave.
Theremin demonstration and concert.
Javier Díaz Ena. Well-experienced theremist will show the great possibility of this music instrument.
Demonstration all day long: Friday and Saturday from 21.00 to 02.00 | Concert: Friday at 22.00 at La Nave.

and more…
Final party: Saturday from 22.00 to 02.00 at La Nave.