OpenLab4 HomePage PageList

Place
    Melange Social Club
    281 Kingsland Road
    London
    E2 8AS
    Map

Date/Time
    25th Nov 2007
    2pm till late

About
    Openlab 4 will be a whole day event around Free Software as creative means in music, digital arts and
    performance. The event will provide the general public an opportunity to learn about the potentials and culture of
    Free Software as well as enabling Openlab activists to showcase their work. The event will start with presentations
    in the early afternoon and finish with a series of live demonstrations and perfomances in the evening.

Presentations

Ed Kelly

    Meta Studio
    ------------
    The Meta Studio is a polyrhythmic sequencing and synthesis application for Pure Data. It uses graph-on-parent
    objects to implement a modular system of sequencing and synthesis with a flexible patching system.

    Ed Kelly is a composer, performer, engineer, developer of Pure Data software and also a teacher. He play keyboard
    instruments, guitar, bass, computer and anything I can lay my hands on. He wrote his PhD thesis about the experience
    of time passing, and how this can be influenced by compositional devices.


Jagannathan

    din
    -----------
    din is a musical instrument for performing Indian classical music. It is inspired by the sound of the Sarangi, an
    Indian bowed string instrument. But din is constructed like the Piano. It has a keyboard that has a large number of
    thin, closely spaced keys. The 12 notes of the octave are among them and the range of the instrument is 3
    octaves. But unlike a piano, you can specify the number of keys you want between any two notes. These inbetween
    tones (notes?) are called microtones and are very important for rendering Indian classical music.

    Sampath Jagannathan is a computer programmer and researcher from Chennai, India living in London, UK. In the past he
    has developed computer graphics and animation software for film and games.

Evan Raskob
    
    Human Live-coding
    -----------
    Coding with people, not code.  Loosely based on patching programs like Max/MSP and PureData, this completely
    interactive and social workshop uses bungee cords and wearable symbols to put people in the roles of "objects,"
    linking up to create sound and visuals, and reconfiguring the program as the participants wish.  Please bring
    comfortable clothing and a good sense of humor.


    Aside from lecturing at Coventry University and UCCA (Farnham), Evan Raskob is a video, sound & interactive artist,
    VJ (pixelist), visual performance artist, and multimedia technology consultant working out of London (UK) and New
    York City (USA).  Recent works include an installation with artist Robert Whitman ("Turning" at Pace Wildenstein
    Gallery), and work developing an interactive LED-lit cafeteria with architecture firm SOM in New York. Originally
    trained as an industrial engineer at Cornell University, his work reflects a scientific curiosity with natural
    phenomena and processes, especially those relating to visual and audiological perception.  Evan received a Masters
    degree from the Interactive Telecommunication Program at New York University in 2004.

Andy Farnell

    Game audio design using OSC and Pd.
    -----------
    (about presentation)

    Andy Farnell is a computer scientist with 15 years experience working as a freelance programmer and developer mainly
    in audio-visual media. He is a veteran open source advocate (proud to have not touched a Windows machine since
    1999), a skilled content developer and composer of music for radio, television and film. His main occupation is
    serverside unix /linux programming and administration on LAMP stack, MySQL, Perl, C etc. Right now he is tinkering
    with Zope and Smalltalk for no particular reason.

Rob Munro

    Osc sequencer
    -----------
    It is a OSC sequencer, individual OSC events are programmed onto timelines, the OSC messages are used to control
    seperate audio and video PD patches, but could be any OSC enabled software.

    Rob Munro (a.k.a. slick lister - orig. Sydney, Australia) has been making music with open and closed source programs
    to maintain his sanity in an otherwise insane world, and hence restore order to his universe. Now purely a pure data
    user, he likes to tear apart samples in his usual non-linear fashion.


Robert Atwood

    Jack-Bytes
    -----------
    JACKBYTES was inspired by the discovery that seemingly the 'best' way to get sound data from other applications into
    a 'Processing' sketch was by using a non-open non-free library , that only works on Microsoft Windows platforms. Now
    that 'Processing' is open, this was a missing link for for artists wishing to use an open toolchain for creating
    reactive audio-visual applciations in 'processing' Although some similar usage may be feasable with either java-jack
    or using OSC, a simple single-purpose server was developed to simply send a packet of sound data or sound spectrum
    data to the application, using a network port.  A 'processing' client was written to allow nearly drop-in
    replacement of the non-free library, and to allow direct use of the (open) sonia-helper library.

    Robert Atwood has experimented with semi-controlled - (sometimes uncontrolled) - feedback for sound generation for
    several years. As a part of Toronto's Urban Refuse Group in the 1990's, he explored the repurposing of discarded
    portable tape or radio players, using the amplifiers and speakers in feedback loops to generate sound as part of
    free-improvisational performances, along with other participants in the collective who used many other kinds of
    discarded objects to generate sounds (not only electronics).

Chun Lee

    sequencing with phasor~
    -----------
    When comes to sequencing events in Pure Data, [metro] object is often the most obvious solution based on messages.
    However, in the context of making music, [phasor~] can also be used for such a purpose. As a result, the sequensing
    system will be based on DSP signals, which can produce some interesting effects and properties.  

    Chun Lee is a Taiwanese sound artist currently based in London,UK. His discovery of Free Software led him to base
    his work on Puredata - a real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical
    processing. Chun is now actively involved in the use and development of PD. He is also an active member of Goto10
    and Openlab - two international collaborations of digital artists. Chun has appeared in a number of places - from
    academic conferences, to festivals, local meetings/presentations, gigs and squat parties.


Alex Mclean

    Vocable synthesis
    -----------
    Alex will talk about and demo his percussive vocable synthesis, which allows a musician to make sounds by inventing
    and typing onomatopoeic words as part of polymetric rhythms.

    Alex makes music and art using various programming languages including Haskell and Perl.  He performs with Adrian
    Ward and Dave Griffiths as the live intelligent ambient gabba combo 'slub', who together have made people dance to
    their code in festivals and nightclubs across Europe.  Alex is a also a member of the Openlab free software
    collective, founding member of the T.O.P.L.A.P. live coding group, member of the state51 conspiracy, PhD student of
    Computational Arts at Goldsmiths College, co-organiser of the monthly dorkbotlondon meetings, and programmer of
    runme.org and leplacard.org.

Claude Heiland-Allen

    GraphGrow
    -----------
    GraphGrow is an interactive browser-based application for designing fractals, implemented in SVG and ECMAScript.
    Given a seed graph (a collection of edges arranged in 2D space), edges are recursively replaced by rule graphs until
    the new edges are too small to see. GraphGrow-Engine is a standalone command-line application for rendering the same
    class of fractals, implemented in C.  Significantly faster, with prettier output, but harder to use.  The main
    purpose of GraphGrow-Engine is rendering video. Expect hairy equations.

    Claude Heiland-Allen is a digital artist from London, where he has spent most of his life. Art was his first love,
    or was it computers? Either way the three of them have been involved in a tangled relationship for longer than he
    can remember. Ten years of using proprietary software was enough, and in 2004 he made a break for freedom.  No more
    having to use hacks of dubious legality to add extra features to his tools of choice, no more worry over whether his
    files will be useable in the distant future after the software vendor is long gone and forgotten. He studied
    Mathematics and Computer Science at University of Oxford UK, then devoted his time to learning the arts of Linux,
    Puredata and Gridflow.


Performances



Ryan Jordan
===========   Techno/experimental music made with super collider, possibily with body sensors.

Robert Atwood
============= Feedback with homebrew electronics, plus custom sequencing software, free-improvisation.

Ed Kelly
========      Meta studio remixed. Live experiments in rhythm, re-mixed in real time using machine-listening simile patch.

Jagannathan
===========   Performance using din.

Rob Munro
=========     Video remix stuff using custom OSC sequencer.

Cracktux
========      Live audio visual with Pure Data and Processing

pixelpusher
===========   maybe

michael & friends
========?========   Improvisation with Chun Lee (violin), Lina Lapelyte (violin), Mandelbrot (electric guitar) and michael (boxes/musical saw)

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