April 6, 7, 8 2011
11:00-19:00
Xth Sense – biophysical generation and control of music

@NK
Elsenstr. 52/
2.Hinterhaus Etage 2
12059 Berlin Neukölln

FULL PROGRAM: http://www.nkprojekt.de/xth-sense-%E2%80%93-biophysical-generation-and-control-of-music/

~ What

The workshop offers an hands-on experience and both theoretical and practical training in gestural control of music and bodily musical performance, deploying the brand-new biosensing technology Xth Sense.

Developed by the workshop teacher Marco Donnarumma within a research project at The University of Edinburgh, Xth Sense is a framework for the application of muscle sounds to the biophysical generation and control of music. It consists of a low cost, DIY biosensing wearable device and an Open Source based software for capture, analysis and audio processing of biological sounds of the body (Pure Data-based).
Muscle sounds are captured in real time and used both as sonic source material and control values for sound effects, enabling the performer to control music simply with his body and kinetic energy. Forget your mice, MIDI controllers, you will not even need to look at your laptop anymore.

The Xth Sense biosensor was designed to be easily implemented by anyone, no previous experience in
electronics is required.

The applications of the Xth Sense technology are manifold: from complex gestural control of samples and audio synthesis, through biophysical generation of music and sounds, to kinetic control of real time digital processing of traditional musical instruments, and more.

~ How

Firstly, participants will be introduced to the Xth Sense Technology by its author and led through the assembling of their own biosensing wearable hardware using the materials provided.
Next, they will become proficient with the Xth Sense software framework: all the features of the framework will be unleashed through practical exercises.

Theoretical background on the state of art of gestural control of music and new musical instruments will be developed by means of an audiovisual review and participatory critical analysis of relevant projects selected by the instructor.

Eventually, participants will combine hardware and software to implement a solo or group performance to be presented during the closing event. At the end of the workshop, participants will be free to keep the Xth Sense biosensors they built and the related software for their own use.

~ Perspective participants

The workshop is open to anyone passionate about sound and music. Musical background and education does not matter as long as you are ready to challenge your usual perspective on musical performance. Composers, producers, sound designers, musicians, field recordists are all welcome to join our team for an innovative and highly creative experience. No previous experience in electronics or programming is required, however participants should be familiar with digital music creation.

Participation is limited to 10 candidates.
Preregistration is required and can be done by sending an email to info@nkprojekt.de

Requirements and further info
Participants need to provide their own headphones, soundcards and laptops with Pd-extended already installed.

Musicians interested in augmenting their favourite musical instrument by means of body gestures are encouraged to bring their instrument along. More information about the Xth Sense and a video of a live performance can be viewed on-line at

http://res.marcodonnarumma.com/projects/xth-sense/
http://marcodonnarumma.com/works/music-for-flesh-ii/
http://marcodonnarumma.com/teaching/

Dates
6-7-8 April, 11.00-19.00 daily (6 hours sessions + 1 hour break)

Fee
EUR 90 including materials (EUR 15).

Contact
Marco Donnarumma
m[at]marcodonnarumma.com
http://marcodonnarumma.com

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NOVEMBER 2010 || || || |_| ||

*CALL FOR PROJECTS*

The sixth edition of make art – in-between design: rediscovering
collaboration in digital art – will take place in Poitiers (FR), from
the 4th to the 7th of November 2010.

make art is an international festival dedicated to the integration
of Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) in digital art.
make art offers performances, presentations, workshops and an
exhibition, focusing on the encounter between digital art and free
software.

*in-between design: rediscovering collaboration in digital art*

Today's market production accelerates the spread of non-critical and
standardized aesthetics, by means of locked top-down distribution
mechanisms and a series of tools that enforce it. At the same time
new forms of methodologies inspired or powered by free software,
participatory practices and peer-to-peer networks are fueling many
Internet subcultures. Some of these emerging practices will lead to
competitive social productions, while other will remain as pure
artistic experiments.

By adopting production and distribution methods based on free software
and open standards and by sharing the sources of one's work with
others, the collective knowledge base and aesthetic sensibilities can
freely interact to explore uncharted, hybrid directions which no
longer reflect the supremacy of a single idea.

• Does the sharing of artworks "recipes" and tools help debunk
  the myth of the isolated design genius?
• By leaving the possibility of ongoing development and refinement,
  is it possible to ever produce a "final" design?
• Can these methods and technologies inspire new forms of creation or
  tools, beyond self-referential productions?
• Is it wishful thinking to approach collaborative graphical design
  in the same way as an open source software project?
• Is Free and Open Source licensing a catalyst for creation or does
  it add an extra level of complexity?
• Can the limitation of one license trigger new forms of constrained
  creativity?

We're currently seeking new, innovative media art and design works and
projects focusing on the above theme and questions:

• graphical artworks and installations
• lectures
• project presentations
• software and hardware demos

We're also seeking audiovisual performances that will take place
during the festival evenings.

The submitted projects must fit this focus and be made in a free/libre
and open source environment, this includes both its optional
dependencies or production tools and the operating system. We are
asking you to publish the sources of your project under a free culture
license of your choice or release it into the public domain.
Projects that do not meet these criteria will not be considered.

*How to apply*

Submission form and a list of additional requirements are available at:
http://makeart.goto10.org/call/

Deadline: *Saturday 31 July 2010*

Incomplete or late applications will not be processed.

*Timeline*

31st of July 2010 – Deadline call for proposals
Beginning of September – Selected projects notifications
4th-7th of November 10 – make art 2010 - Poitiers (FR)

For examples of previous editions, please visit the archives :
http://makeart.goto10.org/

make art is powered by GOTO10

Hi All
I'm trying to implement the neural oscillator described in this article
http://www.ecila.org/ecila_files/content/papers/ACEICMC05.pdf

It's basically 5 equations describing a pair of coupled neurons (or rather a simplified model of two coupled neurons). The author of the paper implemented in C++ , but I want to implement as a PD abstraction since my C++ is pretty well nonexistent and for the moment at least I just want to get a feel for what the possibilities are. I tried to implement in MAX/MSP 4, but there is no expr~ external for the windows version and I got nowhere trying to do the calculation with the maths objects. I have an excel spreadsheet doing the calcs and the output behaves the way I'd expect, so I'm fairly certain I've got the calcs right, It's just implementing in PD that I'm having trouble with.

SO...
The equations (bottom of page 1) are iterative - each new set of values for the equations depends on the output values for the previous step - eg X Y and Z at time n are calculated on the basis of the values X Y and Z at time n-1.
This leads me to the first question - since this means I need to do stepwise calculation, presumably I'll need to use fexpr~ (sample wise calculation) rather than expr~ (vector calculation)?

Or have I misunderstood? expr~ does vector calculations - and I'm assuming that's a displacement/amplitude vector - displacement from 0 over time t. If so, and since the time base is going to be constant surely I can just treat t as 1 - ie, ignore it - for present purposes?

That may be incredibly naive though - I'm new to expr~.

The second question is - does anyone have any ideas how I can start the thing running? Since it always needs a n-1 value to calculate the n value, I need to initialise it with values. Working on the principle that this is more or less a kind of waveshaping feedback synthesis I thought about just firing a short blast of white noise at all of the inputs to get the thing started.

Again, naive?

Either way, whether or not you have ideas to help - that paper is worth a look. Interesting stuff.

Ta
Dan

Hi all..
I've been having troubles reading the digital inputs of an arduino duemilanove (328) using the pduino firmware. I mean having troubles like not reading anything from them at all.
Analog ins and digital outs work fine, but the DI do not want to read anything. I've checked that they are OK (I can effectively read them) with other sketches including the button read example from the arduino website, so there are no hardware issues.
I've tried he latest version of the pduino firmware, and went all the way back to pduino 0.4 with firmata 2.0. I even changed the moocow objects for flatspace as someone hinted somewhere here but to no avail (yes, I'm on windows XP).
I've tried the pduino-help and pduino-test patches included with the download and everything works except the digital input reading.
.. and of course, the digital ports are enabled and the pins' output mode are in 0 (input) and the serial port is set correctly both with the selector and inside the [arduino] object (just in case)
The toggle objects do not change at all in the lower right section of the pduino-test patch. As a matter of fact nothing comes out of any [route digital] object, even if it is directly connected to the [arduino] object
Am I missing something here?
any help would be appreciated

thanks

rick

I'm organizing a digital art residency this summer up at Teachers College, Columbia University. I would love it if some of you could apply! Feel free to contact me directly with any questions, or if you're interested in stopping by to check out the atelier.
Cheers,
Stephanie

2009 EdLab Digital Art Residency
APPLICATION DEADLINE: MARCH 19, 2009

The EdLab Digital Art Residency (EDAR), hosted at the Gottesman Libraries (Teachers College, Columbia University), aims to explore and build upon the ways people access and understand information across a broad range of technologies. The goal of the residency is to engage in research and development of creative projects that challenge our community to reflect on the impact of digital culture. With this in mind, successful EDAR applicants will be fluent in innovative applications of media and technology. EdLab encourages applications from creative professionals in fields such as engineering, computer science, and media arts.

EDAR awards selected artists $4,000 to conduct innovative research leading to possible public outcomes including seminars, public discussion and exhibition. Additional funding may be available to support equipment, travel, and housing expenses. Invited residents are expected to work on-site at Teachers College, Columbia University during the residency period (June 15 - August 14, 2009).

Applications from practitioners exploring one or more of the following topics are especially encouraged:

* Graphical visualizations of data relevant to library systems, including how people use the physical building and the flow of library resources (digital and physical)
* Site-specific interactive displays
* New ways to derive meaning from Teachers College's historical collections and information databases
* Educational projects exploring the intersection of art and technology

For more information, visit: http://edlab.tc.columbia.edu/edar/

Contact information: Stephanie Hunt, edlab@tc.columbia.edu

transcomp~ uses transdetect~ to shape the initial attack and release of a signal.

Requires IEM's FIR~, fexpr~ and dbtorms~ which are provided in PD-Extended.
To work properly the transdetect folder should be added to PD's path.

Start by opening help-transcomp~.pd

01 Implementation:

transdetect~ works by using two pairs of envelope followers. The first pair
subtracts an envelope follower with a slow attack from an accurate follower,
the result of which is a signal containing the initial attack. For the initial
release, the second pair subtracts an accurate envelope follower from one with
a slow release.

An envelope follower measures the mean square power of a signal over time
(see 3.audio.examples/H06.envelope.follower.pd for details on implementing an
envelope follower). To do this we must use a low pass filter at a very low
frequency. In order to achieve an accurate follower a linear phase FIR filter
was used (using IEM's FIR~ external). Unfortunately this introduces a phase
delay.

In order to facilitate the use of different envelope follower implementations,
transdetect~ requires a filter type as a creation argument implemented in
followernameTransDetectEF~.pd. 4 linear phase fir implementations are provided:
181, 251, 451 and 501 taps filters. The 501 taps filter provides the most
accurate filter but with a phase delay of 5.668 ms at 44.1kHz (raise the
sampling rate to lower the phase delay). They were all generating using
http://www.dsptutor.freeuk.com/FIRFilterDesign/FIRFiltDes102.html with a
cutoff frequency between 5 and 10 Hz.

A compromise between accuracy and phase delay might be achieved by using
minimum phase FIR filters. A 5th implementation using PD's native lop~ object
is also provided under the designation iir (FIR~ not required).

Along with different possible envelope follower implementation transdetect~
also requires an attack and hold type implemented in
attacknameTransDetectAttackShape~.pd and holdnameTransDetectHoldShape~.pd
respectively. These implementations dictate the kind of attack and release
curves used on the envelope followers (linear, slow[er|est] and fast[er|est]).
All implementations provided use fexpr~. A more efficient external could be
made to take fexpr~ place.

02 Use

In help-transcomp~.pd patch enable start and pay attention to the snap in the
hit. Disable the green toggle button to disable the compression make the snap
go away. Check out the tables on the left to see the results of the transient
compression.

transcomp~ is useful when used with recorded drums to maximize or minimize
its transient (to make it punchier or to make snare drums less clappy).

transcomp~ uses transdetect~. By itself transdetect~ can be used to synthesis
hits from a recording. For example, take a bass drum recording and use the
signals generated by transdetect~ to shape the frequency and envelope of a
synthesized kick drum.

Would love to have some feedback and some help in turning the linear phase filters into minimum phase filters.

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/transdetect.rar

well the first step in implementing something like this in pd is to understand the principles behind waveguide synthesis. this is an area i am not particularly familiar with; though it does sound intersting. do you have any information on any existing research done in this area? if you know how people have handled it without Pd, you're a step closer to being able to implement it with Pd.

from the little i know about waveguides, i think that part of the process somehow involves delay lines (i could be wrong here, i am just trying to remember something a read a couple years back in computer music journal).

--zac

the 2^23 limit , from my part , ive always heard about 32 bit internal resolution , hence 2^31

A floating point number is a binary way of writing numbers like -1.462e24 or 6.444e-10 . Out of the 32 bits, 1 bit is the sign of the number, and 8 bits are for the number after the "e". That leaves 23 bits for the actual digits of the number. You only get a certain number of significant digits of precision, which means the absolute difference between adjacent floats increases as you increase the size of the float.

Say you had three decimal digits of precision. Then you could represent 1.00 - 9.99 in step 0.01. 10.0 - 99.9 in 0.1's, 100 - 999 in 1's, but after that the difference between successive numbers that you can represent is 10, so you have 1000, 1010, 1020, ... , 9980, 9990, 10000, then 100's: 10100, 10200 and the gap increases to 1000 at the next power of 10. Going the other way with smaller numbers, the absolute gap between floats gets smaller, but the relative (percentage) gap between floats stays roughly the same over the whole range of floats.

If Pd had a 32bit integer type, it could represent time up to 27 hours, if it had a double (64 bit) float type it could go even further, and if it had a 64bit integer type it could go further still. And really you want an integer type for time, because of the discrete time of sampling - then when it overflows you get an obvious error, rather than these non-failing distortions you get with float quantisation (quantisation = loss of significant digits of precision).

I think Gridflow has more types than Pd, that could be worth looking into.