Spark Festival of Electronic
Music and Arts 2009
February 17 - 22, 2009
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN.

Doug Geers & Ali Momeni, Artistic Directors
J. Anthony Allen, Producer
James P Hunglemann, Nightlife Curator

CALL FOR WORKS
University of Minnesota West Bank Arts Quarter
In partnership with the American Composers Forum
Announces

2009 Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts
West Bank Arts Quarter, University of Minnesota Twin Cities Campus

Minneapolis, MN
February 17 -- February 22

Enter the Online Submission System

CALL FOR ARTISTS, COMPOSERS, and PRESENTERS

Submission Deadline: 11:59pm PST, October 31, 2008 (postmarked)

The University of Minnesota West Bank Arts Quarter and Collaborative Arts Program (COLA) are proud to present the 2009 Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts, February 17-22. The festival will be held on the Minneapolis campus of the University of Minnesota (USA) and neighboring Minneapolis performing arts venues, and will feature numerous guest artists to be announced.

Now in its seventh year, the Spark Festival showcases the groundbreaking works of music, art, theater, and dance that feature use of new technologies. Last year's festival included innovative works by over one hundred international composers and artists, including featured guest artists Paul Demarinis, Graffiti Research Lab, Iancu Dumitrescu, and Richard Devine. Leading scholars and technology specialists also presented lectures and panels relating to new technology and creativity. Audiences for the concerts, installations, and lectures last year totaled approximately 4,000 people and garnered multiple articles and reviews in local and national media.

Spark invites submissions of art, dance, theater, and music works incorporating new media, including electroacoustic concert music, experimental electronica, theatrical and dance works, installations, kinetic sculpture, artbots, video, and other non-traditional genres. Although Spark does not force submissions to adhere to a annual theme, we are especially interested this year to feature wearable and mobile technologies, and events will include the first Spark Fashion Show.

Spark also invites submission of scholarly lectures and panel proposals on topics of Collaborative Arts, Interactivity, Cognition, Compositional and Artistic Process, Social and Ethical Issues in the Arts, Art, Music, Video, Film, Animation, Theater, Dance, Innovative Use of Technology in Education, Scientific Visualization, Virtual Reality, intermedia composition, performance, human-computer interaction, software/hardware development, aesthetics, and history and all topics related to the creation of new media art and music. For Spark 2009, we are particularly interested in lectures about wearable and mobile technologies, but submissions on any of the above topics are welcome. All accepted papers will be published as part of the Spark proceedings. Please see http://www.spark.cla.umn.edu/media.html for PDF copies of the Spark 2006, 2007, and 2008 proceedings and program.

Hi, I've been messing around with making electronic music on the computer for about a year and a half. I started out with project 5, and still use project 5. At first I just used the preset instruments and fooled around for a bit, but I didn't like the cheesey factory settings, which gave everything a out-of-the-box fruityloops feel. Somehow I found out about absynth, and have since put a lot of time into understanding it and learning how to use it to make decent music.

I've grown fairly competent with it, and have a pretty good grasp of how to sculpt the sounds I want with oscillators, envelopes, filters, and lfo's. But I feel somewhat limited, regardless of the fact that I haven't come close to pushing absynth as far as it can go, and I want to open up opportunities for making more complex sounds in different ways. pd seemed the logical choice as it's free, while reaktor isn't.

I'm not a bad mathematician and have a bit of programming experience, so using pd for the basics hasn't been too difficult. I completed most of the tutorial/documentation that was included without too much trouble. I still need to learn a lot more about all the elements I'll need to create to make good synths and whatnot, but pd makes enough sense that I'm pretty sure I'll be able to figure out how to do what I want to do with some study and practice.

My problems are with how to implement pd as a tool to create music. How does one do this? Is it easy to make pd patches into vst's for use with project 5, or say, minihost? If so, how? I don't have any midi controllers and so I want to use pd to create instruments that I can use with the sequencers I'm already familiar with. Or with minihost for when I get a midi controller, so I can quickly switch between a pd patch and other vsts. I understand the basics of programming, but first and foremost I'm just a guy that likes to make music on the computer. Not a programming guru, so I don't really plan on making sequencers or environments, as it seems it would be a lot more difficult than just making synths.

Are there any pd guides out there for people that are predominantly electronic musicians?

I'd appreciate advice from anyone, whether you've been in my shoes or not.

hello

I am looking for cheap and quick hardware input for Puredata. I am using Linux Ubuntu.

Well, I already tested with success, one tablet, joystick, keyboard, midi in, mouse..

But I am looking a way to do some electronics to work in Puredata. Anyone knows if I can use parallel port in Puredata?? Parallel port would give 8 digital inputs and 8 digital outputs.

Well, I am searching about midi protocol and It's trivial to implement on a controller as an ATMEL with GCC-AVR however, MIDI to USB devices are expensive

Well, also I want to do a turntable to control Puredata and I am looking devices, potentiometers, electronic rotors , etc.. I apreciate any link with info - thank you.

To share with you:
http://wiki.dorfeu.com/tiki-index.php?page=Ani

If anyone need that code, I can share.. I am just waiting to share the v 1.0

STEPHAN

Hello
I am artist using telecommunication. We are working on this artwork called CONTACT:
"Two copper plates, located in two countries. One in Antarctica and the other in Europe.
When one is touching the plate of one country, the other plate warms up."

We have several problems:
1- Pd-0.39.2-extended-test5 is not lauching on a MAC OS 10.3.2
2 - we do not know how to operate an electronic relay with ARDUINO interface
3 - we would be very happy to have an electronician drawing us a electronic map to warm and cool a resistance threw this system (and not burn the users : -)

thanks
stephan Barron

> yes, probably. but now I'll try to run it on my Atari ST

Seriously try it if you get time one day. Oddly the Atari ST is still *THE* choice for some serious techno musicians. Why? The simplicity of how the UART is addressed and clocked gives it rock solid midi timing. It's something that seems to elude complex architectures even with the best preemptive scheduling, buffering etc. I've watched top producers take a midi file on floppy disk from their $5000 super Mac/PC systems to have it play back on an Atari for final mixdown. It's one of those analog vs digital type debacles where real experience of good ears trumps what "technically shouldn't be so". The ST lacks enough grunt for useful audio DSP, but as a midi processing hub or sequencer it could be an astonishingly powerful tool with pd if you can compile it.

>mhh... this is just a anthropomorphic vision of reality...

You got me.

>what I need to ask now is where I can find reference for all objects:
>I know that there's no menu of them and i have to type their name in those little boxes, but
>I need to know, at least, what objects I can create, typing their names, is it true?

Yeah that bothers me too. Even after using for it some time I forget the name of an atom and have to go looking for it. I often do something like "ls /usr/lib/pd/externs/ | grep pd_linux$ | less" to see if I actually have something. For windows likewise search the externals directory for .dll files

>so, I would like to have a list with the object identifier (for oscs, filters etc.), their
>details (kind of filters, slopes, ripples etc. for filters, as example ), their parameters (cutoff, Q, etc.)
>is there a documentation like this?

The help files are detailed, well written and easy to use. Once you know that such an object exists. Just right click any atom and select "help". Usually there's an example case.

Check these to find common atoms
http://puredata.hurleur.com/sujet-248-suggestions-noobs
http://ccrma.stanford.edu/courses/154/pd-reference.html
http://pure-data.sourceforge.net/documentation.php

>I know... but I still feel more confortable with a traditional language (C++, pascal), also
>for writing my personal VSTs (you know, for those weirdest things...) I think it's still easier to write "algorithms" with a textual language,
>without a graphical metaphore.

Raw code is not an expedient or practical way to make music. Having used Music(N), Csound, Nyquist (LISP/SCHEME), and all that stuff I can say this from the bottom of my heart after 15 years experience. Pd gives you two really important things from a software engineering point of view. It's modularity and clarity of interface in abstracting things just beats any C++ classes hands down for it's intended purpose - digital signal dataflows. Consequently you get better decoupling and better reuse. One of the few pitfalls for a trad programmer imho is that pd is very dirty on types, in a way it's one of the most badly typed languages I've ever experienced. Ironic for a tool called "pure data", but you get used to it's lovable idiosynchrocies vis lists, messages, numbers, arrays, symbols and generic "anys". Also it's scoping rules leave a lot to be desired, everythings global within one instance of the server unless you say $0- at the head of a name.

>But now I need to teach a course on "languages for electronic music" in classical, academic shool.
>they don't know DSP matchematics or something like,
>so I need to urgently search for use a more "abstract" instrument for doing the lessons...

You couldn't wish for a more appropriate tool. For non maths/physics students you can use the power of abstraction to build "black boxes" like synths, analysis tools and sequencers and then open them up later in the course. As Claude says, it takes about 9 months or more before you really take to PureData. Electronic music is BIG, really big, not as big as space but it's a discipline that just explodes in scope once you get into it. You can waste weeks writing externals in C, or designing a synth, or creating a composition method...you can get really lost on a random walk in d>2. The best way forward is to have a context and a goal. Teaching this course sounds like an excellent vehicle to focus your scope.

>Tried also Jmax but on Windows (required OS, because > 95% students use billgatesware ) is quite unstable

I would make it "unrequired". Put your foot down as course leader/tutor that Windows is unsuitable. In order of preference I would go with Mac, then Linux, then Win. If the students only have Windows then try Dyne:bolic ( http://dynebolic.org/ ), a minimal GNU/Linux distro that runs from a CD in RAM and comes preconfigured with PureData and a smorgasboard of other digital media tools. That said, I've seen it work really well on Windows. Once. I've no hard evidence to back this up, but I feel a disturbance in the force when Pd runs on Windows, as if a million threads cried out at once and were suddenly silenced. I don't think it likes heavily loaded machines and I guess 99% certain the reason it's unstable on Win is down to *other* things running. Hint: a music machine shouldn't double as an email server and GCHQ spyware centre. Start with a clean install and nothing else running and you may have better luck, but that will probably remain stable about as long as a schizophrenic Z-boson particle if you network it.

from the pd mailing list:

Hi all
apologies for cross-posts
Paschall
-=-=-=

University of Glamorgan
School of Electronics

CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIES
FUNDED RESEARCH STUDENTSHIPS

The School of Electronics invites applications for 1 full-time research
studentship leading to the award of PhD in the area of:

Creative Technologies (Software)

from applicants with a good honours degree in technology, science, or other
related subjects, and with an understanding of digital music production and
systems.

The successful applicant will be registered normally for MPhil, progressing
to PhD as soon as possible after the first year, and completing their PhD
after 3 years of research working on the following project:

* 3D Surround Mixing Environment (Ref:RP5)

Successful candidates will, subject to a satisfactory annual review, be paid
a maintenance bursary of £9,000 per annum, and have their research course
fees paid by the School (£3010) per annum. In the case of overseas
students, they will have their fees paid by the school (£8915) and receive a
bursary of £5,645 per annum. In addition, the School of Electronics has a
policy of engaging research students as part-time lecturers/demonstrators
where possible.

The successful candidate will join a new dynamic research group with
excellent research facilities. We have strong collaborations with industry,
research laboratories, and other academic institutions. On attaining the
PhD, the research experience gained will provide an excellent basis for a
career in industry and academia.

For further particulars and application forms contact:

Mrs Sue Morgan
School of Electronics
University of Glamorgan
Llantwit Road
Treforest
PONTYPRIDD CF37 1DL

Telephone: +44 (0) 1443 482542
E-mail:- sdmorgan@glam.ac.uk

Closing date: Completed application form (specifying project of interest
with reference number) and CV to above address, to be received by 25th
March 2005