SONIC ARTS @ GASP proudly presents: SuperCollider Concert and Workshop :: Workshop: with Ron Kuivila — April 5, 2009; 12:00 - 5:00 pm :: Concert: Dan St. Clair, Andrew Greenwald, Ben Klein, Ron Kuivila, Ivan Naranjoriva, Marcelo Rilla — April 5, 2009; 6:30 pm :: 362-4 Boylston St., Brookline, MA.

Workshop: A friendly introduction to SuperCollider for absolute beginners, aimed at artists and musicians. Aside from a little familiarity with the digital arts, no prerequisites, though some prior exposure to computer music (perhaps through Max/MSP or Csound) may be helpful. The supported platform will be Mac OSX. SuperCollider is a free, cross-platform environment and programming language for real-time audio synthesis and algorithmic composition. The GASP event is a prequel to the Third International SuperCollider Symposium which will run from April 9 to 11 at Wesleyan University, Middletown Connecticut.

The annual SuperCollider symposium features presentations by Supercollider developers and users from around the world. The opening of this year’s symposium will feature a keynote address by James McCartney, the original developer of SuperCollider, and a presentation by the editorial committee of the Supercollider Book (forthcoming from MIT Press).

Additional SuperCollider workshops will run from April 4 to April 8 at Harvestworks in New York City.

Ron Kuivila is a sound artist and a teacher at Wesleyan University. He composes music and designs sound installations that revolve around the unusual homemade and home modified electronic instruments he designs. He pioneered the use of ultrasound (In Appreciation) and sound sampling (Alphabet) in live performance. More recent pieces have explored compositional algorithms (Loose Canons), speech synthesis (The Linear Predictive Zoo) and high voltage phenomena (Pythagorean Puppet Theatre). Kuivila has performed and exhibited installations throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe. He has collaborated with other composers, artists, and choreographers including Anthony Braxton, Rudy Burckhardt, Nicolas Collins, Merce Cunningham, Hugh Davies, Douglas Dunn, Susan Foster, and Larry Johnson.

Dan St. Clair makes works that playfully reconsider our daily listening habits. His public projects include Call Notes, where artificial birds sing pop tunes in public parks, a muzak map of the Chicago Loop, a unique set of bicycle horns, and The Cure for That Song Stuck in Your Head. In performance and gallery pieces he has amplified sheets of melting ice and played an instrument made from a book and sewing thread. In 2004 he archived a set of original piano preparations used by John Cage and David Tudor. Exhibition venues include SFX Seoul, South Korea, Soho In Ottakring, Vienna, Austria, Sonambiente 2006, Berlin, Germany, The Chocolate Factory, New York, NY, Wired Magazine NEXTfest, Chicago, IL, and Mess Hall, Chicago, IL. As a pianist, he has performed with Anthony Braxton, Matt Bauder, Mary Halvorson, and Jamey Abersold. He has studied with Nic Collins, Mary Jane Jacob, Ron Kuivila, Laurie Palmer, and Anne Wilson. He currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Gasp attempts to create a space for artistic exchange where artists will explore and propose new possibilities for contemporary practices, a site for collaboration between disciplines and fields in the contemporary cultural landscape.

The Sonic Arts at GASP performance/installation series has featured: Phill Niblock, Pamela Z, Amnon Wolman, Ron Kuivila, io casino, Stephen Lehman, Jessica Feldman, Callithumpian Consort, Interensemble, Erdem Helvacioglu, Allan Chase/Bruno Raberg, Gary Chang, Richard Boulanger, Anthony Baldino, Pierce Warnecke, DREV, Mem1, Bruxism (Anne Rhodes/Carl Testa), Landon Rose, Jonathan Chen, Julia Campbell, Joe Sexton, the Jitter class @ Berklee (Joe Branciforte, Daniel Patterson, Zachary Kramer, Ben ‘Encanti’ Cantil, Carson Whitley, Alex Molina), Max Ables … and many more.

http://www.audiosynth.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperCollider_programming_language
http://supercollider.wesleyan.edu/
http://supercollider.wesleyan.edu/conf/index.php/sc3conf/SC09/schedConf/presentations
http://www.harvestworks.org/cms/index.php/component/option,com_chronocontact/chronoformname,supercollider/