Music Hack Day :: November 21-22, 2009 :: Microsoft NERD, 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA :: Register .

The main goal of Music Hack Day is to explore and build the next generation of music applications. It’s a full weekend of hacking in which participants will conceptualize, create and present their projects. Music + software + hardware + art + the web. Anything goes as long as it’s music related.

This event will mostly be spent hacking. Talks will be limited, but we’re mostly interested in people who want to make stuff. That said, the demos and talks on Sunday afternoon will be open to a broader audience. See the preliminary schedule for details. Continue reading

Transitio_MX 03: International Media Art and Video Festival :: Centro Nacional de las Artes, Centro Multimedia, Avenida Río Churubusco 79, Colonia Country Club, C. P. 04220, Coyoacán, México, D. F. :: Call for Proposals — Deadline: June 19, 2009.

“The third edition of the Electronic Art and Video Festival, Transitio_MX 03 attempts to acknowledge differences in a transparent and straightforward context. We aim to offer an event that is representative of current trends in new media art and video, and to show how artists use that technology in their creative pursuits.

While global space eliminates the geographical locations wherein these proposals take place by homogenizing them; technological appropriation is seen as a disagreement, and as such, artistic practices emerge as autonomous. Continue reading

Hackteria & labhacking with Marc R. Dusseiller & Kaspar Koenig :: May 30 - June 3, 2009; 12:00 - 6:00 pm daily :: NK, ElsenStr. 52 (2.Hof) Berlin, Germany :: Course Participation fee: 100 euros :: Registration required (limited to 16) — email enka_nkATgmxDOTde

Experimental make-workshop with multilayered outcome for people interested in sound, DIY-biology, microscopy and interaction of living microorganisms. Knowledge in physical computing, video and sound processing, electronics and puredata is welcome, but not compulsary. The experiments will take place in close-up view of microorganisms (e.g. water bears aka tardigrades, amoebae and collected organisms from urban environments), which appears to be a world by itself. Maybe due to the scaling and the amplification of a microscope, but maybe also due to all parameters of imagination that the microcosmos provokes. Growth and behaviour of these microscopic animals remind us of our own micro-macro-development. Continue reading

Abstract — Chiptune refers to a collection of related music production and performance practices sharing a history with video game soundtracks. The evolution of early chiptune music tells an alternate narrative about the hardware, software, and social practices of personal computing in the 1980s and 1990s. By digging into the interviews, text files, and dispersed ephemera that have made their way to the Web, we identify some of the common folk-historical threads among the commercial, noncommercial, and ambiguously commercial producers of chiptunes with an eye toward the present-day confusion surrounding the term chiptune. Using the language of affordances and constraints, we hope to avoid a technocratic view of the inventive and creative but nevertheless highly technical process of creating music on computer game hardware. Continue reading

Handmade Electronic Music –Hardware Hacking Workshops with Nicolas Collins :: April 20 -21, 2009; 11.00 - 19.00 :: NK / ElsenStr. 52 (2.Hof) Berlin, Germany.

Nicolas Collins presents two hands-on workshops in Hardware Hacking. Assuming no technical background whatsoever, these workshops guide the participants through a series of sound-producing electronic construction projects, from making simple contact microphones, through “bending” toys”, to making oscillators and other circuits from scratch. The workshops end with a performance/installation by all participants, and a party to celebrate the publication of the expanded second edition of his book, “Handmade Electronic Music –The Art of Hardware Hacking“. Continue reading

PdCon09 — Third International Puredata Convention :: July 19 - 26, 2009 :: Sao Paulo, Brazil :: Call for Submissions — Deadline: March 15, 2009.

Puredata, or just Pd, is an open source tool for multimedia programming. Because of its open source nature, much of its development result from a community effort of developers worldwide. Some centers do have more people engaged, like the places that held the two previous conventions. The first convention took place in Graz, Austria, in 2004. The second happened in Montreal, Canada, in 2007. It is a great satisfaction that we continue this event by bringing it to yet another continent, with the intent to promote the formation of an important group of developers locally. Continue reading

The Loud Objects have set the standard for performative live circuit bending. Wielding soldering irons and a ramshackle overhead projector, the New York City-based trio (composer Tristan Perich, programmer Kunal Gupta, and architect Katie Shima) wire up live musical circuits in pursuit of lo-fi electronic noise.

During the opening minutes of their performance, The Loud Objects are surrounded by a bleak silence as they swiftly assemble an initial circuit, their activities starkly projected from their OHP work-surface. Gradually, as more components are added, Perich, Gupta and Shima gradually hack microchips into a swarm of percussive 1-bit noise. Continue reading

Plink Jet, developed by Lesley Flanigan and Andrew Doro, is a robotic musical instrument made from scavenged ink jet printers. The mechanical parts of four printers are diverted from their original function, re-contextualizing the relatively high-tech mechanisms of this typically banal appliance into a ludic musical performance. Motorized, sliding ink cartridges and plucking mechanisms play four guitar strings by manipulating both pitch and strumming patterns like human hands fingering, fretting, and strumming a guitar. Plink Jet is designed to play itself, be played, or both. The result is an optionally collaborative performance between both the user and Plink Jet, with the user choosing varying levels of manual control over the different cartridges (fretting) and string plucking speeds (strumming). Continue reading

A former post-graduate student at Edinburgh University. Yann Seznec, a Franco-American sound designer, has used the Wiimote handset to create a musical instrument like no other. Dubbed the “Loop Machine“, it enables users to load audio files such as a drum pattern or a baseline on to their computers. These “loops” then automatically sync with each other. But the really clever part of Seznec’s invention is that these samples can be manipulated by moving the Wiimote around. The end result is that the user can dance about with the Wiimote in their hand, making music and performing at the same time. You can even record a set of movements and apply that same set of movements to particular sounds. Continue reading

CALL FOR WORKS: Futuristic Music Design Challenge - A live competition at Yuri’s Night Bay Area presented by createdigitalmusic.com :: Deadline: April 7, 11:59 PM EST (No exceptions!)

Online submission: Web entries accepted from around the world for the Web showcase. Limited entries will be chosen to compete live — To compete for the prizes, those entries must be present at Yuri’s Night Bay Area, Saturday, April 12. Submit DIY music performance projects – using custom software and/or hardware – for a live performance battle at the Yuri’s Night Bay Area party on April 12, sponsored by Yuri’s Night and createdigitalmusic.com. Compete for awards including a Yamaha Tenori-On grand prize. Continue reading