The workshop ran from July 21-25, 10 AM-4 PM (Lecture 10-12, lunch break 12-1, lab session with instructor support 1-4) - CNMAT is located at 1750 Arch Street, Berkeley, CA - Instructor: Adrian Freed with Syuzi Pakhchyan, Yotam Mann, Jeff Lubow, John MacCallum, Andy Schmeder, Michael Zbyszynski - Fee: $800 (includes lab fee)

Prerequisites

None. All knowledge, skills and materials required are integrated into the class. Just bring your curiosity and your favorite way to take notes.

Audience

• Artists exploring new possibilities in interactive media in an integrated hands-on and technical way
• Musicians augmenting traditional instruments with new sensors
• Teachers developing interaction arts curriculum
• Engineers, computer scientists, or product designers interested in exploring artistic outlets for their talents and collaborating with performers and composers

Special Emphasis

New fiber and malleable materials including conductive fabrics, piezoresistive fabrics, conductive heatshrink tubing, carbon fiber etc. Recently-developed rapid-prototyping techniques using these new materals will be shared. This is your chance to get your hands on all those hard-to-find fabrics and materials.

Introduction

This workshop offers a hands-on survey of sensors, sensor interfaces and integration software and hardware for use in musical performance, dance, video, sound and art installations. Students will explore sensor systems from CNMAT’s extensive library (and ones they bring to share) integrating them in a range of sound, image and motion synthesis systems. muilti-touch and many-touch systems will be explored.

We survey core sensor types including: resistive, position, inertial, capacitive, RF, ultrasound, magnetic and optical. We will explore the major sensor integration systems, e.g., Make Controller Kit, Arduino (Freeduino, Lilypad, Orangutan, Boarduini, RBBA etc), CUI, and the latest uOSC, and how to adapt existing sensors such as the Nintendo Wii controllers. During the laboratory sessions we will build complete instruments and art pieces by using the Open Sound Control (OSC) protocol as glue between sensor data and synthesis patches in PD and Max/MSP/Jitter. Sample programs for these environments were provided to test and calibrate the sensor projects and contextualize them in viable artistic contexts. Students enjoyed hands-on experience with innovative sensor systems being presented at NIME 2008.

The practical core of the workshop were complemented by inspiring guest presentations from leading developers and performers of sensor based music and art.

The complete list of all the resource nodes (which includes the sensors, gesture controllers, gesture interfaces, materials, etc.) is available here.

Format

Daily 10am to 4pm. Short morning presentations and demonstrations and late morning and afternoon supervised lab sessions. There will be plenty of scope for discussions and private access to instructors for guidance and mentoring. Participants are welcome to join the CNMAT Max/MSP night school participants for the special event on the evening of the last day (friday)

Materials and Tools

Course fee includes lab fee and materials you can keep after the class. It will be helpful to have a reasonably modern laptop (Windows or Mac) with a USB port to test devices and create complete systems. Bluetooth is required for some sensors which can be readily added to an older laptop that doesn’t have bluetooth support with a $10 dongle. You are welcome to bring any art-making software/hardware you already use.

Syllabus and Questions

A more detailed syllabus is a available. Please address questions about the content of the course to adrian [at] cnmat [dot] berkeley [dot] edu.

Housing

For information on housing, contact the UC Berkeley Summer Visitor Housing office for information on availability of rooms on campus: (510) 642-4444

• The workshop runs July 21-25, 6-9 pm (and typically later)
• CNMAT is located at 1750 Arch Street, Berkeley, CA
• Instructors: Ali Momeni and guest lecturers
• Fee: $500
• Click the Sign up link above to reserve a space

Complete syllabus here.

This year’s night school will not cover the basics of Max/MSP programming — students should already be experienced with Max/MSP. The course focuses on the use of Max for control of complex interactive systems. Emphasis is placed on areas of active research and interest at CNMAT, including:

• Max 5: features, changes and advances
• real-time performance with computer based instruments
• probablistic approaches in interactive instruments
• gestural controllers (e.g. Wacom, Continuum, Tactex, Thunder, Lemur, etc.)
• rapid prototyping of gesture based instruments and accompanying real-time software in Max/MSP
• complex gesture-to-sound mappings techniques, including interpolators, neural networks and physical models
• gestural controllers
• many approaches to treatment of time and rhythm
• data-management
• advanced list and matrix processing
• advanced network applications with Max (e.g. ftp, http, POST/GET, ….)
• inter-system communication with OpenSoundControl
• intra-patch communication with OpenSoundControl
• analysis/resynthesis using additive and resonance models
• the SDIF file format
• complexity management in Max/MSP/Jitter
• reliability and robustness of concert-ready patches
• connecting Max to other software environments (e.g. Java, JavaScript, VST, MySQL, python, Ableton, Native Instruments…)

A variety of materials and resources will be provided to course participants, including copies of all the programming examples provided in the course, references to large sets of 3rd party externals, and references to a wide range of research topics in the field. After completing this course, a student will have been exposed to most of the uses of Max/MSP in current CNMAT music production and research. Graduates of this course will have a variety of techniques for avoiding trouble while developing large-scale, concert-ready Max/MSP programs.

For more information on Max/MSP and Jitter, visit the Cycling74 web site.

To learn more about CNMAT’s ongoing Max work, visit the Max/MSP/Jitter Depot on our web site.

For information on housing, contact the UC Berkeley Summer Visitor Housing office for information on availability of rooms on campus: (510) 642-4444

Playing the first part titled “Faith in Numbers”.

OSC is a convenient way to label information flowing from sensors to processing software and output actuators. You choose the parameter names to make it easy to describe and remember what data means.

Jeff will show the Max/MSP patches he has been using with the Monome illuminated switch array OSC USB controller.

Josh is the inventor of the attractive and popular stribe illuminated touch fader array. Josh will describe the device and give a quick sense of what is involved in building one from his kits. For those interested Josh will bring some kits for students to build in the afternoon labs.

Lunch in the wild

Hannah will demonstrate these fine examples of interactive art pieces featuring fabric sensing.

Hannah will be sharing her techniques and be exploring new techniques throughout the afternoon lab sessions outside on the deck (weather permitting).

• Syuzi demonstrates how to sew and seal conductive thread by hand and on CNMAT’s sewing machines.

• Adrian teaches soldering techniques.

• John, Jeff, and Andy demonstrate how to connect the CUI boards to the computer through USB.