Third A2R residency and ws at Hangar: Alex MacLean

Alex McLean is a live coder, software artist and researcher based in Sheffield UK. He is one third of the live coding group Slub, getting crowds to dance to algorithms at festivals across Europe. He promotes anthropocentric technology as co-founder of the ChordPunch record label, of event promoters Algorave, the TOPLAP live coding network and the Dorkbot electronic art meetings in Sheffield and London. Alex is a research fellow in Human/Technology Interface within the Interdisciplinary Centre for Scientific Research in Music, University of Leeds.

During his residency and workshop at Hangar he will explore alternative strategies for creating live sound and music.

alex maclean

During the workshop “Weaving&Speaking Live Generative Music” the participants will make connections between generative code and our perception of music, using metaphors of speech, knitting and shape, and playing with code as material. They will take a fresh look at generative systems, not through formal understanding but just by trying things out.

Through the sessions, the participants will work up through the layers of generative code. They will take a side look at symbols, inventing alphabets and drawing sound. They will string symbols together into words, exploring their musical properties, and how they can be interpreted by computers. They will weave words into the patterns of language, as live generation and transformation of musical patterns. They will learn how generative code is like musical notation, and how one can come up with live coding environments that are more like graphical scores.

Systems like Python, Supercollider, Haskell, OpenFrameworks, Processing, OpenCV will be visted and the participants will experiment as well with more esoteric interfaces.

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