SuperCollider Workshop with Marije Baalman, Ph.D.

Participants

Between April 20th and May 11th, Studio XX will welcome audio artist Marije Baalman who will pass her knowledge of SuperCollider in a 4-session workshop.

Dates: Monday from 6:00 – 9:00 PM,
from April 20th to May 11th, 2009
Fee*: 200$
The workshop will be taught in English.
For information: 514.845.0289 or by e-mail

SuperCollider is an environment and programming language for real-time audio synthesis and algorithmic composition. It provides an interpreted object-oriented language which functions as a network client to a state of the art, realtime sound synthesis server.

SuperCollider was written by James McCartney over a period of many years, and is now an Open Source project maintained and developed by various people. It is used by musicians, scientists, and artists working with sound.

The workshop will teach participants how to make synths in SuperCollider, how to use them with Pattern structures and how to use input devices. Using a combination of exercises and teaching tools, workshop participants will build components to be used in a final composition.

The workshop is taught on a Linux system, but SC can also function on OSX (>10.4) and Windows. The version used in the workshop will be 3.3 (the latest stable release), available from Sourceforge. Participants can bring their own computer with SC installed, or use a computer in the Studio XX Lab.

* Workshop participants must be or become members of Studio XX.

* Men are welcome on a space-available basis.

Marije Baalman studied Applied Physics at the Technical University in Delft, Netherlands and graduated in 2002 in Perceptual Acoustics. In 2001/2002 she followed the Sonology Course at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. She completed her Ph.D. on Wave Field Synthesis and electro-acoustic music in 2007 at the Electronic Studio of the Technical University of Berlin.

She is currently a post-doctoral researcher in Computation Arts at Concordia University in Montreal. Her research explores the use of wireless networks for live performance (such as dance and music), and installations.

Baalman has performed and exhibited across Europe (STEIM,WORM (NL), EXIT Festival (F), Club Transmediale (D)) and beyond (Electrofringe (AU)). She collaborated with Chris Salter and Michael Schumacher on the dance performance Schwelle, and with the Attakkalari Centre for Movement on their most recent production Chronotopia, which premiered at their India Dance Bienniale, February 2009. Baalman founded the Institute for Predictive Sonobotanics with Alberto de Campo, whose work has been exhibited throughout Europe.

She is a contributor to The SuperCollider Book to be released shortly by MIT Press.

COURSE OUTLINE:

Week 1:
Introduction to SuperCollider (Help, documentation, executing code).
Creating and manipulating SynthDefs + Synths.

Week 2:
Patterns: creating musical phrases and compositions.

Week 3:
Using input devices (HID, joysticks, gamepads, etc.) to manipulate synths and patterns operational systems.

Week 4:
Additional topics (participants’ requests).

More on SuperCollider: http://supercollider.sourceforge.net/

More on the teacher: http://www.nescivi.nl