[PD] Words from Pd-Convention Graz

Hans-Christoph Steiner hans at eds.org
Wed Sep 29 02:43:26 CEST 2004


Just got back from the medienkunstlabor, its 2:30 in the morning, at  
the end of the night I was drinking with Yves Degoyon, Jamie Tittle,  
Tom Schouten, and Martin Pichlmayr.  The conference has been quite  
something so far, I already feel like I have been immersed for days tho  
I just arrived yesterday.  One highlight from today was the Shepard  
tone composition for the IEM cube, which is an amazing piece of work, a  
24 speaker ambisonic array powered by Pd, capable of 150 dB, and  
therefore has a large red kill switch.  For this Shepard tone  
composition (I forgot the name of the composer unfortunately, Winfried  
will hopefully remind me), each of the 12 speakers in the "equator"  
ground plane of the array played one note from a chromatic scale.  When  
you were towards the middle of the room, all of the tones summed  
together and it sounded like funky white noise.  But as you approached  
a given speaker, you could clearly hear that single tone.  Then if you  
walked around the circle of speakers, you heard an ascending or  
descending tone, depending on which direction around the circle you  
walked, which had a very similar effect as Shepard tones.

The highlight of the evening for me was the concert by the Henry Bros,  
Cyrille and Damien, aka chdh.  They played a set where they had tightly  
linked Gem visuals with electro rhythms and tones.  The visuals were  
almost completely black and white, except for one red object, and the  
shapes where generally quite simple.  But there was an incredible  
fusion of sound an visuals, and they build up layers of sound/visuals  
in really nice ways.  The music and visuals were tightly linked and you  
could see and hear the layers coming together.

But this is saying nothing of the talks that went on today, all of  
which were totally interesting, as well as the first big developer  
meet-up session, where we all sat in a room and discussed ideas about  
how to work together.  Some issues were resolved, others were left  
unresolved, and others remain on the table for discussion.... But there  
is still 4 more days, its like drinking from a fire hose...	

.hc

________________________________________________________________________ 
____

"[W]e have invented the technology to eliminate scarcity, but we are  
deliberately throwing it
away to benefit those who profit from scarcity."
							-John Gilmore





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