First International Meeting in Computer Music and Multimedia

From 11 to 17 November 2019, the Arsenale in Venice (Sale d’Armi and Teatro Piccolo Arsenale) hosts the first International Meeting in Computer Music and Multimedia, a cycle of theoretical-practical Masterclasses about the new frontiers in electronic music.
From November 11th to 16th, there will be daily lectures open to the public in the morning, and workshops in the afternoon reserved for the composers selected for the Biennale College CIMM. The Meeting ends on November 17th with a concert at the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale (4:30 pm).

The Meeting brings to Venice some of the major computer music studios, researchers, composers and artists who will present the new languages of electronics. Motion capture techniques often used in animation films applied to music, smartphones which everyone owns used as a tool for shared creativity, with applications for the collective performance of music or concerts with audience participation, as well as languages for the synthesis of sound, video-mappings activated by the sonic parameters of the compositions themselves, the sound of matter, hyper-instruments based on augmented reality, programmes for mixed music: all studies that are currently underway, or the object of experimentation, to develop the sound of tomorrow, or even more wide-ranging applications.
Talking about their research and experimentation are: Yann Orlarey from GRAME (Centre national de création musicale in Lyon), Laura Bianchini and Michelangelo Lupone from the CRM (Centro Ricerche Musicali in Rome), Frédéric Bevilacqua and Michelle Agnes Magalhaes from IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique in Paris), Alvise Vidolin from SaMPL (Centro di sonologia computazionale in Padua), and finally artist Andrew Quinn and composer Maurilio Cacciatore.

The morning lectures are open to the public; the afternoon events starting at 2 pm are reserved for the composers selected by the Biennale College CIMM.

Monday, November 11^th
Extensions of Gesture. Workshop for composing and developing Live Electronics using Motion Capture techniques
lecturer Alvise Vidolin
assistant Luca Richelli
violinist Carlo Lazzari (workshop)

10 am > 12 noon presentation by Alvise Vidolin at the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale
2:30 pm > 6:30 pm workshop at the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale

The musical repertory that uses Live Electronics techniques is constantly expanding thanks to the interest of composers, to the rise of new generations of electronic performers, to the development of scientific and technological research studies finalized towards the design of new instruments that satisfy the composition and performance needs of this sector of contemporary music. The many experiences that characterize this repertory not only have offered history countless musical works of great prestige, they have also highlighted the problematics of the interaction between traditional performers (voice and instruments) and electronic performers (live electronics and sound direction) caused by the separation of roles, which often leads to a consideration of the traditional musician as a simple generator of sounds at the service of electronic elaboration. The result is the division of the musical gesture into two independent actions that require far greater rehearsal times and affinity than those allowed by contemporary music practices. However, this separation makes it difficult to achieve expressive gestures comparable to the traditional ones. For example, it would be like playing a violin, with two different people at the bow and the fingerboard.

Tuesday, November 12^th
MMixte: architecture software for Live Electronics with acoustic instruments
lecturer Maurilio Cacciatore

10 am > 12 noon presentation by Maurilio Cacciatore at the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale
2 pm > 6.30 pm workshop at the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale

MMixte is a middleware dedicated to the software architecture for mixed music in the form of a Max package. Based on the French tradition of the “concert patcher”, it offers a dynamic and flexible environment for developing the computer part of a piece of electronic music, with or without instruments on the stage. The modules in MMixte are based exclusively on the Max basic library so that it does not require updates instead of the release of new versions of the software; it does not contain audio effects but is exclusively focused on handling data for the optimization of the data paths. It is compatible with the use of other libraries and is conceived to be an aid to help include each user’s personal patcher.
The workshop will consist of a theoretical part and a practical one. The former will include a general introduction to the software architecture most often used for mixed music, an overview of the collections of currently available modules and an explanation of the software architecture behind the realization of MMixte, to provide the theoretical bases required to understand the potential of its use. In the second part, which will be practical, participants will learn to use MMixte to build their personal software.

Wednesday, November 13^th
TouchDesigner - Audio reactive visual, Videomapping and Interactive LED
lecturer Andrew Quinn

10 am > 12 noon presentation by Andrew Quinn at the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale
2 pm > 6:30 pm workshop at the Biennale CIMM (Sale d’Armi)

TouchDesigner is an intuitive node based software for the production of real time audio reactive graphics for musicians who wish to compose visuals as counterpoint to their music. It can render accurate 3d for video mapping and also output audio reactive pixel mapping to LEDs via dmx. It communicates with audio software via MIDI, OSC or via direct link with ableton live to allow perfect sync with audio, or can analyse an audio feed. It is the ideal tool for musicians who see and hear their music, ideally suited for performance with keyboards, MIDI controllers, sensors or tracking devices: link to music software of choice, or simply take a live feed from orchestra or ensemble.

Thursday, November 14^th
Presentation of the FAUST programme – Electronic instruments and audio plug-ins design using the Faust language
lecturer Yann Orlarey

10 am > 12 noon presentation by Yann Orlarey at the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale
2 pm > 6:30 pm workshop at the Biennale CIMM (Sale d’Armi)

Faust (Functional Audio Stream) is a functional programming language for sound synthesis and audio processing with a strong focus on the design of synthesizers, musical instruments, audio effects, etc. Faust targets high-performance signal processing applications and audio plug-ins for a variety of platforms and standards. The core component of Faust is its compiler. It allows to "translate" any Faust digital signal processing (DSP) specification to a wide range of non-domain specific languages such as C++, C, JAVA, JavaScript, LLVM bit code, WebAssembly, etc. In this regard, Faust can be seen as an alternative to C++ but is much simpler and intuitive to learn.

Friday, November 15^th
Creation-Experience. Innovative forms in the art of music
lecturer Laura Bianchini
Poetics and techniques of Feedback for augmenting instruments
lecturer Michelangelo Lupone
assistant, computer music specialist Silvia Lanzalone
saxophonist Enzo Filippeti

9 am > 11 am presentation by Laura Bianchini at the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale
11:30 am > 1:30 pm presentation by Michelangelo Lupone at the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale
2:30 pm > 6:30 pm workshop at the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale

The study of the characteristics with which matter vibrates and radiates acoustic energy is the object of the artistic, scientific and expressive research conducted at the CRM in Rome, and is one of the aspects on which the musical production of the Centro converges. The analysis and vibrational control of matter were explored in two principal applications: augmentation, understood as the extension of the acoustic and performing qualities of traditional musical instruments, and adaptivity, understood as the capacity of a musical composition to change based on interaction with man, the environment and the passing of time (art installation, sculptural-musical work, distributed and collaborative work). The workshop will include both a theoretical section and a practical section that will implement various systems of feedback finalized towards the creation of music.

Saturday, November 16^th
Presentation of the IRCAM’s research program on Sound-Movement Interaction & Collective Interaction
lecturer Frédéric Bevilacqua
assistant Michelle Agnes Magalhaes

10 am > 12 noon presentation by Frédéric Bevilacqua at the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale
2:30 pm > 6:30 pm workshop at the Biennale CIMM (Sale d’Armi)

We are developing a generic platform for collaborative and collective interactions based on recent mobile and web technologies (projects CoSiMa, BeCoMe, CoMo/Elements). The applications include collective music performances, concerts with audience participation, collaborative games, dance or music pedagogy. Our web-based platform turns the smartphone in everybody’s pocket into a tool to create novel paradigms for collective music listening, performing and composing.

The Meeting ends on November 17th at the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale (4:30 pm) with a concert of “music of the future”: instrumental music, electronics, videos, new sounds and new performance techniques come into play in the pieces, two world premieres and two Italian premieres, by Maurilio Cacciatore, Simone Conforti, Ivan Fedele, Michelangelo Lupone. Top-tier performers in the concert include flutist Ayako Okubo, the Paetzold flute specialist Ulrike Mayer-Spohn, tenor and counter tenor Javier Hagen, Enzo Filippetti on the saxophone, as well as with the Windback, Raphaël Siefert for the videos and Andrew Quinn for the sound-reactive visuals.

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CIMM – Center for Computer Music and Multimedia of La Biennale di Venezia is supported by SIAE - Società Italiana degli Autori ed Editori