Biennale College – CIMM 2019

The Centro di Informatica Musicale e Multimediale (Center for Computer Music and Multimedia) of La Biennale di Venezia, directed by Ivan Fedele, aims to promote and support the many cultures of electronic music.
The CIMM’s projects for the year 2019 include a cycle of masterclasses to be held in Venice from November 11^th to 16^th 2019. The masterclasses will end on November 17^th with a concert (programme to be announced) that is an integral part of the courses.

The project is addressed to young composers to be selected through an international call.
The masterclasses will include the participation of researchers, composers and artists from some of the most cutting-edge international computer music and multimedia studios.

The daily sessions will be divided into two learning sections:

            1) theoretical:  lectures by speakers on the state of the art and the applications of the research they are engaged in.
            2) practical: masterclasses and workshops, individual and in group sessions, with the selected young composers at the electronic music studios of La Biennale.

At the end of the course, the Director Ivan Fedele reserves the right to select a maximum of three participants who may receive a commission for the Biennale Musica 2020.

RULES OF PARTICIPATION
Applicants are required to fill out the registration form online in all its parts, and to attach the requested digital documentation (in Italian or in English):

• a passport-size photo
• curriculum vitae in pdf format
• a letter of motivation
• 2 scores with relative recordings of compositions for instruments and electronics, or 2 tracks of acousmatic compositions as well.

Incomplete applications will automatically be rejected.

The course will be held in Italian and in English. Fluency in both languages is required.
Participation in the project requires full attendance.
The deadline for receipt of the applications is October 12^th 2019.

Who the call is for
The call is addressed to young composers over age 18, who have not reached the age of 31 before the date of the call deadline. Applicants must possess a Diploma from a Conservatory, or be third-year students of a three-year programme.
The artistic director will select a maximum of 20 participants.

Costs
Every participant will be required to pay a registration fee in the amount of € 80.00 (VAT included, non refundable) that must be paid exclusively by credit card following the announcement of acceptance into the programme, and no later than the date to be announced.
All costs relative to the participation (travel, room and board, local transportation) will be paid by the participants.

GRAME (Lyon, France)
Yann Orlarey lecturer and professor
Theme: Presentation of the FAUST program - Electronic instruments and audio plug-ins design using the Faust language

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.

CRM – Centro Ricerche Musicali (Rome, Italy)
Laura Bianchini and Michelangelo Lupone, lecturers and professors
Theme: Creation-Experience. Innovative forms in the art of music (Laura Bianchini)
Poetics and techniques of Feed-back for augmenting instruments (Michelangelo Lupone) - assistant, computer music specialist (Silvia Lanzalone)

The study of the characteristics that make matter vibrate and radiate acoustic energy is the subject of the artistic, scientific and expressive research conducted at the CRM in Rome, and is one of the aspects that the Centre's musical production of the converge towards. The analysis and vibrational control of matter have been deployed in two major applications: augmentation, understood as an extension of the acoustic and performance properties of traditional musical instruments, adaptivity, understood as the capacity of a musical composition to be transformed by the 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.

IRCAM - Institut de Recherche e Coordination Acoustique/Musique
Frédéric Bevilacqua (head researcher) and Michelle Agnes Magalhaes (composer)
Theme: Presentation of the IRCAM’s research program on Sound-Movement Interaction & Collective Interaction

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.

CSC - Centro di Sonologia Computazionale of the University of Padua and SaMPL of the Conservatorio “C. Pollini” in Padua.
Alvise Vidolin and Luca Richelli, lecturers and professors
Theme: Extensions of gesture. Workshop for composing and developing Live Electronics using Motion Capture techniques

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.

Andrew Quinn lecturer and professor
Theme: TouchDesigner - Audio reactive visual, Videomapping and Interactive LED

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.

Maurilio Cacciatore lecturer and professor
Theme: MMixte - a new Max package for the mixed music with Max

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.

These activities have been made possible by the support of SIAE – Società Italiana Autori ed Editori.

The programme may be subject to change.

For further information:
cimm-masterclass@labiennale.org