xxxxx workshop: You’ve got Pluggability. Pure Data in the Summer :: 29-31 August, 2008 :: xxxxx/pickledfeet, Linienstrasse 54, 10119 Berlin.

Pure Data (Pd) presents the ultimate, free software environment for sheer audio, video and hardware pluggability, patching and piping. Pd provides the basis for all manner of audiovisual performance and trans-media installation, as well as satisfying the artistic quest for heady experimentation and improvisation. Yet few artists take the time to master a solid foundation in this graphical programming environment.

The three day You’ve got pluggability workshop aims to provide a firm grounding and clear overview of the varied possibilities and paths offered by Pure Data. The first day will introduce Pd and quickly move on to how to create patches which create sounds and noises. The second day will look further at sound, particularly how to work with sampled audio, and will introduce the GEM library for working with live and recorded video. The third day will start with a look at the HID (Human Interface Device) system for getting sensor input into Pd, and venture into to using this input to control the audio and video patches which the participants have already created. No previous experience is necessary to take this workshop.

This PD workshop will be roughly based on the Pure Data FLOSS Manual, written by Derek Holzer, Luka Princic, Adam Hyde and contributors from the PD community: http://flossmanuals.net/puredata

Participants should bring their own laptop running GNU/Linux, Mac OS X or Windows, and with Pure Data Extended installed from: http://puredata.info/downloads

They are also encouraged to bring their own ideas, sensors, USB game controllers, MIDI devices, microphones and video cameras. There will be an opportunity to buy the inexpensive xxxxx-HID sensor input board produced at Pickled Feet: http://1010.co.uk/avrhid.html

Limited places! Please register before 24 August at: m@1010.co.uk

About the Teachers

Derek Holzer [USA 1972] began working with Pure Data in 2001. Since then, he has taught and performed with the program across Europe, North America, Brazil and New Zealand. His work focuses on field recording, networked collaboration strategies, experiments in improvisational sound and the use of free software such as Pd. He is currently writing a beginner’s manual for PureData. http://www.umatic.nl/info_derek.html

Martin Howse operates within the fields of discourse, speculative hardware (environmental data in open physical systems), code (an examination of layers of abstraction), free software and the situational (performances and interventions). http://1010.co.uk

Location:

xxxxx, pickledfeet, Linienstrasse 54, Berlin 10119
U2, Rosa-Luxemburg-Pl. U8, Rosenthaler Pl.
Telephone: 3050187482.

Re Pure Data:

Pure Data
Pure Data (or PD) is a real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing. Because all of these types of media are handled as data in the program, many fascinating opportunities for cross-synthesis between them exist. Sound can be used to manipulate video, which could then be streamed over the internet to another computer which might analyze that video and use it to control a motor-driven installation. PD is commonly used for live music performance, VeeJaying, sound effects composition, interfacing with sensors, cameras and robots or even interacting with websites.

The core of Pd is written and maintained by Miller S. Puckette (http://crca.ucsd.edu/~msp/) and includes the work of many developers (http://www.puredata.org/), making the whole package very much a community effort.

The community of users and programmers around PD have created additional functions (called “externals” or “external libraries”) which are used for a wide variety of other purposes, such as video processing, the playback and streaming of MP3s or Quicktime video, the manipulation and display of 3-dimensional objects and the modeling of virtual physical objects.

PD runs on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X, and there is a wide range of external libraries available which give PD additional features.