Where: Intelligent Instruments Lab (google maps) Room Nr: VHV-007 (next to cafe downstairs) When: Friday, November 15, 3.10-5.10 pm (note 10 minutes past the hour, because of room booking)

Ezra's recent book on modular synthesis

Ezra Teboul - Synthesizing Circuits, Code and Community

What is modular synthesis? In this open lab Ezra Teboul will offer some of the insights gathered in researching and editing a large edited volume on the topic (25 chapters, 40 contributors from 7 countries, published by Routledge in 2024). They’ll begin with a summary of their preface to the volume, which defines the modularity and modes of control visible in contemporary hardware and software electronic music as an intentional, if specialized, product of the 20th century technoscientific project which has in no small part defined every day life in Europe and North America. Ezra will then highlight some of the book’s most exciting chapters, delving into the interview with Corry Banks / Modbap and Bana Haffar’s community organizing projects in Beirut and Los Angeles. They will conclude with a discussion of the ethical implications of making, using, and studying electronic music and its history. Which politics are visible in the multi-faceted practices reviewed? What, who, which spaces did we miss? Where do we hope our techno-artistic communities, and the socio-industrial mechanisms which make them possible, will go, in the context of climate change and extractive economics?

Ezra Teboul

https://redthunderaudio.com

Ezra J. Teboul is an artist, researcher, librarian and archivist. They are currently postdoctoral fellow at the Canadian Museum of Science and Technology developing a material and discursive history of Hugh LeCaine’s contributions to modern musical signal processing techniques and instrument design. They edited Modular Synthesis: Patching Machines and People (Routledge 2024), the first English-language academic collection on the topic. They have a Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an M.A. in Digital Musics from Dartmouth College, and a B.A. from Hampshire College.

Jesper Pedersen - Musical Practice with a Modular System

Jesper will do a demo of his modular system and talk about his approach to modular synthesis in his own musical practise, integrating the computer and software into the process.

Jesper Pedersen

https://jesperpedersen.bandcamp.com/

Jesper is a composer and performer based in Reykjavik. Jesper performs on modular synthesizers and writes music using experimental animated graphic notation.

Chris Kiefer, Steve Symons and Dimitris Kyriakoudis - uSEQ: Livecoding with Modular Synthesis

Chris, Steve and Dimitris will talk about uSEQ, an open-source cyberphysical livecoding system, combining hardware & software to bridge the worlds of livecoding and Eurorack analogue modular synthesis. After its initial presentation at ICLC 2023, the module has undergone several design iterations, evolving into a commercial product. They discuss the key design decisions to date, and explore the factors that influence the ongoing development of the hardware, livecoding language and execution engine. Learn more at https://www.emutelabinstruments.co.uk/

Chris Kiefer

https://luuma.net/

Chris performs under the name Luuma. He’s been playing livecoding gigs since the early days of Algoraves in 2012, and has performed at several ICLC conferences. Over this time he’s experimented with a variety of coding instruments, from SuperCollider systems to Verilog and FPGAs to LISP and modular synthesis. Outside of livecoding, Chris makes and plays hybrid acoustic/electronic/digital feedback instruments, and performs with drone noise act Brain Dead Ensemble. He has released music on Emute Lab, Confront Recordings, Trestle Records, Silent Records, Chordpunch, Punish, Cryonica Music and Wasp Factory. He has a forthcoming release on Flaming Pines.

Steve Symons

https://muio.org/

Steve is a digital instrument maker, artist and performer of over 20 years experience. He is known for an innovative series of Locative Sound Art works titled “Aura” and as member of the award winning three-person collective Owl Project. Owl Project have performed their unique blend of homemade electronics and traditional crafts (such as woodwork, weaving and flint knapping) widely such as at MusikProtokol (Graz), past NIME and ICLI conferences. Steve has extended this investigation of the sonification of real-time processes into his personal practice; creating and playing digital musical instruments based on a-life and neuronal simulations. A life-long interest in electronics has naturally drawn him to modular analogue synthesis, where uSEQ allows him to combine this with his, equally, long-term interest in coding. Steve is currently a Postgraduate Researcher at the Experimental Music Technologies (Emute) Lab at Sussex University.

Dimitris Kyriakoudis

https://dimitriskyriakoudis.lnfinitemonkeys.org

Dimitris is one of lnfiniteMonkeys, aimlessly typing away at a keyboard. He always heard people say that “music is maths”, but he was confused by its meaning and so he set out to find an answer for himself. Sharing time between London and the Emute Lab, he develops and uses TimeLines, a live coding language for expressing music as mathematical functions of time. His practice focuses on live coding information rather than process; a hopeless attempt to stop constantly building his instrument and start playing the damned thing. A minimal setup and a focus on carefully cultivated, homemade randomness makes every performance a unique trip through the infinite spacetime domain of the computational universe. Dimitris’s practice is core to the development of the uSEQ module.