For the second year in a row, students in my advanced electronic music course worked together to produce a concert of original works. Once again, Collective Church graciously hosted us and helped produce the live stream (which is still available as an archive here). Overall, it was another great learning experience and another great night of electronic music. More details online at digahertz.com.
DIGAhertz 2.0 logo designed by Rob Armstrong.
In the Spring 2018, I was able to work out an agreement with Essential Pianos, who generously loaned us a Yamaha Disklavier grand piano for two full weeks. The Disklavier is a fully acoustic piano with added mechanics that allow it to be controlled by computer using MIDI. My students and I held a joint meeting with the Prof. Sean Kennard and his piano students so that we could explore the technology together and get their perspective on its strengths and weaknesses. Before the end of this short-term loan, my students used Ableton Live to collaborate on a generative composition and produced the following video to document their work.
8-channel composition @ Florida Contemporary Music Festival at U of Florida.
I was invited by members of the Music Composition program at University of Florida to present music as part of their Unbalanced Connection concert. For this event, I composed a new work called for this day for the eight channel sound system in their concert hall. It was great to catch up with colleagues James Paul Sain and Paul Koonce, and a privilege to meet many of their graduate students in Gainesville.
I also had some time to mingle with some of the other composers, including Robert Normandeau who came from the University of Montreal. Normandeau’s trip to Florida was part of an artistic residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (ACA) in New Smyrna Beach. About two weeks after first meeting him in Gainesville, I was able to travel with students from my DIGA 366 course to hear him lecture about his work at the ACA.
Presenting a new piece tonight at @UF for Florida Contemporary Music Festival. Concert @ 7:30pm. pic.twitter.com/0HXUQAzB6O
— Nathan Wolek (@LowkeyNW) February 16, 2018
In the Fall 2017 semester, I introduced my DIGA 365 students to Eurorack hardware synthesizers. As a way to explore these devices, I added a new project that required students to design sounds for a smart phone, including a ringtone, social media alert, and messaging. Most students found it fun to take control of these sounds on the devices they use everyday. Some of the results were more imaginative, with the students even adding office ambience to fill out the video. You can hear results of these projects in the following video:
In October 2017, I attended the Processing Community Day held at the MIT Media Lab in Boston, Massachusetts. This gathering was the first of its kind, bringing together creative coders from across the country to share projects and experiences that use the popular programming language called Processing. I have used Processing both in my creative work and in teaching CSCI 111Q.
Taeyoon Choi and the other organizers of this event placed a heavy emphasis on networking, and from my perspective, it was a success. Attending this event allowed me to meet several individuals face to face that I have previously only conversed with online, as well as get to know new artists and educators using this programming language. It helped me lay the groundwork for new developments in my teaching and creative practice.
More information on the event can be found here.
Good morning, Boston! @ProcessingOrg @MIT pic.twitter.com/sVpAFhoCXG
— Nathan Wolek (@LowkeyNW) October 21, 2017
As part of my work for the Jamoma team in early 2015, I completed a 64-bit Mac update of an external from 2006 for vector-based amplitude panning by Ville Pulkki. This enabled other members of the team to use models that were dependent on the external with newer versions of Cycling’74 Max. After seeing my forum posts about this, I was recently contacted by someone on the Windows platform about getting an update for that version too. After first getting permission from Ville, I set up a new GitHub repository with continuous integration so that changes are automatically compiled.
A few people are still collaborating on documentation updates to flesh out the package, but the externals are ready for use at the repository link. If you download the updates and use them successfully, let me know. Also, if you know of other stray Max 32-bit objects out there that need a similar updates, please contact me.
vbap works with matrix~ to pan sounds across multichannel setups.
This year, the second semester of my Computer Music sequence (DIGA 462) was structured more as a peer working group. Students were responsible for developing two large-scale projects that fell within several pre-defined categories, and bringing their work-in-progress to class each week for comment and critiques. I worked on projects too and brought them in for students to comment. The student response to this format was very positive! For those that are interested, you can review the syllabus here.
In the second half of the term, we assembled our work into a final concert held off campus at Collective Church. The concert turned into a wonderfully authentic experience for the students. They had to develop an order for the concert program, gather the required gear, plan for marketing, and run the event. Documentation for this event was spread over several social media platforms, and links to these and a full-length video from the concert can be found online at digahertz.com.
DIGAhertz logo designed by Katie Mackey.
The largest project for me in 2016 was another chance to collaborate with composer Virgil Moorefield. Like in 2014, I worked for months in advance of the proposed performance dates to achieve some of the effects Virgil wanted. Most of this preliminary work centered on programing for a Microsoft Kinect gaming system so that it could be used in his performance as a gestural control for visuals. This required many hours of research, programming and testing, but the results were very successful.
For the November performance in Zürich, Switzerland, I arrived about a week in advance so that I had several days to focus on final adjustments and getting the overall technical setup ready for the show. Here is a two-minute video of me doing a final systems check of the Kinect controller:
It is important to note that Virgil assembles a great team of people to perform for his concerts. The individuals that make up this team are seasoned and work at a high level of professionalism, which makes for a very stimulating work environment. Myself and other members of the technical team also supplied the physical labor to move all the necessary gear from Virgil’s studio to the venue. This 2-minute time-lapse gives you a glimpse of how much work was involved:
My role during the concert was as a visual performer, which made me responsible for the computer handling visual effects and cueing transitions throughout the performance. Moorefield is also great about documenting his concerts, and the video produced from this event is available online here:
In a recent update to Max, Cycling ’74 introduced the new Package Manager as an easier way for users to download third-party add-ons to their local machine. For the last few weeks, I have been consulting with Tim Place and Andrew Benson to make some improvements and additions to my own package on GitHub (including the addition of Windows support!), so that it could be included in this handy new feature. Now that this work is finished, I am honored to say that the LowkeyNW Max Package is now part of this “hand-picked selection of the finest Max add-ons”. If you are a Max 7 user and download the LowkeyNW package, please let me know what you think!
LowkeyNW featured inside the Package Manager.
This spring semester, I once again lead our Digital Arts juniors in a service learning project at the local Boys & Girls Club. The Stetson students designed a game that could be used to introduce key programming concepts to the kids at the club using Processing. In addition, they were responsible for documenting their work by creating a website.
Website created by students to document the project.
Very proud of the work these students did! In addition to their website, you can learn more about the project from the following:
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