Art + Music + Technology

Teacher, maker and tool-builder Ali Momeni is our subject for the week. Ali is well-known in several communitied, having been an active coder/composer while at UC-Berkeley, creating large-scale word at the University of Minnesota, and now active with ArtFab at Carnegie Mellon University. He works in Max, Pd, microprocessors and (as we hear in this podcast) a wide variety of industrial fab machines. He is also one of the most engaging people you'll ever meet - whether in person, or in an interview like this. One of the recent projects that Ali finds himself involved in is a library of machine learning tools. The link for that library is: https://github.com/cmuartfab/ml-lib. If you are interested in more complex mapping of data to actions, you will want to dive into this collection of tools. He is also active in the ongoing development of the Udoo board; you can find more information here: http://www.udoo.org/ Enjoy!

Mark Mosher is one of the most active synth-fanatics in the Denver area. He creates music, leads a scene of performers, helps organize the Boulder Area Synth Meetup, does example and tutorial videos for hardware and software - and probably doesn't sleep much. This last week he put out a new album Fear Cannot Save Us, which is a continuation of the science fiction themes from his earlier albums Reboot and I Hear Your Signals, but is also one of the finest classic electronic music albums I've heard in a while. So I took the opportunity to quiz him on the making of the album, how he mixes sci-fi themes with electronic music, and how he produced such an excellent sounding product. If you want to hear the new album, you can check it out at http://www.FearCannotSaveUs.com. You can also learn more about Mark and his activities at http://www.MarkMosherMusic.com. Enjoy!

Sometimes it can be really exciting to look at New Stuff and get excited about it. But sometimes a review of Old Stuff can be just as exciting. Author, educator, journalist and musician Mark Vail has the gift of helping us see more than the glamour of New Gear, and I had a wonderful discussion with him for this week's podcast. Given Mark's encyclopedic knowledge of hardware, this could have turned into a "I thought the QRB-1500 was much superior to the FRX-9590" drone-athon, but he isn't like that - he's a relaxed and fun guy that has a story for every hardware spec. He has also spent time with history-making builders and artists, and enjoys sharing the memorable background that helped create the Music Instrument (MI) world. I hope that you enjoy this podcast as much as I enjoyed making it. Also, you can get a little more info from markvail.com, and meet/hear him at a book signing at The Avid Reader in Davis, California on April 11, 2014. Enjoy!  

I seem to have known Barry Threw for a long time, but after this interview I realized that this was the single longest conversation we'd ever had. Some of the reason behind this is that we often met up at conferences or shows (AES, NAMM, Expo74 and the like...), where time is unnaturally fragmented into small bits. So this was a refreshing change of pace for us, and we took advantage of it by drilling into a wide variety of things: architectural surface projection, Naut Humon and Recombinant Media Labs, the development of the K-bow and even abstract stuff like "religion as a precursor art locale". Toward the end of the podcast, we also talk a little about the plight of Bassel Khartabil, a technologist currently imprisoned in Syria. If you would like to learn more - or get involved - you can find out more at Barry's site (barrythrew.com) and at the FreeBassel site (freebassel.org).

Continuing our discussions with media arts "professional", this week's conversation is with Mark Henrickson. I first met Mark as a performer at the Spark Festival, and I have had the pleasure of performing with him on several occasions. But I also knew that he was active in the show production world - which these days involves multi-channel audio, amazing lighting rigs and projection-mapped video. So I wanted to talk to Mark about how he meshes this professional life with his personal artistic work, and how he uses influences in one area to open doors in the other. I think this discussion gives a unique view into the background of a pro, but also provides some insight into the development of a personal artistic practices that is unique, recognizable and interesting. Enjoy!

Andrew Benson flies slightly under the radar, doing design work for Cycling 74, teaching at SFAI in San Francisco, maintaining an active artistic practice and doing visual work for Name Brand Stars that you certainly have seen. But Andrew doesn't really long for a spread in People Magazine; rather, he is constantly diving into edge-case technology looking for new ways of drawing emotion out of media art viewers. In the podcast, I recall my first interaction with his work - and having a visceral reaction based on the movements of a simple drawing. This sort of expression is key to Andrew's art, and in this podcast he talks openly about how he approaches art technology in the pursuit of these feelings. Another great conversation, and it opened my eyes to opportunities in the visual space that I'd not previously considered. Enjoy!

This week's interview is with a long-time friend and inspiration - Richard Devine. I've known him since "back in the old days" on Analogue Heaven, and we still have great conversations any time we meet (whether after a gig or during a trade show). We came up under many of the same influences, and were both obsessed with the many kinds of cool hardware that we came across. But one of the things I've noticed with many of the interviews I've seen with Richard is that they focus on his gear and the contents of his studion, but little is written/shown on how he creates his music or how he accomplishes his sound design. And his work is impeccible. Since he was willing to do a podcast conversation, I decided to focus on The Creative Man rather than The Gear, and the result is that we get some insight into Richard's creative process that is really important. Of course, we still talk gear a bit - I mean, we are only human! But hearing about Richard's trek into electronic music (the story about the "4 crates of albums"

If you are involved in electronic/digital media creation, you've surely run across Julien Bayle. He is a performer, installation artist, programmer, writer and is heavily involved in almost every facet of media arts. He is also a public figure that spends a lot of time investigating systems - and sharing what he's found with the community. I find Julien fascinating, because he seems to be incredibly productive, and seems to finish more work than most people can even conceive of starting. In this conversation, we talk about his background, how he became comfortable with the many technologies that he uses, and how he is able to accomplish so much. As I suggest in the intro, this podcast was a bit of a scramble; both technical and scheduling issues pushed this right to the brink. But this conversation is a great way to peer into the mind of a self-described "obsessive", and understand how Julien decides on which work to pursue as well as which decisions he's decided to make. Great stuff. To learn more about Juli

It's always a wonderful thing when you get a chance to work with someone whose company you can enjoy. That's the case with Matthew Davidson, a person I've always admired and whose work I've appreciated, but who is also a person you can just enjoy hanging out with. In this "interview", Matthew and I really just talk smart about controllers, modulars and the composition process. Matthew always has a thoughtful view on almost anything, and is willing to challenge people to push their thought processes beyond the most convenient position. I hope you enjoy listening to this conversation as much as I had doing it. Matthew forces me to talk about myself a little (gulp!), for which I apologize in advance!

I was really looking forward to this interview, since I knew it would not only be interesting, but educational. I don't know that much about analog video processing, but I've always loved the results. Liz Larsen, of LZX Industries, spends some time teaching me about the history and mechanics of analog video, introduces me to the core concepts, and helps me understand more about this fascinating world. LZX, if you don't know, is the primary developer of modular analog video systems, and the results of their users' work is quite beautiful. But beyond that, we get a glimpse into the world of an innovator, and learn about the struggles in developing a creative system that doesn't place a restrictive stamp on the work of the artist. Follow me into this brave new world, and see if you don't want to take out another mortgage too!

OK, so I'm going to reveal a little fanboyism in this podcast. Randy Jones, owner of Madrona Labs, doesn't output a ton of products. But the ones that he does produce are impeccible. His Soundplane hardware device is a wonderful meshing of instrument and controller, while the Aalto software is one of the most modularistic plug-ins I've used. All of his work sports a deftness of design that I appreciate, and their operation are equally awesome. I don't often pitch websites here, but madronalabs.com is worth a visit. And I really can't wait to try out that new Kaivo software!

Paul Schreiber has seen it all, from building his own Heathkit gear, to designing automotive stereo systems, to designing cell phones to creating modular synthesizer systems. I was, of course, mostly interested in the latter, but I was also interested in how modular systems were informed by his earlier experiences. In this interview, Paul shares how he learned electronics, how he designed the MOTM modular system, and also shares his advice for anyone interested in digging into it themselves. This is the first in a series of interviews informed by the forum citizens over at muffwiggler.com. Don't let the name freak you out; I'm sure it started out as some sort of inside joke, but it really is the main meeting place for all things modular.

This week is a visit with part of the "extended family"; in this case, an interview with Tom Zicarelli - brother of David Z, but a mad inventor in his own right. Tom is a musician/educator/hacker in the best sense of all these words, and I thought he'd be able to give us some insights on system interfaces that we've not yet heard. And I was right: from Ruby scripting to Pd on a Raspberry Pi, we get a little info on everything. This was probably the easiest interview I've given, because there was a lot to talk about - but also Tom is a very laid back guy, and the conversation has more of a conversational (rather than interviewer-ly) tone to it. I hope you enjoy, and aren't overly distracted by the insertion of some of my troubles into the discussion!

This week's interview is with Peter Nyboer, software developer, interface designer and do-alot-guy with Livid Instruments. But Peter also has a long history working in the music and technology industries, doing personally developer software packages, playing a lot of gigs and working with Recombinant Labs. I wanted to talk to Peter to not only get a glimpse behind the Livid curtain, but also to see how he manages to be both professional and creative. As you might expect, it isn't always easy...

In our first interview with someone specifically not self-identified as a programmer, we talk to David Stout. David is one half of the performing group Noisefold, and is also a faculty member at one of my (many) alma maters - University of North Texas. David has some very specific views on the creations of art with new media tools, and he share some of them with us in this chat. I really enjoy exploring these areas, and hope to have a follow-up interview with David sometime in the near future. In the meantime, please enjoy this sip from the firehose!

Nick Rothwell is someone that I've worked with over the years; he is both electronic music composer and dance company collaborator. He is also a master programmer - in Max, Java and anything else he needs to get his work done. But in this interview, wedon't get into too much technical detail. Rather, we focus on history (of the internet, dance technology and controllers) an on how to create systems as collaborative tools. A great interview, and some good insight on how to manage a wide-ranging career.

I begin this podcast describing Nathan Wolek as a "self-made person"; by that, I mean that he was a trained musician, but found computer music and programming to be the locale for his voice. So he put himself in positions to have to learn computer systems, computer programming (including C programming for the Max SDK) and other "difficult" processes to be able to extend both his work as well as the people that he was working with. The result is a variety of important creations, from the Granular Toolkit (something that I've used extensively) to the Jamoma project. In addition to working on his own projects, he is also an active educator at the university level, and has recently been working with kids groups to teach creative coding in that environment. Nathan is an inspiration to me, and represents one of the futures of the tech-savvy artist.

Joshua Goldberg has been part of the Max "scene" for as long as I can remember. He was there during the early days of video-for-Max (including being a user of The Software That Shall Not Be Named...), and introduced many people to VJ programming with the Dervish video system. In this interview, we swing from early history to recent construction art, but really spend a lot of time describing the ways we get to "happy accidents" and joyfulness. A super-exciting discussion, and it just reiterates the fun that I have talking to passionate people. The bumper music was made with the help of a sample set I recently purchased from Max Milllion. Fun stuff, and only 4UKP...

Luke DuBois is a roller-coaster conversationalist. I had a list of things we were going to talk about, but I don't think we got to a single one of them! What we did was cover a huge number of topics - from dating sites to nurse's crash carts - and how they relate to media art, data visualization and creative coding. Every time I have a chance to chat with Luke I end up learning so much; this is another one of those times. This is a long podcast (over an hour), but it is work every minute of your time to give it a listen. Download it and enjoy!

In doing a little research on YouTube and the Cycling '74 forums, I kept on running across a user "baz" that seemed to be knowledgable, engaged and really active. His tutorials on YouTube were quite phenominal, and I wanted to find out more about this guy. Surprise to me - it is Barry Moon, someone that I think I ran across on the old Max mailing list. It turns out that Barry has been around the electro-acoustic scene for a lng time, but has been working on teaching, visual cration, composition and various collaborations. A cool interview, and another change to talk to a multi-talented artist. Enjoy!