Over at my blog, I posted up the slides and a quick recap of my travels to Melbourne. Of course, most notable for this blog is the kick-off of the Overlap Salon Melbourne.

A big thanks to Simon Hampson for setting up the event, and always doing what he does, which is symbiosis great! He set the event at the fabulous Loop Bar in downtown Melbourne. After about 10 people showed up, Simon started off by discussing what Overlap is, the evolution of Symbiosis and how he wants to see Overlap Melbourne move with the Salon and eventually doing Listen/Vision events in the future.

Then, I did my presentation thing (you can see my slides here), talked about my background, Fabricatorz, Vision Forum and the Laoban Speaker Workshop. I also updated the Overlap slidedeck, so that others in Overlap can use it to build future presentations.

Josh Batty gave my favorite presentation of the night by showing off his wonderful max patches, and talking in general about his direction as an artist, and how he hopes to grow the scene in Melbourne through the Overlap Salon Melbourne (You can see my photos of him speaking here).

We ended the night after some constructive discussion, a few pints, and then onto eating the most amazing noodle soup I’ve ever had at a nearby venue.

Hats off once more to Simon and Josh for great event. I look forward to seeing how the Overlap Salon Melbourne grows. If you want to start an Overlap Salon in your city, start contributing to Overlap.org, drop us a line, and lets overlap.

The last Overlap Salon, hosted by the Berkeley Center for New Media, was a resounding success. We had a fantastic turnout during this East Bay edition of the Overlap Salon, and plan to hold more bold, cutting-edge, innovative synergies of new media social networking 3.0 there in the future.

Both beginning and experienced Max users attended (actually the largest concentration of experienced Maxers I’ve seen in the Bay since Expo ‘74), and our presentations did a good job of catering to all experience levels. Salon co-organizer Vlad Spears presented his new patch Wyvern, which uses the Monome and number patterns to sequence complex melodies. We discussed a lot of different data input and sequencing possibilities, including Numbers Stations.

Your humble author followed up with a run though of the poly~ object in Max. We started out with a very brief Max explanation for new users, which is the type of beginners educational content that we plan to be making a formal part of every Salon as we continue. After pulling everyone out of the wood of worldliness, I went through several patches showing both traditional uses of poly~ (to manage synthesizer polyphony) and less common ones such as filling arrays of audio and video buffers and changing out modular patches during runtime.

Poly~ Example Patches are the patches I showed at the event, consisting of some cleaned standard Max examples and a dynamic buffer patch.

After, we had an update on some new externals using Bonjour networking that are being developed by veteran Salon presenter Matt Ridenour. One of our ongoing projects at the Salon is to create a kind of performance framework where data and audio can easily be shared among several performers to create an ad-hoc Overlap Orchestra. In upcoming meetings we will be exploring this concept more, and encourage anyone interested to come share their ideas.

We look forward to our Salon next month, which we are planning to be an off the hook Max/Live explosion. Stay tuned to Overlap.org to get details on the event.

See more pictures from the last Salon on our Flickr page.

Overlap.org Max/MSP/Jitter/Live Salon, 7-9 July 22nd. RSVP to info@overlap.org for the address of our July meeting location in Downtown San Francisco.

It’s getting time again for our monthly Salon devoted to sharing code, ideas and projects built with Cycling ‘74s New Media Toolkit Max/MSP, and Ableton’s electronic music performance application, Live. This one promises to be the biggest one yet, and we are incredibly excited to be joined this month by the Bay Area Computer Music Technology Meetup Group.

This month we will have the following presentations:

- UC Berkeley’s Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) has had a twenty-year involvement with Max. Currently, CNMAT manages a distribution of dozens of objects and hundreds of patches covering controllers, additive and resonant synthesis, analysis, (electronic) music pedagogy, and open sound control. Michael Zbyszynski will present a brief overview of what is available, where to get it, and how it is being used both on stage and in the classroom.
- Peter Nyboer will be showing the new Livid Ohm64 controller. Peter says, “I’ll talk about how to control the LEDs, show off the editor, and show some max patches that I’ve been developing that will provide good fodder for discussion on how to make instruments for this beast!”
- Matt Ridenour (VJ Mattbot) will present and perform with his Euclidian sequence generator Max external. There will be a web link provided to the Mac OS X beta version of the Max external, example Max patches and a Ruby class implementation for non- Mac/Max users.

BIO:

MATT RIDENOUR (a.k.a. VJ Mattbot) escaped the linear world of single channel film/video after discovering interactive multimedia in the Spring of 1995. His work occupies the liminal spaces between random and generative chance, impromptu decisions, preprogrammed structures, emergent behaviors, meaning and noise. His work has been presented in installation, live performance, theater, architecture, recorded media and network based formats. He has been coding audio, video, and installation pieces using Max/MSP since 2001. Matt Ridenour received his BFA in Filmmaking from the University of Oklahoma in 2000.

PETER NYBOER has been making software as a partner of Livid Instruments for about 5 years. Livid Instruments has a variety of open-source and commercial applications for audio and video artists. They have been making low-volume, high quality MIDI controllers and look to carve out a unique niche in the controller market with the Ohm64.

MICHAEL FERRIELL ZBYSZYŃSKI is a composer, sound artist, performer, and teacher in the field of contemporary electroacoustic music, is Assistant Director of Music Composition and Pedagogy at UC Berkeley’s Center for New Music and Audio Technologies, and teaches Electronic Muic at San Francisco State University. Playing flute, saxophones, clarinet, Yamaha WX-5, live electronics, or things made from coffee cans and PVC, he has appeared with Respectable Citizen, Roscoe Mitchell, Myra Melford, Frank Gratkowski, the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Capacitor Performance Group, Frances-Marie Uitti, at the Other Minds Festival, the Oregon Bach Festival, the Getty Center, and the Montréal Jazz Festival, and has been a resident fellow at the Montalvo Arts Center. He holds a PhD in composition from the University of California, Berkeley, studied at the Academy of Music in Cracow, Poland, on a Fulbright Grant, contributes to Make Magazine, and can be heard on the ARTSHIP recording label.

In addition we will have some other surprises in store as the Salon crew always has interesting projects to demonstrate. We will be also be starting to develop group project drawing on all the talents pooled in the Salon, so don’t miss this meeting so that you can get in on the ground stages of idea development. We are also the official Ableton Live users group for the Bay, so expect to see some Live action…maybe even some control from the Ohm 64.

Also, bring the things you are working on. The purpose of this event is not only to network and learn from some of the best Max programmers around, but also to share ideas…because everyone has a new perspective on programming or music creation to teach.

Last but not least: While you have to RSVP for our meeting location, you’ll have to trust me that it is a new exciting location that will be of interest to anyone that is fond of media art or live audio visual performance.

Some refreshments will be provided, but bring your laptop, code, questions, curiosity and thinking caps. We all look forwarding to seeing you.

About Overlap.org:

Overlap is an online platform for experimental media, releases, and events. Through innovative special events and exclusive online releases, Overlap shares new independent music, video and experimental art via its website Overlap.org, and provides anyone with a blog to share their media with the world.

Last night saw the most recent incarnation of our Max/MSP/Jitter/Live Salon for Overlap. While we’re still allowing the event to mutate, Barry did an excellent job fielding basic and advanced requests from the crowd (including calculating ticks per second — remember: use [rtin] and [sync~] to get MIDI tempo from Live to Max). It was a good time, and nice to see new faces. Thanks to all who attended.

Among demonstrations, it deserves mentioning that Cycling ‘74 will be putting on a rather large demo for all things related to their software at Expo ‘74 from 22 April – 24 April 2009. You will hear a great deal more about as this date nears. Sooner, however, are the events at swissnex, in the San Francisco Financial District. Of particular interest to me is an event on media facades, covering advances in LED technology, projection surfaces, and the integration of media with our everyday world.

Finally, a topic unrelated aside from involving the Swiss, Giovanni Arrighi has an interview in the latest issue of New Left Review. He helped develop world-systems analysis which has given a broad overview on the nature of our lives in a global capitalist society and how these political and economic theories fit in with very old theories on the cycles of the universe. Though this kind of abstraction may not provide much comfort in times of financial instability, it’s nice to know people still have their sights on the larger picture of what we do today, and how it will be important long after we are gone.

I will see you around.

Wednesday night March 11th, 2009 from 7-9 pm @ Sound Arts – 520 Hampshire street, suite #206 SF, CA 94110

This salon, Hosted by Overlap.org and Sound Arts + led by Barry Threw, will be focusing on Dynamic Buffer allocation. It is encouraged to bring patches, questions, and any sort of libations. We will also be introducing Ableton Live into the Overlap Salon family tree.

Our salons will be a mix of presentations and ad-hoc discussion, dependent upon what kinds of patches and issues are brought to the table. We’ll cover some tips and tricks for integrating preset communication into your patches as unobtrusively as possible. Everyone is welcome regardless of previous experience, and we will try to cater to all skill levels. We also drink beer.

At this and future events we will try to set some itinerary for what people are interested in discussing at future salons, so try to show up and lend your ideas.

Max/MSP/Jitter patches covered in the Salon will also be shared on Overlap.org following the event. All participants are encouraged to bring your their own laptop, and libations. WIFI provided in case you are bored.

About Overlap.org:

Blending the lines between a record label, event production company and social network, Overlap.org brings together a diverse network of independent artists and media connoisseurs. Overlap promotes and distributes music, video and art via its website and live events. Monthly releases at Overlap.org feature brand new material and live event recordings which push the boundaries of genre classification. On the community front, anyone can sign up and join Overlap.org and share their work for free.

* Contact email: info@overlap.org

* Sponsoring Organizations: Overlap and Sound Arts

* Website: www.overlap.org

* Event post : More info: http://overlap.org or email info@overlap.org

Wednesday night Feb 4th, 2009 from 7-9 pm @ Sound Arts Recording Studio 520 Hampshire street, suite #206 SF, CA 94110

We are revitalizing the Overlap Salon series with a new event on Feb 4. I’m taking over the reigns, and we are planning what promises to be a a very worthwhile series for users of Cycling 74’s powerful New Media creation software Max/MSP/Jitter to share their projects, help overcome problems, and learn new patching techniques. Everyone is welcome regardless of previous experience, and we will try to cater to all skill levels.

Our salons will be a mix of presentations and ad-hoc discussion, dependent upon what kinds of patches and issues are brought to the table. I will be discussing preset storage using the pattr system; one of the most powerful and perhaps least understood of Max’s object sets. We’ll cover some tips and tricks for integrating preset communication into your patches as unobtrusively as possible.

At this first event we will try to set some itinerary for what people are interested in discussing at future salons, so try to show up and lend your ideas.

Max/MSP/Jitter patches covered in the Salon will also be shared on Overlap.org following the event. All participants are encouraged to bring your their own laptop, and libations. WIFI provided in case I’m boring.

About Overlap.org:

Blending the lines between a record label, event production company and social network, Overlap.org brings together a diverse network of independent artists and media connoisseurs. Overlap promotes and distributes music, video and art via its website and live events. Monthly releases at Overlap.org feature brand new material and live event recordings which push the boundaries of genre classification. On the community front, anyone can sign up and join Overlap.org and share their work for free.

* Contact email: info@overlap.org

* Sponsoring Organizations: Overlap and Sound Arts

* Website: www.overlap.org

* Event post : More info: http://overlap.org or email info@overlap.org