SYNTHESIS is the name of a series of workshops that I gave at the Visual Communication Institute of the Academy of Art and Design in Basel and led to a public concert for the opening of our new campus.
The basic premise was to use generative systems to create visual instruments that mimic the expressivity of electronic music synthesizers. Parameters of visual synthesis engines should be made controllable through haptic interfaces in order to design and spontaneously improvise images intuitively and in real-time.
The performativity of that approach was exemplified through audiovisual performances at the end of the workshops and presented publicly in a concert situation with the hardware electronic band VITA ARTUR that was co-organized by Johannes Bruder at the Critical Media Lab Basel (CML). The CML opened this year as a research facility for theoretical and practical studies in media and design cultures.
In the course of the workshop several kinds of input methods were explored, such as simple electronics with Arduino for attaching potentiometers and accelerometers. For the public concert the team used ready-made MIDI controllers (Korg NanoControl 2) in order to be reliable enough to perform in front of an audience. I provided a Processing snippet called KNC2 that integrates the popular Korg controller (or other MIDI devices) with premapped MIDI CCs, adjustable parameter glide and 8 LFOs with variable waveshapes. That middleware is based on The MidiBus library and available on GitHub.
Some students developed visual synthesizers that depart from existing physical engines such as the famous Flocking sketch by Daniel Shiffman, while others went from scratch in the spirit of the minimalist Basel Graphic Design. In general we sticked to black and white graphics on black backgrounds in order to constrain ourselves to motion and form for telling our visual stories. A key factor was to create a wide range of visual intensities that we could move through smoothly with the controllers in order to follow the action of the music.
Two video documentations are available. The first one (below) is an edit of the 45 minute live session at the CML together with VITA ARTUR that took place on September 12th as a contribution to the opening of the new Dreispitz Campus. VITA ARTUR is a Basel-based band that uses hardware synthesizers and sequencers such as the Roland SH-201 or the Korg MS-20 and play as a three headed improvisational combo. Many sketches were using the live sound via the MacBook microphone and Minim library in order to bind parameters tightly to the action in the sound.
For that night my role was to conduct my students in regards to the pace of their images. I was operating a Blackmagic ATEM Television video switcher, which is able to move between up to four MacBooks via HDMI seamlessly. That way the students could load individual sketches and prepare pictures on their own while I was previewing the material they offered to me on a separate HDMI monitor.
Video by Dennis Schmidlin and Laurids Jensen
Earlier performance by Lazar Jeremic and Cyrill Studer to the music of Amon Tobin and was featured earlier this year on CAN.
Performing students and staff:
Ted Davis, Moritz Greiner-Petter, Susanne Hartmann, Lazar Jeremic, Jasmine von Niederhäusern, Kevin Renz, Dennis Schmidlin, Cryill Studer, Ludwig Zeller
KNC2 code on GitHub | Interaction seminar at the HGK FHNW | Critical Media Lab Basel | Pictures from the 1st workshop
