In late September, CDM travels to Amsterdam and the legendary STEIM, a hub for research and experimentation in electro-acoustic music. The Patterns + Pleasure Festival will explore live electronic music practice and more, from controllerist laptop musicians like Edison and Moldover to the likes of sculpture-trained artist Nina Boes working with drawing and video instruments. The afternoon of September 28, we’ll have an open celebration of DIY electronic music culture with a special installment of Handmade Music.

If you’re in the Netherlands or nearby, we hope you’ll stop by. And if you have something you’d like to share, for show-and-tell, performance, and mingling with artists participating in and attending the festival, we have an open call for works.

You can see our video from last time. The video doesn’t really convey what a blast we had. Don’t be afraid by the crackles and whistles, either; I love that there’s a range of sound in electronic inventions, from the crackly experimental to instruments that work in more conventional contexts, too.

This installment already promises to be far bigger. I can’t wait. And if you’re far from the lovely winding canals of Amsterdam seen below, we’re working on extensive coverage so you can feel like you’re there from anywhere on the planet.

Here’s the call for works; feel free to spread it around:

Open Call:
Handmade Music at STEIM

As part of the Patterns + Pleasure Festival
28 September 2011
14:30 – 17:30
Frascati Theater, Amsterdam
Deadline: Friday 9 September 2011

Hosted by createdigitalmusic.com and STEIM; curated by Peter KIRN with Takuro Mizuta Lippit

Attention, makers of things that make music! Be part of an open laboratory, a science fair-style show and tell of work. We want to see your creations, including but not limited to:

Custom circuitry
New custom synthesizers
Creative controllers
Open source hardware and software
Audiovisual software
Original acoustic and electroacoustic instruments
Sound art/sculpture
Circuit-bent designs
Instruments and composition and performance tools made with game technology, mobile technology, Kinect cameras, and the like

The essential element is that you’ve built something yourself, in hardware, software, or both.

Please be prepared to show a self-contained presentation of your work. Some display/projection and amplification will be available, but we encourage you to bring your own displays and speakers if you can.

We will setup works for show-and-tell style exploration, as well as brief (5-minute demos) and short (5-10-minute), variety style performances and jams. We’ll also lead a discussion with artists and engineers, and encourage you to meet other makers and exchange ideas and techniques.

We are unfortunately unable to provide expenses for travel, so you will need to provide your own transportation to and lodging in Amsterdam. All projects will be covered on createdigitalmusic.com.

Please submit:

1. Your name, as you’d like it to be listed
2. Your project name
3. If applicable, a link to a project site
4. Photos of your project (a link to Flickr, Picasa, blogs, etc. is fine)
5. (Mandatory) Video and or audio documentation of your project in action (Vimeo, YouTube, SoundCloud, etc.)
6. Space requirements
7. Technical requirements (power / audio / safety concerns if applicable)
8. A brief description (two sentences is fine) of your project.
9. If you wish to propose a performance, please describe in short how you perform with your tool.
10. Your contact information, so we may respond

Submission form:
http://cdm.fm/pt99dq

We prefer to capture information on the submission form, but if you have difficulty with it, please email peter (at) createdigitalmedia [dot] net directly with the subject ‘STEIM HANDMADE MUSIC’

patternsandpleasure.com

Drasko Vucevic, Toronto- and Santa Monica (California)-based sound designer and artist/composer, is apparently not only interested in playing alone. His upcoming interactive installation at Toronto’s Royal Music Conservatory will have an audience jamming along live via Twitter. And the artistry is crowd-sourced, too – with a range of artists already onboard, Drasko is calling on musical and visual artists (read: you) to be involved with sounds and visuals.

Drasko has sent along extensive notes, so I’m going to let him speak for himself:

I am working through both Drastic Music and Eksperimental (my companies) to create an interactive installation experience for this year’s TEDx Toronto conference taking place at the Royal Music Conservatory.

I am also doing an interactive music performance – an audio visual performance with a complete 3d/visual journey, which allows the audience (physical and digital) to collaborate with me by triggering audio and video elements in real time through their tweets.
So far, I have a few great artists contributing their time to create some beautiful visuals for this first of its kind interactive real-time jam.

Installation [Call for Audio]:
The installation concept is based around redefining collaboration. We are doing this by using real-time data (motion, color, sound, light) and tweets relating to TEDx to trigger, control, manipulate and compose audio elements on our back-end audio library (ableton). This is all happening through Processing, Max 5, Arduino, Ableton.

The massive back-end sound library contains loops, melodies, soundscapes, fx, you name it – produced by some great artists. The beauty of this is also that artists which have never before collaborated, will be remixed and mashed up solely by the audience, in relation to key words, discussions, movement, etc.

So far, the artists contributing audio content are:

Yoko K
Trifonic
Richard Devine
Drumcell
Audioandroid
David Della Santa
Darrin Wiener
Audionerve
Box of Toys
Lodewijk Vos
Matt Davis
Adrian Ellis
Andrew Lauzon
Drasko V

Performance [Visual Call]:

As I mentioned, my performance will be very interactive, musically and visually. Both audio and video elements will be triggered based on tweets in real time. I have some great visual artists contributing their time, such as Murat Pak, Yongsub, Charlie Vicetto, etc, but am looking for more, to create elements for the performance. They would of course get the great exposure of TEDx brand, be mentioned everywhere online, and will be in the final video spread throughout blogs once we launch the digital music version.

So how does the call for works … work?

The TEDxToronto conference is on September 23. Here’s how all the pieces come together for that and how to submit:

Musical system uses a massive library of sound structures – loops, melodies, fx, soundscapes and more – triggered and manipulated solely by tweets (relating to TEDxToronto) and motion, color, sound and light within the RCM venue.

Over 12 compositions will be recorded on the day of the conference. The arrangement, structure and sounds used will depend only on the key words used in tweets, the types of emotional replies, and physical interactivity within the venue.

Beauty of having some great artists be remixed and mashed up by the general public, in a very subliminal way. (again – Through their emotional replies, and physical movement)

This posting is a call to artists who may wish to apply to contribute their audio content and be a part of the soundtrack we will create that day. They should contact drasko (at) drasticmusic (dot) com with a link to their portfolio and we will take it from there.

Our installation progress may be followed on my personal site (drasko-v.com) or via Drastic Music or Eksperimental blogs.

We plan to expand the installation idea and bring it online for an ever-changing musical universe manipulated by truly organic methods (digitally and physically).

Interested to see how this will all come together. We’ll be watching. If you submit, and if you attend, let us know how it goes.

More on Drasko:
http://drasko-v.com/

This post, by definition, overlaps with the worlds of Create Digital Music and Create Digital Motion, so I’m cross-posting — absolutely not one you want to miss, both because of the event in New York, and because the landscape of works here engages issues about which readers here I know are passionate.

Music and visuals are each themselves endless wells of potential; put them together, and “infinite possibility” probably isn’t an overstatement. This July, label Ghostly International is working with researchers at New York’s Eyebeam research center to do a free, one-week intensive on dynamically-generated visuals for sound. Before you read on, that deadline is the end of today NYC time, via a fairly simple online application form. Check out the full details and application form.

The event is led by artists Aaron Meyers (Flying Lotus’ Fieldlines) and Aaron Koblin (Daisy Bell). I asked Mr. Meyers for a round-up of the kind of work that he’s done…

Read the full story on Create Digital Motion

“Press play” … “button-mashing” … the very criticism of digital music is often directed at the button or switch, even as the cult hit monome spreads arrays of buttons like a virus.

Well, we’re still interested in what you can do with a button, so to fully focus you, we’re only giving you one button with which to play. The challenge of limiting interaction to one button has already spawned an explosion of entries from game designers, who have fought their way through intense competition for the legendary Gamma indie/experimental game competition. We’ll see the winners at the Game Developer Conference next week.

But we want to see what people can do with a single button and sound. Friday, March 12, sonic (and game-based, and other) objects involving a single button will converge at San Francisco’s Gray Area Foundation, in the midst of GDC.

The deadline is officially today, March 1, but as I follow up on entries, we’re extending that to Friday, March 5, by the end of the day NYC time. There are already some terrific-looking submissions, but we’re willing to entertain the possibility of more, at least for a few more days. (if you have something you want to share online but can’t ship, let us know that, too)

How to enter – simplified rules:

It doesn’t have to be a game. (But it could be.)

It does need to do something – make noise, make lights, move, or otherwise interact.

It needs to operate on its own. We have to be able to plug it in and have it function, without the addition of a computer, etc.

It needs to be shipped to California for March 10 arrival, to be ready for the opening Friday, March 12. It will then be shipped back to you.

Send submissions, as detailed as you can, to:
onebuttonobject@kokoromi.org

Party + Hack

Part of the beauty of the one-button limitation is that it encourages quick hardware hacks and simplified designs. It’s a design you can make even if you’re out of time. We’ll be having a party to finish off creations in NYC on Saturday afternoon, building last-minute creations for Handmade Music Monday night (details forthcoming) and the One Button Objects show in San Francisco. If you want to get your own little hackday going between now and then and join us online from your local hackerspace / studio (anywhere in the world), let us know in comments. Here are details for those of you near NYC – plus some music for everyone to listen to while you solder/code/build:

Handmade Game Objects Hackday + Party
SATURDAY OPEN HOURS @ 2PM – 6PM
L TRAIN – 915 WYCKOFF AVE ( SILENT BARN )

Map
Facebook

Babycastles teams up with Handmade Music Night for a hacking afternoon. Come make crazy new video game objects, art, and controllers with us! We’ll have a jungle of fun stuff like dentures and gloves (high five to play!), but you should bring some fun things too. No experience at all necessary! (Bring soldering irons, tools, etc. if you’ve got them.)

with music by CHEESE’N'BEER CHIP MUSIC COLLECTIVE MATINÉE

ADAMGETSAWESOME »>
http://myspace.com/adamgetsawesome
Adam uses a gameboy with LSDJ and a lot of alcohol! We assure you that his name is not just all talk, he does in fact “get awesome.”

Zen Albatross »>
http://8bitcollective.com/members/Zen+Albatross/
Zen Albatross make stuff with pixels, Game Boys and ancient spirit magick. He also blogs about art, airships, bleeps, bloops and other swell things.

Goatslacker »>
http://music.goatslacker.com/
Goatslacker is Florida’s Josh Perez who promises to fill you up with high octane chip music.

and curry by chef Syed Salahuddin

And yes, that music lineup includes Goatslacker, who did the MUSE covers in 8-bit. It’s the sort of high-energy music that goes well with trying to keep your brain on hardware hacking.

Seriously, if anyone wants to switch on a webcam or IRC chat while you work on your submission, let us know and we can co-hack internationally.

What can you do with a button? What circuits can you bend? What software and hardware can you construct? Want to meet up with myself and fellow makers from the DIY music and visualist communities? I’m touring and looking for new works, we have one call for one-button objects that (if you can ship it) can come from anywhere in the world, plus upcoming events in New York, San Francisco, and — this month, Amsterdam at the planetary music tech hub that is STEIM.

STEIM + Handmade Music Amsterdam (Netherlands, February)

Handmade Music is beginning in Amsterdam. To kick things off, I’ll be visiting the legendary STEIM research center. The event will be open to anyone with inventions and self-built hardware and software you’d like to share. We’ll plug in and make a raucous noise. I’m really quite looking forward to meeting folks from this area.

When: Wednesday, February 17, 8p – ?
Where: Utrechtsedwarsstraat 134, Amsterdam
Cost: FREE
STEIM Hotspot Lab Event Page

I’ll also do a short presentation of some work TBD; more on this next week.

If you’re attending and want to share what you’re bringing in advance or make sure you see me, use the CDM contact form.

One-Button Objects Call (SF + World, March)

What can you do with one button? In an age of ever-more-complex touch interfaces, we’d like to imagine what a single, tangible, hardware button can mean for a design. To celebrate the arrival of their Gamma game event in San Francisco, art game collective Kokoromi is teaming up with Create Digital Music and Create Digital Motion to launch a call for ONE-BUTTON OBJECTS.

So, sorry monome — too many buttons (unless you want to make a one-button monome, that is). The one-button game objects will incorporate a single-button-centered design and inspiration from the world of gaming into unique creations. Read up more on our sister site:

Call for Works: One-Button Game Objects
Then send your submissions for the gallery show in San Francisco to onebuttonobject@kokoromi.org
(see also Kokoromi
Receipt deadline: March 1

If you’re in the NYC or San Francisco, we’re looking to do some informal hackdays to play with buttons, HID interfaces, Arduino and microcontroller platforms, and the like — we just need a hackerspace to host us. And if you’d like to do that elsewhere in the world, let us know and we’ll promote it.

And of course, be sure to attend Friday, March 12 at the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts if you’re in the Bay Area or attending the Game Developer Conference.

Handmade Music Brooklyn Returns; Your Inventions, Live Artists Wanted (NYC, March)

Handmade Music in its hometown of New York is being rebooted. We’re launching new workshops, new hacking, and a new quarterly performance series at a proper performance venue, Galapagos.

That means we need you.

For the quarterly party, we’re continuing to look for people to bring in your own creations. If it runs on a netbook, if you have headphones you can bring, if it’s made out of wood and you can play it, if you can plug into a portable amp and make some noise, if it’s a circuit-bent toy with built-in speakers, it’s a welcome guest.

But we’re also looking for live artists in the greater New York area who incorporate DIY instruments, hardware, software (and even wearable interactive costumes, if you’ve got them) into your act. We’d like to hear who’s out there. We can’t invite everyone to play, but that’s all the more reason to hear about what people are doing.

If you have a project or act to consider, send them here:
Official 2010 Handmade Music NYC Call for Works

The first event is Monday, March 8. Doors open 7p, live acts start 8p.

Mixed Up – Beat Blender and Mixmaster 1200 from Matti Niinimäki on Vimeo.

Ableton Live enthusiasts, you take very seriously what gear you plug into your laptop sets. We’ve seen painstakingly-created DIY controllers like the arcade button hardware below, and bizarre oddities like calculators and arcade cabinets and blenders and Osterizers (above). So, in celebration of New York installment of the Dubspot Ableton Live 8 Tour, Saturday, June 27, we’re going to get together in a fantastic space and have a little Live party. And we want to see what controllers you’ve made.

If you’re coming to town for the Live Tour or are in the New York area, we’d love for you to show some of your creations. Built or customized your own controller? Got your Wii remotes and webcams running your Live set? Built your own special Reaktor / Pd / Max / Python creation to customize your Live performance? Invented some hardware that works with Live? We’d love to see it. It’s a week that includes some of the most skilled Live minds in the planet presenting, plus celebrity appearances by the likes of Richie Hawtin, Scientist, and others. So we expect that even though this is last-minute, this could be a fun chance to get together.

If you’re interested, just sign up below or head directly to the Google Docs form. This is an informal, relaxed venue with drinks and finger foods. (Check out the recent New York Magazine write-up.) The idea is to bring along some headphones or small speakers and show things off in the catacomb-like former stables (and former sex club) nooks of this fantastic bar, meet up, relax, and get to know each other. We’ll also feature a live performance or two; if interested, let us know what your stuff sounds like.

The event will be open to the public; stay tuned for more details on this and the event itself.

And if you want to learn how to use controllers intelligently with Ableton Live – from the cheap and accessible to the weird – I’ll be teaching a workshop at Dubspot on Sunday 6/28.

Sign up, creative folks:

Our Handmade Music series continues this month on Thursday evening, 3/19, 7:30p at 3rd Ward in Brooklyn. Projects are open as always. Bring hardware. Bring circuit-bent stuff. Bring code and patches. Bring works you want to perform. Bring works that don’t work yet. Just, if you can, give us a shout to know what to expect. We have a PA, a mixer, a projector, and some space. It’s a party / science fair-style atmosphere, a chance to have a few beers and celebrate sound and noise with fellow geeks and the musicurious.

I’m particularly interested this month to see if anyone has Java or Processing-based works you want to share, as Sun’s CommunityOne East is in town, meaning lots o’ Java programmers. (Generally, they’re doing serious, work stuff like … um … servers and things. But that doesn’t mean you can’t show off your own, more unusual creations.)

More details of the lineup soon.

Call for Works, Direct Link [Google Docs]
Embedded form below:

It’s the next New York’s DIY music tech party, presented by CDM with Etsy.com, Make, and XLR8R.com, and now sponsored by Pabst Blue Ribbon!

Handmade Music is now a monthly affair at the wonderful 3rd Ward in Brooklyn, and increasingly, I want to work on adding an online, virtual component for the rest of the world to share. That means we’ll be looking for new works to share. The setup is this: for people in-person, we’re looking for installations, short performances, or projects you’d like to show off informally, science fair-style. Projects don’t have to be completed finished – in fact, this is a great way to get feedback on something you’re working on (and we certainly welcome repeat presentations as you make more progress, especially now that we’re monthly). We also welcome visual and audiovisual projects; we’ll have a projector onsite. (You’ll need to share if you can’t bring your own projector, but we can give you at least a few minutes of projection time.)

New for January 15’s event:

• Free beer, sponsored by Pabst Blue Ribbon, plus our usual refreshments
• DIY TV: Make Magazine screen music projects from their new Make: television, produced with Twin Cities Public Television and American Public Television, with a talk by Make’s Phil Torrone
• Better weather? (hopefully) no torrential freezing downpours like our debut last month (see, and you folks in other parts of the world were jealous…)

And we’re working on two projects for the online party: one is to be able to get those able to show off work around 8pm Eastern time (realizing that is a bit close to the middle of the night for Europe) to present via video chat. The other is to set up small shared labs for people to work together on new music and visual tech projects. Stay tuned.

For a glimpse of what these events look like, check out some of my photos from the December event at 3rd Ward. Video documentation coming soon (once I’m done editing!)

If you want to submit, we can use your info as soon as possible. Walk-ins with projects are always welcome, but if we know a little in advance, we can prepare and promote your project in our event info.

Form is embedded above, or skip to the form directly:

Call for Works @ Google Docs

Handmade Music, the regular series of DIY music tech parties CDM hosts with Etsy.com and Make Magazine in New York, is back. And it’s back in a big way: the event has a new home in Bushwick and will be held on an actual schedule monthly. The first event is next Thursday, December 11. After the December debut, it’ll be every third Thursday of the month, starting with January 15, 2009. We’ve got a spacious, new home at the hip galleries and workshops of 3rd Ward in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn. We want to see your projects, from simple first-time creations to advanced hacks, from software patches in Pd/Reaktor/Max etc. to hardware and electronics. See the call for works below.

RSVP + Event Details on Facebook

Bonus – Make Your Own Beep-It Optical Theremin. For the cost of parts (about $10), Mike Una is giving a workshop – no experience required, and you’ll leave with your own Beep-It. (Space is limited!)

Workshop RSVP

Double Bonus – You! We’re looking for hardware and software projects to share.

Call for Works Form [Google Docs]

Not in New York? Stay tuned – we’ll have some ways to join up live online with both the CDM community and the Etsy community.

If you are in New York:

Directions to the Space

Party: 7-10p, 12/11 (snacks/drinks + lots of sounds for everyone, from non-musicians to hardcore musical hackers!)

Make Your Own Beep-It Workshop: 7:30-8:30p (arrive promptly!)

Here’s what the event is about, as described by, well, me:

Part party, part mixer, part Science Fair, and part performance, this is an informal chance for geeksters and the geek-curious to come together, relax, and discover new sounds. The evening is a gathering of inventors of circuit-bent toys, custom software and patches, interactive digital & visual instruments, custom electronics, electricity-powered noisemakers, DIY robots and new acoustic instruments. And it’s open to everyone from hard-core hackers & newcomers to music lovers who want to learn about the DIY music scene.

And here’s a big bonus: if you liked Michael Una’s Beep-It DIY optical Theremin, as debuted here, you can make your own for the low, low price of parts: about ten bucks.

Michael Una will demonstrate his optical theremin synthesizer Beep-it and conduct a workshop wherein attendees will build their own optical theremin. The basics of analog synthesis will be discussed. No skill level is required- all tools and parts will be provided by the participation fee.

Pay for your parts by Wednesday 12/10, and reserve your spot at the workshop, at EventBrite:

http://beepit.eventbrite.com/

Beep-it from Michael Una on Vimeo.

Logo design by the amazing creator of the CDM logos and endless musical posters, Nat aka onetonnemusic.

See you next week, in New York or online!

We welcome people showing up with gear and creations at the last minute – bring cables, an extension cord, and (if you’ve got it) small speakers / headphones / PA (though we’ll do our best to provide some sound). But it does help to know who’s coming if you want to give us some advance warning, and we can help publicize your work in advance. Here’s the form: