Enough of all this nonsense about how the Western Empire is crumbling. In our new “world” in which Mumbai is as powerful a cultural compass as Berlin or New York, one thing is guaranteed: it’s going to be a great party.

One stalwart Western-based advocate of a more pluralist electronica scene are the folks at Indian Electronica. Pumping out regular live events, podcasts, radio streams, and festivals, the crew is keeping music south Asian-flavored and eclectic. They’re truly inclusive: previous festivals spotlighted the likes of DJ Spooky, artists who are not connected to India by birth but love the music. It’s “Indian” in a loose sense, covering the thread of musical influence instead of just the geography.

The good news is, the excellent Indian Electronica Festival is returning with dates in New York, Toronto, and Vancouver. (Sadly, Mumbai didn’t make the list this time, but North America gets a good dose of great music.) They’re looking for artists to sign up, too, and possibly even other sessions.

http://www.indianelectronica.com/
http://www.indianelectronica.com/festival

Part of why I still like the term “electronica” is that the history of electronic music is by its very nature trans-cultural, eclectic, and global. Those are buzzwords, I know, but in this case I think they’re backed up by actual reality – by music spreading instantly across thousands of miles to the other side of the planet. It’s odd to me that people malign Berlin’s scene and history for being somehow restrictively bound in Germanness. It was Berlin’s pioneers who were smart enough to bring over artists from North and South America, from Detroit and Sao Paolo, and to arrange cultural intersections that changed the course of music.

But anyway – back to the music. The video quality is poor, but here’s the kind of highlight of their previous festivals, from Mumbai in 2007. Tablatronic Violence is the duo of Amsterdam-based tabla player Heiko Dijker and Sharat Srivastava, Hindustani musician who plays both strictly classical music and rock, as well as teaching Indian Violin in Glasgow. It doesn’t get much more international than this.

It’s like Mexican wrestling for people who enjoy, um, patching together interactive tools for music and visuals! And on one fateful Toronto day, the open source challenger took the prize.

As promised, a group of music tech geeks challenged DIY multimedia software environments Pure Data (Pd) and Max/MSP to a mano-a-mano contest of wits. These competing patching environments share interface concepts, code, and even a surprising amount of compatibility, but open source Pd and commercial, more polished-looking Max each have their own loyal converts. I’m pleased to offer the results – though I’m already hearing calls for a rematch in this heated rivalry. And there was DIY pong. And some kind of dancing … koalas?

Co-organizer Dafydd Hughes:

The event was a success – lots of fun, good-natured competition, beer and general nonsense.

Pd won 9-6, but several people pointed out that since there was only one person on the MAX team and two on Pd, maybe the score should have been 6-4.5 in MAX’s favour. Before the final Pong match the score was 4-2 for Pd. We then won Pong 5-4 and added the scores together.

We had a really good time and we’re already thinking of ways we could do it better next time and of variations on the theme.

Pictures here:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/interaccess/
Video here:
http://www.interaccess.org/blog/?p=743
A great blog post, pictures and video here:
http://www.nowpublic.com/tech-biz/anything-you-can-do-i-can-do-better-midi-software-duel-5

Two modular patching software packages for programming multimedia software visually, Pure Data (Pd) and Max/MSP/Jitter have long had a friendly relationship. The tools share code, are reasonably compatible in patches and external objects (sometimes with some adjustment), and are basically open source (Pd) and commercial (Max) cousins of one another. The user bases are likewise friendly with one another. But a certain rivalry hid behind the surface – until now.

Now, it’s personal.

Enough of the diplomacy. A group of dedicated patchers in Toronto have decided to dispense with this “we’re all winners” nonsense and decide which tool is superior. I’ll let them the organizers describe it in their own colorful way:

Come take sides in this fight to the death between those open-source PD Commies and the right-wing, proprietary, puppy-hating MAX/MSPers.

There has been a long and bloody rivalry between those who would make new media art with Pure Data, a free, open source graphical programming language, and proponents of MAX/MSP, Pd’s slick, commercial half-brother. We intend to open these old wounds, pour salt, beer and whatever else we can find into them, push both programs and programmers to the brink of collapse and determine once and for all which is better.

Join host Misha Glouberman as he leads our contestants through a series of increasingly difficult challenges with play-by-play commentary by Nicholas Stedman and game show music with Graham Collins. Watch as Frank Tsonis (team MAX) and David McCallum and Dafydd Hughes (team Pd) try to come up with the fastest, sexiest and most effective solutions, all the while fighting against each other, the clock, and the inevitable nerds who think they can do it better.

If you have experience with either of these programs (or if you don’t) and you think you can do better than our resident gurus, or even if you just want to play along, feel free to bring a laptop, work on the challenges, aid or abuse our contestants or just check your email. The popcorn’s on us; it’s free to watch, participate, heckle, throw fruit, and bet on who’s gonna get an ass-beating.

Information and downloads:

Pure Data: http://puredata.info/

MAX: http://www.cycling74.com/products/max5

Interaccess Electronic Media Arts Centre: http://interaccess.org/
9 Ossington Ave, Toronto ON Canada
Facebook event is here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=19191668235

I think the idea is hilarious. Anyone in Toronto, we’d love some photos / write-ups / video / whatever. I’ll be sure to share the results – and I imagine someone may stage a rematch somewhere else in the world, especially if they’re unhappy with the results!

Pd Tag on createdigitalmusic.com

Max/MSP tag on CDM