TEDxTeen is coming to London on October 11th 2014 and Music Hackspace has been invited to host a dedicated demo booth and feature in the conference speaker sessions.

The TEDx Program is a platform created by TED and TEDxTeen is an all day conference put on by We Are Family Foundation, taking place in New York City. This October they are bringing the 6th TEDxTeen Conference to London at the O2 Indigo Theatre.

If you have a project and would like to take part, contact curators@stagingmhs.local, we will be happy to answer any queries. Please remember when submitting that we are looking for projects that are ready for demonstration and are engaging; these can be ‘work in progress’ or finalised pieces/products.

The theme of the conference is “Remarkable Disruptors”:

“The world is changing faster than ever. Affecting every aspect of our lives. Business models and jobs that we couldn’t have imagined ten years ago, are now the norm. Boundaries are blurring, everyone can play a role.

Much of the change is driven by technology. Disrupting conventions to allow us to live in new ways, try new things and make stuff more easily than ever before.

Young people understand this better than anyone, being the first generation to be younger than the Internet. Many of these young people are driving the change, proving that if you’re good enough you’re old enough.

We challenge you to see the world through their lens. To see not just the future they are building, not just the new norms they are creating, but the now that they have already impacted.

Pay attention. Life is moving quicker than ever. With each blink our world shifts.

Make. It. Count.“

We are excited to present for the first time in our blog the Acoustic Hacking Meetups.

Led by Saif Bunni, Acoustic Hacking are workshop driven meetups that happen the last Sunday of each month at the London Hackspace. We meet to share, discuss, make, explore and collaborate together to make sounds! We have a focus on the hands-on and the physical, and to create objects and devices that make music and sound, either manually or without our interference. Join us on this journey to explore the hidden world of acoustics!

For this month’s meetup, we have a guest, Tom Fox from Vulpestruments, who works with upcycling materials to create instruments. Come and join us to have a chat, maybe bring your project so we can discuss, introduce yourself and meet others around the space!

What: Acoustic Hacking Meetup
When: 7pm, Sunday 27th July (Last Sunday of Each Month)
Where: London Hackspace

Visit the blog for latest news. Any queries email acoustichacking@gmail.com
Looking forward to see you there. Thank you.

 

About our guest: Tom Fox is the owner of Vulpestruments, a UK-based instrument design company which specializes in upcycled materials. Tom has undertaken numerous commissions from performing artists internationally. He has also had articles published on MAKE online and worked with the Prostate Cancer UK charity to produce Moustache-shaped instruments for the Movember fundraising campaign. He currently works for the Royal College of Music, London.

 

When: Saturday 21st June, 4pm-3am

Where: The Hive Project Unit 2A Queen’s Yard, White Post Lane; Hackney Wick E9 5EN

Theatre Entrance: Register for theatre section day ticket in advance, or £3 on the door.

Bar Entrance: Free

æstival: sound art and music is an all day programme proposing many and various ways of understanding music and sonic arts, featuring 24 artists, from artistic and experimental to the most organic and visceral music makers. With a common focus in music, sound art and other formats of audiovisual expression, the day will showcase a set of performances, installations, concerts and DJ sets.

Theatre (£3 on the door):
thickear (16.00-17.30)
0AH (18.00-18.40)
Harmegeddon (19.00-19.40)
Tom Richards (19.45-20.20)
Steve Beresford, Terry Day & Blanca Regina (21.00-21.30)
Syd Kemp (22.15-22.50)

Bar (free entry):
Shelley Parker
Miguel Colmenares
Cave of Sounds presents Animal Kingdom by Daniel Lopez (installation)
OSCILLA by Andrea Santini (installation)
Jack James (participatory performance)
Tropicana
Camila Fuchs
Antonio Mingot

Curated by Tadeo Sendon and Blanca Regina in collaboration with MILAGRO, thickear, Music Hackspace and The Hive Project, we hope you can join us in this journey for the first day of summer. Many thanks to all the artist involved who have made this initiative possible.

 

We are excited to announce that Music Hackspace is hosting a one day Hackathon during NIME 2014 Open Day event on Friday 4th of July, at Goldsmiths Great Hall, Richard Hoggart Building.

To welcome participants, introduce challenges and form groups, we are launching the Hackathon in advance, this Thursday 12th June as part of our regular meet ups.

Meet us this Thursday with Jean-Baptiste Thiebaut and Adam John Williams to get involved and hear more about the Hackathon challenges presented by Heart n’ Soul and Drake Music.

Registration and further details of the Hackathon will be announced in the meetup. The theme of this Hackathon will be assistive and adaptable musical interfaces.

Hackathon Launch: Thursday 12th June 7pm, at Troyganic Cafe, 132 Kingsland Road, Corner of Cremer Street, London E2 8DY

Open Day and Hackathon: Friday 4th of July (all day), at Goldsmiths Great Hall, Richard Hoggart Building.

About NIME:
NIME is the premier conference in designing human-computer interfaces and interactions for musical performance. NIME gathers researchers and practitioners around lectures, installations, concerts and workshops. For more details about the NIME 2014 conference please visit http://www.nime2014.org

When: Thursday 29th May, 7:00pm
Where: 132 Kingsland Road London E2 8DY Shoreditch

Patchblocks are stand-alone programmable synthesizer modules. Turn them into filters, sequencers, oscillators, or anything you can think of with an easy to use visual programming environment. Plug them into each other or use them with other music gear. You can also easily share your patches online and learn from the community.

Sebastian Heinz, the creator of Patchblocks, will be giving an introduction to the software and hardware. Whether you are already a Patchblocks user or new to the platform come on down and meet other like-minded individuals for some hands-on fun and noise at the London Music Hackspace.

http://www.patchblocks.com

When: Wednesday 21st May 7.00pm
Where: Troyganic, 132 Kingsland Road, near Hoxton station, at the corner of Cremer street.

Faust [Functional Audio Stream] is a Domain Specific Language designed for real-time signal processing and sound synthesis. It is a fully compiled language, the Faust compiler translates Faust programs into equivalent imperative programs (typically C++, LLVM, Java, etc.), taking care of generating efficient code. The generated code is self-contained and suitable for embedded systems, like OWL pedal for instance, plug-ins as well as standalone applications.

A Faust program says nothing about audio drivers, GUI toolkits and more generally how to relate the computation on signals it describes to the external world. This information is provided by architecture files. This separation of concerns, between the computation and its usage, allows a same Faust program to be compiled for a large variety of platforms (Web, Android, iOS, Linux, OSX, OWL, Raspberry PI, Windows) and formats (Csound, Jack, LADSPA, LV2, MaxMSP, PD, VST, etc.).

This hands-on session will be the opportunity to discover Faust and its eco-system. Participants are encouraged to bring their own equipments (computers, Android or iOS smartphones, Raspberry PI or OWL pedals) to try it. The Faust distribution is available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/faudiostream/

Yann Orlarey has been a member of Grame since 1983, and is currently the scientific director of this organization. His own research is concerned mainly with formal languages for musical composition, and real-time operating systems. He is the co-author with is colleagues Dominique Fober and Stéphane Letz of the Faust programming language.

Music Hackspace event: Sound performance with SQ
When: Wednesday 30th of April, 7.30pm
Where: 132 Kingsland Road, Corner of Cremer Street, London E2 8DYSQ

SQ (Sound Quartet) explores music inaccessible to contemplative composition. Devoting many hours to develop skills which circumvent learning and amplify responses to the moment. Each piece is a sortie into uncertainty along paths never followed before, with assiduous unpremeditation and susceptibility of mind and body as our guides. States far from equilibrium can branch on barely perceptible quantum quivers to sublime and unexpected trajectories, even a false step can open a new passage if grasped as a sign.. We hope the listeners will come along and find the journeys rewarding.

SQ will showcase a set of wind and electronics live improvisation, interspersed with short EAM pieces. Visuals will be provided by Viktor Zeidner of Deadpixel. There will also be a chance to talk about their work, practise and upcoming events.

Thomas Bjelkeborn is a sound artist, electronic musician and acousmatic composer from Sweden. He is also a curator for the PUSH festival and Club Lamour in Gävle and Stockholm. He has performed at many electroacoustic and electronic festivals on all continents.

Thomas will play Alpha Position U, composed in autumn 2007 in Studio Alpha at Visby International Center for Composers in Sweden with a grant awarded by The Swedish Society of Composers.

Paul Pignon:
Playing and composing music of almost every kind for nearly 60 years, physics degree, pioneer in EAM. First foray into non-idiomatic improvisation in 1962 (Oxford). Has lived about equally in the UK, Yugoslavia and Sweden.

Paul’s contribution will be the first movement from Adagio Lugubre.

Digital Design Drop-in: Music Hackspace
What: Free talks and tours
When: Saturday 26 April, 13.00-16.00
Where: V&A, Room 21a
Entry: Free, Drop-in, no booking required

Music Hackspace will be taking over the next pop-up studio showcase at the V&A. Drop-in anytime between 13.00 and 16.00 to meet great examples of work and Music Hackspace members including:

Tasos Stamou‘s circuit bended toys.
Andy Farnell.
Oscilla, by Andrea Santini.
Water Speaker, by Saif Bunny and Tim Yates.
Silly Beats, by Eshan Ziya.
Untitled work in progress by 0AH (Borja Caro).

When: Thursday 17th April, 7.30 pm
Where: 132 Kingsland Road, Corner of Cremer Street, London E2 8DY

Oscilla is a scalable interactive audiovisual instrument designed & developed by Andrea Santini at UBIKteatro (Venice), which enables musical interplay between multiple users within a responsive, projected visual environment.

Inspired by the Latin ‘Oscilla’ (votive objects that would swing in the wind) and by the Victorian ‘Harmonograph’ (a mechanical instrument for visualising frequency relationships), OSCILLA is a playful exploration of the oscillatory roots of sound, of its visualisation, of the foundations of music and, ultimately, of the ‘harmonic’ relationships within groups.

A projected scalable interface allows for context-specific adaptability and for a variety of intuitive physical interaction paradigms whereby the positions and movements of people or objects, optically tracked within a given area, determine the volume and pitch of a set of sine-wave oscillators.Each position and frequency value is projected on the main surface, along with music notation, while a visual representation of the resulting combination of sounds (Lissajous curves) is plotted in real-time on a second screen.The oscillators’ outputs, when discretely amplified by multiple loudspeakers, also provide different auditory spatial perspectives into each harmonic structure, while enhancing natural acoustics and resonances of the installation space.

Participants can thus create morphing chords and harmonies, explore unusual microtonal intervals and beat frequencies while discovering the fascinating relationships between harmonic structures and their visual counterparts.