Thursday 20th May 6pm UK / 7pm Berlin / 10am LA / 1pm NYC

In this livestreamed interview, Alex McLean retraces the history and intent that prompted him to develop TidalCycles alongside ‘Algorave’ live performance events, contributing to establish Live Coding as an art discipline.

 Alex started TidalCycles project for exploring musical patterns in 2009, and it is now a healthy free/open-source software project and among the most well-known live coding environments for music.

TidalCycles represents musical patterns as a function of time, making them easy to make, combine and transform. It is generally partnered with the SuperDirt hybrid synthesiser/sampler, created by Julian Rohrhuber using SuperCollider. 

Culturally, TidalCycles is tightly linked to Algorave, a movement created by Alex McLean and Nick Collins in 2011, where musicians and VJs make algorithms to dance to.

Where to watch – 

 

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Overview of speaker

Alex McLean is a musician and researcher based in Sheffield UK. As well as working on TidalCycles, he also researches algorithmic patterns in ancient weaving, as part of the PENELOPE project based in Deutsches Museum, Munich. He has organised hundreds of events in the digital arts, including the annual AlgoMech festival of Algorithmic and Mechanical Movement. Alex co-founded the international conferences on live coding and live interfaces, and co-edited the Oxford Handbook of Algorithmic Music. As live coder has performed worldwide, including Sonar, No Bounds, Ars Electronica, Bluedot and Glastonbury festivals.