Workshop: An introduction to the platform Nanc-in-a-Can/Canon Generator

The present workshop is open for any kind of audience, specially artist, programers and musicians interested in rhythm and temporal phenomena in digital media and technologies.

This workshop is a broad introduction to the open source library ​Nanc-in-a-can Canon Generator (​https://github.com/nanc-in-a-can/canon-generator/​) that we have developed as a device that enables users to “live code” temporal canons as the ones proposed by Conlon Nancarrow. The objective of the workshop is to deploy the current capabilities of the program, involve the community into extending the software with new ideas for functions or notational devices and, produce a brief canonic configuration through a speculative exercise in which the participants are encouraged to imagine bodies, minds, objects, etc. capable of existing in different temporalities and places simultaneously.

The workshop will be divided in 4 sections:

The first section is an introduction to the theoretical praxis and the socio-cultural conditions in which the platform was created, the musical background necessary to understand the research and works of Conlon Nancarrow from a critical point of view.

The second section will help the participants to become familiar with the conceptual, notational, and technical aspects of the program and how to use it in order to generate the multi-temporal structures.

The third section will explore in detail the basic data structures that the program has as inputs and outputs and will introduce the participants to various ways in which they could manipulate these data structures to satisfy their creative needs. When exploring the inputs to the program we will have the opportunity to touch upon some musical concepts such as isorhythm, harmonic rhythm and seriality (all of which where also relevant to Nancarrow’s practice). When exploring the outputs of the program we will be able to elaborate on the possibilities of working with pure functions and data structures as we will be showing the participants different ways in which the could work with the outputs of the program, be it, doing further transformations to the data structure (like merging canons), getting it into a Pbind, Task, or any sclang object for playback, or sending the whole canonic data structure over OSC for manipulation within any other platform. As the participants get familiarised with the proposed platform it will become evident that temporal canons are devices that not only generate rich musical forms but keep expanding the way we understand space and time and the object that exists within them. Such experience will lead on to the next section.

The final section will build upon the creative momentum of the third and will encourage the participants to fantasize upon possible new temporal manipulations of sonic objects. We will choose one of these ideas and will collaboratively work on developing and proof of concept implementation

of it. The rest of the ideas will be registered as issues on the github page of the program for further development. The final objective being to engage the community in the appropriation and development of this library.