Workshop: Feedback Loops on the Fly: creating improvised sound system merging live patching and hardware hacking techniques in a live performance

Feedback Loops on the Fly: creating improvised sound system merging live patching and hardware hacking techniques in a live performance.

This workshop focuses on the creation of a sound discourse within the framework of improvisation, leaving the limits of the recreation of conventional musical forms, to enter the field of development and articulation of sound textures in an improvised manner more akin to aesthetics of noise or electroacoustic music, using interconnected live coding and hardware hacking techniques, with the purpose of searching for new and broader forms of expression within the iterative dialogue between the physical world and the digital world.

The graphic programming language Pure Data will be used as a tool to build and process digital sounds, following the rules of live coding (in this case live patching) to start a performance on a blank screen and build a structure that generates sound by making virtual connections of the basic elements to build a flow structure in this environment, such as objects, messages and numbers.

We will talk about the use of externals and the use of GUIs to satisfy an aesthetic purpose within the context of live coding. Likewise, we will also talk about the need to establish a balance between adapting to the operating mode of a specific system and adapting that system to the artist's way of thinking, recognizing the limits and possibilities of expansion of the environment used.

The next operation will be to manipulate values that modify the behavior of sound reading physical gestures through the communication with an Arduino board and a breadboard, making the connections and the choice of electronic components (knobs, ldrs, buttons, ultrasonic sensors) to create an interface data entry on the fly.

We will talk about the necessary protocol to establish bidirectional data communication between the Arduino board and Pure Data.

Finally, we will create a simple electrical circuit that produces sound (for example: a contact microphone, a coil, etc.) and we will connect its signal to the laptop to be processed in Pure Data. Here we will use to evaluate the degree of ambivalence with respect to the property of controlling or being controlled of the three elements of interaction on this proposed feedback chain (programming language, microcontroller, external source of sound).