Here’s an interview which appeared in the excellent Neural magazine in June 2007 (issue 27). A scan is also available. Live Coding: I think in text Alex McLean Alessandro Ludovico: The term ‘live coding’ is usually meant to describe the coding of music on the fly. It seems a process of unveiling the (running) machine [...]
PhD Thesis: Artist-Programmers and Programming Languages for the Arts
by Alex on February 22, 2012
With some minor corrections done, my thesis is finally off to the printers. I’ve made a PDF available, and here’s the abstract: We consider the artist-programmer, who creates work through its description as source code. The artist-programmer grandstands computer language, giving unique vantage over human-computer interaction in a creative context. We focus on the human [...]
Babble
by Alex on November 27, 2008
My Arnolfini commission is now live. It is a simple but (I think) effective vocable synthesiser that runs in a web browser. It’s written in HaXe (compiling to flash, javascript and php) with a touch of jQuery. The sourcecode is here. I’m back to hacking haskell now, results hopefully before this Saturday when I’m playing [...]
Dorkcamp and new demo
by Alex on August 12, 2008
Two posts rolled in to one, to annoy the aggregators a bit less (sorry haskellers, more haskell stuff soon). First, dorkcamp is a lovely event in its third year. The idea is for around 60 of us to go to a campsite an hour out of London, well equipped with showers, toilets, a big kitchen [...]
Vocable bugfix
by Alex on December 11, 2007
Apologies to those who weren’t getting any sound from vocable, here’s a version with a quick bugfix from Rohan Drape that makes sure control buses are properly initialised. It should work for everyone now. Thanks Rohan! By the way you might notice that vocable records everything you do under the ‘logs’ directory. I’d be really [...]
MSc Thesis: Improvising with Synthesised Vocables, with Analysis Towards Computational Creativity
by Alex on December 10, 2007
My MSc thesis is here. The reader may find many loose ends, which may well get tied up through my PhD research. Abstract: In the context of the live coding of music and computational creativity, literature examining perceptual relationships between text, speech and instrumental sounds are surveyed, including the use of vocable words in music. [...]
More vocable synthesis
by Alex on November 28, 2007
Another screencast, a short one this time, which I’ve been using as a demo in talks.
Openlab this Sunday 25th Nov
by Alex on November 23, 2007
I’ll be talking about my adventures with vocable synthesis at OpenLab 4 this Sunday. Openlab are a collective of people doing artistic and musical things with (or as) free software, putting on top notch free events such as this. Full details here: http://www.pawfal.org/openlab/index.php?page=OpenLab4
Vocable source released
by Alex on November 15, 2007
The haskell source for my vocable synthesis system used in my previous screencasts is now available. I’ve been having fun rewriting this over the last couple of days, and would appreciate any criticism of my code.
More vocable synthesis
by Alex on September 10, 2007
Another screencast: As ever, feedback, both positive and negative is very much appreciated!