Interactive Sound machines:
interactivity and multidisciplinary co-creation as a catalyst for an ecosystem within the digital arts
research class by Max Schweder and Charo Calvo
“An ecosystem is a geographic area where plants, animals, and other organisms, as well as weather and landscape, work together to form a bubble of life. Ecosystems contain biotic or living, parts, as well as abiotic factors, or nonliving parts. Biotic factors include plants, animals, and other organisms. Abiotic factors include rocks, temperature, and humidity.”
Equivalent multidisciplinary co-creation within the digital arts includes both artistic and technical profiles, as well as technological tools, protocols, and methodologies. To facilitate this form of co-creation, MAXlab will organize a research class focusing on the inclusion of interactivity within digital arts.
How can artists from different disciplines and fields interact and collaborate within a live digital performance? In what ways can a multidisciplinary team contribute to a unique digital (e)co-system, while interacting with each other, the audience and the digital artwork itself? What is the role of each member and component of the digital (e)co-system?
Researchers Max Schweder (sound visualization and interactivity) and Charo Calvo (sound and embodiment) will organize a week of workshops, where you can research and experiment with the visualization of (body) movement and sound, using the software TouchDesigner. Students will gather an insight in the world of noise, variables, bodytracking, interactivity and large-scale projections, and will explore how multidisciplinary co-creation and interactivity will influence their art making into interactive sound machines.
(image: mexptheaetre)
Charo Calvo
Charo Calvo is a Spanish electroacoustic composer, sound designer and teacher, living in Brussels. After having performed as a dancer with the influential Belgian dance company Ultima Vez, she started her studies on Electroacoustic Composition in 1992 with Annette Vande Gorne at Brussels Conservatory (now ARTS2 Mons). From 1992 her work as a composer is being developed through different media, widely diffused in international venues and festivals, dance performances, theatre, film and on the radio. She has received several important awards such as Palma Ars Acustica 2014 EBU, Phonurgia Nova Awards Paris 2017, Prix Marulic 2018 Croatia, Grand Prix Nova Bucharest 2019 and was shortlisted for Prix Europa Berlin, Hearsay Prize Ireland. Charo Calvo has been a guest of the prestigious residential program for international artists in Berlin DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm during the year 2017/2018. She has been selected as representative of Belgium at ISCM 2020 World New Music Days in Auckland, New Zealand with her multichannel piece ‘The Grass’, commissioned by GRM-INA Maison de la Radio, Paris.
Max Schweder
Max Schweder studied ‘Pop Music Production’ for his Master’s degree and ‘Saxophone Jazz/Pop’ for is Bachelor’s degree at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln (HfMT, Cologne, Germany) and ArtEZ Arnehm (Netherlands). As a musician, performer and multimedia-artist Schweder works for the international, inclusive and interdisciplinary performing arts company Un-Label. They push towards a more diverse, mixed-abled cast on stage and challenge themselves to make their performances as accessible to anybody as possible. Schweder is currently researcher at the Academy for Theater and Digitality in Dortmund (Germany). He has worked for Red Bull Radio and as a freelance musician, producer and performer. He is one half of the electronic-music duo CYLVESTER.
>> This research class is part of the RESEARCH WEEK October 2022 and the annual research festival ARTICULATE 2022.
