Graham Wakefield
Courses
MAT 594P - Composing for the AlloSphere
Media Arts & Technology, UCSB, Fall quarter 2010.
Content Instructor: Professor JoAnn Kuchera-Morin
Workshop Instructors: Lance Putnam, Charles Roberts, Graham Wakefield, and Matthew Wright
Website
MAT 594P is a hands-on studio and tutorial course that will teach you the basics of the AlloSphere software systems. The course is structured to make multimodal media content for the AlloSphere instrument with software modules designed for you so that you will be able to make immediately.
Spatial Interactive Computing (Spring 2010)
Computational Media Composition (Fall 2009)
MediaSCAPES/Visual Studies, Southern California Institute for Architecture (SCI-Arc), Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Faculty lecturers: Wesley Smith & Graham Wakefield.
Website Wiki
A practice-based course in computational composition and the fundamentals of spatial interactive computing, using Max/MSP/Jitter.
What is the nature, capacity and potential of creative engagement within a computational field?
The course explores the rich potential of computationally enabled media and technology based art. It conveys a blend of technique, strategy and context but is ultimately focussed on the pragmatics of production using the Max/MSP/Jitter software environment. Max is probably the predominant platform for interactive art and music technology research and performance. For the artist, it is both the Swiss army knife and the Lego of digital media technologies. Not only does it connect everything from video processing, sound synthesis, device interaction, 3D rendering, networking and scripting languages, it is itself a visual programming language with which is compositionally open to a boundless diversity of mappings and logics of interaction and behavior, and very firmly rooted in a notion of real-time interactive computation.
Background theory in the nature, perception and tendencies of image, sound and spatial form along with their underlying representations in digital technology and their diverse cultural expressions will be combined freely with creative methods to compose systems that analyze, synthesize, process and control them. Exemplary works across the spectrum of possibilities will be shown, which we will analyze and reconstruct in lab sessions. Students will learn how to use Max to produce and present works as well as how to employ it as a link in a larger production tool chain.
There will be multiple small projects throughout the term in order to develop individual imagination and the ability to compose an original final project. Final projects will be take on one of the following forms: interactive installation, virtual world, augmented reality projection, generative design tool, or abstract audiovisual composition, or some other creative product based on class discussion.
MAT-Sci-Arc: Alveological Inventions / Immersive Environments
Media Arts & Technology, UCSB & MediaScapes, SCI-Arc, Winter quarter, 2009.
Faculty instructors: JoAnn Kuchera-Morin (UCSB), Marcos Novak (UCSB/SCI-Arc) and Jean-Michel Crettaz (SCI-Arc)
Workshop instructors: Lance Putnam, Charlie Roberts, Wesley Smith, Graham Wakefield.
A unique collaborative course between Media Arts & Technology at UCSB and MediaScapes at the Southern California Institute for Architecture; students from each program created collaborative projects together and workshops given on diverse techniques (software virtual and physical fabrication).
http://stem.mat.ucsb.edu/blog/
MAT 594SP: LuaAV Research Group
Media Arts & Technology, Fall quarter 2009.
Instructors: Wesley Smith & Graham Wakefield.
A collaborative, practical research course centered around the LuaAV software. The core topic is dynamic real-time audiovisual scripting, and the goal is to further discussion on what such software can be in terms of performative/interactive contexts, exploratory composition, and media arts research.
CS 105: Art Music Video
College of Creative Studies, UCSB, Spring quarter 2006, and Fall quarter 2007 - Winter quarter 2008 (two quarter sequence).
Instructor: Graham Wakefield
Website
How do you see your music?
We take a slice somewhere through the various strata of creative media-distributed time-based work over the past century that may be relevant and inspiring for audiovisual composers of the future, and detail the connective tissue of contemporary techniques and tools with which such work may currently progress.
Historic disciplines of art and music (and to a lesser extent theatre, sculpture, architecture, engineering, philosophy) increasingly both converge and diverge into less distinguishable categories, movements, tendencies, moments... Points of stability may be identified: the contemporary art gallery, the Hollywood cinema, the computer game console, the academic thesis, YouTube... some or many of these elements may become the seeds for great works of the future. The slice taken in AMV aims where possible to identify those which may be more the fertile seeds. Since technology exists in shorter durations than aesthetics (due to more specific demands of support), the component of technique is focussed most squarely on very contemporary tools, whilst the component of theory is spread more generously through the past hundred years.
The two-quarter course is aimed primarily at music composition undergraduates who are interested in working with integrated audio and visual media. Students will be exposed to historical precursors from diverse fields, aesthetic and conceptual concerns in the creative design of integrated audiovisual works, and will learn the skills to be able to implement such works according to their own needs. Classes and lab projects will attempt to cover a wide range of digital moving image techniques, from digital video film-work through to algorithmic visual art. In addition to skills gained through the practical work, students should benefit from a contextual understanding of the concerns, precursors and future possibilities of audiovisual media. Classes will include screenings of key and indicative works of a wide variety.
The first quarter will emphasize grounding theory of integrated audiovisual composition, design and aesthetics, and introduce techniques of audiovisual content generation. The second quarter will shift the emphasis to non-linear editing and post-production, culminating in the production of an audiovisual work on DVD by each student.
Final projects will be projected during the Primavera festival at the UCSB cinema.
MAT 200B: Music and Technology
Media Arts & Technology, UCSB, Winter quarter 2005
Instructor: Professor Curtis Roads
Teaching Assistant: Graham Wakefield
A core curriculum course at MAT.
Workshops
AlloSphere Summer Workshops #6: LuaAV
California Nanosystems Institute, UCSB, Sep 16 2010.
Instructors: Wesley Smith & Graham Wakefield
11-1 lecture, 1-2 lunch, 2-4 hands-on tutorial
Website
We will introduce LuaAV. LuaAV is a real-time audiovisual scripting environment based around the Lua scripting language and a collection of libraries for sound, graphics, and media protocols. The goal of LuaAV is to serve as a computational platform for creative exploration that is both fluid and generative. The tutorial will focus on the development of a real-time audio-visual canvas/instrument, live-coding ready!
AlloSphere Summer Workshops #5: Device Server, Devices and Lua
California Nanosystems Institute, UCSB, Sep 9 2010.
Instructors: Charlie Roberts & Graham Wakefield
11-1 lecture, 1-2 lunch, 2-4 hands-on tutorial
Website
Graham will give an introduction to programming in Lua. Topics will include basic syntax, OSC sending and receiving and more. Charlie will present the DeviceServer and we'll look at using it and Lua to add interactivity to software, with a variety of devices for people to experiment with: Wiimotes, Space Navigators, gamepads etc.
AlloSphere Summer Workshops #4: Cosm
California Nanosystems Institute, UCSB, Sep 2 2010.
Instructors: Graham Wakefield
11-1 lecture, 1-2 lunch, 2-4 hands-on tutorial
Website
Cosm is a set of extensions to Max/MSP/Jitter for the construction of navigable, sonified virtual 3D worlds, including a6DoF navigation, 3D spatial audio, collision detection, 3D field diffusion and agent-environment interactions. In the workshop, we'll build a virtual world in which bacteria-like agents follow chemical gradients to find higher sugar concentrations (chemotaxis) in a diffusive field, singing as they go.
Composing Artificial Natures using Cosm
Hyperbody ProtoSpace, TU Delft, Holland, May 6, 2010
Instructor: Graham Wakefield
Cosm is an integrated collection of extensions to Max/MSP/Jitter to assist the construction of navigable, sonified, complex virtual worlds, and has been designed to facilitate use in CAVE-like environments. Cosm adds support for six degrees of freedom navigation for both camera and world-objects, collision detection between objects (based on spherical intersection), spatialized audio for mobile objects. It also provides rich support for 3D fields as dynamic environments, and agent-environment interactions.
The workshop will cover the essentials of setting up dynamic virtual worlds in Max/MSP/Jitter + Cosm, and explore the natural relationships between field-like and agent-like models of emergent behavior. This will culminate in the production of a multi-agent system in which bacteria-like agents follow energetic gradients in order to flourish. Prior familiarity with Max/MSP/Jitter will be a great advantage!
TransTechShop: Max/MSP/Jitter/Cosm
TransLAB, CSNI, UCSB, Dec 2, 2008.
Instructors: Wesley Smith & Graham Wakefield
An advanced Max/MSP/Jitter and introductory Cosm workshop for virtual environments.