Over the month of June, a series of programming workshops took place in Kaunas Artists’ House. Over the course of five meetings the participants were learning a new language, that of visual programming in Pure Data.
The entire series had a start and the first meeting, attended by 12 participants, already in March, but due to the pandemic, it was put on halt. Therefore the remaining workshops took place by the end of quarantine, in June.
The content of the workshop was prepared by and the workshops were led by sound and visual artist Vygintas Orlovas – he is a lecturer of the Vilnius Academy of Arts, as well as the head of site-specific art department. Vygintas’ research interest lies in dissecting communication, intersecting it with glitch and interference, and musing of entanglements between the sonor and the visual, as well as processes taking place in the looking eye, the hearing ear as well as overall processes of perception. In his artistic practice, Vygintas relies heavily on Pure Data: he uses it both for his live sound performance and audiovisual installation. In his educational practice he’s open and ready to help those willing to learn this powerful open-source programming language.
During the workshops, the participants were introduced into the fundamentals of sound synthesis, the principals of construction virtual instruments in Pure Data. Step by step, they were learning to build various instruments to process sound and visual signal. What are the commands, elements and processes a sequencer consists of? Whatwith could we listen to the sound the plants make? How to manipulate visual material? Those, among others, were just some of the questions that participants had.
Pure Data workshop was organised by Matters. Platform for Industrial Culture. The programme that Matters is developing during 2020 aims at accessible sound techniques and technologies education through the means of workshops and concerts, as well as at supporting those that create sounds that they themselves find are part of industrial culture.
Matters platform was initiated in 2018 as a part of “European Capital of Culture 2022”, since 2020 it is part of Kaunas Artists’ House and is developed with the support of “European Capital of Culture 2022”.
