Monday, August 20, 2007
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Introduction to Pure Data
Introduction to PD – Instructor Lewis Keller
4 meetings, 14 contact hours
Sept 9th + 16th (Sundays 12-4) and Sept 11th + 18th (Tuesday nights 7-10pm)
$250
Class Full, Registration now closed
You’ve heard that Max/MSP is the cool thing for making electronic music, video art, interactive installations and any other sort of computer media but don’t have the $500 to shell out for it. Pure Data (PD) does things in a similar manner to Max but is free open source software. It also runs on Windows, Macintosh or Linux computers.
PD (aka Pure Data) is a real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing. It is the third major branch of the family of patcher programming languages known as Max (Max/FTS, ISPW Max, Max/MSP, jMax, etc.) originally developed by Miller Puckette and company at IRCAM. The core of Pd is written and maintained by Miller Puckette and includes the work of many developers, making the whole package very much a community effort. PD runs on Windows, Macintosh or Linux computers.
An introductory class in using the Pure Data programming language. This class will spend time covering the basics of using the language which is similar to Max/MSP, therefore experienced Max users should probably not attend. No previous programming experience is required but familiarity with computers and digital media is recommended.
Materials:
computer (laptop recommended)
headphones
USB game controller or USB MIDI device (optional)
We’ll be installing PD on your machines as part of the class. After learning some good programming habits we’ll build some idiosyncratic synthesizers, samplers and sequencers and explore basic algorithmic composition. We’ll look at different ways of interfacing with our collection of sound making gizmos and get our computers communicating with each other. Though we’ll focus on making sounds with PD in this class, we’ll explore the environment in such a way that after the class you’ll be able to continue developing installations, video art or what ever digital media projects you can come up with.