The workshop ran from July 21-25, 10 AM-4 PM (Lecture 10-12, lunch break 12-1, lab session with instructor support 1-4)
- CNMAT is located at 1750 Arch Street, Berkeley, CA
- Instructor: Adrian Freed with Syuzi Pakhchyan, Yotam Mann, Jeff Lubow, John MacCallum, Andy Schmeder, Michael Zbyszynski
- Fee: $800 (includes lab fee)

Prerequisites

None. All knowledge, skills and materials required are integrated into the class. Just bring your curiosity and your favorite way to take notes.

Audience

• Artists exploring new possibilities in interactive media in an integrated hands-on and technical way
• Musicians augmenting traditional instruments with new sensors
• Teachers developing interaction arts curriculum
• Engineers, computer scientists, or product designers interested in exploring artistic outlets for their talents and collaborating with performers and composers

Special Emphasis

New fiber and malleable materials including conductive fabrics, piezoresistive fabrics, conductive heatshrink tubing, carbon fiber etc. Recently-developed rapid-prototyping techniques using these new materals will be shared. This is your chance to get your hands on all those hard-to-find fabrics and materials.

Introduction

This workshop offers a hands-on survey of sensors, sensor interfaces and integration software and hardware for use in musical performance, dance, video, sound and art installations. Students will explore sensor systems from CNMAT’s extensive library (and ones they bring to share) integrating them in a range of sound, image and motion synthesis systems. muilti-touch and many-touch systems will be explored.

We survey core sensor types including: resistive, position, inertial, capacitive, RF, ultrasound, magnetic and optical. We will explore the major sensor integration systems, e.g., Make Controller Kit, Arduino (Freeduino, Lilypad, Orangutan, Boarduini, RBBA etc), CUI, and the latest uOSC, and how to adapt existing sensors such as the Nintendo Wii controllers. During the laboratory sessions we will build complete instruments and art pieces by using the Open Sound Control (OSC) protocol as glue between sensor data and synthesis patches in PD and Max/MSP/Jitter. Sample programs for these environments were provided to test and calibrate the sensor projects and contextualize them in viable artistic contexts. Students enjoyed hands-on experience with innovative sensor systems being presented at NIME 2008.

The practical core of the workshop were complemented by inspiring guest presentations from leading developers and performers of sensor based music and art.

The complete list of all the resource nodes (which includes the sensors, gesture controllers, gesture interfaces, materials, etc.) is available here.

Format

Daily 10am to 4pm.
Short morning presentations and demonstrations and late morning and afternoon supervised lab sessions. There will be plenty of scope for discussions and private access to instructors for guidance and mentoring. Participants are welcome to join the CNMAT Max/MSP night school participants for the special event on the evening of the last day (friday)

Materials and Tools

Course fee includes lab fee and materials you can keep after the class. It will be helpful to have a reasonably modern laptop (Windows or Mac) with a USB port to test devices and create complete systems. Bluetooth is required for some sensors which can be readily added to an older laptop that doesn’t have bluetooth support with a $10 dongle. You are welcome to bring any art-making software/hardware you already use.

Syllabus and Questions

A more detailed syllabus is a available.
Please address questions about the content of the course to adrian [at] cnmat [dot] berkeley [dot] edu.

Housing

For information on housing, contact the UC Berkeley Summer Visitor Housing office for information on availability of rooms on campus: (510) 642-4444

• The workshop runs July 21-25, 6-9 pm (and typically later)
• CNMAT is located at 1750 Arch Street, Berkeley, CA
• Instructors: Ali Momeni and guest lecturers
• Fee: $500
• Click the Sign up link above to reserve a space

Complete syllabus here.

This year’s night school will not cover the basics of Max/MSP programming — students should already be experienced with Max/MSP. The course focuses on the use of Max for control of complex interactive systems. Emphasis is placed on areas of active research and interest at CNMAT, including:

• Max 5: features, changes and advances
• real-time performance with computer based instruments
• probablistic approaches in interactive instruments
• gestural controllers (e.g. Wacom, Continuum, Tactex, Thunder, Lemur, etc.)
• rapid prototyping of gesture based instruments and accompanying real-time software in Max/MSP
• complex gesture-to-sound mappings techniques, including interpolators, neural networks and physical models
• gestural controllers
• many approaches to treatment of time and rhythm
• data-management
• advanced list and matrix processing
• advanced network applications with Max (e.g. ftp, http, POST/GET, ….)
• inter-system communication with OpenSoundControl
• intra-patch communication with OpenSoundControl
• analysis/resynthesis using additive and resonance models
• the SDIF file format
• complexity management in Max/MSP/Jitter
• reliability and robustness of concert-ready patches
• connecting Max to other software environments (e.g. Java, JavaScript, VST, MySQL, python, Ableton, Native Instruments…)

A variety of materials and resources will be provided to course participants, including copies of all the programming examples provided in the course, references to large sets of 3rd party externals, and references to a wide range of research topics in the field. After completing this course, a student will have been exposed to most of the uses of Max/MSP in current CNMAT music production and research. Graduates of this course will have a variety of techniques for avoiding trouble while developing large-scale, concert-ready Max/MSP programs.

For more information on Max/MSP and Jitter, visit the Cycling74 web site.

To learn more about CNMAT’s ongoing Max work, visit the Max/MSP/Jitter Depot on our web site.

For information on housing, contact the UC Berkeley Summer Visitor Housing office for information on availability of rooms on campus: (510) 642-4444

Adrian Freed introduces a small number of affordable commercial haptic devices like the Novint Falcon.

Ed Berdahl introduces the principles of haptic devices and shows his great new drum and guitar projects.

Adrian Freed will survey several optical multitouch sensing methods made popular by Jeff Han and a new simple method using cheap laser pointers.

Christy Canida from Instructables.com and Adrian Freed will lead this informal and optional lunch demonstration of how to share your projects, materials and techniques on CNMAT’s web site and instructables.com. Wiki’s, blogs, and photo sharing will be covered with particular tips relevant to good illustration of sensor and physical computing projects.

As you wrap up projects don’t forget to take a look at what other participants have made!

Hans shows us his interesting trumpet sensing system

Adrian will demonstrate examples of sensor integration systems, discussing their strengths and weaknesses
and provide a framework for choosing the right one for your projects:

• Arduino, Freeduino, Wiring, Lillypad, Boarduino
• Make Controller
• uOSC on PIC18F* USB, i.e., Bitwacker, CUI
• Rimas Box, New Rimas Box

There will be a sneak preview of new products coming out from Sparkfun and Arduino.

A short comparison between ZigBee and Bluetooth. Also a mention of the ZigBee-based Java physical computing modules from Sun Microsystems called the Sun SPOT.

I discussed the built-in 4 channel ADC in the ZigBee modules sold by Sparkfun and the pro version of their module with greater power and range.

I suggested that the newer protocol options in Bluetooth to support UWB and isochronous options may result in better performance than ZigBee.

We explore the tablo as an example for calibrating, mapping and tuning our sensor systems.

Sensor workshop participants are welcome to join the final evening class and reception and meet the special guest presenters:

• Edmund Campion (CNMAT): http://cnmat.berkeley.edu/people/edmund_campion
• Sue C (Oaktown): http://www.sue-c.net/
• Bob Ostertag (UC Davis): http://bobostertag.com
• Paul DeMarinis (Stanford): http://www.well.com/~demarini