I have now finished my degree at the University of Hull and will be graduating next month. With all of the marks I've had thus far I am still on track for a first class finish so here's hoping that's still the case when I receive my final set of marks in about three weeks.
What next? Following an interesting talk given by Atau Tanaka last month, I have been inspired to further explore new concepts of audience and artist relationships with a particular focus on technology and interactivity (my key area of interest after 3 years of studying). I think a masters course that allows me to work within this field is what I shall be pursuing, so long as funding permits!
In terms of current and recent projects, I realise that my website is now due an update too and hopefully this will happen at some point in the next couple of weeks. To give a idea of what I've been up to since my last post:
Back at the end of April, I went to Germany with my traditional folk group Frozen Gin. We played a very enjoyable set to one of the most welcoming crowds I have ever had the pleasure to perform to and made some great friends who I hope to see again! Gleichen zeit im nächsten jahr? Studio recordings of some of the tracks we played that night are also available to download here.
Around the time we played that concert I also got my hands on a new iPad and have been having plenty of fun it. Having made plentiful use of apps like TouchOSC in the past on smaller iDevics I've been experimenting with some ideas, creating some new MaxMSP patches to use it with. One of those which I have pursued a little further I have decided to call PhatPad (or I should say 'had'):
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| WIP icon and WIP title for my latest creation. |
It turns out someone has already made a completely unrelated app called PhatPad so this probably won't be its final name, however the concept is something that's proved to be quite useful. Given the restricted number of dials on my Moog Little Phatty (yes I have far too much gear) I decided to make a TouchOSC/MaxMSP combination that allows more flexible control utilising multiple faders and XY pads etc. I also get semi-wireless control (the iPad communicates with the MaxMSP patch over wi-fi which passes along MIDI messages to the Moog) which is especially useful given that I've been building in a mini-sequencer too!
I'll get some videos posted of that as soon as I've done some more work on it. With all the more pressing work I've had to complete since I got the iPad, I've not had much chance to look at it since I first worked on it!
I've probably missed something but I've got far more time on my hands now so updates should come a little more quickly (I hope). Additionally, from the end of this month I'll be based in Manchester. Fancy that!
