Pop Culture Collage with Max/MSP

Adam Roksar
Sun, Nov 7 2010 – noon to 6pm

We are forced every day to look at the sights and hear the sounds of popular culture. Escape is diffcult, so why not take back what you see and hear and build something beautiful out of it? Re- appropriation art, including remixing, sampling, collage work, uses pop culture as a vehicle for self expression and social critique. This class dives into how to built novel art from commercial art using the graphical programming language MaxMSP. We will mix and mangle our way through Miley Cyrus and Beyonce, Walt Disney and Casablanca, all the while focusing on building a powerful set of technical skills in the art of audio and video processing. Automatically fnding and downloading web content will also be covered. By the end of the workshop, students will leave with a re- appropriation toolbox for MaxMSP that will allow to continue to explore new possibilities for future projects. People of all backgrounds and skill levels are welcomed.

Adam Rokhsar is a multimedia artist with degrees in psychology from Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the Music Information Retrieval Laboratory, the head coordinator of the Music Technology student interest groups. While earning a Master’s degree in Music Technology from New York University, Adam designs sound for interactive installations, teaches computer music and video programming, and is working on a Master’s thesis on machine learning algorithms. His sound design work can currently be seen in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, and his video work was displayed in the Jakopic Gallery as part of multimedia project Senza Televisione.