Convert your laptop into a digital Theremin! The Theremin antenna sensor is an early electronic music instrument developed in the 1930's in Russia by Lev Thermen and played without physical contact. Moscow Theremin Center director Andrei Smirnov will help participants to learn basic principles of the operation of Theremin-based interactive systems and the multiple ways of interaction with your laptop by means of body motion and gesture. Pure Data expert Derek Holzer will assist them in creating sound and/or video generating software with this free/open source programming language.
 
 
Andrey Smirnov (1956) is an interdisciplinary artist, composer, performer, instrument builder, programmer, author, curator, educator. He is a founder and director of the Theremin Center for Electroacoustic Music at Moscow State Conservatory, member of Russian Association for Electroacoustic Music, member of Electronic Music Foundation Advisory Council, director and founder of Altermedium International Festival for Electroacoustic Music, Moscow, founder andartistic director of Moscow Laptop Cyber Orchestra.
 
He has conducted various workshops and master classes in the U.S., Europe and Russia, attended numerous festivals and conferences. He teaches various courses on history of electroacoustic music and multimedia, sound design and composition, new musical interfaces and sensor technology, introductory digital audio signal processing and sound synthesis, acoustics and psychoacoustics at the Theremin Center (Moscow), Moscow University for Psychology and Education, Pro Arte Institute (St.Petersburg).
 
Smirnov has also developed many contemporary interpretations of Leon Theremin's classic electronic musical instrument, the most recent of which is a digital Theremin sensor which uses an Arduino interface to communicate data from the Theremin sensors to software such as Pure Data and SuperCollider.
> http://asmir.theremin.ru
 
Derek Holzer (1972) is a sound artist with a background in radio, webstreaming and environmental recording. His work focuses on capturing and transforming small, unnoticed sounds from various natural and urban locations, networked collaboration strategies, experiments in improvisational sound and the use of free software such as Pure-Data. He has released tracks under the Nexsound, Sirr, and/OAR and Gruenrekorder labels, and has co-initiated several Internet projects for field recording and collaborative soundscapes including Soundtransit.nl.
> www.umatic.nl/info_derek.html
> www.myspace.com/macumbista