Miller Puckette & Irwin
Øther
Performing a Distributed Instrument
Lecture-Performance
Friday, October 2 – 6 PM
Studio Pase
Corte Nova, Cannaregio 3561
30121 Venice
Concert
Saturday, October 3 – 5.30 PM
Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello
Palazzo Pisani, San Marco 2810
30124 Venice
Miller Puckette and Irwin, performing as the duo Øther, have developed a jointly controlled electronic musical instrument in which a pair of percussion pads activate a broad array of virtual resonators and synthesizers. The instrument uses a combination of Pure Data—an open-source software environment for audio processing and control—and the commercial DAW Ableton Live, in a setup that can operate either locally or over network connections, depending on the physical location of the two performers.
During the lecture-performance, the duo will show how the instrument is constructed and played, followed by an informal preview of the performance that will take place at the Conservatory on Saturday.
Biographies
Miller Puckette is known as the creator of the Max and Pure Data real-time computer music software environments. As an MIT student he won the 1979 Putnam mathematics competition. His PhD in mathematics is from Harvard University. He was a researcher at the MIT Media Lab from its inception until 1986, then at IRCAM (Paris, France, where he is now a visiting researcher), and is distinguished professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego. He has been a visiting professor at Columbia University and the Technical University of Berlin, and has won two honorary degrees, the 2008 SEAMUS award, and the 2023 Silver Lion of the Venice Biennale Musica. Puckette has performed widely in venues including Centre Acanthes, Carnegie Hall, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, the Ojai Music Festival, Ars Electronica, and a cistern beneath Guanajuato, Mexico. His installation, Four Sound Portraits, was shown at the 2016 Kochi-Muziris Biennale.
Irwin has been active as a musician, beat-maker, programmer, producer, composer and sound designer for over three decades, and has toured as a side musician for a wide range of genres as well as his own solo live electronic performances throughout the U.S. and Europe. Irwin has worked on hundreds of music projects for film, gaming, live performance, and as a clandestine go-to “ghost” producer / programmer / beat-maker within the music industry.
