FluCoMa Podcast #10: Thor Magnusson

by Jacob Hart

Episode ten of the FluCoMa podcast where Jacob Hart talks with musicologist, creative coder and educator Thor Magnusson.

Thor Magnusson

The Podcast

Chapters

1. Introduction (0:0)

2. Background and getting into the field (1:26)

3. Approach to live coding (12:11)

4. Talking about SEMA (21:13)

5. Affordances and limits of the web browser (26:50)

6. Sonic Writing, the Intelligent Instruments Lab and instrument design (32:28)

7. Digital organology and contemporary musicology (42:43)

8. MIR techniques and workflow inscription (51:48)

9. Instruments as objects of resistance (1:1:14)

10. Teaching music technology (1:9:43)

11. Future of music technology (1:16:43)

Overview

In episode ten of the FluCoMa Podcast I talk with Dr. Thor Magnusson, primarily a theorist, but also a practitioner and educator of creative coding and music. We discuss Thor’s creative work and explore how it is influenced by and influences his theoretical research. We talk about Thor’s recent book Sonic Writing and his perspective on instrument design, interface and organology.

Links

Here are the links to some of the things that were discussed during the podcast:

• University of Sussex.

• Iceland University of the Arts.

• Performance made with Sema:

• Enrike Hurtado and ixi software.

• ixi lang live coding language.

• Thor’s PhD thesis: Epistemic Tools: The Phenomenology of Digital Musical Instruments (2009, University of Sussex).

• Performance using the Threnoscope:

• AHRC-funded Live Coding Research Network with Alex McLean.

• AHRC-funded Sonic Writing project, and Thor’s book Sonic Writing (2019).

• Chris Kiefer (see his work with Alice Eldridge for the FluCoMa project) and Francisco Bernardo.

• (University of the Arts London)[https://www.arts.ac.uk/] and Durham University.

• Gerard Roma’s’s creative work on the project.

• Gibber by Charlie Roberts:

• AHRC-funded MIMIC Project (Musically Intelligent Machines Interacting Creatively).

• Goldsmiths, University of London and the UAL Creative Computing Institute.

• Maximilian Sound Engine and Web Audio API.

• ERC-funded Intelligent Instruments Lab project.

• Jacques Attali’s Noise: The Political Economy of Music (1984).

• Thor’s article Musical organics: a heterarchical approach to digital organology (2017).

• Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus (1987).

• Rebecca Fiebrink’s Wekinator.

• David Beer’s The Social Power of 1lgorithms (2016).

• Halldor Úlfarsson’s Halldorophone :

• Serres’ The Parasite (2007).