Monday, January 15, 9h at the Smart Living Lab
Prof Joe Paradiso - An Introduction to Sensing, Hardware, and Visualization

This talk will show how diverse and distributed sensors augment and mediate human experience, interaction, and perception, and the development of new sensing modalities and enabling technologies that create new forms of interactive experience and expression. The presented research encompasses the development and application of various types of sensor substrates and networks, energy harvesting and power management, sensor representation in virtual and augmented reality, sensor-based inference, interactive systems and HCI, and the technical foundation of the Internet of Things. The presented work is highlighted in diverse application areas and is applied across wide scales, spanning wearable systems, smart buildings, environmental sensing, and space missions.

Workshop: https://events.human-ist.ch/swisti_2024

Thursday, January 18, 20h at the SMEM on BlueFactory

Prof Joe Paradiso - A SONIC TOUR THROUGH TIME AND TECHNOLOGY FEATURING THE PARADISO SYNTHESIZER

Although I started designing and building my own electronic music synthesizers in the mid 1970s, this passion took a huge leap while I was living in Zürich in the early 1980s, where I finished most of what what was probably the world’s largest homemade modular synthesizer.  Incorporating many circuits unusual in synthesizers then, by the late 1980s my system grew to encompass over 125 modules housed in 5 cabinets.  As an early ‘circuit-bender’, I also absorbed several commercial synthesizers into my modular system, including a MiniMoog, a Moog Satellite, a Realistic MG-1, a Casio VL-Tone, and a Casio SK1, interfacing dozens of circuit nodes from each of these synthesizers to panels in my modular that allowed patches to reach deep into their innards.  The system accumulated renown over the years, being awarded distinctions and mention in Keyboard Magazine, Gizmodo, Ars Electronica, etc., and has been exhibited in many live installations, for example at the MIT Museum and The Ars Electronica Festival in Linz.  I still continue developing, expanding, and using my device in very complex patches, often leveraging up to 1000 patch cords to produce complex, autonomous soundscapes that continually evolve and stream worldwide over the Internet. One of my recent modules, developed in collaboration with my students, allows anybody over the internet to change parameters of a running patch in real time, effectively crowdsourcing a modular composition.   In this talk I’ll describe how I developed this system in Boston and in Zürich, then tour through some of its most unique modules and show examples of how I use it all in patches and installations.  If time warrants, I'll also touch on a few projects relating to music and musical controllers from my research group at the MIT Media Lab.

SMEM: https://www.smemmusic.ch/en/talk-swiss-born-synth-rig-joseph-paradiso-mit-media-lab-usa