C-LAB Future Media Arts Festival｜TouchDesigner: New Media Hub

Online Event

TouchDesigner (TD) is a node-based visualization environment for creative coding. That is, it thinks and operates in image. By dint of the connection and superimposition of nodes, it can deliver a holistic presentation of real-time interactive multimedia content, which makes itself one of the most vital visual computing tools extensively applied in the fields of design, art, video game, performance, installation, and filmmaking. As a graphical user interface, TD has led to significant breakthroughs and effects in technological media and transdisciplinary projects. From 2 to 7 November 2021, the “TouchDesigner: New Media Hub” will be held during the C-LAB Future Media Arts Festival by inviting TD experts and creators from Taiwan and foreign countries to open up the possibilities for future visual creation through the hands-on practice in the workshops and professional experience sharing in the talks.

👉🏻Online Registration (Free Admission)
Please note: All events will be live streamed on the Facebook Page of C-LAB Technology Media Platform except for the workshops.

Program

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▌Liquid Flow (Level: Beginner-Intermediate)｜Katherine LIAO
Time: 11/5 (FRI) 15:00–17:00
Venue: West i-CENTER, 2F (Advance registration is required.)
Revolving around the visual effect of liquid’s flowing trajectory, this workshop utilizes “feedback” in TouchDesigner to embody such a visual concept. Titled “Liquid Flow,” this workshop aims to visualize the trajectory of liquid that flows slowly downward onto the surface. This workshop proceeds in three phases. The first phase is a brief introduction to TouchDesigner, which allows the participants to get a basic understanding of the user interface. The second phase explains “feedback” in TouchDesigner and provides examples for the participants to try some exercises. The third phase requires the participants to use TouchDesigner to create the visual effect of flowing liquid. The lecturer will guide the participants to generate one or two visual effects of flowing liquid step by step from starch. In the end, there will be some time left for a Q&A session and extended creation.

｜Katherine LIAO
As a TouchDesigner aficionado and its heavy user, Katherine LIAO has focused her interests on the visual effect of trickling liquid, interface system design, and Dome Projection in recent years. She is also an interactive designer and a software engineer who excels in visual interactive design and installation interactive design. She was the designer of the Dome projection system for the C-LAB’s FUTURE VISION LAB (2020) and the visual image creator for the C-LAB’s FUTURE VISION LAB—Alpha Doggo—Dream(achine) Capsule (2020). She was in charge of the installation integration and visual interactive design for the Taipei Lantern Festival’s Praying Slot Machine (2019), as well as the multimedia installation integration and visual interactive design for the Display Section of the 19th and 20th Centuries of Design Our World hosted by the National Taiwan Science Education Center (2019). She also engaged in the installation visual interactive design for the Metamorphosis March—Fantasy Lab at the Blossom Pavilion of the Taichung World Flora Exposition (2018), and the visual image creation for the Interzone in the Jyodori Area at the CLOSE TO YOU International Puppet Festival Taipei (2018).

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▌TouchDesigner: What You See Is What You Get (Level: Beginner)｜YEH Ting-Hao
Time: 11/6 (SAT) 15:00–18:00
Venue: West i-CENTER, 2F (Advance registration is required.)
Expression is the raison d’être of Creative Coding. In terms of user interface, its common tools can be divided into two major types—“Command Line Interface” and “Node Base Interface.” The former is more difficult to use for creators from non-information background, while the latter is the optimum entry point for beginners of creative coding.
TouchDesigner has been widely adopted in all sorts of computing installations, audio-visual performances, and permanent media works. This workshop not only introduces the fundamentals of TouchDesigner, but also shares typical cases and the lecturer’s experience with the participants.

｜YEH Ting-Hao
New Media Artist and Lecturer
YEH is a new media artist and lecturer who works in the field of creative coding, experimental sound and performing arts. His works mostly focus on the relationship of sound and visual, attempting to integrate prefabricated and instantaneous events, starting from glitch aesthetics, and attempting to find harmony and dialectics belonging to the new media age. He participates extensively in Taiwan’s experimental sound scene activities, such as TRANSONIC, Lacking Sound Festival. He is currently the head of the experimental audio-visual promotion group “Noise Fluid”, and concurrently teaches in relevant departments of many universities. In 2017, YEH started to run TouchDesignerTW community together with Yea CHEN and held several promotion workshops.
https://www.yehtinghao.net/
https://www.facebook.com/fluidnoise

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▌TouchDesigner: The Universal Hub (Level: Advanced)｜Yea CHEN
Time: 11/7 (SUN) 15:00–18:00
Venue: West i-CENTER, 2F (Advance registration is required.)
In the 2020s, a digital creative content producer is confronted with multifarious media, such as datasets, kinetic machinery, projection control, lighting control, game engine, sensor information, tracing equipment, visual identification, and deep learning.
Sometimes you may get lost amid these dazzling choices and find no common language for their intercommunication, and ergo keep producing tools at the service of the works during the creative process. Among the infinite possibilities, TouchDesigner is a great choice for you to integrate everything into your work with simply one technique.
Be it figurative visual bridging, abstract information translation, or the presentation of sound, light and force in the physical space, you will be amazed at the capability of TouchDesigner as a hub for integration.

｜Yea CHEN
Multimedia creator
Chief Technology Officer at ChillProduction
CHEN is a performing arts-based multimedia developer, specializing in visual programming and shading languages. Past experiences include stagecraft, digital control, carpentry, ironworks, cinematography and lighting, editing and post production, drawings, graphics and optical techniques, machine vision theory, fundamentals of electronics, network communication, computer programming, as well as basic narrative theory. With such a wide, albeit cursory array of experiences in a multitude of fields, CHEN possesses a unique ability to examine and search for a path of digitization for existing arts and crafts from a variety of perspectives. https://github.com/yeataro
https://www.facebook.com/chillproduction2016/

────────────────────────────────Talk ───────────────────────────────

▌TouchDesigner—20 Years of Visual Development｜Markus HECKMANN
Time: 11/3 (WED) 19:30–20:30
Venue: Live streaming on Facebook Page of C-LAB Technology Media Platform (advance registration is NOT required.)
On the occasion of the C-LAB Future Media Art Festival 2021 in Taipei, Taiwan, Markus HECKMANN will introduce the core concepts and inspirations behind the development of TouchDesigner tracing the over 20-year history of the software back to its roots as a tool for VJs to the many faceted applications today.
The development of TouchDesigner is aimed at providing artists and developers alike with an environment that allows the creation of experiences and applications with a sense for playful discovery and easing the use of technology that might otherwise present a hurdle to the community. With that directive, Derivative has found itself to work on a platform of interoperability, spanning the gap from idea to realization with a workflow that often starts at a prototyping stage but quickly evolves into full-fledged productions. Taking into considerations the work Derivative’s community is undertaking, Derivative’s task is not only to provide toolsets for the future but also make sure that workflows are approachable and fit the overall pattern of the visual development paradigm.

｜Markus HECKMANN
Markus HECKMANN was born 1977 in Leipzig, GDR. He attended the University Ilmenau and Bauhaus University Weimar studying Media-technology. He left university in January 2006 to work as a Technical Director with Derivative, the makers of TouchDesigner, in Toronto, Canada. Besides his work at Derivative where he creates tools and workflows for the community, participates in shaping the future of the software, is active in educational efforts such as workshops and talks, is part of the organizational team of Derivative’s TouchDesigner Summit, and directly supports customers with projects and installations–commercial and artistic alike, HECKMANN utilizes TouchDesigner in his own practice for audio-visual installations and performances with appearances at Mutek Montreal, Mutek Buenos Aires, Cutting Edge Canada in Heidenau Germany, Day4Night in Houston Texas and more.

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▌TouchDesigner: Millions of Possibilities for Digital Creative Content｜Yea CHEN, YEH Ting-Hao (TDTW)
Time: 11/4 (THU) 19:00–20:00
Venue: West i-CENTER, 2F (Advance registration is required.)
From the control and integration of new media systems in experimental theaters to the dazzling image design for concerts, the powerful resilience of TouchDesigner helps new media creators integrate sound, image, installation and lighting, so as to achieve real-time interaction and computational mapping, which opens up millions of possibilities for creative content.
This talk invites YEH Ting-Hao and Yea Chen (ChillProduction) to share their experience of applying TouchDesigner to theater and concert, especially how they visualize the imagery of dance and music with new media thinking and thereby establish their aesthetic practice in performing arts and pop music culture.

｜TouchDesignerTW (TDTW)
Developed by the company Derivative in Toronto, TouchDesigner is a node-based environment of visualized creative coding for real-time, interactive multimedia content. Artists, programmers, creative coding engineers, software designers, and performers use it in performances, installations, and permanent media works. As a spontaneous community, TDTW often organizes events in collaboration with Derivative in Taiwan. TDTW serves as a platform for the education, promotion and exchange concerning the learning and application of TouchDesigner.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/TouchDesignerTW

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▌Audiovisual Art in TouchDesigner｜Bileam TSCHEPE
Time: 11/5 (FRI) 19:00–20:00
Venue: Live streaming on Facebook Page of C-LAB Technology Media Platform (advance registration is NOT required.)
This presentation aims to give an overview of the audiovisual work of Bileam and to offer some insight into his approach to digital art with focus on audiovisual projects.
Bileam will start by giving an overview of his background and describing his freelance work. He’ll then explain why he’s using TouchDesigner and what makes it such a powerful tool. Furthermore, he’ll give some insight into how he creates music videos, how to fuse sound and audio and how to create generative art that fits to musical input, using his own projects as examples. After the presentation, Bileam will answer any questions regarding his work.

｜Bileam TSCHEPE
Bileam TSCHEPE aka elekktronaut is a Berlin based artist and educator who creates audio-reactive, interactive and organic digital artworks, systems and installations in TouchDesigner, collaborating with and teaching people worldwide. He started with web-design and coding and worked with software like Ableton, Resolume and Processing, studied Interaction Design and later discovered TouchDesigner, which is his current main focus. In a lot of his works, he aims to imitate natural patterns and behaviours with coding and brings them in connection with sound.

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▌Python and Techniques for Data Manipulation in TouchDesigner｜Matthew RAGAN
Time: 11/6 (SAT) 19:00–20:00
Venue: Live streaming on Facebook Page of C-LAB Technology Media Platform (advance registration is NOT required.)
TouchDesigner's Python integration is one of its most exciting super powers. From changing operators to exploring Machine Learning techniques, there's a world of exciting creative opportunities to explore once you start to apply some scripting techniques to your TouchDesigner workflow. In this talk we'll look at some simple ideas for working with Python, explore how you can pull data directly from the web, and finally talk about future applications for working with Machine Learning libraries in TouchDesigner.

｜Matthew RAGAN
Matthew has worked as an educator, mentor and counselor for over 15 years. He has a robust archive of teaching resources for the creative-coding community, and specializes in creating interactive systems for digital environments. He received his MFA from Arizona State University in Interdisciplinary Digital Media and Performance in 2015. Previously, Matthew has worked as the Director of Software specializing in Real Time Content Creation at the Madison Square Garden Company, as an interactive engineer Obscura Digital.

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▌Why the Bauhaus Would Have Loved TouchDesigner｜Stefan KRAUS
Time: 11/7 (SUN) 19:00–20:00
Venue: Live streaming on Facebook Page of C-LAB Technology Media Platform (advance registration is NOT required.)
The BAUHAUS is considered to be the most influential art school of the 20th century and an important forerunner of modernity. The recent centennial of the Bauhaus’ founding has highlighted once more the global influence of a unique educational project that lasted a mere 14 years, before being closed by the Nazi government.
In this talk, Stefan KRAUS outlines his hypothesis that the Bauhaus’ protagonists would have loved TouchDesigner and how he still finds inspiration in ideas that were original more than 100 years ago. Often mistaken as a style, the Bauhaus was in fact composed of many talented individuals and a wide range of ideas that were not always coherent and in some cases controversially discussed within the school.
Nevertheless, we can identify three phases and how they resonate within the visual programming environment, not only in terms of philosophy but also as an analogy to the personal learning paths of many TouchDesigner users.
Firstly, the fusion of previously separated disciplines of art into a “Gesamtkunstwerk” an immersive, all encompassing artwork—was a driving force for the early Bauhaus, one deeply influenced by expressionism. This experimental approach later made way for modern product design and architecture by demanding a “new unity of art and technology” which moved away from an ideal referring to traditional craft and towards the socially conscious application of industrial mass production techniques. Lastly, the resolution of the school would go on to drive the global spread of the “International Style”.
Ultimately, it is pertinent to acknowledge that many of the ideas embodied in “new” media artworks were conceptualized more than a century ago yet only now do we have the means to realize these visions, thus posing the question: what vision can we provide for the next 100 years?

｜Stefan KRAUS
Dipl. - Ing. Stefan Kraus, *1974 in Cologne, Germany
http://www.mxzehn.de http://www.thenodeinstitute.org
The Berlin based media artist and educator, Stefan KRAUS, is co-founder of the creative coding education hub, The NODE Institute, the projection mapping festival, Genius Loci Weimar, and the media art studio, MXZEHN. Trained as an architect at Bauhaus-University Weimar, Stefan explores the augmentation of physical structures using interactive and generative media and the narrative potential of abstract imagery. He holds a special interest in the art of live visual improvisation and creates augmented scenographies for theater, dance and music performances. Stefan enjoys sharing his knowledge and experience with the students of different universities and the creative coding community. His studio produces interactive installations, live media performances and augmented reality applications for commercial clients, festivals, institutions and exhibitions.

Please Note:
1. Some online talks are pre-recorded with Chinese/English subtitles. Consecutive translation will be provided during the QA session.
2. Due to the spread of COVID-19, the organizer reserves the right to change, adjust or cancel the events at any time.

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