Emute Lab

Strange Pulse Toolkit: Building Chaotic Instruments in Max Workshop

Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

:::: When: Jan 19th 4-6:00pm UK time (GMT). Where: Zoom ::::

Are you interested in creating chaotic instruments for exploration and fun in Max? We are inviting you to participate in a free workshop that will take place in Janurary 2026. The workshop will introduce the Strange Pulse Toolkit - a package for the Max software environment, which explores the rhythmical potential of Strange Attractors - simple mathematical models that exhibit chaotic behaviour.

*A screenshot of the Strange Pulse Toolkit *

The Strange Pulse Toolkit provides a suite of tools to enable the creation of instruments that embrace the chaotic nature of strange attractors. Rather than simply using a chaotic system as a random modulator in an otherwise predictable system, the SPT encourages the embedding of chaos into the very core of the instrument, exchanging absolute control for surprise and unpredictability.

Requirements

The only requirements are some experience using Max, and a working installation of Max (ideally version 9, although this is not required). This workshop will be conducted over Zoom, so the ability to join the zoom call is also required.

Registration:

To sign-up and for further information about the workshop: SPT Workshop Registration

This video demonstrates a simple demo written with the SPT:

For a more technical information about the SPT, please refer to this article:

Worgan, M. (2025). The Strange Pulse Toolkit. Proceedings of the 22nd Sound and Music Computing Conference (SMC2025), Graz, July 2025, 283–289. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15837615

Please register above and we hope to see you on Zoom on Jan 19th!

Max

Emute Lab Instruments @ London Synth and Pedal Expo

Sat, 22 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dimitris and Chris were presenting and London Synth and Pedal Expo 2025.

Emute Lab Meeting March: Live Coding

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Emute Lab is meeting in March with presentations from Dimitris Kyriakoudis and Aydin Kuru focusing on the practice of live coding.

Dimitris will be presenting the recent developments on the Eurorack live coding module that him and Chris Kiefer have been working on, specifically around integrations with the code editor and doing dynamic visualisations.

Aydin will be presenting his ongoing experimentations regarding the role and functions of typing in the context of live coding through a demo performance exhibiting the gesture of typing as a sonic phenomenon.

Everyone is welcome at this meeting, looking forward to seeing you.

Date: Tuesday, March 11th Time: 4pm Location: Room 76 (back of Falmer Bar)

May Meeting: Cell Oscillations and Entangled Instruments

Wed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This month we will have presentations from Shu Yang and Steve Symons.

Shu will presenting audio-visual programmes (Max and Touch Designer) that can be used to simulate vascular cell oscillations based on its protein’s biochemical structures (AlphaFold 3, FPbase, and RCSB PDB). The attached ‘cell’ image is the biomaterial he has created for a soft robotic system that simulates the cell using water, oil, gelatine and food dye.

Steve will be presenting a proposal to use diffractive analysis to make sense the messy data that emerges when we interrogate multi-player instruments, such as the entangled instrument the Stickatron (see second attached image), from a post-human perspective.

Everyone is welcome - we look forward to seeing you.

April Meeting: Audio Inventions Presentation and Demo

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

For out April meeting, we have special guests Paul and Brian from Audio Inventions, demonstrating their Freedom Player system for woodwind instruments.
https://www.audio-inventions.co.uk/6/Home

Audio Inventions are located in the Sussex Innovation Centre on campus, and they are doing some fascinating work in instrument acoustics, machine listening and embedded sound synthesis. They will be talking about their system and showing a demo.

All welcome, from across campus.

Until now there hasn’t been an effective way to silence a woodwind instrument because the sound comes out of any open finger holes as well as the bell, so trumpet-style mutes don’t work.

Freedom Player™ is an electronic practice mute for wind instruments that uses patented technology to ‘blow’ the instrument for you with a high-tech stimulus that we call Digital Breath™. </i>

Date: Tuesday 30th April

Time: 1pm

Location: Sussex Humanities Lab

Zoom: https://universityofsussex.zoom.us/j/94541042594

March Lab Meeting: Strange Attractors and Livecoding Modular Synths