Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
PureData Convention 2011

PDCON:Porcelain carillon

Contents

Concerts on the Carillon

Short evening concerts on the carillon of weimar.

  • Bileam Kümper: Clockwork, 24x60 canons for each minute of the day (12 min)
  • Rich Thomas: Race, War, and a Failed Treaty (11:49 min)
  • Thomas Grill: luscinia megarhynchos (12:20 min)
  • Chelsea Leventhal: Spieluhrgruss für Weimar (ca. 12:00 min)

See the schedule for the times

Zeitmelodien~Timetunes

During the pd-convention 2011 there will be an interactive installation on the marketplace from weimar. Visitors can send an sms with their birthday to the carillon and they'll get the #1 Chart Hit of this date.

Project documentation (in German), Press release (in German)

Information about the Porcelain Carillon

The carillon installed in the tower of the city hall has 35 bells made from Meissen porcelain, the lowest note being an A2 and the highest note G5. The bells are driven by solenoids with plastic tips, there is no velocity dynamic possible. For playing and composing with the original sound of the Weimar porcelain bells just download and unzip the soundfont.
In Linux use FluidSynth, in OSOperating System – for instance Apple's OS X stands for the tenth version of the OS X you can put it in ~/Library/Audio/Sounds/Banks and use it with SimpleSynth.

Sound recording:



Downloads

Links

FAQ

Which are the possibilities of nuances of amplitude of the porcelain-carillon?

  • technically there are no "nuances" for the touch-response: once you played a note the mechanical hammersystem hits the bell with the same intensity.

What is the repeat rate of a single bell / speed of execution of melody?

  • we just sent a request to the guys who build the carillon if there is any limitation (techically/concerning “health” of the bells). As soon as we have an answer we'll let you know. As far as we tested the carillon with a MIDIMusical Instruments Digital Interface see also →OSC-Keyboard there were no limitations except the speed of our fingers :)

Is there a full polyphony resp. how many voices can be played simultaneously?

  • as far as we know there is a full polyphonic response. In principle you can play 35 bells simultaneously...

What's the length of the pieces you are looking for?

  • Since there is currently no way to override or surpress the quarter-hour chimes the maximum length for a piece should not be longer than 12 minutes. If a piece is longer then it will mix with the quarter-hour chimes.


Kreativfonds Bauhaus-Univeristät Weimar Electronic Arts Blog für digitale Spielkultur The Mozilla Foundation Allied Vision Technologies Reality Jockey Ltd. Freistaat Thüringen Bauhaus-Universität Weimar Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt Weimar Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT Stadt Weimar Klassik Stiftung Weimar NK Faculty of Media Studio for electro-acoustic Music KulturTragWerk e.V. Elektronisches Studio der TU Berlin Maschinenraum Hackerspace Weimar Parlomar5 e.V. Lab for Electronic Arts and Performance Radio Lotte WeimarSponsors and partners of the 4th internationals Pure Data Convention in Weimar 2011

4th international Pure Data Convention 2011 Weimar ~ Berlin