MusicMakers Hacklab 2013 - Indeterminism Machines

With a robotic, full-sized 808 drum machine, danceable improvisations, and back-to-back DJ sets, a packed night of music ran the gamut of what musical performance and DJing can be. Berghain Kantine played host to the first MusicMakers Hacklab, curated by Peter Kirn, CDM, and Machinedrum. The performances capped a week of investigation and experimentation in creating and hacking the machines that make music, from wearable interfaces to generative hardware.

This Hacklab edition was hosted by Peter Kirn and housed at the Kunstquartier Projektraum in Berlin. The finale performance took place at Berghain Kantine. A series of public Hacklab Input talks rounded out the lab's activities: The »Open Technologies for Software & Hardware« workshop with Peter Kirn, »Marvin Sings The Blues: A discussion of robotics by Moritz Haas, »The Musical Gloves Project« with Imogen Heap, »Inside the Design Process at Native Instruments« with Florian Schneidmadel & Gösta Wellmer, the »Reaktor, OSC, and the iPad« workshop with Gwydion ap Dafydd & Clément Destephen, the »Controlling Everything in Live« workshop with Christian Kleine, »Visual Performance for Richie Hawtin: Tools & Concepts« by Ali M. Demirel, »Playing with Tape« by Lucas Abela, »Applying Generative Concepts to Hardware-based Electronic Music« with Keith Fullerton Whitman, »Custom Creations for Live Performance« by Tim Exile, and »Demdike Stare - Presentation« by Miles Whittaker.

• Peter Kirn