I'm really excited about the upcoming Maker Music Festival, which starts on Saturday, May 15. It's an online event with a virtual campus of 18 buildings. Each building has several windows, and by hovering your cursor over a window you can get a preview of music created by one of the participants. By clicking on the window, you can see a video.
I have the honor of being a judge this year, and so I'm going to visit every window this weekend!
From the release:
On Saturday, May 15th, the Maker Music Festival VIRTUAL campus opens and it is just the beginning of a bigger plan to bring together and grow the global maker music community.
The two-day celebration weekend and grand opening will give attendees and fans a chance to explore, experience, and be inspired as they check out each maker in their virtual studio space. By hovering over a window, you can "play the building" and hear a sample of music from the maker that inhabits the space, and by clicking on their window you will have access to a featured video, project notes, frequently asked questions, a bio and ways to connect with them IRL and even help support their creative work by contributing to their Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee accounts.
The Maker Music Festival website hosts a campus of fifteen buildings that will become home to 200 makers of innovative, experimental, and unusual instruments. Over half of the buildings have been curated by collectives, organizations, and other specialized communities including Bela, CCRMA, Center for New Music, Dogbotic, Hackoustic, MakeMe, MakerNet, and Makey Makey. "It was important for me to create the best online experience for the makers and attendees as we continue to push the boundaries of imaginary place and experimental music," said Joe Szuecs, co-founder, software developer, maker, and musician. Along with his partner, Sherry Huss, co-founder of Maker Faire, and Innovator-in Residence at Freeman, they are taking what they've learned from producing the first Maker Music Festival in 2018 coupled with their recent work collaborating and designing online experiences to create an environment that is truly unique, and one that celebrates the pioneers of experimental music and showcases the work of this growing global maker music community.
In addition to exploring a campus of open studios, there will be 20 hours of live "drop-in" style programming on Zoom that will include performances, presentations, and workshops (and can be found on the SCHEDULE page of the website). All recorded session videos will be posted to the Maker Music Festival YouTube channel after the event. Other fun weekend activities that attendees will be invited to participate in include:
- A special drop-in style VR experience from Iklectik on Mozilla hubs where attendees can socialize and enjoy a showcase of past Hackoustic performances and a special 360 video performance of Leon Trimble's Gravity Synth project.
- Access to Makey Makey's new Sampler app which has just been released and will be a great learning and creativity tool for home and the classroom.
- A JackTrip Live Tutorial and Open Jam on Saturday, May 15th at 3:30pm PT. Jacktrip is an open source, audio only, software program written by Chris Chafe and Juan-Pablo Caceres, that sends and receives low latency, uncompressed audio over the Internet. This software allows people all over the world to continue singing and playing together online from geographically separate locations. The Maker Music Festival campus will remain open and continue to be developed after the event. It will be a hub for experimental music makers and we hope to add more buildings and makers in the future. We are always accepting new makers, and encourage makers to submit their work. For a sample of what to expect over the weekend, check out the Maker Music Festival Sampler video.
See you at Maker Music Festival this weekend!
