The Bradford British Science Festival

摘要

The first talk with a mathematical component was Live Coding: creating languages for making music by Alex McLean from the School of Music at the University of Leeds. Alex's interest is in live coding of music. That is, writing in real time an algorithm that generates music. Live music programmers compose by creating code piece by piece (or should that be bit by bit). The code is then altered, again in real time as the composer/programmer adjusts it whether in response to their own tastes or the response from an audience. Alex's work involves creating programming languages for making such music and exploring how live coding can introduce programming to children as well as leading to new ways to collaborate on making live music. Alex showed videos of algoraves (raves with algorithmically produced music) where the performers were in different countries and gave us a live demonstration of how the code creates the music. He also performed with friends at an evening algorave. The talk was notable for being the first Daphne Oram Award Lecture. Oram was an electronic music pioneer and was a founder of the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop. Another application of mathematics demonstrated live was seen in Capturing Motion by Karl Abson and colleagues from the Centre for Visual Computing at the University of Bradford. Their interest is in how to capture the motion used in computer generated animation such as used in the Hollywood films Avatar and Lord of the Rings. Their particular interest is in animals, for example horses, and though the talk focussed on the demonstration it was clear the mathematics and geometry in particular was important to the development of his technology.