Workshop | Dan Wilcox: Introduction to Zirkonium3: ZKM’s Sound Spatialization Environment

Zirkonium is a free spatialized sound environment for the ZKM | Hertzlab, formerly ZKM | Institute for Music and Acoustics, which wraps various spatialization algorithms and abstracted speaker layouts with a path sequencing interface designed for composers in mind. The project was developed for the Sound Dome (Klangdom), a 43.4 speaker half dome in the ZKM Kubus studio however is applicable to almost any physical setup. Zirkonium has had three major versions since 2006 and this workshop introduces the current version, Zirkonium3, which utilizes libpd and Pure Data patches for its sound engine. The background and basic concepts will be introduced with the goal being for participants to stream live audio from Pd/Max/Ableton/etc projects into Zirkonium3 with live control. Requirement: MacOS 10.13+

Requirements

Participants should come with an Apple laptop running macOS 10.13+ and headphones.
Participants should have a basic computer music background and ideally with example audio of their own work to try. An understanding of Max / Pure Data is helpful for trying the example OSC external control patches.

About the workshop facilitator

Dan Wilcox is an artist, engineer, musician, performer who combines live musical performance techniques with experimental electronics and software for the Exploration of new expression, often through themes of science fiction, space travel, cyborgification, and far futurism. His father was an aerospace engineer, he grew up in the Rocket City, and has performed in Europe and around the US with his one-man band cyborg performance project,
robotcowboy.
Dan currently lives in Karlsruhe, Germany and is a parttime artist & researcher for the ZKM | Hertzlab. He has been the developer for the Zirkonium project since 2017.
More about Dan here.