Summer Schools

Folly Summer Schools were annual three day events of specialist workshop activity and evening entertainment for artists professional development.

In 2005 we were invited to host two days of workshop activity and an evening presentation as part of the Open Source and OpenMute Touring programme. The tour familiarised audiences with current FOSS practice within art by inviting key practitioners to present at the events, provided hands on workshops for OpenMute tools, for novice and intermediate users of the internet, and contextualised and demonstrated contemporary artistic uses of FOSS.

The Summer School of Sound 2006 was held at More Music in Morecambe. The workshops were delivered by ixi-software, with an evening performance at Morecambe's Winter Gardens – an electro-acoustic improvisation in response to the building by the trio of musicians, I Am One.

Participants in the workshops held an interest in learning about real time music, sensors, programming and audio-visual software, composition, instrument making, physical theatre and moving image work.

Ixi-software, a dual artist group (Thor Magnusson and Enrike Hurtado), delivered workshop activity on real time audio and visual programming,  working with open source and free software only to show how graphics, sound and physical controllers can be used to create music, musical software, musical instruments, installations, graphical environments and visualisation of sound.

The Summer School of Sound 2007 was held at St Martin's College, Lancaster and led by internationally acclaimed artists' collective GOTO10.

Marloes de Valk and Aymeric Mansoux led a three day course, exploring free open source software available for home studio purposes such as audio and midi sequencers, sound editors and virtual effect racks, as well as the creative possibilities of puredata in an audio workstation setup.

The 2007 event also included an evening performance at Lancaster's Dukes Theatre by GOTO10 artists de Valk and Mansoux, as well as Dave Griffiths and Chun Lee.

The summer school was attended by musicians, designers, artists and those with an interest in multimedia technologies who wanted to explore how new digital technologies can help and inspire us when working with music and sound.

Open Source City was folly's annual professional development offer to artists for 2008.  Read about the project here to find out more.