Workshop at Lycée Vaucanson, Grenoble, France (organized by Hexagone Scène nationale)
These two workshop days at Lycée Vaucanson, developed in collaboration with L’Hexagone Scène nationale, were conceived under a deliberately open title: Collectif stochastique pour un monde incertain. This title was not a metaphor. It described both the context we live in, and the type of system we were about to build together.
Day one : presenting a practice
The first day was important for a very simple reason: before touching any software, it felt necessary to clarify the nature of the practice involved, and the kind of environment in which this work takes place. We began by looking at the tools used in this context. Here, that environment is Max/MSP, and the primary material at hand is sound itself. This led us to a basic but fundamental question:
What is sound?
Sound is not an abstract object. When we do DSP (Digital Signal Processing), we are literally learning how to move a loudspeaker membrane. The loudspeaker is our instrument. The air is the medium. And the numbers we organise inside a synthesis environment are the score that determines how this membrane moves, instant after instant. DSP is about shaping movement. This idea framed the whole workshop: sound as a physical phenomenon, mediated by computation, and organised through systems.
Building a system
From there, we started very simply. A minimal signal chain: oscillator, modulation, envelope, gain, output. For students who had never opened Max before, this was already a significant conceptual step. The goal was not to “finish” anything, but to understand that a sound patch is a living structure: data flow, parameters interacting, behaviours emerging over time. The visual language of the patch evolved accordingly.
What we gradually assembled was a multi-voice system with a deliberately retro-futuristic and poetic interface — dark, minimal, almost diagrammatic. Each module represented a function, each connection a dependency. The interface was designed as a way of making the system readable while being enjoyable
Day two : networks, distance, and collective control
On the second day, I shifted the perspective. Since the students are enrolled in an automation and networking program, it made sense to start from what they already understand: machines talking to machines. We began by sending data from one computer to another, introducing the basics of UDP, ports, addressing, and remote control. At that point, there was still no sound, only messages, flows, and connectivity. The network itself became the first compositional space.
From there, everything connected naturally.
We reopened the patch I had finalized overnight, now a stable but open organism made of several synthesis voices. Together, we added interactive elements: for example, generating text driven by a line~, linking the audio signal domain to symbolic and visual output. A single evolving value could simultaneously become sound, text, and behaviour.
Phones, faders, and play
The final step was pretty important and cool. We created a local network, the students connected with their phones, and joined an Open Stage Control client. A few faders, a few parameters, nothing visually spectacular. But suddenly, the system became playable. A gesture on a touchscreen became: a network message → a number → a modulation → a movement of a loudspeaker membrane.
The session ended in a collective moment of play like a shared exploration of a system in motion, unstable, stochastic, and alive.
What this workshop was really about
This workshop was not only about introducing and learning Max, not only about mastering synthesis techniques. It was rather about experiencing a way of thinking: sound as a system technology, as a working material, networks as an extension of the instrument and interaction as a form of writing
In the end, what we built together was less a synthesizer than a shared environment, where uncertainty became a condition for working together.
Big thanks to Magalie Gheraieb from Hexagone, and José Olivares Flores from the Lycée for puting this together 🙂