Max Jacob
http://www.xzoert.org
Participant in
SoundLAB VI – sonic art project environments
soundPOOL – a challenge for imagination
SIP – SoundLAB Interview
I was born in September 21 1970 in Enger, Germany, but I grew up in Italy. Since I was a child I played piano, in 1980-81 I learned programming in Basic on a Commodore VIC-20, at sixteen I started playing guitar and at eighteen I begun my journey into synthesizers and electronic music. I studied contemporary music at the university and developed as autodidact my computer skills, which became good enough to let me work for many years as programmer, first by Giunti publishing group in Florence and afterwards (2001-2007) at IRCAM in Paris, where I learned a lot about digital signal processing, analysis/synthesis and many other techniques used in music informatics. Through all these years I continued my activity as musician, playing several instruments (keyboards, guitar, bouzouki, laptop) in several ensembles of different genres (experimental, rock, folk etc.) and as composer, making sound tracks for movies, music for theater and sound installations, often in collaboration with visual artists. Currently I work mainly as composer, sound engineer and instrumentalist. These activities are heavily based on my perpetual researches in acoustical physics and music informatics, since I develop by myself most of the tools and algorithms I use for making music.
Among my recent works, the sound installation ‘eco-sistema’ (in collaboration with Enrico Di Ienno) held in the Chiasso (CH) railway station in November 2006, the music for the theater show ‘Madhausen’ (Florence-Rome, 2007-2008), the music for the installation ‘In xochitl in cuicatl’ by Lisa Lazzarini at the Diego Rivera Anahuacalli museum in Mexico City (July 2008), the sound installation ‘sounds for Giottolandia’ at the Festival della Creatività of Florence in October 2008.