The theme of "Max Summer School in Geidai", which will be held for the 7th time this year, is "Max and Improtech". Improtech is a festival aimed at AI and improvisation using Max, and will be held at the same time as Max Summer School in Geidai 2024. The first developer, Miller Puckette, also known as Max's father, will be invited as a guest (Miller Puckette's keynote will be held on the first day, July 29th). There will also be workshops on Max related to AI and improvisation, such as SoMax, which is developed by Gerard Assayag and others at IRCAM. At the same time, as usual, a workshop will be held to provide detailed explanations for those using Max.

The workshop will be divided into very beginner, beginner, intermediate, and advanced lectures, with the goal of having participants learn Max thoroughly according to their own level. In addition to technical explanations, we also provide information on what can be done with Max, what kind of performance can be done by using Max, and what kind of sounds can be created (realtime sound generation, image processing, installation), etc.

The workshop will be divided into four levels: very beginner (for those who are using Max for the first time), beginner (for learners in the first half of the tutorial level), intermediate (for those who have completed the tutorial level), and advanced. Each lecture will be taught in the form of a tutorial in which participants learn while actually programming on computers they bring along, based on actual examples prepared for this workshop. In addition, as in previous years, we plan to create an environment on Discord where one can ask individual questions to tutors and learn about review and application.

This year as well, we will be holding in the style of hybrid, both face-to-face at Tokyo University of the Arts Senju Campus and online via Zoom.

This year's Max Summer School will feature namely Gérard Assayag, Marc Chemillier, Marco Fiorini, Mikhail Malt from the REACH project based at IRCAM. IRCAM is a national research institute located in Paris, France, and is the world's most prestigious institution conducting research and development related to music and acoustics. Max was originally developed there. Gerard Assayag (https://www.ircam.fr/person/gerard-assayag) is head of the Musical Representation team at IRCAM and is PI of the research project REACH (https://manifeste.ircam.fr/en/news/reach-le-long-chemin-vers-la-co-creativite-humain-machine18/), along with Marc Chemillier from EHESS and Shlomo Dubnov from UCSD. The main purpose of their research is on improvisation between humans and Max's AI, or creativity through human-machine collaboration. SoMax2, OMax, Djazz, Dyci2, etc. have already been developed in the Max environment. Improtech (https://improtech.ircam.fr), a festival that focuses on improvisation between humans and machines, is held every year using this software. This year, it will be held at the Senju Campus of Tokyo University of the Arts at the same time as the Max Summer School.

Starting with Miller Puckette's keynote, there will be Miller Puckette (UCSD), Marc Chemillier (EHESS) & al, Shlomo Dubnov (UCSD, Qualcomm Institute), Nicolas Brochec (Geidai), Marco Fiorini (Ircam), Mari Kimura (UC Irvine), Jose-Miguel Fernandez and Lara Morciano (Ircam), Nao Tokui (Qosmo Inc.), Suguru Goto (Geidai) for Evening Sessions, and Joëlle Léandre (Bass) and the Who/Men (G. Assayag, M. Fiorini, M. Malt, generative electronics), Justin Vali (Malagasy zither, voice), Marc Chemillier (Generative electronics), and friends, Miller Puckette (live electronics), Irwin (percussion, live electronics), Jean-Marc Montera (Table Guitar), Turner Williams Jr (Shahi Baaja), and friends, Lara Morciano (composer, pianist), Jose-Miguel Fernandez (generative electronics), Suguru Goto (composer, generative electronics), Ko Sahara (composer, generative electronics), Steve Lehman (Saxophone, live electronics) and friends, Mari Kimura (Violin, generative electronics) and friends, Georges Bloch (composer, generative electronics) and friends, Takeyoshi Mori (composer, generative electronics), Nicolas Brochec (composer, generative electronics) for the concerts (These will be possibly updated later).

Other workshops will also introduce GEN and RNBO (https://rnbo.cycling74.com), which have become hot topics in recent years. Max patches can be compiled directly into targets such as VST Plug-ins, Max external objects, web applications, and Raspberry Pi. RNBO is an innovative feature that allows you to export the work done in Max in various formats.

Up until now, no workshop has been held anywhere in the world where people can share information about the specific methods that can be used with Max and what can be done with it. There will be a lot of exciting contents.

Improtech Paris - Tokyo 2024 is chaired by Pr Suguru Goto, Pr Marc Chemillier and Pr Gérard Assayag, organisation committee include Nicolas Brochec, Marco Fiorini, Vasiliki Zachari. Improtech is supported by the European Research Council, IRCAM, French Ministry of Culture, CNRS, Sorbonne University.

See full details of the Improtech program during the the MSS at : improtech.ircam.fr

Max (Max/MSP/Jitter) is a program development environment with a graphical interface. It was originally developed for (computer) music composition, but because of its ease of use, it has come to be used for realtime sound synthesis, interactive systems for performances, etc. Furthermore, it is widely used in media art works that use multimedia, Images, the Internet, etc.

Max was developed at IRCAM, a music research institute and studio in Paris, France, and is currently developed and sold by Cycling'74 in California (https://cycling74.com).