In its 48th edition, the International Summer Courses for New Music were taking place in Darmstadt this year with a wide program.

Initiated just after World War II by Wolfgang Steinecke (then head of Department of Arts and Culture, in a city that was pretty much completely destroyed during the war), the Darmstadt School has risen to glory not only because of its famous seminarists such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, but mainly because of its diversity, international flavor and rehabilitation of art that was tainted by the Third Reich.

I am happy to have been a part of this year's spectacle, although I didn't really see much aside from the rehearsals and premiere of the piece I came to help establish: Tolerance Stacks by Annesley Black.

The Linux Audio Conference is actually a quite old concept by now. Started as a small Linux Audio user group meeting at LinuxTag back in 2002, the conference more and more developed into a multi-national event, thanks to people such as Frank Neumann (who by the way initially had a "hacker meeting" in mind) and places like the ZKM.

As more universities hosted it, its academic side strengthened, leading to proper proceedings, paper and poster presentations.

Generally speaking it has also always been a place to present software, do workshops to show people how to use software and try it out - suited for developers, users and interested alike!

Another nice aspect that evolved over the years is the concept of the "Linux Sound Night", giving the stage to the artists to present their pieces or perform live.

There's obviously a lot more to the history of the Linux Audio Conference (which is no wonder after such a long time!), than I could elaborate on.

By now the LAC has taken place in many different countries: Germany, Australia, Italy, The Netherlands, Ireland, USA and Austria.