Turning music and sound into three-dimensional worlds often yields something that fields like a trip through space. But this feels like a real trip. Through pulsing, glowing starfields, “Versum”‘s audiovisual movements are brain-bendingly transformative. Artist Tarik Barri has created an integrated world of sound and image that makes the interface and the compositional realms seamless. It seems as though this really is a musical universe, through whose harmonies of the spheres you can fly like. Boldly going, indeed.

Ingredients: Max/MSP/Jitter, Processing, Java, SuperCollider, GLSL [the 3D shading language], and … some serious skill and time, I imagine.

The work has been in development for some years (not surprisingly, given the results). But it surfaced again as we brought up the 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator hardware as a practical controller for 3D. See Create Digital Motion:
Look at Me, I’m Flying: SpaceNavigator Hardware + Blender

Tarik’s work resurfaced after a presentation in the UK. Reader janklug writes:

I’m just back from the M4_u Max/MSP/Jitter conference in Leicester (was great, btw), where Tarik Barri presented his project ‘Versum’, both as an installation and as a performance.
The user (and in case of the performance, Tarik) navigates through this incredible 3D-space-sequencer-universum with the help of a SpaceNavigator; glowing objects floating in this space produce sound, and as you approach them, they even give this nice doppler effect…
It was totally amazing to be able to float between pulsing rhythm-planet-objects and shiny drone-beams; navigation was easy and natural. Tarik uses a combination of Processing and Max/MSP; don’t know which one the SpaceNavigator is connected to.
Having tried this, I immediately ordered one; I think it also could be a great interface for M4L…

More information:
http://tarikbarri.nl/projects/versum
PDF documentation [2009]

Significantly, it’s really the act of flying that controls the music. That remains interactive, but it’s the movement through the three-dimensional space that determines what you hear. As the artist explains:

This virtual world is seen and heard from the viewpoint of a moving virtual camera with virtual microphones attached. This camera, controlled in realtime by means of a joystick (or any other kind of controller) moves through space, similar to how first person shooter games work. Within this space, I place objects that can be both seen and heard, and like in reality, the closer the camera is to them, the louder you hear them. So when the camera moves past several visual objects, you simultaneously hear several sounds fading in and out. Consequently, the way the camera travels past them actually causes melodies and compositional structures to be seen and heard.

The visual position of each object coincides with the panning of its sound: objects to the right of the camera will also be heard on the right, and those behind the camera will be heard from behind in case a surround speaker setup is used. This principle also applies to the Z-axis, meaning that sounds can be heard coming from above and below if the speaker setup supports it.

That’s the essential question, to me, when looking at 3D environments for music. What about the dimensionality will interact with the music? Is it something spatial, or will there be other sorts of interactions? (New Zealander-turned-Berliner Julian Oliver worked extensively with game engines, for instance. One solution for him was modifying the “gun” in those games to be an implement for doing things in the space, turning swords into plowshares after a fact by making the gun produce music rather than kill virtual entities.)

So, now you’ve seen some of the technical demonstration. But Tarik uses his work as an environment in which to make audiovisual performances. Here’s what some actual live playing looks like, in a beautiful, meditative piece called “Eleven”:

In fact, the biggest challenge to me of a piece this awesome is that you want an immersive environment, not just the small, rectangular screens that are often all festivals and venues can afford.

Holodeck, anyone?

More:

What happens when you meld the most futuristic Microsoft technology with the most futuristic Apple technology with the most ColecoVision-esque graphics as built in Jitter? Or you create gameplay that couples physical human contortion with the step sequencing rhythms of music? A different take on music games, that’s what.

Developers Matt (“M@tt”) Boch and Ryan Challinor work, in their day jobs, on the music game as most people know it, at Harmonix. Harmonix’s roots remain in the rhythm game, so that music play, even at its most serious, is still about musical timing accuracy. Pxl Pusher is a very different mechanic: imagine a step sequencer grid on an iPad, presenting blocks that, true to the classic game Twister, require another player to balance and stretch their bodies to match.

I caught up with Matt and Ryan over the summer at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Before throngs of crowds swarmed the game – easily one of the most popular of the night – I managed to get some quick footage of the creators doing last-minute patching and trying out gameplay. (The quiet there is atypical; we got to shoot before the doors opened.) An insane travel schedule kept me from publishing sooner, but here, Matt and Ryan share their process.

Another interesting twist: Max/MSP and Jitter allowed extremely rapid prototyping with Kinect, something of interest to anyone doing this sort of work. (And dig those “3D” images … if they don’t blind you.)

CDM: How did you work together on this project?

Matt: Jamin from Kill Screen had asked me to make a project for the Pop Rally, and I was looking for someone to team up with to make it happen. Around the same time, Ryan was developing Synapse, and I got super excited about that tech. Having worked with him closely on Dance Central 2, I was positive we’d make a killer team, so I proposed we team up and make it happen. He got the ball rolling immediately.

Max/MSP is a pretty ideal environment for the both of us to work in, as it lets us evaluate ideas really quickly, and completely obliterate the lines between disciplines that we’re used to in traditional game development. Each of us designed, coded, sound designed, and made art for the game. It was awesome to be able to share in the creation of all parts of the game.

Ryan: We riffed on ideas with each other until it snowballed into the final product. Max allowed us both to work in the same space, as opposed to the traditional programmer/designer arrangement, where I would work in code and Matt would tweak values that I expose. This allowed us to work much faster and blurred the line between programmer and designer.

Any roadblocks, discoveries along the way?

Ryan: The whole project was driven by discovery: discover a fun interaction, then figure out how to leverage it. There were no real roadblocks, other than Matt being on painkillers for the entirety of the project!

Matt: I fell, knocked out four teeth, and fractured my jaw, so I was on heavy doses of painkillers for much of the development. I’m doing much better now, almost fully recovered.

The greatest discovery for me was more of a rediscovery. I remembered how freeing it is to design a game for a very specific context. Before working at Harmonix, I made arcade games in a contemporary art context. Getting back into that mindset was a blast.

Tell us a bit how you work with Max for rapid prototyping. How did you set it up? Any specific tools you made use of? Any tips, either related to Max or Kinect specifically?

Ryan: No real tips for Max, other than do a lot of commenting when you’re working on a file with someone else. As far as Kinect tips, my main advice would be to explore and discover what fun you can have with he input, other than starting with a specific goal. The only tools we used outside of Max were Synapse for the Kinect data, Adobe Premiere for the background movie, and some web app Matt used to generate some of the sound effects.

Matt: We ended up using Beanstalkapp & Versions for version control, which was huge for us in the late stages of development when we both needed to be working simultaneously. It was great that we structured our patch in such a way that we could easily turn elements of the patch into standalone patches, so simultaneous work could happen. You lose some flexibility, but it’s worth it to be able to work in tandem.

How did you conceive the idea for this game?

Matt: Largely through iteration and idea exchange. I VJ around Boston a fair amount and often used TouchOSC to VJ with my iPhone, so I’m not stuck behind my laptop for hours at a time, so when Ryan brought up the idea of using TouchOSC with MAX and Synapse, I was totally sold. We quickly arrived at the mashup between Twister and Step Sequencer, and every after that was polishing mechanics, arriving at a unified aesthetic, and then finding the best way to ramp difficulty.

Ryan: Matt approached me to work on a game for the PopRally right around when I just finished up Synapse, so I wanted to leverage that in the project. I had also just learned about TouchOSC, so I thought it could be fun to incorporate that. So, the initial concept was born out of experimenting with interactions that combined the Kinect and iPad.

How did things go at MOMA? Any surprises in terms of reception? It was effectively rapid playtesting — anything that you would now incorporate into the game? Or things that worked well, for that matter?

Matt: It was a phenomenal success. I never imagined we’d have a line of people waiting to play the game all night, never mind a line full of people cheering, laughing, and clapping as they watched others play. We’ve talked a bit about ways to modify the existing game to make it a bit deeper and more broadly compatible, but I’m also wary of upsetting the balance we arrived at.

Ryan: I was pleased with the reception at MoMA, it was very satisfying to work on a project and then immediately have people playing it, literally 10 minutes after it was finished (thanks to a last-minute feature request from Matt’s friend Christina)

What does it mean to you to have this game in this landmark art museum?

Ryan: I’m really grateful that we were able to show it off in such an amazing space. It feels a little unreal to me, my brain hasn’t really processed it yet.

Matt: It was hugely validating, especially because my Dad was in town and was able to make it to the event. He’s never seen crowds of people play the games I’ve worked on so to have him there, seeing how much fun everyone was having, was awesome in and of itself. That it was at the MoMA? Still haven’t totally processed it. It was the stuff of dreams when I was getting my art degree; it’s going to take a bit for me to internalize that that dream was realized. Not only was I able to show work at the MoMA, but it was shown in the context of so many great games: Bit.Trip Beat, Limbo, B.U.T.T.O.N., QWOP, the list goes on…

How about the connection to Kill Screen Magazine?

Matt: I think Kill Screen is far and away the best game writing happening right now. Both their daily updates on the web and their themed print issues are staples in my life. To be fair, I might be biased as I’m good friends with [editor-in-chief] Jamin, but nevertheless, I think what they’ve accomplished is undeniably phenomenal. What other publication could convince the MoMA to have a video game night?

Can you tell us a bit about your roles at Harmonix, and how you came to be there?

Ryan: I’m a programmer at Harmonix, I’ve worked on The Beatles: Rock Band and the Dance Central series. I was a CS major at the University of Texas, I got an internship at a game studio in Austin that turned into a job, then a few years later a coworker talked me up to someone he met from Harmonix, and I got recruited to work there.

Matt: I am a Project Lead at Harmonix, though I’ve occupied many roles previously, most recently Senior Designer. I started at Harmonix as a Production Assistant while I was finishing my thesis at Harvard. My friend and VJ partner, Josh Randall, is the Creative Director of Harmonix. We’d been VJing together for a bit while I was in school. He gave me a call one day, suggesting I apply for a Production Assistant role. One of my jobs was to track all the prototype hardware, but I ended up spending most of my time repairing it, as my art practice of building arcades gave me a fair amount of experience about mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, and coding. That landed me a role as hardware designer, and, many Rock Band iterations and trips to China later, I was tasked with investigating tech for a potential dance game. That lead to me heading up the development of a game prototype that would become Dance Central, and I’ve been designing for the franchise ever since. A circuitous path for sure, but I’m really happy with where I ended up, and deeply grateful to Harmonix for allowing me to occupy such varied roles throughout my 4 years tenure.

Synapse is something other folks can use, too, correct? What does it do, and where might they begin?

Ryan: Yep, Synapse is a freely released toolset. The primary focus of the project was for controlling Ableton Live with Kinect, but it can be used with anything that receives OSC input. You can find more information at http://synapsekinect.tumblr.com/

Any future plans for this game, or other Synapse-powered stuff?

Ryan: In the immediate future, we’ll be showing off PXL PUSHR at Indiecade in LA on October 8th. Beyond that, I’m not sure what the future is. At the very least, we’re going to keep the ideas of the gameplay mechanic in mind to be incorporated into future projects. As far as Synapse, I’m currently exploring other ideas so I don’t have any Synapse stuff in the works at the moment, but I know of a few other people working on Synapse-powered projects currently.

Matt: As Ryan stated, we’re showing it at Indiecade, and are hoping we’ll get more opportunities to show the game publicly. I deeply enjoyed working on the game with Ryan and I hope that TeamPXL, the moniker we’ve adopted, will develop additional games with the same working methodology. For now, given that we both just wrapped development on Dance Central 2, we’re taking a much needed break to recharge. I know Ryan’s got some awesome audio manipulation patches in the works, and I’m excited to see what comes of those. In time, I’m sure an awesome idea for a game will cross one of our minds and we’ll have no choice but to dig in and make something new!

http://teampxl.tumblr.com/

You may have already seen FaceOSC, free software that eases the use of facial tracking from a computer camera for use as a controller, here with music software (top). Synthtopia picked up the story in July, featuring artist and engineer Kyle McDonald. But one FreeKa Tet has done his own implementation (second from top), and while the video is a bit grainy, he sounds wonderfully terrifying, as if his face is trying to slip out of The Matrix.

Sometimes, I’m rendered entirely silent (no, really, it happens), and it’s best to let videos speak for themselves. So here, after the jump, are some whimsical and wild prosthetic sound light-up … hell, I don’t have any idea what’s going on, but I’m enjoying it.

I dare you to start some conversation about musicality. Just don’t be surprised, comment trolls, if you find yourself abducted by a glowing and oddly glitchy-sounding creature with long, monstrous fingers. I’d watch what I say, frankly. Remember the old saying “on the Internet, no one knows if you’re a dog?” I expect that extends to space aliens, too.

Plenty more where those came from.

Oh, look, I could have done my research and seen there’s a bio for Mr. FreeKa Tet, aka Bacon ClapCLAP.
:

Extreme violent bursts, silence, speech, hard rock samples, strange atmospheres, Burgers , American Idol Icon, crackles, retardation, puking static, rocking a gabber party, cutting a worm in half and watching both parts moving, get a watch tatoo on his wrist, confusing videogames with music, drawing little puke characters on friends faces …

Right. Okay. That cleared everything up.

Enjoy your weekend, folks, and stay high and dry, those of you here on the Eastern seaboard of the US.

Cycling ’74 this week has announced an upcoming new version of its Max software, the DIY patching software for multimedia, from live sound and music to visuals. It looks as though more details will be available in the fall, but we at least get a glimpse of the goals for Max 6, as well as a new pricing scheme, and more information is likely at the NYC Expo ’74 conference. Max (and now Max for Live, too) is certainly at the heart of a lot of the projects we talk about here on CDM, so we’ll be watching.

Cycling ’74 founder and leader David Zicarelli describes greater “accessibility” as the goal for the new release, both in terms of “obtaining and learning” the software. That means documentation and tutorials and the Website go alongside new features in the software and new pricing. The other two goals: “quality” and “performance.”

In short, here’s how Cycling says Max 6 will evolve:

• Improved performance, particularly via “code generation,” which sounds a bit like a just-in-time compilation optimization scheme for higher-performance patches. (This won’t be included free with Max 6, but as an add-on, however.)
• A gen~ low-level signal-processing objects, for coding your own 64-bit DSP objects with greater performance than in patches.
• The Mozilla JavaScript engine is integrated for greater performance (JS was always a bit of a performance bottleneck in Max, so this is potentially pretty huge), as well as the ability to use 2D HTML5 graphics code with Max.
• Better sound quality, including a new cycle~ wavetable, resampling filters, crossfading between versions of a patch, and a new audio mix engine.
• Workflow improvements, including enhancements to how help and documentation is displayed.
• Project management.
• Improved OpenGL animation and rendering tools. (I’ll write soon about what we know about Jitter changes separately on Create Digital Motion.)

Pricing schemes have changed, too.

US$399 ($199 upgrade from v5) gets you Max, MSP, and Jitter; no need to buy Jitter as a separate add-on. (Apparently those code compilation features will run you extra, though whether that’s $5 or $500, I have no idea yet.)

Subscriptions for students now run 12 months instead of 9. There are new volume discounts for academia, also based on subscriptions, too.

The place to find out more is likely to be the Expo ’74 conference.
Expo ’74

In Brooklyn October 14-16 (coming to the East Coast after its first, West Coast installment), Expo ’74 will be a series of hands-on events. The US$295 early bird pricing ends July 15 (Friday); it’s $395 thereafter.

There’s no word yet on the implications for Max for Live, but it seems safe to assume the new release will be accompanied by an updated Max for Live edition, too.

So, what does this mean for Max 5? Via Cycling ’74 comments, Joshua Kit Clayton explains backwards compatibility:

Max 6 is essentially backward compatible with Max 5. There have been some small changes which might cause issues in extreme edge cases. For example, on Macintosh, we’ve changed from using Carbon Event Model to a Cocoa Event Model, so if an object uses its own internal Carbon or Cocoa Event Loop, they may need to make some changes since the application has changed the primary event model of the application. There may be some minor visual differences. However, the vast majority of third party objects which work in Max 5 will work in Max 6 without alteration. If third party MSP externals wish to make use of 64bit resolution audio signals, they will need to be updated, but they will still work at 32bit resolution if they remain unchanged.

Don’t worry. While there are many great changes to the application, we’re not going FCP X here

For now, you can read David’s comments from yesterday. And if you buy Max 5 starting now, Max 6 will be free.

Announcing Max 6

Take a powerful game engine (for animation, 2D and 3D graphics, physics, and on-screen interaction). Add the flexibility of a visual development environment for programming with virtual patch cords, for rich sonic and musical capabilities plus easy interaction with data and input. That’s the idea of combining something like Unity 3D with Max/MSP. In the example from earlier today, the solution simply routed basic data from a Unity-based game to a responsive music engine in Max.

In the case of [myu] – the Max Unity Interoperability Toolkit – that integration goes further still. Developed at the DISIS (Digital Interactive Sound & Intermedia Studio) at Virginia Tech, [myu] allows bi-directional integration of the Unity engine with Max or Pd. The two tools use netsend/netreceive to send data via TCP and glue the two together.

For visualists using Jitter, you can even exchange texture data, which offers some mind-blowing powers for live visuals.

Download at Virginia Tech — bonus, an extension of the aka.wiiremote object so you can use the lovely Wii Fit controller, among various other projects
Discussion on the Unity Community Forums
Discussion on the Cycling ’74 forum
Virginia Tech DISIS

As an interactive prototyping tool, this should have a lot of potential for lovers of patch-style programming.

Thanks to Dr. Ivica Ico Bukvic, DISIS Director and researcher, for sending in his project. I’ll be curious to see what other people might do with this.

If you haven’t been following Max 5 updates, the folks at Cycling ’74 have been aggressively bug squashing. The changelog for 5.0.6 alone is exhaustive. (Via @rekkerd on Twitter, of rekkerd.org.)

Updated: Also new in Max 5, it’s now possible as of 5.0.6 to properly save your patches to a version control repository. Don’t know what that is? Now’s a perfect time to find out — it means it’ll be easier to track changes you make to your own patches, and easier to collaborate with other people. And it’s free. From adamj, on comments:

RE: the diff’ing issue I was talking about above. Timothy Place (one of the Max developers) shared this helpful tidbit:

“Since the change log is a mile long, I’ll point out an obscure new power-user feature in Max 5.0.6.

You can send a new message to Max like this (or put it in an init file):
;max sortpatcherdictonsave 1

This makes it so that the JSON files that are use by Max for saving patches will keep the dictionary in the same order (alphabetized) every time you save. If you are keeping your patches in version control (e.g. SVN, GIT, CVS, etc.) then this should make your diffs a lot more usable.”

See: Version Control and Sharing for Patching: Keep Those Max, Pd Patches in Order with Git

And in other Max news, Expo74 will be a full-blown Max conference in April in San Francisco. You still have a few days to lock in the US$295 intro price (through 3/1). On the menu:

• C74-taught workshops for users: live looping, 3D, Max for Live, new timing objects, etc.
• Workshops for developers: C programming and the Max external API
• Special guest speakers, including Robert Henke — but also Miller Puckette, the creator of the original Max and developer of Cycling ’74′s open-source rival Pd.
• An afternoon on teaching Max
• A “Science Fair” for sharing projects
• Field trips
• A “Relationship Manager” – a sort of conference concierge – plus access to the C74 folks, a bit like the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference

Expo74

It’s good stuff. And the price seems a very reasonable deal for a conference.

You know, it also reminds me that some of the events around the open-source tools could be friendlier than they are. And we like science fairs. I’m not sure that I’ll be able to make it out to California in April (I’ll be there in March for the Game Developer Conference), but eager to hear how this goes.

But speaking of open source, don’t want to spend April at an event for a proprietary tool? Prefer the East Coast to the West Coast? Like code better than patching? Like tools that begin with the letter “S” better than the letter “M”? Want tools that make you think of supermassive black holes? Oh, April in North America has you covered regardless of what you like. One moment while I write up another post…

We get the “where do I go to learn this stuff” question a lot in the inbox. With Max for Live coming later this year, bringing the powers of Max to Ableton Live, I imagine the hunger for knowledge on that tool will be all the greater. (At the same time, I think the growing popularity of DIY tools means that it won’t make alternative tools like SuperCollider, Pd, Csound and the like less popular — I think we’ll see a growing trend toward all of these tools, provided we can show folks how to use them and get better at them ourselves!)

I know one route that has been successful for many people is the coursework at Harvestworks, the storied research and study center in New York. I can heartily endorse this one and say that, while I know and am friends with all the faculty, I have absolutely no investment in this. Dafna Naphtali, Hans Tammen, and Zach Seldess will all be teaching week-long intensives at Harvestworks in Manhattan. They’re not cheap – $1275 for the whole week – but I know some people have even flown to New York from other parts of the world to study up.

And what does all this mean? Well, it means you can turn Street Fighter, the game, into an improvisational ballet as instructor Zachary Seldess has done (above). Among other things, of course.

If it’s all out of your budget, don’t worry; we’ll have some other learning resources for you soon. But for those of you who can take the plunge, here are some details:

(apologies for copy-and-paste, which I always smugly say I don’t do, but I’m in a rush)

HARVESTWORKS DIGITAL MEDIA ARTS CENTER, NEW YORK

—–> MAX/MSP/JITTER FULL WEEK INTENSIVE COURSE

Dafna Naphtali / Zachary Seldess / Hans Tammen
Mondays through Fridays 10am to 6pm
Section A: March 23 through 27
Section B: August 31 through September 4

Cost: $1275 (incl. Harvestworks Membership)

Location: Harvestworks (http://www.harvestworks.org)
596 Broadway #602
New York City, NY 10012 (at Houston St)
Subway: F/V Broadway/Lafayette, 6 Bleecker, W/R Prince

From its central SoHo location in New York City, Harvestworks brings together innovative practitioners from all branches of the digital arts, and provides a vital context and catalyst for creativity in the field. For the last thirty years we have offered artists on-site recording studios, programming services, workshops, classes and one-on-one tutorials in emerging technologies supporting the pioneers of computer music with equipment and instruction. As a tool for artists, Max has been a central part of the Harvestworks program for almost 20 years. We offer regularly scheduled year-round classes and workshops on a wide variety of topics relating to Max/MSP and Jitter; as well as our Certificate Program, a flexible course of one-on-one instruction.

Now, Harvestworks is offering a full-week, 40hr crash course in the basics of Max/MSP and Jitter, run by veteran Max programmer Dafna Naphtali, Harvestworks engineer and teacher Zachary Seldess, and Harvestworks’ Deputy Director Hans Tammen. The course is designed for beginners who want to get a head start with this software package. The course may be especially appealing to artists living outside of New York City who don’t have the opportunity to learn Max in their own hometown and who would enjoy a week in New York City.

The cost of the course is $1200, plus $75 for the annual Harvestworks membership that is required to take the course. The courses are Mondays through Fridays 10am to 6pm. Working in our computer lab after 6pm can also be arranged. Lecture demonstrations will alternate with practice time, and some of our Max-savvy interns can be available to assist during practice time. Workstations with Max/MSP/Jitter will be available, but it is also recommended that you bring your own laptop. The course will provide lots of practice and sample patches. Students enrolled in Max/MSP/Jitter related classes at Harvestworks are eligible for Cycling 74′s educational discount when purchasing the software. The course is limited to 10 students.

We will not provide meals or snacks for the course, but can point to lots of cheap dining places in the neighborhood. We also cannot provide accommodations, but can help with posting requests or bringing you in contact with other artists who might be able to help.

To sign up for the course, or if you have further questions, please call Hans Tammen at 212-431-1130 ext 13, or go to our webstore at

http://www.harvestworks.org/cms/index.php/Classes/Classes-new.html

In his interview on Cycling74′s website, Hans Tammen gives a few insights into Max teaching at Harvestworks: http://www.cycling74.com/story/2008/9/15/113650/347

MAX CRASH COURSE OUTLINE:

Day 1 – The Basics: Objects vs. messages vs. comments; ordering of operations; math in Max; scaling and mapping ranges of numbers; playing sound files.
Day 2 – Basics of modular programming; live audio input; recording sound files; simple data storage.
Day 3 – Controlled chaos; useful GUI objects; more data storage; basics of synthesis.
Day 4: Interfacing with the outside world. Overview of MIDI, the HI object (game controllers), Wii controller, the Harvestworks Sensor Station, using a Wacom tablet. Wireless Miditron. Data storage.
Day 5: Introduction to Jitter: Jitter matrix; basic matrix processing; playing and basic manipulation of QuickTime movies; basics of Open GL.

INSTRUCTOR BIOS:

DAFNA NAPHTALI has been a Max teacher and programmer at Harvestworks since 1995. She earned a degree in Music Technology at NYU. She was Chief Engineer of the NYU Music Technology Studios until 1998, and has taught Max there as an adjunct instructor since 1996. Naphtali is also an academic advisor for both undergraduate and graduate students in NYU’s Music Technology program. She was a programmer for two years for many artists and her own projects at multi-channel sound gallery Engine 27. As a composer, writing custom Max/MSP programs since 1992 has enabled her to perform and compose using her laptop-based noise/audio processing “instrument” to alter the sound of her singing, vocalisms, personalized recordings as well as the sound of any musician playing with her. She has received commissions and awards from New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Meet the Composer, Experimental TV Center, American Composers Forum, Brecht Forum, and has held residencies at STEIM (Holland), Music OMI and iEAR at Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute. http://www.dafna.info

ZACHARY SELDESS currently works at Harvestworks as a resident Programmer/Teacher, and at Brooklyn College CUNY as adjunct faculty. He also works at The CUNY Graduate Center’s New media Lab creating interactive virtual sound environments in 3D Game Space using the Torque Game Engine and Max/MSP. He is currently pursuing a PhD in composition at The Graduate Center CUNY where his primary teachers are Amnon Wolman and Morton Subotnick. Previously he worked as a performer, composer, private teacher and adjunct professor at Wilbur Wright College and Harold Washington College in Chicago. As a composer, Zachary has collaborated with artists in many mediums including theater, dance, film, and poetry. He spends much of his time these days creating interactive media artwork, particularly within the Max/MSP/Jitter programming environment. Programming projects include work with Jane Rigler on Manhattan New Music Project’s “Music Cre8tor”, a sensor/software music-creating interface for developmentally challenged children.
http://www.zacharyseldess.com/

HANS TAMMEN is currently Deputy Director at Harvestworks, and is responsible for the oversight of all projects related to Max/MSP/Jitter and Physical Computing, as well as managing the education program and the studios. In this position he encounters the projects of approx. 250 clients, students and Artist In Residence per year. After an initial degree in Adult Education in 1988 he taught as an adjunct at Kassel University, and as part of his works as a union technology consultant from 1992 to 2000 he held about 120 one to five-day seminars using modern seminar techniques like metaplan, role-plays, and others. As a composer/guitarist he is best known for his “Endangered Guitar” works, interfacing his guitar with Max/MSP. Signal To Noise called his works “…a killer tour de force of post-everything guitar damage”, All Music Guide recommended him: “…clearly one of the best experimental guitarists to come forward during the 1990s.” http://www.tammen.org.

Many people are asking about what Max for Live can do. That’s a short answer: everything Max/MSP/Jitter can, plus some new stuff to make it work with Ableton Live. It might be better called “Max in Live.” Max for Live has all the objects that Max/MSP and Jitter have – all of them. Right now, I’m gathering a big part of the testing Cycling ‘74 is doing is to try to make anything not work, but so far, it sounds as though everything does. That means Max for Live is an environment for JavaScript and Java. It means you could have Processing sketches, wrapped in Max patches, running in Live.

And it also means you get Jitter, which gives you video playback, processing, and output, plus 3D visuals. You’ll apparently be able to open a window for output, just as in Jitter. So you could have Live sets that trigger video clips, all from within the same tool – or, if that sounds unwieldy on one machine, have a Max patch that communicates with any visual app you like on another machine.

You can’t open Max patches directly, but so long as you own Max 5, you can adapt them to Max for Live into a device.

This also means that whether or not Live 8 supports OSC (it looks as though it doesn’t), you will be able to add that support however you like via Max for Live.

On top of this, you’ll get a collection of new objects that allow Max for Live to use UI elements from Live, interface with the program as Devices, and listen to and control events in the Live interface (like manipulating clips, Devices, warp markers, and whatever else they choose to support). It’s this interface area that’s really new, and that I hope to cover more soon.

The only catch to this is you have to make an investment in software before you get started. If you want to run Max for Live, you need to buy Live 8 and buy Max for Live as an add-on. (Ableton has said it’ll be a separate product, but no word yet on pricing.) If you already own Max 5, you’ll still need to buy Max for Live (though again, no word on discounts). And you will still need to own the standalone Max if you want to use your patches without starting Live.

For more discussion, there’s a thread on the Cycling ‘74 forum:

"Max for Live"?

Jeremy Bernstein of Cycling ‘74 says it best here:

Max for Live is, well, a superset of Max. MaxMSPJitter + special features for Live integration
If you want to create a Max Device from a Max patch, you can currently copy and paste the main patcher into an empty device. We’ll probably offer a simple converter at some point, as well.

Right. What he said.

What Might it Mean for Open Source?

You can see that this is good news for:

• Max and patching (a huge boost to DIY software)
• OSC (the open communications protocol, supported – indirectly – for the first time)
• monome (because all those patches can be adapted for Live, which was a popular app to use anyway)

It’s not such fantastic news for the open source world or competing tools, because this is a very proprietary and vendor-specific solution. That’s not a criticism, just an observation – I know fantastic people and friends who are supported by the business model that’s here. But it is worth noting, because I believe healthy software ecosystems incorporate both free and commercial models, and fully open and fully “integrated” (which are sometimes more closed) solutions. There’s no question where this lies. You’ll need the full version of Max to use these patches with even another host – and you’re likely to miss some of the specific solutions here.

That said, I think it’s still an opportunity for open source alternatives to differentiate themselves, and for the two to coexist harmoniously. For starters, open source software will have an easier in when it comes to talking to Live, if there’s a friendly set of Max for Live patches that help communicate with other tools. Also, open source software can be two things this solution is not – lightweight, and free. It’s also an opportunity for open source hardware to interface with this solution (again, see: monome, which I still think has some elegance things like the APC40 lack).

In fact, there’s so much power by the time you put together Live and Max and all your plug-ins (too … much … POWER!!)  that I could see some people finding it refreshing performing with just a simple Processing sketch and turning everything else off.

I might even go so far to say that, by association, Max’s open-source cousin Pd could benefit from this. (I don’t see Pd working in Live any time soon, though.) I do hope that Max patchers release at least some of their work as open source patches for others to use. Flash is a great example of a proprietary tool that has generated fantastic open source tools around it. That means you get Adobe’s support and quality level, but you can still share code – and clearly, the Max world can do some of the same things.

These are ultimately all tools. I’m pretty excited about developments in the open source world, and I believe that most people will use a combination of free and commercial tools. 2009 should be a great year for both, which means you’ll gravitate toward using the right tool for the job, and for your budget. For those who can’t afford all these glitzy new toys, you won’t exactly be suffering. (Next week, I’m going to try to put together a virtual, open-source “NAMM” rounding up some of those developments.)

If you asked me to wish for everything I’d want to come together, for the kinds of things we advocate on CDM, I couldn’t do much better than we’re doing already – and we’re only part of the way through January.

8-bit and robots and odd Max and Reaktor patches and custom visual software and visualizations of data packets and sound made from plants and mutant trumpets and gloves for DJing and laptop music – we’ve got quite a lineup here in New York this week.

Friday night, a live audiovisual lineup from the worlds of createdigitalmusic.com / createdigitalmotion.com invades the HOPE conference, aka Hackers on Planet Earth, the three day-long convergence of tech hacking. $10, open to all, 11-2a Friday July 18 at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York. It’s a live digital, technological variety show in a doomed NYC landmark hotel with an audience of famous and infamous hackers. (Think Kevin Mitnick and MythBusters’ Adam Savage and Steven Levy, all in one place.)

Facebook event page; also on Going.com

Here’s a look at the performers and projects. If you can’t be in New York, this should give you a little taste of the range of work people are doing here and in our community in general, and I hope to have more coverage after the event.

Michael Una performing at SYNC Fest 08 from Michael Una on Vimeo.
Robot drummer from Michael Una on Vimeo.

Michael Una’s live-looping, robot-drumming, circuit-bending experience

CDM contributor, Circuit Bending Challenge coordinator and sage of all things DIY and sound art Michael joins the ensemble with robotic assistance:

I will be using custom-built interface devices, acoustic and circuit-bent instruments, and a robot drummer to create a rhythmic, textured and melodic sonic experience on the fly.

http://una-love.com

(Hey, does anyone know why Renee and Michael’s site is being blocked by Google? Was it the beat bike or the prayer wheel? What gives?)

Joshue Ott/superDraw +Ezekiel Honig live at monkeytown from superdraw on Vimeo.

Joshue Ott / superDraw (visuals)

Ezekiel Honig (music)

Ott is the creator of superDraw, a home-made software application which manipulates simple line drawings to create something beautiful and far removed from the original input.

A New York City native, and founder/label manager for the Anticipate and Microcosm labels, Ezekiel Honig concentrates on his idiosyncratic brand of emotively warm electronic-acoustic music. Using the loop as more of a tool than a rule, Honig paints outside the lines, nestling into a comfortable space between techno, house and ambient – using them as reference points from which to stray, rather than as steadfast frameworks. Drawing on the rich history of musique concrete, Honig looks to incorporate a material nature into his music by imbuing it with a host of field recording/found-sound sources in the search for a balance between digital software innovation and the physicality of the world around us. His music is one of contrast and contradiction, combining minimal, abstract tendencies with a core of timeless harmonics – pairing fuzzy chords with clunky and dirty "mishaps."

http://www.ezekielhonig.com/

superDraw

Ben Neill’s mutantrumpet.

Ben Neill will present a new set of music for Neill’s newly redesigned original instrument, the mutantrumpet.  Dubbed “the mad scientist of dancefloor jazz” by CMJ Magazine, Neill’s music “masterfully blurs the lines between electronic dance music and jazz sounds” (Billboard).  This new set of future dub jazz is the most recent chapter in Neill’s musical evolution which has included the CDs Green Machine (Astralwerks), Triptycal and Goldbug (Verve) and Automotive (Six Degrees).  Neill has also recently created a new version of his unique electro-acoustic instrument, the mutantrumpet, thanks to a residency at the STEIM studios in Amsterdam.

We’ll have visuals with Ben’s work, too; final confirmation of the visualist soon.

http://www.benneill.com/
http://www.myspace.com/benneill

Bill Jones, visuals

Bill Jones, Neill’s longtime visual collaborator, has created a new set of interactive video for the set.  The imagery is primarily black and white and evokes a late-night urban vibe inspired by sci-fi noir films such as Godard’s Alphaville. The video and music are created as one hybrid form of expression, and the new capabilities of the mutantrumpet make it possible for the visual and sonic elements to be seamlessly integrated in real time.

Neill and Jones are continuing to explore ways in which the dynamics and improvisation of live musical performance can be translated across the boundaries of sound and vision.  Their past projects have included the Pulse series of sound/light sculptures, widely exhibited in the 1990’s, MIDI controlled slide projector shows for Neill’s Sci-Fi Lounge tour with DJ Spooky, and Palladio, a VJ movie based on the novel of the same name by Jonathan Dee.

Todd Thille, with Duncan Laurie and … houseplants.

Custom circuitry with an Arduino base will acquire electromagnetic signals from plants and use them to influence generative audio and video inside Max/MSP and Jitter.

http://synesthete.com/works/#sonata
http://www.duncanlaurie.com/node/194/play

Hally // Blip Festival 2007: The Videos from 2 Player Productions on Vimeo.

Paris: Digital Visuals

Paris Treantafeles (aka Voltage Controlled) is an open source software expert and live visualist, regularly associated with the local 8-bit scene. He builds custom visual software for 8-bit game systems.

Paris Graphics

Don Miller / No Carrier

Don is another DIY software visualist, writing his own visual tools for NES, Commodore 64, and most recently Game Boy (yes, even in black and white!)

http://no-carrier.com/

Animalstyle

Animalstyle (aka Joey Mariano) has a different twist on 8-bit music: he’s a guitarist, but routes his instrument through 8-bit fuzz pedal, uses a Game Boy foot controller, and mixes guitar and 8-bit sounds.

http://filefreakout.com/animal-style/

vade and Mary Ann Benedetto

vade (aka Anton Marini) performs visuals on his own custom real-time software. He’s doing something mysterious involving data packet sniffing visualization and joining our VJ/visualist crew for the evening. He’s also a contributor and tipster for Create Digital Motion.

Mary Ann Benedetto will also be visualizing and reinterpreting geeky things, likely including munging the Linux kernel visually. Expect some visual surprises – and source releases on CDM for a couple of those visual tools!

Roger Tsai

[Groovy Hand] allows DJ to use hand gesture & head shaking to manipulate music. These gestures visualize how DJ play music, and also ask for sound from audience to generate interactive entertaining experience.

In a great music performance, musician are usually encouraged to express themselves with body language and do all kinds of gestures to enhance entertaining effect (such as exaggerated move of guitarist). However, unlike other performer, DJ doesn’t have many chances to use gestures because most of the DJ instrument are not helping him showing gestures, they’re just knobs and buttons.

Also, audience doesn’t get a clue how how a DJ produce music because there are only limited visual information from DJ’s movement and gestures. Base on these observation and interview, I created [Groovy Hand], that allows DJ have fun with innovative way to manipulate music. At the same time, visual and verbal interaction between DJ and audience brings audience a new experience of DJ show.

Urbanism: Study III from Peter Kirn on Vimeo.

Peter Kirn

I have no idea who this person is, but he kept tagging around, so we had to include him.

Okay, it’s me. I’ll be doing a live music set with keyboard and laptop with some custom Reaktor / Kore music tools, plus the debut of a rig for working with Nintendo’s Wii Balance Board.

I may jump in on visuals, as well.

PETER KIRN is a composer, digital musician, and media artist/visualist. Classically trained, he has extended his work into experimental music for acoustic instruments, historic instruments, and digital sound and visual technology. The Boston Globe describes his music and live visuals as "poetic" and "delicate." He has been a Digital Fellow at Dance Theater Workshop with collaborator Christopher Williams, and has taught music, interactive visuals, and technology at Harvestworks, 3rd Ward, Massachusetts College of Art, CUNY, and Sarah Lawrence. He is completing a PhD in music composition at the City University of New York Graduate Center.

Be there

Where: The Hotel Pennsylvania, New York City (map); head to the main door, on your left is the entrance to Penn Pavilion and you should see a table there.

When: Friday, July 18 2008 – performances run 11pm – 2am

Cost: US$10 at the door. First come, first served. (free if you have a conference badge; contact me if you need a press badge)

Conference info

Image credits (top): Michael Una by Hans Kuder; plant installation by Todd Thille; Roger Tsai by Corrine Brown; mutantrumpet designed by Ben Neill; Peter Kirn by Todd Thille; screenshot of visuals by Anton Marini; Don Miller (no carrier) by Cyen Obite; cover from Ezekiel Honig’s “Technology is Lonely”; screenshot of superDraw by Joshue Ott; the Hotel Pennsylvania by Martin de Witte; screenshot of visuals by Paris.

Max 5 Downloads

Max 5 Product Descriptions [links now working!]

Max Online Documentation, including what’s new