Everywhere I go, people bug me about when they’ll see better support for OpenSoundControl (OSC) in applications. Why use fancy-schmancy OSC when MIDI does the job? Well, OSC supports higher resolutions of data when needed, maps variables elegantly (when you’re controlling something like visuals and descriptions like musical pitch or filter cutoff make no sense), and plays nice over networks and with multiple computers. In other words, go ahead and use MIDI when it does the job — but we need something else when it doesn’t.

Here’s one way to get OSC from your favorite app: hack it in. Spotted today as Gav tells Create Digital Motion about gluing together Isadora and Ableton Live, the OSCGlue plug-in is a simple VST insert that listens to MIDI and sends OSC.

A team of artists has turned the Nintendo Wiimote into a controller for an adaptive, 3D sound environment. Claudio Midolo, Edgar Castellanos, Natan Sinigaglia, and Pedro Mari worked together on the project, and have posted extensive technical details if you fancy trying something like this yourself.