MetaFilter posts tagged with multimedia

At least as interesting as a one-link-to-wikipedia post.

Crumpled Farm — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:43:06 -0800

Max/MSP is a graphical programming environment primarily used for music, video and multimedia. Max/MSP has sometimes been described as a digital erector set. David Tinapple describes Max in this way: "it's like you're drawing a diagram of what you want the program to do, and then when you're done drawing the diagram you've also sort of accidentally programmed it". Named after Max Mathews, Max was developed for MIDI processing at the French institute Ircam by Miller Puckette during the late 80s. In the following years, Max was passed around and underwent several permutations. A history of Max is here. In 1997 Max found a stable, loving home up at the San Francisco based Cycling '74 where MSP, an architecture for realtime audio processing, was added. In 2003, Cycling '74 released an addition to Max/MSP called Jitter, for realtime manipulation of video, 3D graphics, and matrix data. Max has many relatives including Miller Puckette's Free Software Max cousin Pure Data, Native Instrument's Reaktor, Bill Orcut's Lily, Apple's Quartz Composer, and Yahoo Pipes. Max is useful for mapping, converting or processing any kind of input data to any kind of output data in an arbitrary way the user specifies. Max/MSP comes with 450 "objects" that can be linked or "patched" together graphically to create a kind of flowchart that represents how data will be processed (pictures of Max "patches" here). In addition to the standard Max objects, there are thousands of user-created objects, called "externals" that allow for anything from getting data from an Iphone or Wii Remote to support for numerous programming languages to computer vision to tools for ambisonics. Maxobjects.com maintains a database of thousands of Max objects. Max's Pluggo allows Max patches to be saved as VST plugins for use in audio editors such as Pro tools, Logic or Ableton Live. A variety of musicians, artist, performers and researchers use Max. Notable musical artists who use Max include Autechre, Menomena, Radiohead, Kevin Blechdom (previously), Fennesz (previously), Keith Fullerton Whitman/Hrvatski, Monolake and Jamie Lidell. In the late 90s and early 00s Max/MSP and Cycling '74 were center of a controversy fabricated by the enigmatic Net Artist Netochka Nezvanova (previously) . Max has been used to control all manner of things, from a lightbulb-covered building facade to a maze that reconfigures itself around you to a game of "flaming simon". Max can be controlled by anything from iPhones, timecoded encoded records, a variety of sensors to a Radio Baton. Several commercial software applications are known to be created in Max including the VJ application Vidvox. It is rumored that Ableton Live was prototyped in Max. Tomorrow marks the release of Max 5. The transition from Max 4 to 5 has been compared to Apple's transition from OS 9 to OS X. Still waiting in the wings is the announcement of the exact nature of a collaboration between Cycling '74 and Ableton (here and here). A video (at 52:30) of Robert Henke (of Ableton and Monolake) talking about Max/MSP with a bit about the collaboration between the two companies. An interesting interview with Joshua Kit Clayton, electronic musician and developer of Jitter, about Max/MSP, digital art and culture.

Gravityland

Miko — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:54:06 -0800

Gravityland. Interactive Web TV series. Watch weekly episodes, respond, contribute. Read blog. Add moves to music video. Play Where in the world is Gravityland? Read comic book. Build FAQ. Somehow, it's all related, and all possibility. Auteur: MeFi's own John Herman. Via.

Take your forms wrestled from the void and get the hell out

1f2frfbf — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 07:37:48 -0800

Wayne White's paintings Wayne Who? He left Tennessee to study at the New York School of Visual Arts with Art Speigelman (he posed holding a broomstick for some of the characters in Maus) and Red Grooms. He came back to Tennessee to do puppetry work for a children's show called Mrs. Cabobble's Caboose, (5th link down, mpg) which in turn caught the attention of CBS who hired him to do the set direction for Pee Wee's Playhouse (I'll defer to this excellent post for Pee Wee videos), for which he played Mr Kite, Randy and Roger the Monster. Where else have you seen his work? The video for Peter Gabriel's "Big Time", and the video for the Smashing Pumpkin's "Tonight, Tonight". This was inspired by my tiny little comment here and he seems to be mentioned in passing here and here. Also: Waxy weighs in along with jonson, his IMDb profile and his Wikipedia entry. Not for use with some sets, consult doctor before taking internally.

Dennet Audio and Video

McLir — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 23:15:33 -0800

The Daniel Dennett interview with Bill Moyers [GoogleVid now with free viewing]. Dennett's talks at TED. Dennett with Robert Wright [GVid]. And additional AV at Daniel Dennett Multimedia -- his presentation at the Center for Naturalism (on "Breaking the Spell") is excellent. [Previously 1, 2, 3, 4]

The Sancho Plan

diastematic — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 11:16:52 -0800

The Sancho Plan "create live audiovisual performances and installations for your listening and viewing pleasure." Spacequatica, recently performed at Martyn Ware's Future of Sound event, is an intriguing mix of live sound and animations triggered by electronic drums -- worth a few minutes on a Friday.

It really is like Minority Report!

allkindsoftime — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 19:34:20 -0800

Photosynth. Blaise Aguera y Arcas (second one down) does a live demo (with some subtle humor) of the product we've discussed previously. Via the wonderful Ted (mentioned a f e w t i m e s).

Ubuntu Studio Released!

phrontist — Thu, 10 May 2007 22:02:28 -0800

Ubuntu Studio is a Linux distribution focused on creative audiovisual pursuits.

Read Only Memories

davebush — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 18:19:30 -0800

Back in the mid-nineties, before broadband took hold, the CD ROM was drawing considerable interest from publishers, musicians and other artists. Notable (for contrasting reasons): Laurie Anderson's Puppet Motel, The Residents' Freak Show, Peter Gabriel's Xplora, The Voyager Company. Launch, Media Band, Headcandy.

Having your mobile content and eating it too!

Samuel Farrow — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 14:42:27 -0800

The mobile content market is big but the mobile service companies control the bottleneck of data to your phone and may well be holding the industry back. A NZ site has launched offering a platform for mobile content producers to sell direct to mobile content consumers globally: Voeveo.

Art Museum, Deconstructed

Dave Faris — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 11:14:56 -0800

The Luce Foundation Center in the recently renovated and reopened National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, is more like a smörgåsbord-cum-antique store, packed in an overflowing archive rather than a more traditional museum layout. The collection is comprised of varying American art styles and genres in intimate display cases, with little in the way of context or reference. (Though the same site in this link is available on computers scattered throughout the gallery for further detail.)