http://www.lightningfield.org/

Visual Programming Language Reinvented

San Francisco, CA • April 22, 2008—Cycling ’74 today released Version 5.0 of its Max/MSP media development tools. This version represents a new era of Max programming, with a completely redesigned multi-processing kernel and a streamlined development environment built on a platform-independent foundation. With a new patcher interface, searchable database of objects and examples, integrated documentation and new tutorials, the new Max user will find a smoother learning curve while experienced users will see improved productivity. These improvements to the Max/MSP/Jitter bundle are provided at a more affordable price of MSRP US $699, with academic discounts available.

CEO David Zicarelli remarked: “In almost twenty years of working on this software, there’s never been anything close to the transformation we’re undertaking. This is Max for the next twenty years.”

In addition to a modern infrastructure designed to support today’s multi-core processors and tomorrow’s operating systems, Max 5 features a stylized UI intended to aid in the expression and understanding of complex ideas. Each graphical element has a unique look that informs the user of its function, and the new presentation mode allows performance layouts that do not affect the programmer’s view of the patch. This new system provides a more efficient workflow, and offers a richer experience for both programmer and educator.

Availability

Max 5 is now available for download and purchase from cycling74.com and its worldwide distributors. Max/MSP costs US $495, the Max/MSP/Jitter bundle is US $699, and the Max 5 Upgrade is US $199. Discounts for student and educational institutions are available. Customers who purchased Max/MSP or Max/MSP/Jitter after October 1, 2007 are eligible for a free upgrade.

About Cycling ‘74

Cycling ‘74 creates software for the specialized needs of artists, educators, and researchers working with audio, visual media, and physical computing. Our visual programming tools Max, MSP, and Jitter serve as the creative engine behind thousands of innovative projects.

More information about Cycling ’74 and its entire product line available at http://www.cycling74.com.

Use this link to go to the original copy of this press release.

Max 5 has left the station at Cycling ‘74. It’s definitely worth checking out. I’ve had good time working on the development of the File Browser over the last months. But, I’ve also been working on Tap.Tools 3—and an early beta of that is now available too!

Tap.Tools 2 will not work with Max 5, so Tap.Tools 3 is required. The beta is available to anyone who is a registered user. If you aren’t a registered user, it’s easy to become one by heading on over to the Tap.Tools webpage ;-).

When anyone becomes a registered user of Tap.Tools, they are provided with a link and username/password to get to the extra goodies. Those pages for registered users is where the new Tap.Tools 3 Beta installers can be downloaded.

I also want to thank Jesse Allison (who sometimes writes on this blog) for his assistance, and also Dave Watson who has been a huge help getting us to the point where this beta is ready in time to go out with the Max 5 release. Hooray!

Video Artist – John Fillwalk and I have a virtual sonic art installation going up in Second Life at the Man a hatta Gallery

It’s a fanciful re-interpretation of a real life resonant pipe installation by Michael Pounds. I was able to help Michael in that with some programming and sensor implementation.

This virtual piece reacts visually and aurally to your avatar’s location, changing color, sound, light, etc. Sonically, each pillar plays rhythmic pulses that blend together into an aggregate texture. Combined with the 3d localization of sound in Second Life, the effect is pretty intense. I think it turned out well.

We’ve been able to show both installations side by side a number of times creating an interesting Second Life art imitates art imitates life paradigm. I’m working on a couple of projects that blur things a bit further where Second life participants create real life actions which are fed back to the second life viewers. It’s an interesting paradigm and I’m still trying to decide what aspects of it are poignant and how it could be used in a meaningful way.

Until then, here’s a shot of the installation. Be forewarned though that the sound and reactive nature of virtually traveling around in it makes the installation much cooler. So if you’re interested, head over to the gallery and check it out.

• http://www.bsu.edu/art/electricart/
• http://www.digitalintermedia.org/

It was great trip. On Thursday I was able to present some of my music using interactive systems I’ve worked on, and Friday I was able to talk a little bit about those systems. Specifically, I demo’d Max 5 and gave an introduction to Jamoma. I also had a fun little session in Keith Kothman’s Max class and showed the source patcher for a Hipno Plug-in to give them sense of how I structure things.

BSU’s facilities were amazing. I had heard about them, but descriptions just don’t do any justice to what actually exists. I still can’t believe how incredible the studios are in both quality and quantity. More people should be considering BSU as a top choice for working on a degree in digital arts.

On the weekend, I was able to spend some time working Jesse on some Electrotap activities. One part of that is an overhaul of our web resources, so look for some big changes to our site(s) over the next couple of months.

Alexander Refsum Jensenius has made his now-published dissertation available. Info here: http://www.arj.no/2008/01/10/paper-version-gone-electronic-version-ready/

It is a great read. Congratulations Alexander!

Last week we had an intensive development workshop for Jamoma in Brussels, Belgium. The workshop was hosted by iMAL under the direction of Yves Bernard.

During the week our ranking at SourceForge soared up to round 2600. This places Jamoma in the top 2% of all open source projects on SourceForge in terms of current development activity. Impressive!

• FunctionLib: a new library of mathematical functions that are accessible throughout the Jamoma system. A new jcom.map object uses this functionality to create a sort-of “super scale object” swiss-army-knife for patching.
• RampLib: the ramp library has been re-written so that the shape of the ramp is function from the FunctionLib, as defined by the user. The RampUnit then defines the mechanism for driving ramps. In addition to scheduler-based and queue-based RampUnits we also created an async unit, which is particularly well-suited to Jitter modules.
• DataspaceLib: In previous discussions this was the ‘UnitLib’ (a final name has not officially been settled). This is not yet implemented in parameters and messages, but we have a working prototype. It allows to say that a parameter or message belongs to a dataspace such as ‘gain’ and then that parameter or message will be able to handle input values in various formats (e.g. decibels, midi, linear, etc.).
• Refining the OpenSoundControl namespace. In general we are making the namespace more consistent and rational. We also discussed a variety of issues in terms of OSC syntax and began preparing some papers on the subject. Of particular focus is the use in Jamoma of the ’:’ character to denote that we are addressing the metadata of a node instead of the node value itself.
• Interpolation between presets in each module. Also a variety of other features and improvements to the preset system.
• Implemented setting and getting parameters of attributes of parameters (for example: the power parameter of the ramp/function attribute of the bitdepth module-parameter).
• Lots of bug fixes (and probably the introduction of some new bugs too ;-)
• Charting out future development: this includes support for node-based tree structures in both the namespace and the patcher messaging model. We also have more work to do on wildcard support in our OSC parsing, and a variety of other tasks.
• Implementation of an ‘Oblique Strategies’ component done by Alexander. Whenever we are in a bind for a decision to make, we now have the perfect component to provide the answer. “Do the words need changing?”
• New build script for the Mac that doesn’t produce miles of undigestible output in the terminal. When we left Brussels it was having some difficulty, but it should be in working order now.

Overall I think the workshop was a tremendous success. I though we would get a lot done, but we far exceeded my expectations. We also had a good public presentation on the final day (Saturday). After doing this I think it became more than abundantly clear that we should have done this at the beginning instead. Next time we should definitely take this into account. We got some very good feedback from the public presentation part, especially from Olivier Pasquet.

We also brought a number of people up to speed on the less flashy aspects of Jamoma, such as how to do your own build from the latest source. While this may sound dry, it actually will be a tremendous help in moving Jamoma forward by having more people spreading out the work, and allow us to do even more cool things. Hooray!

• http://www.arj.no/2007/12/10/jamoma-workshop-in-brussels/
• http://www.jamoma.org/jamoma_blog//54

I haven’t been feeling well the last few days, so what better way to spend some downtime than by watching the opening game of the World Series.

As a part of the pre-game pagentry the Star-Spangled Banner was played as arranged and conducted by John Williams for the occasion. No problem there. But his introduction was completely over the top. Among the various superlatives, he was referred to as The Epitomy of Our Culture.

Excuse me? Yes, he is famous. I understand that. But does that make you the epitomy of our culture? I know America only has a few hundred years of history, but is our culture that shallow? I should hope not!

Here is the Press Release for Max 5, just announced by Cycling ‘74 today: http://www.cycling74.com/story/2007/10/5/92326/1303

And here are some videos showing off a couple of the new features: http://www.cycling74.com/story/2007/10/5/91222/9559

The videos a re just a taste—they don’t even come close to the depth in the new version!