2Second(fuse) - 09

Cycling '74 Loves Cats
9/27/07 09:36 - permalink - email - category: MaxMSPJitter

The elves at Cycling '74 are running a text/video interview with me, using the Daevl.Plugs as its centerpiece. I created the Daevl.Plugs using Cycling's brilliant graphical programming environment, Max/MSP/Jitter, and released them on 31 October, 02006. It's been a rocket ride and appears headed to escape velocity.

The interview experience was wonderful. My interviewers, Media Maven Marsha Vdovin and Master Video Manipulator Ron MacLeod, also live in San Francisco and we moved every direction through this fair city during the course of filming, questioning, answering. Marsha and Ron were fabulous, even when they had me riding antique toy cars ten sizes too small. We spent time talking at Ritual Roasters, and I had a blast synth-ogling during the segment we filmed at Naut Humon's Asphodel compound. Mmmmm... Korg Mono/Poly.

Without Max/MSP/Jitter I would have stepped down a musical path very different from the one I'm on. Max/MSP/Jitter is deeply woven into almost every aspect of my creative flow, from raw sound design to chaotic experimentation to Monome interfacing, Droid-3 thought processes and Ableton Live mind-melds to the Daevl.Plugs, which I use every day. I accomplish easily with Max what would take months in other environments... if it could be done at all.

In the video image below I am demonstrating for Cycling staff how to properly whistle so only dogs, cats and teenagers can hear you. Correct intonation and resonance is very dependent on the shade of eyeshadow one wears.

Vlad shows Cycling '74 staff how to whistle... you know how to whistle, don't you?

The interview was more about me as an artist and Max user than about their products, so here are a few points I'd like to make about Cycling '74 which didn't come across:

- Cycling '74 themselves sell a line of plug-in products built in Max/MSP/Jitter: Pluggo, Mode, Hipno, Octirama and UpMix. The fact that I have created a set of plug-ins (the Daevl.Plugs) using their product (Max/MSP/Jitter) and now am able to sell my plug-ins with Cycling's blessing even though I'm overlapping some of their marketplace turf, is very cool... Scooby Doo cool.

- Cycling '74 not only permit me to sell these plug-ins, they do so without any royalty or restrictive licensing arrangements. Masters of the Universe cool.

- To ice the cake above, Cycling '74 interviewed me to promote the fact anyone (I'm looking at all of you with Max open behind your web browser right now) may create plug-ins in Max/MSP/Jitter and freely share or sell these creations in any way they wish. Transformers cool.

- Lastly, Cycling '74 loves cats. Cats show up everywhere: in documentation, in help patches, in the website, in application logos. You will see Maminka the Black Cat in the first image of the interview, telepathically prompting me during the tricky parts. She was even in the splash image Cycling ran on their home page, at right. She's purring on my lap right now, as I type, reminding me we need to get back to creating in Max.

Thundercats cool!

Seemingly Solid Things - Glenn Gibson @ GIVEN
9/25/07 21:00 - permalink - email - category: Look

Glenn Gibson's Seemingly Solid Things - wire sculpture and magickal worlds.

Sculptor Glenn Gibson recently asked me to create a one minute loop of atmospheric music for his site. One of Glenn's pieces graces my own wall, and now I've written music for it has shown itself as an emissary from Elsewhere which will never live hidden again.

Using the Monome 40h as melodic controller via Balron, my own tonal mapping MIDI app, I composed while watching images of Glenn's fantastical creatures float across the screen to better capture them in sound. Throughout the process I had increasing flashes of this place they hail from, this realm of mechanism and magick, flowing wires and imagination as life force.

Saturday evening I slipped out of deep hack mode long enough to attend the opening night reception for Glenn's wire sculpture show at GIVEN in the Castro. I found myself immersed in their world once again.

Friends and art aficionados turned out in force... all were enthralled, captivated, captured. Add dark chocolate deliciousness to the mix and an otherworldly time was had by everyone.

It seemed perfectly natural to find GIVEN occupies a space once Harvey Milk's camera shop. Glenn has opened the closet door for his creations: hunters, goddesses, acrobats, queens, lovers, world trees and devils. They're all coming out to claim our land as their own. I believe Harvey would absolutely approve.

I've posted a Flickr set of the evening for your own journey.

drmArm
9/12/07 01:26 - permalink - email - category: Gear

Seth Elalouf of Spacesuitgroup has released a fun and funky rhythm application with extra doses of beat-breaking grit and synthesis mojo. You can create crazy (good crazy!) bleep-laden rhythmic structures using just this application and a hardware controller. And when you're done, you'll find yourself setting up to do it again. And again. drmArm is addictive.

drmArm features:

- Five different building blocks for synthetic percussion: shaker, hit (aka snare), tine 1 & 2 (aka bloop and blip) and kick. Each have a graphic volume envelope and various other parameters for shaping the sound.

- x0x sequencing grid with MIDI triggerable sequence slots for shifting between various beats on the fly.

- An audio-chopping sample player for live rocking of sliced waveforms.

- Global effects: delay, filter, pan and a nice beat-breaker for triggering glitches and stuttering repetitions.

- MIDI learn for almost everything. drmArm was designed to be tweaked live with a controller.

- Beautifully minimal and concise PDF manual.

- ReWire, full screen mode, tap tempo and more.

I made the Spacerx source loop for Daevlmakr's current 1dot9 sample set using drmArm. I've been playing with it for a couple months now, and just can't stop. Created in Max/MSP then wrapped up as a stand-alone application, drmArm is hands-down one of the best Max built apps I've used.

drmArm is a free download at spacesuitgroup.com. If you dig it, grace them with some patronage and/or spread the word so more sweet tools like this one will fall out of the airlock.