MaxReel: Performing Arts with Max/MSP/Jitter

I: What is Max/MSP/Jitter?

Max is a Macintosh-based graphical programming environment for music and media applications. Originally developed by Miller Puckette at IRCAM, Paris, in the 1980s, Max is currently published by the San Fransisco-based Cycling '74(David Zicarelli, President).

Here's what Cycling '74 says about Max:

"One of the main goals of Max is to let you control anything with anything. For instance, you can use MIDI to control a laserdisk player, or mouse movement to control the playback of a Quicktime movie... Max excels as a way to customize the logic of building an interface to interactive media. It lets you schedule events with millisecond accuracy, create complex mappings for incoming data, and run a large number of operations in parallel."

With the addition of MSP, Max can generate audio on its own, without the aid of external synthesizers. Jitter is a set of extensions that allows Max to handle video and 3D graphics. Taken altogether, Max/MSP/Jitter is the most powerful and versatile software suite available for the development of innovative custom-designed audio/video interfaces.

II: What are artists doing today with this techology?

Douglas Henderson / Andrea Parkins / Joseph Reinsel

MAX/MSP/JITTER FAIR at Harvestworks 2003

Douglas Henderson has composed music for numerous dance works, often involving extensive speaker installations and received the 1998 New York Dance and Performance Award ("Bessie") for his collaboration with composer Guy Yarden and choreographer MIa Lawrence in "Kriyas."
Andrea Parkins is a musician whose works have appeared at the Whitney Museum, the Knitting Factory, P.S.1, and has toured the U.S. and Europe.
Joseph Reinsel has composed digital audio-visual works of art that have been showen and performed in the U.K., Los Angeles, New York, Boston, and Baltimore. Reinsel performed "Loose Tessellations," a piece that is the second part of two created as multi-media compostions.

Joseph Reinsel
Henderson, Parkins, Reinsel

Dafna Naphtali is an active singer, sound artist, and composer with an eclectic musical background in folk, gospel, rock, and jazz. She performs and composes, using her own custom Max/MSP programs for sound processing of her voice and other instruments. Recent projects include {kaleid-o-phone}, Mechanique(s), and the new release on Tzadik What is it Like to be a Bat? (partly commissioned by Harvestworks). Dafna Naphtali has worked at Harvestworks as a teacher and engineer since 1996.


Engine27	mechanique(s)	the ha!

Matthew Ostrowski is a composer, performer, and installation artist working primarily with electronics and sound. His piece, Draden, involves the use of amplified and processed fluorescent light bulbs, using realtime digital processing and a custom-built MIDI-to-lightbulb controller built by James Lo.Matthew Ostrowski is an engineer at Harvestworks.

Draden-
The Kitchen, 2002

Eric Singer is co-founder of New York's Madagascar Institute. Projects include Max/MSP-based instruments such as the Sonic Banana and MIDI Glove, a Max video-tracker called Cyclops, and a giant pyrotechnic memory game called The Flaming Simon. With Harvestworks, he has developed LEMUR, The League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots.


Sonic Banana- Harmonica	MIDI Glove- Air Drums	Cyclops- Multi-Drums	Flaming Simon	Mari Kimura and the Guitarbot

Curtis Bahn teaches Harvestworks' Sensor Building For Max class. Students build and program several circuits and use them to control dynamic parameters of Max/MSP synthesis and signal processing algorithms.


SBass	Sensor Building Class (slideshow)

Toni Dove is an artist who works primarily with electronic media, including virtual reality and interactive video laser disk installations that engage viewers in responsive and immersive narrative environments. Sally or the Bubble Burst is an interactive DVD-ROM in which the viewer uses a combination of mouse rollover and a USB microphone to talk with Sally in an interactive conversation that incorporates speech recognition and synthesis. Toni Dove is a member of the Harvestworks Board of Directors.

Sally or the Bubble Burst

Bruce Gremo specializes in writing Max/MSP applications to enable acoustic soloists to control computer generated sounds using only musical means. His performances frequently take the form of highly structured improvisations. He often combines his aural work with the video art of Rene Beekman. Significant recent collaborations between the two include Route/Mutable Surface, Butterfly Dreams, and, with Harvestworks, Talkative Gods.


Route- 13.1	Route- 14.1	Mutable Surface- "drawn with a very fine camel hair brush"	Mutable Suface- "that from a long way off looks like flies"

Shadow Puppies is the experimental guitar trio of Nick Didkovsky (guitar with JSyn/JMSL), Hans Tammen (guitar with Max/MSP), and Kurt Ralske (video with Max/MSP/nato/Jitter). All three teach or work at Harvestworks.


Performance- Excerpt 1	Performance- Excerpt 2

Georg Hajdu has created dozens of works for Max/MSP since 1990, including work in microtonal composition and with neural networks. He is founder of WireWorks, an ensemble dedicated to interactive computer music with acoustic instruments and voices. Recently, he has created Quintet.net, an internet performance environment that enables up to five performers to collaboratively play music over the internet from different geographical locations. Harvestworks has participated in two such concerts, in 2001 and 2002. [Orpheus Crystal]


Quintet.net	Orpheus Crystal

Pamela Z is a San Francisco-based composer/performer and audio artist who works primarily with voice and live Max/MSP-based processing and sampling. She makes use of a MIDI controller called the BodySynth which allows her to manipulate sound with physical gestures. She was also an Artist in Residence at Harvestworks in 2001.

Performance-
Harvestworks, 3/4/02

Laetitia Sonami is a composer, performer and sound installation artist who designs and builds her own instruments. She developed and performs with The Lady's Glove, a glove-based MIDI controller that, with Max, allows her to control light and sound through the movements of her hand. She was also an Artist in Residence at Harvestworks in 2001.

Lady's Glove-
Demonstration

Ricardo Arias has developed the Interactive Mapophone, a magnetic playback head detached from its usual fixed position on a tape recorder and attached to a new housing. The mouse can then be moved over a pad of magnetic audio tape to generate audio and MIDI signals through Max/MSP.
Ricardo was a Artist-in-Residence 1n 1999.


Mapophone View 1	Mapophone View 2