Latest Articles @ Cycling74

Between the tutorials, Jitter Recipes, and all of the example content, there are many Jitter patches floating around that each do one thing pretty well, but very few of them give a sense of how to scale up into a more complex system. Inspired by a recent patching project and Darwin Grosse's guitar processing articles, this series of tutorials will present a Jitter-based live video processing system using simple reusable modules, a consistent control interface, and optimized GPU-based processes wherever possible. The purpose of these articles is to provide an over-the-shoulder view of my creative process in building more complex Jitter patches for video processing.

Imagining New Environments with Max/MSP/Jitter

When you think of multimedia technology you think mostly about the technology. When you experience Dana Karwas' work you think of the rich organic layers of experience. Dana is working in the nebulous grey area between art and design. As a trained architect she is commissioned to do design works for giants such as Knoll, yet as an artist she creates amazingly tactile and organic performances like her work Party Dress and the installation Fursicle. Although based in architecture, Dana’s work uses high-end technology such as Max/MSP to explore social interaction and levels of identity within public space.

Introduction

In the last article, we added some basic tonal effects: distortion/overdrive and EQ/filtering. This time, we will expand our virtual effects rack to include both a phase shifter and a full-featured modulating digital delay. As we add these effects, you will begin to see why a DIY effects system can trump any commercial product.

This week the new Eowave OEM USB boards arrived at Cycling '74 HQ, and I was all too happy to give it a test drive. After having read the impressive spec sheets I was eager to see if the performance of the board lived up to all the promise. I quickly set to work putting it through its paces.

The third installment of Jitter Recipe Collection.

More snacks for the Patching Enthusiast! Stay tuned for new entries to your favorite cookbook.

These days it seems that everyone wants to be an artist so I found it refreshing to meet someone who see himself as an engineer that wanted to create tools for artists. Mattijs Kneppers spoke to me by phone from his home in Holland.

Now that I've got a nice generative patch and a way to hear it, I thought it'd be nice to make a few improvements and extensions that would let me begin to specify larger structures - to generate instructions to my generative patch, as it were. While I'm sure that the world is full of people who want ways to have the same thing happen again and again, I'd like to do this in ways that offer a little more freedom than that. This short tutorial will add a modest number of these kinds of changes.

Cycling '74 began developing and selling software officially in late 1997, and it was in 1998 that the company incorporated and hired its first few employees. To celebrate ten years of our continued existence, we decided to have an anniversary party. Since the employees and consultants are spread over a few continents, the timing had to be just right to include the most people possible. After AES in San Francisco this year seemed to be an opportune time, and following are a handful of photos and details from the event that you will hopefully find amusing. Other details will be kept to ourselves as a basic self-preservation effort.

We rolled out of bed and into our suits this weekend to attend the annual Audio Engineering Society (AES) conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, a mere 5 blocks from our SOMA office. We occupied a small piece of real estate in the shadow of the big Mackie booth, and directly across from a booth featuring big reels of magnetic tape.

Cycling '74's First Software User Conference

AES • San Francisco, CA • October 2, 2008--Cycling '74 today announced that its first user conference, Expo '74, will be held in San Francisco next April. The conference will include presentations, installations, workshops, and collaborative events covering the company's Max/MSP/Jitter software. Details will be outlined on the conference web site (expo74.net) in the coming months.

I'm pleased to announce that Cycling '74 will be hosting its first user conference next year, Expo '74. The conference will run three days from April 22-24, 2009 and will be held at the new (and intensely colored) Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco. I'd like to tell you why we decided to put on this event and what you can expect to happen if you attend.

I'm always curious about how someone's physical relationship with a guitar goes from the usual strumming to what some people call "tabletop guitar" - it seems like everyone has a different story about that. How'd it happen for you?

It was a gradual process - an acquired taste. I started with Rock music and classical guitar in the 70s, and played all sorts of Jazz in the 80s. After that I made a transition to music heavily influenced by the British Improvisers style.

Those of you who are paying close attention already know that Max 5 includes a database that manages all the files in the search path and makes handy things like the File Browser possible. To enable this functionality, we wrote an SQLite object to do all the important work under the hood. However, the SQLite object in Max isn't really something that you can type into an object box, and it doesn't come with any help files or documentation. In this article, we'll look at ways to interface with this mysterious "no box" object using JavaScript, so that you can build, query, and edit your own databases in Max.

Introduction

In the last article, we did a lot of setup - we got input/output handling in place, and added a compressor to the processing chain as an example of an “effect module”. In this article, we will continue adding effects, including a dual overdrive module and a three-stage EQ/Filter module. With these additions we will further explore Max 5’s user interface options, as well as taking a look at some of the “tweaks” that make Max/MSP functions a little more guitar-faithful.

Last week, Siggraph 2008 took over the Los Angeles Convention Center, and Cycling '74 was there to bravely represent Jitter to a huge crowd of CG enthusiasts, production professionals, and academics. For anyone who hasn't been to a Siggraph show, it is a huge, over-stimulating event for the computer graphics community, complete with academic talks, screenings, an exhibition hall, an art show, competitions, and a job fair.