Max is one of our foundation languages in the School of Arts Media and Engineering. It allows us to explore everything from projection mapping to NIME and hybrid performance. We use custom-built and existing interfaces – always with an eye to the future of musical performance, looking at questions of gesture, morphology and the audience-performer link.
Cosmoscope runs from two networked Macs – one controlling the audio and other, the lighting system. The Max-based audio operates on 12.4 or 8.2 discrete channels, depending on the site. The LED animation and display system is driven by Clojure and WebGL code, with some custom Max for networking to the audio engine.
I used some Computer Vision and an unusual way of treating the image, creating the illusion of a computer-interface scanning the planet Earth and old footage of human interaction with it.
The 58-speaker system is hidden and includes 32 amplifiers, 3 soundboards and one main computer running Max. Since the opening in 2010, artists have created works in which no equipment or technology would distract the visitor from a clear vision of the architecture.
Espongina is a digital instrument made of water and two carved wooden bowls. Waterproof piezos pick up vibrations from movement and physical contact with the wood. These vibrations are processed and mapped through Max to different parameters that generate and shape sounds throughout the performance.
