An Evening With William Shatner Asterisk (and Max)

Our friend and co-worker, Rob Ramirez, shared some recent work with us and provided details on how he used Max. The best part is that you don't have to be a fan of Star Trek... not that I've ever met someone like that.

The show was built entirely with Max from start to finish. We began by collecting clips of Shatner as Kirk from the three seasons of Star Trek, and building a database using Max's sqlite implementation. From this, we created a dictionary of possible words to hand off to our writer. However we quickly realized that any word was possible to create by combining syllables from other words (eg interchangeable created from intercraft + change + considerable). After receiving the completed text, I created a sequencing patch that took the script as input and gave me all the possible variations for each of the words in the text. I could then adjust the starting and ending positions, and overlap between words to fine-tune the rhythm and tone of his speech. - Rob

• New York Times review

• SF Bay Guardian review

• Show's Facebook page