Found on Facebook

Everybody who’s ever spent time on Facebook since the addition of Facebook groups knows that the signal-to-noise levels can vary widely, from “serial global giglist” to “self-promotional echo chamber” to "Thunderdome for arguments about (insert cultural minutiae here).”

Yes, of course there’s a Facebook group for Max/MSP, thanks for asking.

In fact, there's a Max for Live-centric version, a German language page, and even a page for a user who prefers to be referred to as Max MSP.

In the interest of aiming our loyal readers at eruptions of Maximalism on Facebook, I thought that – instead of recapping those recent announcements that haven’t made it only to the Max Forum and the occasional question you're likely to have seen before on the Forum, I’d spotlight one posting that really caught my attention.

While you do occasionally see an entertainingly shaped Max patch (by the way - I’m always surprised that there aren’t sites that celebrate really ugly Max patching.

Perhaps the invention of the presentation layer ended that as a possibility…), I was particularly surprised and pleased to see a patch whose interface was right out of The Book of Secrets, and it's my winner for the month - Giorgio Sancristoforo's The Arcane Pillar.

Despite my normal and boring Midwestern American demeanor, I’ve always had an interest in esoteric traditions – you know, secret sources of hidden knowledge. In the audio world, this extends from our fascination with EVP that gave us objects like this to the work of Andrew MacKenzie/the Hafler Trio (whose views are elucidated in ” ”””’ ” (being an exposition and elucidation of an eternal work by The Hafler Trio).

This baby, though, is all about the UI - the esoteric on display here is totally neo-Temple of Dendur, and I look forward to reading more about those elemental initialization routines. Like any good secret knowledge - the documentation is well... pretty nonexistant. Stay tuned, seekers!