A few weeks ago I developed a new piece called "Algorithmic Lines". It's a tribute to Wacław Szpakowski - a pioneer of abstractionism and pre-conditional arts. At the beginning of the twentieth century Szpakowski, developed impressive, highly intellectual artistic method, located between art and science, visual arts and music (Szpakowski was a violin player, and his visual works has been interpreted by some composers as a scores): his each drawing is just one continuous line (never intersecting and usually running from left to right), that creates stunning, quasi labyrinth-like, rhythmical form of visual and temporal character.

From a practical point of view "Algorithmic Lines" is a simple program nested on the webpage and allowing to create graphic patterns based on the rules derived by Szpakowski, originally developed for the exhibition "Wacław Szpakowski (1883-1973) The Rhythmical lines". While working on the piece I thought, that inside the Szpakowski's concepts exists a potential to use them as an interesting tools for musical composition (or others time-based digital arts). Therefore I added to the original code a simple mechanisms for communication with MaxMSP.

That allows you to use "Algorithmic Lines" as a little bit unusual step-sequencer running inside MaxMSP patches. On the project's webpage (link below) you will find ZIP archive with example patches demonstrating, how load the "Algorithmic Lines" into [jweb] object inside MaxMSP, control the program from the patch, and use data obtained from the program.

There is also an online version of the work and sample video on the project's webpage.

The "Algorithmic Lines" are written as a "sketch" in P5*js (http://p5js.org) programming environment. For more info about interfacing "patches" created in MaxMSP/Jitter and "sketches" written in P5*js check the "MaxMSP/Jitter and P5*js" solution: http://paweljanicki.jp/projects_maxandp5js_en.html

Because the program refers to the webpage your computer need to be connected to the Internet to run the examples.

video https://vimeo.com/172012849

project's webpage (online version, max patches to download) http://paweljanicki.jp/projects_algorithmiclines_en.html

"Wacław Szpakowski (1883-1973) The Rhythmical lines" exhibition http://www.wroclaw2016.pl/waclaw-szpakowski-1883-1973-the-rhythmical-lines