Video reactive music for modern dance...

Blake's icon

I'm an electronic music student at Bennington College who just started studying Max/MSP (and oh wow, I'm never turning back) and am currently composing an electroacoustic piece for a good friend's modern dance performance. I would really like to involve Max/MSP in this piece, making the music interactive with the dancers, changing the granular texture of the music with the dancer's movements. I know that similar things have been done with dance and Max/MSP, but I'm not sure whether Jitter is required to do something along these lines. Does anyone know of any available tutorials for this or patches I can tear apart? Would this ultimately be a project that would take a lot of time and dedication? I would need to have it finished by next month, and I also have tons of other work to finish as well... so I'm not sure whether or not this idea is a feasible concept given the circumstances. Anyway, thank all of you for your help!

LoneMonad aka don malone's icon
Blake's icon

Thank you so much, but this requires jitter which I don't have. Is this a possibility using only Max/MSP?

barry threw's icon

As long as you don't want to do video specific interaction you don't
need jitter.

For, generally, everything else Max is fine.

bt

On Mar 27, 2008, at 3:50 PM, Jonathan Shaw wrote:
>
> Thank you so much, but this requires jitter which I don't have. Is
> this a possibility using only Max/MSP?

barry threw
Media Art and Technology

San Francisco, CA
Work: 857-544-3967
Email: bthrew (at) gmail (dot) com
Web: www.barrythrew.com

Jean-Francois Charles's icon

Of course. A couple of options:
- sensors, on the body of the dancers. With or without wires, your choice
(according to the choreography ;-)
- sensors, distant from the bodies (IR, ultra-sonic, movement detection,
etc.)
- or the best if you don't want to buy any kind of gear: have a "human
sensor". I mean a guy looking at the dancers, and moving the faders of your
max patch accordingly. Great reactivity is possible.

Note that you don't even need Max/MSP for that.

> Thank you so much, but this requires jitter which I don't have. Is this a
> possibility using only Max/MSP?

Thinksamuel's icon

here is the website of my teacher. He focuses mainly on interactive dance and made his PHD on it
http://homepage.mac.com/carlosguedes/FileSharing4.html

kp*'s icon
mzed's icon

Quote: Blake wrote on Thu, 27 March 2008 14:36
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I would really like to involve Max/MSP in this piece, making the music interactive with the dancers, changing the granular texture of the music with the dancer's movements. I know that similar things have been done with dance and Max/MSP, but I'm not sure whether Jitter is required to do something along these lines.
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And I humbly submit some of my own work:
http://homepage.mac.com/mikezed//technology/knock.html