Tom Hall

Hey, John. You're pretty familiar to a lot of Max users who have been around a number of years, but can you let us know how you got into Max and learned about it? Can you remember?

Yeah. Wow... It must have been when I started doing concerts because I've got this really funny picture, which I’ll try and send to you, which is me doing my first gig and it's in completely empty room in a pub with no stage and just a mattress on the floor. And then, there's like a piece of wood that's about maybe 12 feet long. It's got one string on it. There's a mixer, there are about two mini-disk players. Then, there's a zoom effect rack from my studio? And, that was it. That was the gig.

And I thought, oh wow, there must be a way of performing which doesn't rely on just playing back stuff from mini disks. And, I was playing shows in Germany at the time. And, I actually think I probably came into the very first incarnation of the Ableton offices when Ableton was just starting out. Because people were just kind of thinking about Live as a way of performing... I don't know, I think I probably found Max before Live existed actually, to be honest, but I remember downloading a demo of it. Not getting into it at all and then suddenly finding a project that needed Max and then I couldn't afford it. So I ended up with this terrible cracked copy.

At the time, I'd had some like bad mental health thing. I'd had this really bad agoraphobia, so I couldn't go out. And, I basically used a year just to learn Max.

Yeah. If you can't go out, you might as well do something useful like learn Max.

And then, yeah, that was like it opened up so much stuff. Yeah, I started making my own software and I made a bit of software that I'm still working on today. 2006, I think it was.

Yeah. I've made little bits of little patches that are still just really useful today.

I was going to ask about Forester. Because, the first time you ever came on my radar I think must have been 2005, somewhere around then, I discovered Forester and I was on my Max journey and Forester fast-forwarded me in a way in that I was, holy crap, this is kind of in ways what I've been trying to build. If anything, maybe it stunted my Max learning because I just got lazy and used Forester for a whole minute there. 

There's definitely some magic about that. And, I think you might find it amusing if I tell you how I made it.

I think it was in about 2005 that I started to make it and I was doing this album called The Forest And The Sea, which got released in 2006. And, I'd been recording in loads of forests and I'd noticed that because of the trees, sound doesn't travel as far. Say, you move through the forest, you can hear stuff that's happening in a more isolated way. And so, those, I imagine, sound sources and their spheres of influence, I thought, oh, this would make a great interface. I then over the next few months became very intimately acquainted with the LCD object and how to... and, oh yeah, I had to go back to a lot of high school math business.

Because there were no objects. Now, there's an object in Max called Nodes, I think it's called. And, it basically does exactly what I programmed Forester to do. I honestly think I spent months making just the interface and then I made the sound part at the end and it took about four hours to do the sound bit.

Yeah. But in my head, it was like, oh yeah, as long as the way you interface with this thing feels like magic, then the sound will too. I think I got quite lucky because actually over the years I've found that if you don't get the right sound for a physical instrument or a GUI, then it doesn't work.

That's really interesting, John, I hadn't thought about that, but there was somethingfound very attractive about Forester. Firstly, I love forests. I grew up in Tasmania and now, thankfully, now live in a forest again and I find them calming and just an absolute joy to be inside of and around. And, I found the GUI very attractive. It's so great you've shared this because just being in it was fun before you even got to the cool sounds. 

It's quite an unusual GUI, especially for the time, I think, Maybe there was stuff like that, but I hadn't seen anything like it. And then, also what's nice about it is that the sounds are essentially 50% of what you put into it. So, it doesn't make any sound on its own until you start putting your field recordings or your studio recordings or whatever into it.

There was something about it that had this fluidity to it. This natural, obviously environmental quality, and it almost had this kind of semi-modular quality in the way the trees... You could clump the trees and you could walk through the forest. Yeah, it's a good point. Other than obviously just Max in itself or Reaktor or whatever, there weren’t a lot of modular electronic software GUIs that I recall at that time.

Who was the guy, Ross Bencina from Melbourne, Australia. He developed Audio Mulch. That did have a node-like interface for one of his granular effects, I think.

Yeah. I definitely used that a little bit.

It was really inspiring. It's so weird because I never knew how that thing worked, I think. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. It had its own space. It had modules and object-like things, but then it did some unique stuff that I don't think anything else did at the time.

I wanted to take a bit of that. I wanted Forester to be a little bit mysterious. You can't just put in, I want 500ms delay on the left and 250ms delay on the right. It's not that kind of software. It's kind of, you touch it and then see what happens.

That's definitely important. There was this autonomy to it as well like once you set it off on its path, it was away. I think that's what really attracted me to it because, yeah, I was trying hard to make generative stuff and had somewhat succeeded, but it certainly wasn't as versatile as Forester. And so, it was just fascinating to me to put this stuff in and be continually surprised at what came back at me.

It's interesting. It's like generative music in a way that what comes back is not necessarily cool music, but it's definitely stuff that you can find places for and use. I found that lots of people used it for film soundtracks.

And I can't remember who it was, but I think it must have been a couple of years after Forester was released the first time so it must have been about 2008, someone wrote to me from a record label saying that 90% of the demos just sound like they're just sounds thrown into Forester.

There are people that have emailed me at least once or twice a year between 2006 and 2022, when's the next version coming out?

I guess that was the impetus, right, for recreating it. It was like having some time and space and some distance from the first version, right?

For me, I can only do stuff when I really feel it, when I'm really feeling that I'm fascinated or excited about it. And, I just spent ages making this master, do everything patch inspired a bit by chatting with James Holden, actually.

James released my last record Yes! Come Parade With Us. So we would communicate on a fairly regular basis. He was building this really amazing patch and occasionally he'd be like, how do you get this to work? And I'd be like, oh, I'm not sure, maybe try this. And sometimes I'd be able to help, other times I'd just be like, wow, this is crazy, what you're trying to do, but carry on.

Yeah, you should speak to him, he's got... He's made an incredible kind of 3D GUI for his modular and music set up.

I've seen a little bit of it on Twitter. He shares little glimpses into it and yeah, you're right, he's someone I need to talk to and catch up with. I first saw him at Loop, actually. 

I had my first decent chat with him at Loop, actually.

Oh, was that the same one we were at in 2015? 

Yeah. He's really good at Gen. He's got this kind of brain that really works well for Gen, but yeah, he's got a very interesting way of working and he's very committed to making it happen in Max, which it's quite inspiring. So I think I'd been inspired to try and do a similar thing.

And I thought about Forester and I thought, well, maybe I'll try that again. So yeah, I just got excited about having a really flexible architecture for sound. But, the first version of Forester has got fixed architecture.

So all the trees are mapped to delay times and amplitudes and drives and stuff, but it's basically got its sound and you can explore it to a certain extent, but the new Forester has got loads of different modules and it's just got endless kind of possibilities. And yeah, I've done a few gigs with it and it's like, wow, it's constantly surprising me, which is pretty exciting.

Yeah. So, in some ways, then the first Forester was an instrument and then the Forester 2 is more like a collection of instruments, in a sense. 

So you can use it in a lot of different ways. You can be working on a track and think, "Oh, I want to have this particular aspect of it process" and it can do that really easily. But then a month ago, I played with a pianist friend of mine Michael Wollny in Austria and for the first 20 minutes of the gig, he and the saxophonist played and I just recorded chunks. I just sat there on this stage recording little chunks. And then, after 20 minutes I started playing with them and it was just, yeah, this is a great use of Forester.

There is  a video. It's a full gig. It's about 90 minutes of stuff, but yeah, a really interesting way of working. It's one of those things where you've already got a framework to play with. And if you want an extra thing you could, I can just write another little bit to that patch. I don't have to make all the interfaces and what have you.

I don't remember exactly personally when I hit that point with my own Max patching, but it's a beautiful thing when you're able to create a framework for your own creativity.

Yeah. Definitely. It's worth the price of admission, isn't it if something just gives you some little gem that you weren't expecting.

It's a really nice thing. And, a lot of us spend a lot of time working or playing or both on our own. One of the things that I always fancied was making myself a little electronic band, you know? So there's a kind of aspect to that. Especially where Forester moves around of its own accord, there's a kind of element of it just doing its thing while you do your thing.

It really is a performance tool the laptop, a symbiotic relationship between you and the computer/program you’ve developed then?

Yeah. I think, personally I was doing gigs when I'm sure you were when laptops started being used on a regular basis. And, I was pretty quickly dissatisfied with the way that people were generally just sitting behind them, looking at them.

And so, pretty quickly, my sort of technique to help people understand was that I would show a sound going in by actually making that sound in real time and then be entertained by how it was going back out again, which is something the new version of Forester does really well. You can just record really quickly into buffers while it's actually treating that buffer. But yeah, people find all sorts of marvelous ways of connecting with the audience or not at all. There were various acts that just sit behind the laptop and that was it. 

This reminds me of the first time I ever saw you play, John. 

We were on the same bill in Australia at The Powerhouse Museum. 2007 I think?

Okay. So you were playing, you sat on a chair, you had the laptop and you were doing what you just explained, you were showing people the sound going in. You had an acoustic guitar with you. 

Yeah. You were playing and it was all going good and then the laptop crashed.

And you had to reboot and you told jokes. You were telling jokes to the audience and it happened twice during your performance. And it was like, wow, that was amazing. You just kept the candor in the whole set and you totally won the audience over. Because, 2007, I think, this was, laptops, they took a little too long to boot back up. There was an awkward distance between the last sound and when you'd finally get back to making sound.

Yeah. Because it would take a couple of minutes to boot back up. And then, you got to load your Max patch.

Then, you've got to see if the audio interface is still there and all that business. That tour was fairly insane. I think we were probably very tired.

And, we'd driven the whole length of Australia in a '76 Mercedes.

So, it was kind of fairly insane. And in fact, Sebastian Roux was in the back of the Mercedes with me.

Do you remember an artist called Sanso-Xtro?

Yeah. So that's Melissa Agate and she released, I think one or two electronic albums. Really beautiful music, really quite an individual voice. And I'm not sure if she's still doing music or not.

She and possibly her partner for a bit drove and I think we must have annoyed them so much because we were so bored in the back of the car. We were being so stupid. She probably got driven to distraction, but it was amazing. Which is really nice. And, we ended up in Adelaide.

Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Weren’t they from Adelaide?

Melissa, she lived in Adelaide at the time.

But we started in Perth, so we went to Perth and we did a gig there and then flew over and then drove down from Brisbane.

And then, we went to Canberra. Various places. It was fun. 

Yeah. That drive down the east coast of Australia is one of my favorite drives to do in the world. 

There's big objects, aren't there on the road?

That's right. The big shrimp, the big banana, the big sheep. Yeah, that's a real Australian thing, for sure. Tourist stop to get a pictures.

Just abandoned beaches as well. That are just miles and miles of the most perfect sand.

Exactly, I'm obviously biased, but I think Australia's probably got some of the best beaches in the world. Just due to the low population, they're just relatively perfect and clean, fresh. 

It was amazing. I think it was probably one of my first gigs outside Europe, so it was really exciting and I think it was all organized by a guy that had wanted to put me on at a festival in Newcastle and I said, oh, well, it'd be cool to do a few more gigs.

Was that TiNA, This is Not Art festival? 

Argh Newcastle, there was a whole industrial workforce there and steel works and everything. And all of that got shut down, I think in the 90s sometime, but it kind of decimated Newcastle for a while. Half the community left and TiNA had basically just took over all of these warehouses and it was a little bit like Detroit. It was just lot of redundant industrial spaces. And, TiNA festival ran for a number of years. It was able to run on a shoestring budget because it literally could just get the keys to these places for basically free and put on these awesome shows and art. Luckily I got to go and play at TiNA and be part of that. It was super special and I don't think it's happening anymore, unfortunately. 

It was definitely coming out of hard times, but there was something kind of quite edgy about these weird events happening and maybe people living in that area, like what the fuck is going on here? 

Leafcutter John presented his fantastic Light Sensitive Instrument at the Max Connect event at Loop, Berlin.

Leafcutter John - LDR/Arduino Instrument at Max Connect, Loop Berlin

August_Leafcutter_John.jpg

If you don’t know Leafcutter John’s recordings or his software (the astounding playground that is his Forester patch) work already, you’re in for a treat. The recent release of version 2 of his Forester Max patch seemed like the perfect time to catch up with him.

an-interview-with-leafcutter-john

An Interview with Leafcutter John

In addition to all of the audio and music features, Max 8.3 included an Easter egg in the form of our newest experimental Jitter object: jit.gl.pbr. This object provides a new way to define and render materials for 3D geometry - using Physically Based Rendering -  and can be thought of as an alternate version of jit.gl.material. You might have heard about Physically Based Rendering (PBR) in the context of video games or other kinds of special effects production where photorealism is important. If you haven't heard the term before, the purpose behind PBR is to define the surfaces of 3D geometry in a way that mimics the natural physics of light and how it reflects from surfaces. In short, it makes geometry look more realistic.

PBR has gained in industry popularity since a 2004 book by Matt Pharr, Greg Humphreys, and Pat Hanrahan was first published, and it has since become the industry standard workflow for creating materials in both realtime and post-production work. Now you can also find many websites that offer a wide range of high quality, free-to-use PBR materials representing everything from natural surfaces like wood or metal to things like alien slime. For Jitter users, the great benefit of this new object will be experimenting with adding photorealistic and unusual materials to your generative 3D work to open up a new kind of visual outcome.

PBR was brought to life by our Jitter visuals team, which recently added Matteo Marson as a contributor. Tom Hall caught up with him recently, and was able to learn a little bit more about Matteo's love of Max, Jitter and Physically Based Rendering techniques:

Matteo: I started using Max back when I attended the Conservatory of Music in Turin (Italy). I was lucky enough to meet incredible teachers during my course of study, and in particular, the Jedi masters Andrea Agostini and Daniele Ghisi (the guys behind Bach, Cage, and Dada packages), who taught me everything I know about Max. I began using Max (6) for audio programming and musical scoring, but I always wondered what I could do with those weird green patch cords. So, out of curiosity, when I felt like my Max programming skills were solid enough, I started to study Jitter on my own. Since then, Jitter has always been part of my toolbox and has heavily influenced the direction of my artistic productions (in a positive way).

Max is a giant freaking monster! It’s always challenging for me to explain to someone else what Max is and what you can do with it because the answer is “everything,” which sounds a bit like a lie. But if you want to track the volcanic activity on a Philippine island, generate a score in real-time out of those values for a string quartet that plays in Canada, which controls an audio-reactive fireworks show in Tokyo; you can do that! You will not find an object called "jit.volcano2fireworks", of course, but Max is a Turing-complete multi-level programming environment that lets you create whatever you need - through standard programming and Gen, using Javascript, Lua, and GLSL integration or even programing your objects in C. I feel like Max isn’t software but rather a playground that lets you create whatever you want, as long as you can express the processes that are involved in algorithmic form. So, I do my stuff in Max because it’s a synonym for artistic freedom for me, and it’s usually the shortest path from the idea to its realization.

What do you find particularly advantageous about the generation of video graphics within the framework of Jitter?

One of the first things that come to my mind when I think about the advantages of using Jitter is ‘integration.’ To make an example: I’m a member of the artistic collective SPIME.IM. There are usually two or three people on stage during our live shows, each one playing with his computer. We use Jitter as our primary tool for generating video graphics in real-time, and each of us controls or affects the visuals, one way or another. So Jitter is totally and easily integrated into the workflow: we generate the control signals via Max 4 Live devices and send them to the Jitter machines through MIDI and OSC connections. This degree of integration lets us create a strong coherence between the audio and the video graphics. 

It seems that you've been pursuing an interest in Physics-Based Rendering (PBR) for a while, what is it about PBR that you're drawn to?

I’ve always been fascinated by physical-based algorithms. Take physical modeling synthesis, for example; it can generate a massive variety of timbres and musical expressions, exposing only a few significant control parameters. Physics-Based Rendering does the same in the video graphics realm. I find this approach to the generation of images extremely interesting because you do not define the final result. Still, instead, you describe the behavior, and the resulting interaction of the light with the objects in the scene is an emergent property. This reflects in a straightforward way to simulate many different materials (you just care about the color, roughness, and metalness), and the results are always “believable.”

Other than PBR, what is your favorite new feature about Max 8.3?

Max 8.3 update is simply huge! It’s pretty hard to pick just one thing I love about it. I’m a sample-accuracy maniac; therefore, all the new objects that allow audio-driven solutions are early Christmas gifts for me. But if I have to pick just one thing, I’d say that what had the most significant impact on the way I do things in Max (being a Jitter guy) is the support for attrui presets (finally!).

Thanks Matteo for helping us get an introduction into this world of Physically Based Rendering and high-quality rendering options. If you want to get further blown away, check out Matteo's Patreon-based Max tutorials found at https://www.patreon.com/mmmt, where you'll be able to dig even further into the rendering wonderland.

And if you'd like to find out what all the Jitter team has put into the 8.3 release, here's a video they put together for just that purpose:

In this video I have two very special guests with me: Rob Ramirez and Matteo Marson from the C74 Jitter Team. 

Together we take an in-depth look at the new Jitter features introduced with the Max 8.3 version update, and Matteo gives us a sneak peak of some features which are not yet available. 

The features shown include the new object [ jit.gl.pbr ] for extremely good looking rendering, and the "mask mode" for [ jit.gl.meshwarp ]. 

Enjoy! 

Here you can find all my video tutorials ► https://www.federicofoderaro.com/videoTutorials.html

Follow Amazing Max Stuff on Instagram ►https://www.instagram.com/amazingmaxstuff/

Join my Patreon to support Amazing Max Stuff and get lots of Patches for the Visuals ► https://www.patreon.com/mediacoding

Take a look at my shared patches ► https://www.federicofoderaro.com/patches.html

#maxmsp #cycling74 #jitter #Max 8.3 #PBR

Max/MSP Jitter 8.3 Features Walkthrough | Special Guests Rob Ramirez & Matteo Marson

Jitter_PBR.png

We recently caught up with our new Jitter visuals team contributor Matteo Marson for a look at physically based rendering techniques, and then had a chat with the whole team about new features in 8.3.

diving-deeper-into-the-max-8-3-release-with-jitter

Diving Deeper into the Max 8.3 Release with Jitter

Darwin Grosse

To celebrate the release of Max 8.3, we contacted artist/technologist/educator Garth Paine and asked him to review the new features, find some objects that intrigued him, then create example patches that used those objects in an interesting way. In the first example patch, Garth put the new mc.generate~ to the test, then taking advantage of mc.teeth~ for some effects, giving us a curious variety of sounds from a single patch.

We spoke with Garth about this patch, and here’s what he had to say:

Darwin: Hi Garth - thanks for working on this project! Let's start by looking at the "Paine_Generate" patch. It has a sequencer and it's got a bunch of other functional modules, and it can range from a very tight sequenced sound to a very spacey sound. What is the Max tooling that you used in order to make this happen?

Garth: The focus here was really on the mc.generate~ object. One of the things that I hadn't previously gotten my head around was the way that multichannel objects really kind of act as a poly~ object on steroids. So, in this case, it's a way of wrapping up multiple instances of a particular generator.

I really enjoyed the way that the mc.generate~ then would feed any set of generated numbers - in this case frequencies - into mc.cycle~. But I also wanted to have some control over that; that's why I introduced the sequencer into that patch - so that I could set pitch ranges and add a kind of melodic structure to what was going on. That structure really opens up a second option, which is to use the mc.phasor~ to drive the triggering of the mc.generate~  object and to be able to set up deviations around both the triggering and the upper range of the frequency content.

That system generates an amazing range of sounds; depending on the rate of triggering and the deviations that are set up, you really get some extraordinary timbres coming out of there. And then, I put the multichannel mc.teeth~ in there, because I felt like it would be good to take the raw material and just expand it a tiny bit more. mc.teeth~ really allows us to get into these highly modulated comb filtering environments and to create completely crazy feedback.

Right. One of the things that I liked about this patch is the new approach: people typically create cloudy instances of the mc.cycle~ using the deviate messages. But this use of mc.generate~ actually allowed you use a number of different modulation devices, including the sequencer and including a sort of LFO. It feels like controlled-yet-chaotic behavior.

Right, absolutely. I think that's really one of the points of mc.generate~ is that you can have a lot more control, and as you point out, you can have control on multiple levels. So what I tried doing was setting up a kind of backbone with the pitch set that's in the sequencer. And then you can really modulate on top of that, but you've kind of got something to build from.

And the mc objects all the way through that patch just make it so easy to wrap all those things up and send all those channels through to mix down at the end.

Now, this patch contains a number of snapshots. Is there one of those snapshots that represents, for you, the canonical sound of the patch? And what is it about that preset that makes it so interesting to you?

I think, for me, my favorite one is the "Creep Chime," as I called it. It's really slow, but you can really hear the evolving timbres that are in there. I think that's my favorite. And once you've hit that snapshot, you can select different effects presets on the mc.teeth~, which will really change the sound a lot.

If I could select another one, it would be the last one: "Bounce Space." They're both slower, but you really get this sense of the timbre filling into the space.

Actually, I like all the others, too. They kind of demonstrate the control and the rhythmic structure that we get from the sequencer.

This is especially true with the presets named "Nervous" - they really do live up to their names! It's interesting that for doing the effects, you chose to use mc.teeth~. This is not something I've played around with a lot. Is comb filter manipulation a typical tool in your creations?

It's something that I really love, because of the kind of phase correlation that you can get across the comb filter. So like any other tool, I guess, I use it sparingly and when it seems that it's appropriate, but what I think it does here is it just kind of adds a big dose of “fertilizer” to the (sonic) garden!

Suddenly the whole timbral space just kind of blooms into a much bigger space. I think comb filtering is exactly perfect for this kind of thing, because we have so much functionality available. The feedforward and the feedback controls within that comb filter can completely transform sound that's coming out of it.

Learn More: See all the articles in this series 

Garth_Paine_patch.png

Garth Paine dives into some of the new functions of Max 8.3 and provides some playable patches that show off his unique voicing. Part one of three.

paine-patches-for-max-8-3-part-1

Garth Paine Patches for Max 8.3, Part 1

Gregory Taylor

I do. In particular, I discovered that there was this amazing festival held in San Francisco - the Algorithmic Art Assembly. Unlike a lot of what was out there, it brought an astounding array of artists whose work fit under the general category of "algorithmic" together in one place for a collection of broad-ranging performances and talks and opportunities to hang out that I found really exciting. My colleague Tom Hall attended and brought back an on-site report that really whetted my appetite for more. In addition, my colleague Darwin Grosse's Art + Music + Technology podcast featured a chat with the Assembly's organizer Thorsten Sideboard. So I made a note in my calendar to spend some time daring to come up with work to submit or - at the very list - to be in the audience for the next one....

And then, IT happened. Everything stopped and locked down, and I wondered if I'd ever have the chance to attend something that cool again.

One of the things that folks in the algorithmic art and creative coding communities talk about is the idea of emergence. I once thought of that as an abstract term, but I increasingly find myself using the word in real life to describe what to do as things slowly return to the new "normal." I started looking for events starting up again, and was really stoked to hear that — after a two-year hiatus — the Algorithmic Art Assembly was back. As luck would have it, I'm not able to make the journey this time out, but I didn't want to pass up the chance to contact Thorsten and find out what's going on and coming up this time around. Thorsten was kind enough to sit down and clue me in on what was and what is to come. To my surprise and delight, it's going to be possible to buy tickets that provide streaming access for those of us who cannot make it!

Gregory: Welcome back! I’m wondering how the re-emergence of the Algorithmic Art Assembly is going. You’ve faced two postponements in a row for ‘20 and ‘21. How is the upcoming Assembly different from what we might have seen had COVID never happened?

Thorsten: Hi! A lot of the 2022 lineup is carried over from the postponed 2020 version, with some amendments. A few people couldn’t make it, but I brought in a few new exciting speakers and performers, plus  2 new remote collaborations that wouldn’t have happened without COVID. On top of the amazing lineup we had, such as Myriam Bleau, Richard Devine, Ellen Phan, I’ve been able to add Lauren Sarah Hayes, RM Francis and John Bischoff, all of whom I’m super excited for!

Of the remote collaborations, one of them is a work by Mark Fell, Rian Treanor and James Bradbury, building upon work they did for the No Bounds festival last year. At the beginning of the pandemic Mark and Rian began playing with a Max/MSP patch for remote collaboration. They got some remote friends to try setting it up, and after fighting a little with remote troubleshooting issues, ensuring all components were installed and setup, they thought how much easier it would be for a web native setup. They got together with developer, James Bradbury, who helped them realize their Max patch in WebAudio. It works through a central hosted site, and several participants can go to the same virtual room and collaborate through a single interface. Each person sees and hears the others movements and changes, with the audio being output to all participants. For Algorithmic Art Assembly, they’re building upon the audio engine they built and unveiling a new patch they’ve built with it. Mark and Rian approached me about doing a commission based on that work.  They’ll be talking about that on the Friday afternoon of the festival, doing a live Q&A from the UK hosted by Mark Weidenbaum, then they’ll be performing a live set using the patch.

Somewhat similar, we’ll have a portion of Saturday afternoon broadcast live from Barcelona, hosted by Jack Armitage / Lil Data and Thor Magnusson of the Intelligent Instruments Lab. It’ll be an awesome extravaganza, our first international node, a collab with <deep breath> Hangar, TOPLAP Barcelona, Mutek ES, On-the-fly.  They’ll take a feed from San Francisco to hear some of our Saturday morning speakers, and then they’ll host for a while, with Lil Data performing alongside local artists Eloi el bon noi, Alicia Champlin and QBRNTHSS. Mark and Rian will also present to Barcelona, so we’ll have this wonderful three-way connection through SF -> Sheffield ->  Barcelona, tied together through Mark, Rian and James’ patch!

We also have a new opening Thursday night, which will start with a local San Francisco feel - two opening talks by local internet artists, Rich DDT and d0n.xyz, then an evening of back-to-back algorave style performances, with local A/V Club crew and a number of visiting coders. Thursday will finish with a full AV show by William Fields. Here's an example of his last appearance at the Assembly in 2019:

Friday and Saturday have a similar schedule as previous AAA, with talks and presentations from noon till 5, then a break for evening soundcheck. Doors open in the evening again for the live music portion. Friday night will be SPACEFILLER with Mick Marchan \ {arsonist} \ Trash Panda QC \ Myriam Bleau, then Saturday evening will RM Francis \ Ellen Phan \ Tom Hall \ Ross CNDSD \ Kindohm \ Richard Devine. 

You can find full info and ticket information here.

I'm wondering about the extent to which the lockdown has changed the way you feel about live performance above and beyond not being able to go to one. Is there a sense in which the discourse of the Algorithmic Art Assembly is inherently physical and inherently public?

Yeah, Algorithmic Art Assembly was originally inspired by the energy and excitement around in-person gatherings, so I decided to wait until it felt safe again. There are a number of people already doing great online events, so I never really considered moving Algorithmic Art Assembly online. 

While streaming can be a fine way to hear things, even the best online mediated discussion don’t always provide a way for the accidental encounter with a serendipitous idea or another person that sets you off in a radically different direction. It strikes me that that's been one of the things about the Algorithmic Art Assembly that you've been really mindful of is providing those opportunities for attendees.

Absolutely! One of the wonderful things from the 2019 event was walking around and just seeing the explosion of people chatting and meeting each other, getting to introduce people that I knew from different areas and seeing that spark between them as they start discussing arts and ideas.

There were a lot of artists who came along who may not have been so computer-based or algorithmic but were engaged with what was there. The daytime format of the talks is a really nice entry point for artists of any ilk. A chance to hear people who come at it from an algorithmic or a process-based approach. 

One of the main themes behind Algorithmic Art Assembly is to celebrate and showcase that creative side of programming. In 2018, I made a trip to the UK for a Live Code conference, and was just so inspired, meeting a lot of people face to face who I previously only knew online. That in-person energy, that gathering of algorithmic practitioners was great! I wanted to bring that back to SF and to stick a stake in the ground and say "Here be the freak flag! Come all ye programmers and artists together, make the weirdest code art ever!“

There’s been a rash of recent books on that idea - from Daniel Shiffman’s The Nature of Code to Golan Levin and Tega Brain’s Code as Creative Medium, and - of course - the Oxford Companion. Those are great resources, but it strikes me that your curatorial approach to providing ways in during the day and performances at night, it has a potentially more powerful effect….

I hope so, yeah! You can enjoy the aesthetic properties of a work alone, of course. It's one thing to go out to a show and hear amazing music.. you might have a dance and chat with someone, have a great time, but it's usually still a form of consumption, a one way dialogue. However hearing someone talk about their work first is a much more engaging way in. I always find it so much more inviting to have that context beforehand, to hear how much work went into the ideas behind it, to hear the story behind the art. It puts you in a good place to fully appreciate the work.

The AAA has got to be a pretty difficult amount of stuff to organize. How's juggling all this stuff going for you in terms of setting up the infrastructure for the festival?

It’s going really well, and so much of that comes down to working with the amazing people at Gray Area, they take on so much of the heavy lifting. It’s very much a collaboration, they deal with a ton of the logistics - the ticket sales, sound system, lighting, live streaming, they have their own promotion channels and active website, and and.. I can’t thank them enough!

In curatorial situations that bring a lot of diverse people together. It's really common for us to talk about the artists and to not have nearly as much to say about the enablers. If everything goes well they're kind of invisible, right? That's all we see. All we see is the artist and all we see or hear is the work rather than the effort that went into bringing it into existence. So thanks for calling that out at the beginning. That's really good of you.

Having a good partner really changes things. A recent example - Myriam Bleau is headlining on Friday night with a massive laser-focused AV show. She mailed me to ask about a scrim for the front of the stage, for use through the smoke and lasers. Seabrook, the Production Director at Gray Area, he’s awesome. I can add Seabrook to the email thread, and he is super helpful, he finds out all the specs needed, and makes it happen. Super organized, like we have a shared spreadsheet with all the tech riders for all the artists, the timing and logistics for making sure load-in and soundchecks all run smoothly.

One of the interesting new trends in the EMI/Software landscape is the appearance of algorithmic tools and machine learning into commercial music software. There are things that algorithmic composers used to do all the time that are now available in commercial software. Does that availability help to create a culture in which more people appreciate algorithmic approaches because they’re both producing and consuming the work?

Yeah, I see a number of articles for generative tools that can be used for music production. 

…or that the arrival of that stuff in commercial software essentially shifts where the boundary is. The commercial world is chasing the algorithmic artist community at a discreet distance.

It seems like a lot of algorithmic art involves cross-sensory modalities these days. It’s almost as if you have to have something to see and something to hear. I wonder about the extent to which now you think the discourse really tends to assume that an audio presentation must have the visual component and vice versa. How do you see that playing itself out these days?

I’ve thought about that but don’t know that I have or that there is a good answer, I think you really just want a balance. Some artists are very much about the combined sensory experience, others want darkness to focus on the music. I like a nice contrast so you appreciate both. 

I also like to bring in other process arts, which don’t have to be so audio/visual based. 

In 2019 we had Windy Chien, who does amazing knot based art. She brought in 150 ropes so everyone in the audience could follow along with one of her knot algorithms. That was so visceral, and such a nice keepsake! 

One example for 2022, is Ross Goodwin, he works with machine learning and natural language, including building an engine to generate screenplays, which he fed with hundreds of tv and movie scripts. He and  filmmaker Oscar Sharp made an awesomely weird sci-fi short called Sunspring, with Silicon Valley’s Thomas Middleditch

I have one last question to ask. We know about you as the person who's basically organized and curated the Algorithmic Art Assembly. What’s less apparent is your own artistic practice. You're really working hard to foreground the work of other people and I really appreciate it. But what are you excited about right now? What gets you up in the morning and butters your toast and makes your coffee?

I have my own live coding language called SoundBoard. I’ve been working on that for around 6 years now. It started from a basic sequencing and sample engine, which I’ve continued building upon - I’ve added several synthesis engines -  subtractive, fm, granular;  then I wrote and grafted a real programming language onto it  (whereas prior to that it was a massive string matching while loop!) . I have an endless pile of ideas I want to learn and implement, so that totally keeps me excited.

During January I participated in “Genuary”, making a piece of generative p5 art everyday. I hadn’t done so much programmatic visual work, which is interesting as I have a background as an illustrator. I’m definitely interested in getting deeper into the visual side and taking a good look at Unity.

I do also enjoy my day job. I work on an embedded system media stack, and I’m currently implementing a lot of web audio features.  So pretty much most of the time I get to work on interesting audio programming challenges!

https://www.williamfields.com/

William Fields (b.1977) is an artist, musician, and composer from the greater Philadelphia area whose work explores algorithmic composition and audio-visual correspondence in the context of real-time improvisational live performance. His music has been released on labels such as Conditional, New York Haunted, Audiobulb, and NOREMIXES. Fields is the host of the algorithmic music radio show FieldsOS on Resonance EXTRA. He has performed live throughout the mid-Atlantic region and Canada. His work was selected and choreographed for dance as part of the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC).

William Fields - Gray Area, San Francisco, March 23rd 2019

http://www.windychien.com/

Algorithms, Aesthetics, and the Artist’s Hand

If an algorithm is a set of rules that defines a sequence of operations, what does that look like in the hand of a visual artist? Windy Chien speaks about her work with rope and teaches how to tie a knot.

Windy Chien makes art that activates space and elevates the vernacular. She is best known for her 2016 work, The Year of Knots, in which she learned a new knot every day for a year. Her work ranges in size from a knot that can fit in the palm of a child’s hand to majestic, room-sized installations that are sought after by private collectors. Following long careers at Apple and in the music industry, she launched her studio in 2015.

Her work has been covered by Wired, Make:, The New York Times and Martha Stewart. In 2017, Facebook acquired an edition of The Year of Knots and her most recent installation resides at the National Geographic Society in Washington, DC. Windy’s book about her work will be published by Abrams in 2019.

Talk given at Algorithmic Art Assembly, Gray Area, San Francisco, March 22nd 2019.

Windy Chien - Algorithms, Aesthetics, and the Artist’s Hand.

Thorsten Sideb0ard   - REPL REPL ADC21 talk

image2.png

Like many events, the Algorithmic Art Assembly — a festival that combined a broad-ranging array of performances, talks and opportunities to network — went on a two-year hiatus owing to the pandemic and is now re-emerging. It seemed like a perfect time to chat with its organizer Thorsten Sideboard about what's going on and coming up this time around.

an-interview-with-thorsten-sideboard

An Interview with Thorsten Sideboard

Like many of you, one of the things I've missed during the pandemic and lockdown was the chance to get together with friends and make some noise. There aren't a lot of tools out there if you're interested in low-latency network jamming, so it's a topic of conversation that I often find myself in the midst of, and one of those places where folks are on the lookout for new options. One of those newer options out there came to my attention — the work of Miller Puckette, who requires no introduction. I figure that anything Miller turned his attention to deserved a looksee, so I checked out a presentation by Miller for Brad Garton's sound seminar at Columbia University. Owing to the lockdown, the Zoom presentation was recorded, so you can check it out, too.

Damon Holzborn was involved in the presentation, too. You probably know of his work on George Lewis' Voyager project. (I interviewed George and Damon together on the software and its life as a Max patch. You might find it interesting.) And Damon was involved in creating a Max-centered version of the project, so I figured he'd be the perfect person to ask about the project....

I was complaining to someone recently about the fact that I miss being able to play across the 'net with friends and bandmates while we're all locked down (the last thing anyone in the world wants to see me doing is bobbing my head and appearing to read email as an online performance), and my friend said, "Man. You have to check out this..." Um... is it Quack strip?

Quaxtrip is a set of Max patches that makes low-latency uncompressed audio and messaging interconnections over the internet, intended for musicians wishing to play together remotely. Quaxtrip runs Miller Puckette’s Quacktrip Pure Data patch within Max. 

Quacktrip, in turn, is an implementation, in Pure Data, of Chris Chafe’s JackTrip network protocol, based on jacktrip.pd by Roman Haefeli and Johannes Schuett. It establishes a low-latency, point-to-point connection between two sites, with no audio compression. 

Quaxtrip allows up to four of these connections, allowing an ensemble of up to five players at once. In addition to audio signals, you can send messages (e.g. OSC) to the ensemble as well.

If you’re familiar with Quacktrip for Pd, Quaxtrip works more or less the same, just with a Max coat of paint and a few extras. In fact, since it’s actually running Quacktrip (though hidden in the background) through the pd~ object, it’s even compatible, so you can have one peer running Quacktrip in Pd that is streaming to/from another peer running Quaxtrip in Max.

Quacktrip/Quaxtrip simplifies the process of streaming in a couple of ways. 

It reduces the software stack to one app, so you don’t have to configure command line tools or manage routing between applications. 

The connection process is streamlined too. It uses a server, called the “conniption” server, to connect players, bypassing the need to set up port forwarding on your router or exchanging each player’s IP addresses. Once connected, however, the audio streams are connected directly peer-to-peer, not routed through the server.

Is it intended for situations where I'm playing with one other person, or can I reconvene PGT (my two laptop/mandolin trio) with this?

Theoretically, there’s no limit to the number of players who can connect through Quacktrip/Quaxtrip, but due to bandwidth limitations, particularly upload speeds, the practical number of players is a smallish, finite, number. In Quaxtrip, I decided that 5 players max was a good compromise that should work for most people who have a decent internet connection. Much more than that I felt too many people were likely to run into problems. However, if you’d like to experiment with a larger ensemble, modifying Quaxtrip to add more channels is just a matter of duplicating the remote channel bpatcher and changing incrementing its channel number in the arguments.

Those wishing to play with larger ensembles should check out Miller Puckette’s related projects Netty McNetface and Music 101. I don’t currently have plans to port those apps to Max, but I may look into it at some point.

Whoa. This sounds pretty cool. Where do I download the Max stuff?

The best place to go is my post over at the lines forum. There I give the rundown of the requirements and provide download links. If you have any questions or comments about the project, that would be the best place to leave them.

Quaxtrip is an open source project (MIT license) that lives at GitHub. If you’d prefer, you could just go straight to the repository and download or clone it from there. 

Do I need to install anything else to do this? I need to install Pd on the machine I want to work on, right?

Once you’ve downloaded Quaxtrip, the manual includes step-by-step installation instructions. In short, in addition to Max, you’ll need to install Pd and PdMax (that’s the pd~ object that lets you run Pd patches from within Max). The first time that Quaxtrip runs you’ll be presented with a dialog box instructing you to locate the Pd app so the patch knows where to find it, but after Pd is located Quaxtrip will remember. 

Does it require any driver stuff or other exotic software?

What kinds of challenges did you face doing the Max version?

Since Miller Puckette has done all the heavy lifting with his Quacktrip patch, it was a pretty smooth process. I did have to modify the Quacktrip Pd patch a bit to make a version I could integrate with Max, and since I don’t really know Pd, that took a bit of fumbling around. But other than that, it was largely a fairly straightforward design task. Since I wanted to add some features to make it easy for people to integrate existing Max patches with Quaxtrip, my primary challenge was to try to imagine the ways people would want to hook into it.

Don't get me wrong. I'm pretty interested here... I'm just nervous. Once I have the right stuff installed, can you walk me through what setting up a session with someone else looks like?

Again, my post on  the lines forum will walk you through that you need and how to do the initial setup, After that, the process of initiating a Quaxtrip session is quite simple. It’s just a matter of launching the patch, entering the “Call Name” used to connect peers, and toggling the session on. If you’re connecting to more than one peer, then you’ll do that for each person. Depending on your network performance, you may have to experiment with a few other settings, but that’s it.

It sounds like my friends who rave about it really don't feel a lot of latency when they perform together. Is it really that tight? I've tried lots of other stuff, but that other stuff just feels well... spongy. How is Quaxtrip different?

This will depend a lot on the distance between two performers. If you’re playing with someone across town, or across the state, you should experience latency low enough to perform in rhythmic synchrony. Latency will add with distance so as the distance increases the likelihood that this will be possible decreases. Of course, for music that doesn’t require such tight adherence to a pulse, even quite distant partners should experience latency low enough for a satisfying experience.

What’s in store for future versions of Quaxtrip?

The first major addition to Quaxtrip since it first launched, which will be available by the time this is published, is an input mixer. Rather than use a hardware mixer to get my hardware synth setup into the computer, I tend to go directly into my multi-channel audio interface and do the mixing in software. Since Quaxtrip’s release I’ve developed an evolving set of patches to manage my personal integration with Quaxtrip. Figuring that there are likely others who work the same way, I decided to build this functionality into Quaxtrip. When you launch the mixer, you can combine up to eight stereo or mono channels to send to your remote peers as a mono or stereo mix. For those who just have a single (mono or stereo) signal to send, the patch remains unchanged.

There will be a stream of new features rolling out over the coming weeks and months. The next tool that will be added is a recording feature that will enable each performer to record their local signal with a start time synchronized with their partners. This means that each person can have a clean recording of their own performance to be mixed with the other’s in post, free from any connection glitches that might have popped up during the performance.

Next will be a more robust text chat. Quaxtrip already includes a chat feature but it currently is quite rudimentary and is little more than a demo of how to send messages for those who want to use the message sending feature in their own patches. And finally, I’ve been experimenting with sharing clock signals. It’s still a bit experimental, but I hope later to release a system to give an ensemble access to shared timing systems.

The ability to collaborate despite distance has been vital to my creative life this past year. After spending so much time working remotely with others, I realized that a habit of working with distant partners is something that will be valuable long after things return to normal. This forced isolation has shown me that physical distance doesn’t have to be an impediment to working closely together. With so many friends scattered about the globe, it’s really a lost opportunity to limit who I work with based solely on proximity.

I’d love to hear about how people are using Quaxtrip. Don’t be shy about contacting me or joining the discussion at the lines forum. Features requests are welcome too. I can’t promise I’ll implement every suggestion, but if you’ve got ideas I’m all ears. 

g6610, week10 class, fall 2020 (Sound: Advanced Topics)
Special guests Miller Puckette and Damon Holzborn talked about the "Quacktrip/Quaxtrip" software that enables real-time interactive performance on the web

g6610, week11 class, fall 2020 (Sound: Advanced Topics)

image3.png

There aren't a lot of tools out there if you're interested in low-latency network jamming, so it's a topic of conversation that I often find myself in the midst of. One of those newer options out there came to my attention was something called Quaxtrip — the work of Miller Puckette, now available in a Max-centered version thanks to Damon Holzborn.

quaxtrip-and-internet-performance-an-interview-with-damon-holzborn

Quaxtrip and Internet Performance - an Interview with Damon Holzborn

What can you do if you’re not that interested in streaming work during lockdown but the opportunities for gallery or festival performance are still out there? If online exhibitions seem a pale substitution for being together in the real world, can one create something using the tools one has to create something that’s different rather than an attempt to copy the real world? 

Mark Fell and Rian Treanor, together with their students at the Hochschule fur Gestaltung in Karlsruhe, took on this question together and enlisted Node for Max to help them think differently.

Darwin Grosse:
Let's start by talking about the project: what it is that you're trying to accomplish, and what's the artistic intent?

Mark Fell:
Well, basically, it's a response to the situation that we find ourselves in - the whole lockdown thing. Lots of festivals and galleries are getting in touch saying, "Can you do this online thing?" And we were both not very happy about streaming or anything like that. Online exhibitions as a substitution for real world being together - it just didn't seem very good, so we were like, "What can we do that is a meaningful response to this situation that actually uses the technology to create something that is different than just a copy of the real world situation?" So that's the kind of artistic intent, I guess.

Rian Treanor:
But also, you were working with the students in Karlsruhe, and you were discussing about, "How is this impacting our creative practices and what things can we do in this context that enables other kinds of work to be made?"

MF: I'd been doing this job at Karlsruhe. Hochschule fur Gestaltung, HfG. It's next to ZKM, the big media office. So, basically, I'd gotten a job as guest professor in sound and media art. And I'd been doing it last semester, and this semester starting in March/April came along, and I thought, "Well, they're going to cancel the contract, because no one can travel." And then they said, "Well, would you want to do it again and do it all online?" It was basically the day before the semester started, and I was like, "What the hell am I going to do? I know. Let's just use this as a way of having a dialogue about what we should do in response to our situation." So the kind of class that I ran was called Dislocational Practices: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Dislocation. So we'd have discussions, and try things. And it was a nice test bed just to throw ideas around.

Search Results