Andrew Benson

I spend a lot of time reading the Max forums to keep up with what's happening in the user community and to help out where I can.  The other day, along came a forum thread that seemed to blow up instantly.  It was a perfect example of the collaborative learning and problem solving that I've come to love about our users.  The combination of a provocative title, an interesting problem, a fascinating idea, and genuinely helpful posts led to a long, collaborative thread filled with cool Max tricks and ideas. After watching it develop, I thought it would be nice to get some of the main contributors to answer a couple of questions I had, and get some reflections outside of the thread.

Andrew Benson: Do you remember your first post to the Max forums? 

Rodrigo: I first joined the Max mailing list (which then became the current forum) around 2007. This was in the middle of my second serious attempt to learn Max. I mostly read the posts trying to understand how things worked, but occasionally posted some questions, and when possible tried to help people, on the rare occasion when someone knew less than me.

Peter McCulloch: I'm not sure.  I was on the mailing list probably since the early 2000s; I'm guessing maybe 2003? I did a fair amount of lurking in my mailing list days.  I do remember feeling that the community was fairly open, and there were lots of people who helped me along the way, and it didn't tend to be gear-headish.AB: How often do you read the forums at cycling74.com?

Rodrigo: I visit/read the forums daily. I do a ton of research on there when I'm stuck on something or just searching for inspiration, but in addition to research I enjoy reading what other people are working on (and struggling with).

Peter: I'm kind of intermittent with it.  To be honest, I tend to do it when I'm procrastinating or bored, but I've definitely created things for the forum that I then later use especially with my teaching (I teach Max at NYU and Vassar College), since I already have an explanation for the patch.  I use the forum in different ways.  I generally look to help out, especially with tricky problems.  I also use it to research parts of Max that I'm not familiar with, often in conjunction with one of my students' projects, or when I'm experiencing behavior in Max that doesn't match my expectations even after trouble-shooting.

AB: What sorts of patches or forum threads do you get most inspired by?  Do you think there is a logic to what forum threads become super-active and collaborative?

Rodrigo: I tend to get inspired by mid to low level components rather than full 'sharing' patches as it's much easier to see what's happening and to learn from it. Most of the time when someone is sharing a finished patch, it can be quite difficult to wrap your head around what's happening. In general I also tend to find live sampling and processing oriented patches interesting. I think the onus lies with the original poster to post follow up examples/questions. I wish more OPs posted their 'solutions' to the questions they asked once they got things working.

Peter:  I'm generally interested in threads that involve hard problems, and I really enjoy signal-rate logic problems.  I feel like almost all of the threads that I've found interesting at some point involve an experienced member of the community.  The more experienced members have a better sense of the appropriate design patterns for certain kinds of problems and also know how to polish the results.  As far as themes go, I'd say it seems to help when there are constraints.  The more I found out about what Rodrigo was trying to build, the more I could consider specific structures, and that made it easier for me to participate.  When someone wants to build a granular synth, for example, there's a million different directions that can go.  Not having to worry about certain requirements can free things up quite a bit.

If you haven't already, go read the forum thread that started this conversation, and check out Rodrigo's resulting Chocolate Grinder project.

A new app for Monome Arc2/Arc4 (or any MIDI controller). 
 
The Chocolate Grinder is a software emulation of a skipping/glitchy CD player. 
You can record (or drop a waveform) into a buffer and then define a playback/glitch window. 
 
It uses authentic skip/glitch samples at every jump point along with weighted randomness of sample choice to emulate several makes/eras of CD players. 
 
The seek/fastforward is also faithfully recreated. 
 
The Max patch (requires Max6) can be downloaded at my webpage: 
http://www.rodrigoconstanzo.com

The Chocolate Grinder (Arc app)

Read about a collaborative forum thread filled with cool Max tricks and ideas.

collaboration-in-the-forum

Collaboration in the Forum

proppjones

The visual poem/soundpeace is the latest effort between poet sound artist Vincent Quatroche and visual artist David Jones. The piece was created using a multiple layered image processor using Max . Next iterations will be to take the process live.  This app allows me to compile over 30 years of photo images in such a way as to be surprised  by the compositions and juxtapositions- these new images are captured, reused and regenerated. 

The visual poem/soundpeace is the latest effort between poet sound artist Vincent Quatroche and visual artist David Jones. 

capture-and-release

Capture and Release

Darwin Grosse

One of the great things about hanging around the Cycling '74 campfire is the great group of artists and musicians that are found there. One of these, Andrew Benson, produces visual artwork that ranges from stamp-sized GIFs through massive festival/concert graphics. Find out more about Andrew's work and artistic perspective in this mini-interview.

Let's start off by introducing people to your artwork. What are some of your highlight pieces?

Right now I seem to have 3 different trajectories of work, all sort of inter-related.

The main thread is heavily feedback driven experimental digital video/animation work like these:

And the past few years I've been working a lot with 3D animation like this new one I just released through Undervolt & Co:

http://undervolt.co/SINGLES/Mud-Andrew-Benson

And oddly one of the most popular projects I've done is Wolf+Unicorn:

And then there is live video performances and installations that are hard to document well, but it's an important part of what I do.

You've been involved in collaborations with some big name performers. What are some of the particular challenges with that kind of work?

I've been very lucky to work with some wonderful artists all around. The biggest challenge there is that it's not just you in a studio coming up with a crazy idea and going for it. In addition to the headlining artist, you need to work with a big group of people who are all motivated by things not failing and being as predictable as possible. As someone fascinated by the unexpected in my own software, it took some adjustment to see things from that perspective.

The biggest challenge there is that it's not just you in a studio coming up with a crazy idea and going for it.

The other part of it, as Video Director, you often need to be on the phone with equipment vendors and venue people and your job is to demand the best possible situation while not making any enemies. That relationship is really important because in festival shows (for example) you are getting to the venue early in the morning and all you have is soundcheck to make sure the rig is going to display your output properly.

Among Max users, you are probably best known for your "Jitter Recipes" articles that describe interesting visual effects. What was your motivation for doing the recipes, and will we be seeing any more in the future?

When I was learning Jitter in art school, I found that the core stuff I really wanted to do was only hinted at in the tutorials. When I started working for Cycling '74, it was around the time that Jitter 1.5 was coming along with a lot of new sound manipulation and OpenGL features that were really exciting. As a side project, I started putting together these little demos of the new features while also trying to provide some guidance for people who were learning Jitter. These started as a Friday afternoon forum post, but it became clear quickly that we should collect them together and add some text documentation. Since a lot of us at Cycling '74 also happen to be serious home chefs, the cookbook format seemed like an obvious hit.

As a side project, I started putting together these little demos of the new features while also trying to provide some guidance for people who were learning Jitter.

I've begun work on a Jitter Recipes package that will be updated as I further develop the content. Right now, I'm focused on modernizing and consolidating the essential existing recipes, but I'm also excited to get to a point where I can start adding in some new ones.

While most of your writing has been about visuals, I've also noticed a few articles about sound/audio. What is your interest in audio work, and how do you integrate it with your visual work?

I actually started using Max because I wanted to do audio work with it. I spent most of teenage years playing drums in garage bands. The cool thing about being the drummer is everyone leaves their gear at your house, so after hours I'd go out and start plugging things in and experimenting with all the sound gear. So when I was in art school I really got into sound art and performance (I was a Painting major), and took a Max class with Laetitia Sonami. I consider sound, synthesis and music to be a really core part of my identity as an artist, although nowadays that tends to be more just part of the studio process and not necessarily a big focus of my output. I love collaborating with musicians because it keeps me connected to that part of things.

[You can also hear more about Andrew Benson’s work - and his background - in his interview in this Art + Music + Technology podcast.]


artist-focus-andrew-benson

Artist Focus: Andrew Benson

Sometimes the possibilities of using Max are so broad that we love a creative constraint as a way to get us focussed and thinking of new patching ideas. What if your patch only had one button in it to interact with? We invited three artists from the Max community to take the challenge and show us what they came up with. Here are the results of that challenge, with downloadable Max patches included…

oneBang is an interactive audiovisual patch. I wanted to create something that looks and sounds organic. It takes on a life of its own: engagement is encouraged but not essential. The movement (sonic and visual) is driven by a jit.bfg and gets transformed by a push of the button.
Find more of Michael's work on Instagram 

“One_Button_Ocean” generates three audio layers, with accompanying video streams. It contains white noise lowpass filter swells, impulse clicks and background noises. It randomly selects the speed between the clicks, the frequency of the background noise and the frequency/volume of the white noise low pass filter. The simple low-fi visuals of cyan “spurts” are generated by the clicks, light blue “triangle waveforms” are created by the background grumbles and dark blue “sine style waveforms” are made from the white noise swells. The results are a digital ocean.
Find more of Matthew's work on Instagram


This patch is based on the idea that an mc.comb~ object can be repurposed to create polyphonic Karplus-Strong synth chords. The ‘one button’ creates a stream of midi notes (taken from a chord stored in a table object) which are then converted to delay times for the mc.comb~ Karplus-Strong synth. To add some tonality, the resulting stereo signal then is fed through some buffir~ objects with continually updating source buffers – this sometimes gives the synth a piano-like timbre. A simple reverb, made from another mc.comb~ object with a ‘harmonic’ mc wrapper message, gives some dimensionality to the sound. Many of the patch’s parameters are randomised with each press of the ‘one button’, creating a different vibe each time.
Find more of Ben's work on Instagram


Screen Shot 2022-12-07 at 1.05.30 PM.png

We invited 3 artists from the Max community to make a patch with only one button for interaction.

one-button-patching-challenge

One Button Patching Challenge

Guillaume Evrard

Everything in the Trombinotron was made in Max. Excepted the wood structure...

trombinotron

Trombinotron

Jeffrey Krieger

A performance is completely dependent on MAX/MSP. I now use the pitch tracker module from UBCToolbox to interface with the software, as well as 2 continuous controller pedals. The pitch tracker allows me to trigger videos and sampled sounds from the fingerboard of the electric cello.

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