Ryan

We use Max as a show control master computer, the show is automated and Max connects with computers and a light board on a local network to issue commands. I program in Max 4.6 and communicate through MIDI, OSC and Serial to control the performance.

project102-red-over-red

RED OVER RED

David Butler

MSC For Live’ is a Max For Live device for the purpose of adding using MIDI Show Control commands to control and playback scenes and clips in Live. It is currently only supported on OS X due to dependence on a Mac-only external for the purpose of receiving MIDI SysEx data. MSC control allows Live to be cued and controlled from any source which can output MSC, such as most lighting desks, or the software QLab by Figure 53.

Download includes device and full manual. The device is currently only supported on OS X due to dependence on a Mac-only external for the purpose of receiving MIDI SysEx data. This external (lh_midiin by Leigh Hunt) is included and frozen into the device, however it is also available from here.


msc-for-live

MSC For Live

An abstraction for decoding MIDI Show Control commands from the original SysEx into a human (and Max) readable form. Allows you to build MSC capability into your patches, meaning you can use a pre-existing cueing system such as the excellent QLab. Help patcher included.


imp-mscdecode

imp.mscdecode - MSC for Max.

Andrew Pask

Regardless of whether you like programming on Mac or Windows, sometimes you will have your hands tied when you are putting a show machine together. The client might prefer a cheaper option or one more compatible with their IT department and tell you to work on Windows, or you may find you are tied to some kind of hardware or Windows-only form factor.

What I am talking about here is the kind of situation where you are putting in a machine to run a show for a period of time - say, at a gallery or some kind of venue or institution. You almost certainly will have to deal with scheduling issues, hours of operation, and maintenance access. You may or may not have access to the internet, and you may not even be able to access the machine once it is installed. So, let’s say the challenge here is “set and forget”.

In one of our early meetings with David and Sean at Beaudry Interactive (b/i), I talked to them about this. (As you may know, we are showcasing their work this month including an interview with David, and a walkthrough of one of their projects.) I mentioned to them that this was an area I always had some trouble with. Their response was, “Oh, we’ve got that completely nailed. We’d be happy to share this stuff with the community...”

Of course, I'll need to provide you with some concrete examples, which was a really a giant pretext for me to have fun. I had such a blast putting this together last week. Here are the parts I'm using for my “show...”

For the main machine, I decided to try the new i3-based compute stick from Intel. (Find an Anandtech review of it here.)


I added in a 128Gb microSD card for storage.


I was really curious to find out how this little thing would perform. The answer? It works like a champ for audio and not bad at all for video. While it’s pretty easy to load up enough GPU processing that HD video output starts to flicker, it will play back HD video content very smoothly and have plenty of headroom for doing other tasks in the background. For processing audio, it ran all my stuff just fine.

The one trick with these little machines is the power supply! It’s now one of the larger parts of the whole deal, as you can see:

The 9-volt battery is there in the picture to give you a sense of the scale. The HDMI jack is at the bottom of the CS stick, so you can just plug this straight into a TV and rock on.

For the audio card, I used one of my favourite recent bits of kit, the Novation Audiohub2x4 (you can get these for $150 at Sweetwater now). The great thing about this box is the built-in 3-port USB hub. The compute stick has one USB3 port on the body of the device, and 2 more in the power supply, so this addition of 3 on the audio interface means you have tons of room to add stuff and not much in the way of wall warts to deal with. The ASIO drivers that come with the box run fine in Max - this interface is completely gig friendly!


MIDI out to the synth is via a Kenton USB Solo MIDI interface - mainly because that’s what I have lying around in the studio. And the synth? That’s a whole other story.


There you have it. So - I have my gear all hooked up and I have a Max patcher which plays my synth and processes the audio from it and spits it all out up and running. 

Now I want to stick it in a dark closet and have it startup and shutdown on a schedule.

The final step in working on your show code is making it into a Max standalone application. You can then summon your whole show into existence with one line of Windows Powershell scripting. I know people out there complain that this is cumbersome and doesn’t allow for rapid editing and bug fixing. 

Honestly, if you need that much flexibility when you are installing, you probably have lots of other problems going on as well. As far as the guys at b/i are concerned, they’re talking about shows which may run for years that have been developed and signed off by a whole committee of client reps. For them, there are no last-minute fixes. Their stuff has been tested for weeks.

Another advantage of creating standalone applications out of your Max code is that you get to leverage some pretty tweaky stuff in the Windows Powershell. Suppose that you need to run 2 applications or 2 instances of Max, and you have found out that you can increase performance by telling Windows which cores of your CPU to restrict each app to. You can do this in Powershell using the Processor Affinity settings.

Which leads us to the awesome centerpiece of this article: 

This document is the motherlode of Windows Powershell Max scripting as used by the guys at Beaudry Interactive (and a whole lot more). Sean is being modest when he says, “This is all just known information that's out there” - it was sure largely not known to me. This document represents a significant head start and is the product of (no doubt) countless hours of mucking around with this technology to make it useful to Max programmers. 

On behalf of you all, I would like to thank b/i for their generosity in making this information available to the Max community.

I’ve made the document into a PDF because you’re really going to want it everywhere. I dropped it into the dropbox folder I shared with my show machine so I could cut and paste from it into the Powershell IDE (called “Powershell ISE” ) while I tweaked the scripts for my “show”.

Basically, and the document makes this clear, the idea is the following:

Create a script which manages the startup of your show software. You can do this right in the Powershell ISE, debugging and running it as you develop it.


Then you can call your Powershell script in the Windows Task Scheduler. There are a number of fine details to do with getting around security issues, and there’s also a technique described in the document for making your full screen apps completely full screen.


That’s about it. I hope you have as much fun playing with Windows Powershell as I did. In the end, I basically ended up creating a hugely complicated alarm clock, but it runs like a dream.

If you have questions about the b/i document or would like to know more about the Compute Stick, let us know in the comments.

setting-up-a-windows-show-machine-with-a-little-beaudry-interactive-magic

Setting up a Windows Show Machine (with a Little Beaudry Interactive Magic)

Darwin Grosse

Hi David! Thanks for chatting with us. Can you start off by telling us a little about your company, Beaudry Interactive?

Thank you so much for having me here! I’m really excited to have a chance to talk with you and others in the Cycling74 community. I’ve been a Max user since the late 1990’s, so this is quite an honor for me!

I think of all things I’ve had to do in the company, explaining what we do has always been the hardest. Especially if you look at the work we’ve done over the years, it can be challenging to find a through line. Since I have a bit more time than an elevator ride, let me give a little bit of backstory. My background is in performance. Although I do a lot of work in interaction design for live performance, I am a very traditional, classically trained clarinetist. The favorite works that I like to perform are chamber pieces: small intimate ensembles with just a few players, like the Brahms Clarinet Quintet or Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, to name some of my favorites. The experience is both individual and communal at the same time. I thrive on that unspoken dialog with my fellow musicians and the (often absent) composer as we explore a piece, find meaning, and try to find ways to make it our own. 

Now that Beaudry Interactive (b/i) has been around as a company for 10 years, I can now look back and see that it is often that passion and motivation that is behind a lot of the work we do: how do we create experiences that are both communal and personal, experiences that provide handles that allow you reach in and make it your own, all while maintaining the overall intention of the original experience. This applies to our work in theater, dance, music, themed entertainment, experiential marketing, museums, large spectacles and intimate gatherings. That’s a bit of the backstory. 

Now the elevator pitch is we are a small design company based in Los Angeles that specializes in interaction design and performance technology. We are the people in the middle making connections between what people do and their impact on design and story. Not only do we help dream up these experiences, we have the technical chops to actually make it all happen. We code (a lot!), we build custom electronics, we curate (and misappropriate) a lot of different sensing technologies, and we talk to a lot of different show control devices. Some of our clients include Disney (Imagineering, Creative Entertainment, R&D, and the theme parks), Disney Channel, Twentieth Century Fox, Crayola, Diavolo Dance Theater, Sony Pictures, and The Discovery Cube. 

What are some of the things that you've done that you are most proud of?

First, I think I have to be honest and say I am most proud (and genuinely surprised) that we’ve been able to build a company, and make a living, doing this type of work. And don’t think for a moment that I’ve been able to do this all on my own.

I am especially proud of the small team I’ve been able to put together that form the core of our company. Valeria Beaudry, who has a brilliant business mind honed from her past life as a consultant, not only serves project manager for most of our projects and handles most of the business dealings of the company, but also serves as art director on many of our projects. She also owns the company with me. Ryan Dorn, who has been with the company in one form or another since 2009, is a wonderful writer, storyteller, experience designer, “technology curator”, and has always been the one to articulate what’s in our collective heads. And Sean Phillips, who is not only a great programmer (and a fellow Max programmer), he’s a fantastic sound designer, experience designer, and a seemingly endless fountain of ideas. He is also one of the most creative problem solvers I’ve worked with. Together we make a great team whose unique approach to interaction and experience design has clients actively seeking us out, which is a fun position to be in.

But something tells me you were really asking about our work? That’s like asking me to pick which child is my favorite! OK, here are some of my favorites (just don’t tell the others):  

Trunk Show was a blue sky “atmospheric” show for a Major Themed Entertainment Company™. Not only was it the first show we designed and produced ourselves, it was a culmination of all the work we had done in interaction design and real-time show control. Over the 15-minute show there was only 1 cue triggered from back stage, and that was to start the show. All other show elements, light, sound fog, animations, story structure, even a spitting flower (don’t ask), were under the control of the performers, and to some extent, prop-wielding guests.

Transit Space was a collaborative dance piece with the Diavolo Dance Theater (the artistic director for Diavolo, Jacques Heim, was the choreographer for Cirque’s Ka at the MGM in Vegas). This was our first time working with a dance company. What was interesting for us was that in the end we were truly the middlemen helping the dancers and fellow designers make connections between movement, spoken word, sound, music, the giant set pieces and the props. As the show took form, we disappeared and became this invisible (but heavily sensored) hand working behind the scenes. The experience helped us realize our role as interaction designers, and also see hat our tools were just as important for the performers as they were for the audience.

We build a sensor: As a result of our work on Transit Space, we invented an entirely fabric-based, waterproof, bend and pressure sensor that could be embedded in the performers costumes. To date we’ve made over 6000 of these sensors (we have a client that likes them a lot!). Its continuous design and evolution (and often build) has been a company-wide effort.

And last but certainly not least: Inspector Training Course. This was our first venture into the museum world, and certainly not our last. The Inspector Training Course (ITC as the cool kids call it) is a high tech scavenger hunt that teaches kids about sustainability, energy conversation, home safety, and earthquake preparedness. It’s at the Discovery Cube here in Los Angeles, a very hands-on children’s science center/exploratorium. Feedback from it has been tremendous. We’ve even won a couple awards for it! I think the statistic that we are proudest of (and we can verify since we collect a ridiculous amount of statistics on the gameplay!) is that the average time kids are playing the game is 15 minutes! That’s an eternity in the museum world. The experience was so successful we did another version of it for the Discovery Cube in Orange County a year later where the theme was vectors (yup! mosquitos, rats, and other fun disease carriers in your backyard…we clearly get all the cool subject material for kids). And we are now looking into making ITC into a traveling exhibit.

Not being able to share a lot of the work we do. We’ve designed and developed some truly amazing experiences and technology that we’ll never be able to talk about, nor point to (some that I would even put on that list above). This was particularly frustrating in the early years when 100% of our work was under NDA. Our website was pretty sad then, too. Our consolation is that we’ve had good lawyers, so even though we can’t talk about certain projects, we own all the underlying IP and can use it however else we’d like. 

How much of your work is hardware-based, and how much is software?

It’s pretty equally divided between both. Inputs and outputs always need hardware. That stuff in the middle connecting the two is all software. Or put another way: you can’t do interaction design without sensing what people are doing. That requires hardware. You can’t really communicate back to them without some design element (sound, lights, projection, animatronics, pyro!). That’s hardware, too. Tying those together requires some processing and decision making. That’s software. 

What is it about the visual programming paradigm of Max that works particularly well for you and your team?

I think it’s just how our brains work. Before I start any coding I’m always sketching out the show, system, and their relationships spatially (I think David Z. and I share a similar affinity for Omnigraffle, which I use quite a bit for this). It just seems natural to me that my programming environment reflects that. Plus being able to clearly see spatially “output here goes to input there then loops back to this part here” is perfect for how my brain works. It directly mirrors what I’m trying to accomplish in the physical world.

Where is Beaudry Interactive going in the future? What are some of the areas that you are most interested in exploring?

My dream? I really want us to design and build a large scale experience from the ground up. Build a show for ourselves in an old warehouse using all the tools and tricks and ideas we’ve learned and dreamt up over the years and create an experience where all people can say when they leave is “You had to be there!”. Just need to get a big fat check from a generous benefactor. Anybody?

In the meantime, it’s been several years in the making, but I think we are definitely on to something with our interactive show control and design work for more atmospheric entertainment (generally entertainment that isn’t on a stage). A good portion of my summer has been compiling all our work in real-time show control, gesture recognition and control, embedded sensors in props and costumes, microcontrollers, wireless radios, tracking and location systems, etc. into one “ecosystem”. The goal here being able to build shows that are entirely, or largely, performer and audience controlled; a truly “in the moment” experience. There’s really nothing like this out there, and this comprehensive, in the commercial world.

Also we’ve only just begun our work in the museum world. The more we experience it, the more we see that it needs us! Role playing, gamification, storytelling, immersive environments, and cutting edge technology isn’t just the realm of themed entertainment and performance. In order to engage their audiences in new and creative ways, museums are looking outside their dusty bubbles and finding that the same tools and methods used in themed entertainment work really well in the museum world, and we are helping them see that. And in the end there’s only a slight difference in the guest experience. Both go “Yeah! That was fun!” For museums it has the added realization of “Crap! I think I just learned something!”

And honestly, I’m interested in seeing what our current and future clients ask of us! Every project we’ve worked on has been different, from design to programming to sensing to the underlying infrastructure. And there’s always been some element that’s pushed us technically and/or creatively in really interesting directions. I hope that continues for a long, long time.

Many thanks to David Beaudry for his discussion of b/i’s way of approaching the world of interaction design. If you are interested in more information from/about David, you can check out my Art + Music + Technology podcast with him.

Visit the Beaudry Interactive website and get an inside look at the Inspector Training Course museum exhibit.


David talks about his company, their projects and approaches. "Every project we’ve worked on has been different, from design to programming to sensing to the underlying infrastructure."

an-interview-with-david-beaudry

An Interview with David Beaudry

tosh chiang

Max/MSP is the central show controller software and GUI.  It ties several devices together, to create a seamless multimedia/simulation experience.  

Search Results