Nerds: It’s an OSC sequencer. It’s JavaScript-programmable for making your own generative music. It works with hardware and other software. You can use it in real-time.
Everyone: it makes spectacularly strange sounds out of spectacularly beautiful flows of geometries through space.
IanniX, the latest-generation descendant of work done by pioneering experimental composer Iannis Xenakis, has been evolving at rapid pace into what may be the most sophisticated graphical sequencer ever. Xenakis originally had to content himself to drawing elaborate, architectural graphics on paper, then later being one of the first to use a graphical tablet for interactive scores. IanniX, backed by the French Ministry of Culture, is now barely recognizable even from more primitive versions that carried the same name. But the idea is the same: graphical geometries represent events in pitch and time, now sequencing other software (any software that can handle OSC or MIDI) to produce sound.
Free on Mac, Windows, and Linux, and now with growing documentation, IanniX can be seen producing the kinds of warped sounds Xenakis made in his music. But it is one of the first steps toward a graphical sequencer that could be used in all kinds of cases. And it’s free and open source under the GPL v3.
I’ve included some of the recent videos that show off what it can do. I especially like the recursive demo. But since it runs on your OS — well, unless you’re sticking to your beloved Atari ST or BeBox — you can just go grab it yourself.
http://iannix.org/en/index.php
My sense is that IanniX could have implications even beyond this software. Imagine a greater variety of music software that begins to work in spatial and graphical interfaces, not just the traditional piano rolls and linear tape-style arrangement views. And imagine that such tools, using protocols like OSC and MIDI, begin to establish common means of communicating with one another over a network. (OSC and, in particular, MIDI, are in need of some evolution to fully satisfy that. But these kinds of tools might be an ideal way to prod that very evolution.)
Speaking of prodding, thanks to Mark Birchall on Twitter for reminding me to write this up.
Now, if I can just find some hyperspace portal to additional space and time to play with this properly… there must be a productivity jump gate around here somewhere.