Cycling ’74 has posted a fascinating set of videos of artists talking about how they use Max/MSP/Jitter. (Thanks, Kevin!)
Jamie Lidell talks about approaching Max as a vocalist and being a “one-man funk tornado.” It’s interesting to me that Max/MSP has made the transition with him from his classic IDM style to funk — solid proof that tools are what you make them.
AGF sings a song about a Max patch she made, which earns extra geek points for sure. (I could write songs about the mistakes I’m making learning JAVA programming, but that’s another story.)
Kevin Blechdom, who is actually female (just to warn you in advance, blokes), talks about the need to put something out there in live performance and not worry about whether it’s good enough. (Just sing / sing a song … I’m with you, Kevin. Something us obsessive perfectionists could probably stand hearing, so we just go play.)
OSU professor Matthew Lewis has students using video tracking to make music and connecting Max to MySpace. (And, I hope, makes CDM required reading — right?)
North Pitney builds giant mazes and tracks movement through them.
The one element in common in all these stories: the ability to experiment with new, custom ideas for making music, all while rapidly prototyping ideas. That definitely sums up the visual patching experience for me. I like the video inspiration; it’d be great to see users of other tools assemble something similar as a grassroots effort.