Patching, programming visually by connecting virtual patch cords between onscreen objects, has generally been the domain of the few. Max/MSP/Jitter and Pd lovers and modular soft synth fans all patch regularly. But the mainstream audience? Now, Yahoo is letting you “remix” and “mash-up” RSS feeds from the Web, and guess what interface they’re using?
Yahoo Pipes and Quartz Composer, separated at birth:
Yahoo Pipes, via Download Squad (and half the Web, I know; we’re slow)
Now, of course, this isn’t just interesting for its interface. Various tools, including Quartz Composer itself, can make visuals out of RSS feeds. So, strap in here: you build a custom RSS feed using Yahoo Pipes, then make that into custom, live RSS-generated Interweb visuals using Quartz Composer, Processing, etc. Now that you can host Quartz Composer visuals inside some VJ apps (hello, VDMX5), you can add a crazy RSS remix to your next live visual set. And you have to know very little to accomplish it all — nifty.
We’ll be Pipes remixing here at CDM over the coming weeks, so if you have any cool pipes of your own, be sure to share them. Now … will the club you’re playing at have wifi?
Elsewhere: People tend to see software based on their background and experience. So, if you’ve spent time using Microsoft Access, you see Yahoo Pipes as a relational database — even if I see it as an interactive patching environment. That said, it’s clear that Pipes is riffing on the exact design of Quartz Composer, not Access. Patching software itself has been around since the early 1980s (before even Max, Miller Puckette authored Patcher in 1986, and I assume even that may have some earlier inspiration). But relational database is a pretty decent metaphor for what Pipes does.