New Media Exploration Blog

Shirley Stevenson
New Media Exploration Blog

http://www.cycling74.com

My new Media Exloration is about MAX/MSP/Jitter. Max is a graphical development environment for music and multimedia developed and maintained by a San Francisco-based software company Cycling ‘74. It has been used for over fifteen years by composers, performers, software designers, researchers and artists interested in creating interactive software.

The Max program itself is highly modular, with most routines existing in the form of shared libraries. An API allows third-party development of new routines (called "external objects"). As a result, Max has a large userbase of programmers not affiliated with Cycling '74 who enhance the software with commercial and non-commercial extensions to the program. Because of its extensible design and graphical interface, Max is widely regarded as the lingua franca for developing interactive music performance software.

MAX has been in use for over twenty years by performers, composers, artists, scientists, teachers, and students. The newest version is MAX 5 is a dramatic transformation of Max that begins a new chapter in the program's history. The new features in MAX 5 is Patching and Workflow, Debugging, Integrated Documentation, Searching and Finding, & Timing.

To learn more about the company that developed Max Cycling ’74, you can visit: http://www.cycling74.com/. When you visit the cycling74.com site there is an interesting interview with Dana Karwas. Dana’s work uses high-end technology such as Max/MSP to explore social interaction and levels of identity within public space. Dana has a Masters degree in Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) from NYU. To Learn more about the new MAX 5 products you can visit: http://www.cycling74.com/products/max5.