This was the first time I used Max to create my own patch and I have to say it looks like the possibilities are endless. That being said that also means there is a lot to understand and while I was able to create something from scratch in a weekend there was a lot of assistance from various tutorials on the web.
Understanding my work and rationalizing each and every part of it has been something I have been doing for a long time. I think that practice is holding back my work from a conceptual/contextual standpoint. This project made it so I didn’t have the time to do that. It forced me to focus on making the technology work and letting the context take care of itself.
Questions that are arising after beginning this project are:
- How can I incorporate Max into a major work for the quarter?
- It looks like it’s possible to connect it to Blender, but how?
- Should I start playing with Unity? (Max has much better integration with Unity)
- How do I get out of the way and let the work evolve on its own?
- What else is out there?
I’m glad that this project forced me to try something new from a technological standpoint. I’ve always felt that I can pick up software quickly but that sentiment was vacant from this project. Yes, I understand the interface and how things go together (sort of) but there are so many components to MAX/MSP that I really need to study the important and foundational objects.
The incorporation of data from MBARI was interesting and I felt that sonifying images of sea creatures from the mid-layer and then remixing the metatranslations was a fun exercise and gave each of these animals a new voice in an entirely new context. I’m not sure there is a scientific benefit to deconstructing and reconstructing the data is this way but I definitely enjoyed the appropriately alien soundscape that was produced.
Here is a link to the patch. Accompanying media can be provided upon request.