I see that Jack is now truly multiplatform, including Windows. jackdmp is a C++ version of the Jack low-latency audio server for multi-processor machines. It is a new implementation of the jack server core features that aims in removing some limitations of the current design. The activation system has been changed for a data flow model and lock-free programming techniques for graph access have been used to have a more dynamic and robust system....
I have been complaining about the poor support for eLearning solutions at the University of Oslo for some years. I have tried Fronter, but find it too closed and rigid for what I want to do. I like that course information is open and easily available for everyone, but so far the standard course pages have been very much focused on basic information only. I recently discovered that things have improved a lot under the surface, and that it is now possible to give students access to add information to folders under the course web sites....
My panel proposal for ICMC 2007 in Copenhagen has been accepted. The title of the panel is The Need of Formats for Streaming and Storing Music-Related Movement and Gesture Data, and that more or less sums up what we are going to discuss. The other participants in the panel will be Antonio Camurri (Genova), Nicolas Castagne (ACROE, Grenoble), Esteban Maestre (Pompeu Fabra), Joseph Malloch (McGill), Douglas McGilvray (Glasgow), Diemo Schwarz (IRCAM) and Matthew Wright (UC Berkeley / Stanford)....
Musikkteknologidagene 2007, a Norwegian contact meeting for people working in the field(s) of music technology, will be organised at the Norwegian Academy of Music 10 and 11 October. I initiated the first of these meetings back in 2005, and am happy that we manage to keep the concept alive. Both research on, and use of, music technology is growing rapidly in Norway as everywhere else. However, while many of us working in the field have large international networks in our special branches of the music technology world, we often seem to know little about what is happening in our own country....
{.imagelink}I have received a constant stream of questions for an Intel-version of the little MultiControl software I made many years ago. MultiControl makes it easy to use any standard game controller (HID compatible) to control music software through OSC or MIDI. Still only for OS X, but a Windows version will follow at some point. A UB-version of the application is now available here, and I will try and get around to making a Windows version one day....
{#image457}The MTG group at Pompeu Fabra reports that Björk will use the Reactable in her upcoming tour: With her first tour concert at the Coachella Festival in California, the Icelandic singer Björk introduced the reactable for the first time to a mainstream audience. Our instrument will form a key element of the artist’s current world tour “Volta” which will appear at numerous music festivals during the next 18 months....
Brad Garton has posted an interesting blog entry about how he works with many different computer music languages from within Max/MSP, including RTcmix, Chuck, CSound, Super Collider and Lisp. He could also have used Java, Javascript, Python, etc. I particularly like the idea of using Max as the basis for exposing students to many different types of programming languages and approaches, and will see if I can include some of this in my Max course in the fall....
Dexter is the new product from JazzMutant, following the Lemur as a multitouch control interface. I find performing with the Lemur so much more intuitive and straight forward than using a laptop only, and it is great to be able to change layouts (even though the JazzEditor is a bit too complex for my taste). Jazzmutant seems to be one of the few (if not only) company that actually drives innovation in the music technology field at the moment, so it will be very interesting to see how Dexter behaves in real life....
In a 1995 ICMC paper, Todd Winkler wrote: If Leon Theremin were alive today, he would be amused by the corporate giants racing to discover the “killer app” that will bring interactive electronic images and sound to the masses. He had given musicians a seventy year lead to develop concepts and content exploring motion and sound. Indeed, many of the important discoveries presented at previous ICMC conferences regarding interactive systems, and issues surrounding real-time processing, sensing, and scheduling, seem to have gone largely unnoticed by the corporate world and popular media as they take their first baby steps toward creating intuitive sensors and systems that still await appropriate content....
David Zicarelli has posted an interesting note about a new collaboration between Cycling ‘74 and Ableton. Ableton Live is one of the most popular and easy to use to use live electronics software tools, and Max/MSP is one of the most powerful and flexible, so this sounds very interesting.