Jamoma

ProGit, the eminent introduction to and reference on GIT, is now available for iPad and Kindle.

If you just can't get enough of social networking, Andreas Tolf Tolfsen has setup a Jamoma group at identi.ca.

It's been some time since the last status update from the Jamoma development. The reason for this lack of news is that we were all just very busy. See below:

Publications:

We wrote and submitted conference papers on some new parts of the Jamoma framework structure to the ICMC and DAFx conference. While waiting for the DAFx review, we are very glad to announce Tim's presentation entitled "A Flexible and Dynamic C++ Framework and Library for Digital Audio Signal Processing" at the ICMC at Wednesday June 2nd!

Also, Pascal Baltazar will present a paper at the ICMC on a project which uses Jamoma: ``Virage : Designing an Interactive Intermedia Sequencer from Users Requirements and Theoretical Background''.

Further, Jamoma developers Pascal Baltazar and Théo de la Hogue from the Virage team submitted a request for comments to the Open Sound Control developer at CNMAT for a query system using OSC.

Jamoma Audio Graph:

The framework, formally know as Jamoma Multicore, was extended and refined during the last months. The essential idea is to allow flexible and dynamic multichannel audio connections within Max/MSP without having to draw zillions of patch-cords between objects. By using this approach, we are also able to do ``Live patching'' in Max/MSP, meaning that you can change patch cord connection without MSP audio dropouts. It already works quite stable and we have started to test drive and combining it with the spatialization modules in the Jamoma Modular framework - check out the git branch http://github.com/tap/JamomaModular/tree/0.6-nodelib-and-multicore. Feedback is welcome!
We also have a working version of Jamoma Audio Graph for the environments PureData and Ruby.

NodeLib:

The implementation of the proposal of the NIME08 and ICMC08 papers made huge improvements through recent work by Théo and Tim. Check out the branch http://github.com/tap/JamomaModular/tree/0.6-nodelib-and-multicore and enjoy testing OSC wildcards and other things. Feedback is also highly appreciated!

Workshops:

• Pascal Baltazar gave a Jamoma workshop at the Tunis Multimedia school (ISAMM)
• Trond spatialisation workshop at NTNU in Trondheim
• Nils Peters and Trond Lossius gave a sound spatialization workshop in Bergen with emphasis on ViMiC
• Nils gave a one-day Jamoma workshop at the Matralab, Concordia University, Montreal. The workshop focused on sound spatialization and jamoma module development.

Performances:

• FIAT LUX, Oslo Fashion week
• Sonic Tea Diffusion in Four Channels, Laura Emelianoff, Nuit Blanche Montreal
• Le courage: interactive multichannel sound performance by Jean-Léon Pallandre
• Daisy Cutter : Dance show, by La Zampa Company , sound design and management : Valérie Leroux
• Unruhige Räume by HBBP: live spatial electroacoustic music by Bjørnar Habbestad and Pascal Baltazar, with Benjamin Maumus
• Nouvelle Mémoire : Electroacoustic composition/performance by Thierry Besche
• Echo Room : Dance show by K. Danse Co. (Jean-Marc Matos), interactive design by Théo de la Hogue (GMEA)

A list of performances that uses Jamoma can be found here. Let us know if your performance is missing.

New Web Design:

www.jamoma.org got a new web design. Thanks to Julien Rabin for all the work. See his blog post about the redesign.

Outlook to Jamoma 0.5.1:

It's been more than 6 months after the Jamoma 0.5 release and we have already improved many tiny things that would justify a release of Jamoma 0.5.1. Unfortunately, we are currently lacking a stable development machine running Windows 7 which makes it impossible for us to compile and test Jamoma for Windows. We hope to be able to purchase a license within the next few months and start working on the release. To speed up this process, you can either join the development team as a (windows) programmer, or you can join this Pledgie donation campaign which brings the Windows license a little bit closer.

Moviestar is an interactive installation by Marieke Verbiesen & Neeltje Sprengers. The installation moulds old and new media together in order to create a reallife moving filmset. Classic 16mm film, animation, robotics, sound and motiontracking are used to simulate a real life filmset where visitors play the mainrole.

Moviestar from marieke v on Vimeo.

The visitor can see his or herself on a large screen as an actor in a movie surrounded by monsters, UFO´s and other surrealistic events, which they controll realtime themselves.

The installation forms a tribute to the young history of Special Effects, that through the years has evolved in high tempo. The first use of special effects suddenly opened up oppertunities for filmmakes with a low budget to realise their fantasies and create movies by putting together different filmed scenes, and blend animation with real actor recordings.

Like the brothers Sid & Marty Kroft, who started their filmstudio from their garage in the late 1970´s, where they used clay, wood and gardenutilities to create filmsets for their series “Land of the Lost”. In this series a family travels through a timewarp loophole and gets stuck in a strange world where history and future times meet. While getting chased by dinosaurs and haunted by aliens they try to find their way back to the world they came from while being in an enegmatic zone where time and location are unknown, they soon realise they can find their way back by discovering the meaning between past, present and future.

In “Moviestar” visitors get a look in front and behind the scenes in a strange world in which they play a role, and control events themselves. Using several old and new techniques to create this reality.

Workshop on Sound Spatialization in Jamoma
Wednesday, March 31 at the Matrabox
Concordia University, Montreal, CA
1515 Sainte-Catherine West, room EV 4.502

12.15-1pm Nils Peters presents an overview of spatialization techniques

1-1.30pm Navid Navab discusses control issues and tools
2-6.30pm workshop on jamoma and spatialization

Jamoma is an open-source project for structured programming in MaxMSP and Jitter (www.jamoma.org).

Jamoma is based on modular principles that allow the reuse of functionalities whereas all parameters remain customizable to specific
artistic needs. We will install jamoma during the workshop. Participants are asked to bring a laptop (mac preferred) with Max5 installed and audio files for experimentation. If interested, please send a short description of what you wish to do in the workshop to nils.peters@mcgill.ca‎

This event is free and open to the public.

Nils Peters is a PhD researcher in Music Technology at McGill University and affiliated with the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT). His work focuses on the perception and modeling of spatialized sounds. He studied electrical and audio engineering at the University for Music and Dramatic Arts and the University of Technology (Graz, Austria). He has worked as an audio engineer in the fields of recording, post-production and live electronics in Germany, Austria, France, and Canada. He is also a co-developer of Jamoma, an open-source project that facilitates art-based research and performance practice within Cycling'74's MaxMSP.

FIAT LUX was a collaboration between Josefin Johansson, Daniel Sørensen and Ricardo del Pozo for Oslo Fashion Week, dressing models through the use of video projections, and receiving rave reviews:

In times of financial crisis, recession and too much focus on commercial values in the fashion industry, it’s such a joy and relief to see that there are still a few dedicated souls out there, who create, not with the purpose to make money, but with a pure and honest ambition to share a creative vision, to give us a soulful experience in between art, happening and fashion. Josefin Johansson, designer and stylist for Surferosa and Daniel Sørensen, both fashion designer and light designer and the winner of Project Runway, in a collaboration with AV designer Richardo del Pozo, gave us the most mind-blowing performance last night at Dansens Hus. I don’t think anyone in the audience expected to see a traditional fashion show… we all know that Josefin and Daniel are far from conventional fashion designers, but still, the fantastic, short and intense performance they gave us completely blew our heads off!

Three naked models entered a huge black stage and positioned themselves in the spotlight. Then the show started. Their naked bodies were transformed from blanc canvases into art objects in a spectacular show of light, patterns and colors. It was so clean and simple and still one of the most powerful presentations I have ever seen. We were not allowed to take pictures with flash, because that would have ruined the show, but for those of you who wants to experience a little moment of magic, take a look at YOU TUBE.

More pictures can be found here.

For the show Ricardo controlled video using Jamoma and his Jamoma adaptation of Video Projection Tool.

Traditionally, January seems to be one of the most active months for Jamoma development. This year was no exception. Here are some highlights:

• Jamoma Foundation project extended to allow compiling for the iPhone/iPod/iPad.
• Jamoma DSP expanded through the addition of a new FFT Lib extension for spectral processing, based on the Ooura library.
• Jamoma DSP's Filter Lib optimization and clean-up work
• Jamoma Multicore was largely re-written to address limitations of the internal architecture as it had previously existed.
• Ruby language binding fleshed out and made to work doing live-coding DSP with Jamoma Multicore.
• Jamoma Modular saw a continuation of work on the NodeLib (for managing tree structures of modules, parameters, etc.). The Virage DeviceManager (a daemon that loads plug-ins) has now been integrated through a new Max external called jcom.deviceManager. This allows communication with Minuit, OSC, CopperLan and potentially more protocols by building dedicated plugins.
• Many other things have also been going. Not all of them can be listed, but some include: A UserLib module wrapping ol.autotalent~ (automatic pitch correction for MSP); jmod.cueManager/jcom.cuemanager improvements (cue moving, autofollow and comments features); website improvement; and new modules for motion capture retrieval and processing, including selecting models for marker placement and biomechanics, and GDIF implementation.

Moviestar is an interactive installation by Marieke Verbiesen & Neeltje Sprengers.

The installation moulds old and new media together in order to create a reallife moving filmset. Classic 16mm film, animation, robotics, sound and motion-tracking are used to simulate a real life film set where visitors play the main role.

A miniature robotic film set forms the background for the movie, while interactive animations come are activated once a visitor enters the film set.

In front of a green screen on the other side of the space, the visitors movements are tracked in real time, both sound and image respond their movements. Projected into a world that consists of monsters, UFO´s and other slightly surreal events, visitors can control animations by by moving in front of the camera. Jamoma, cv.jit and FTM were used for live video analysis, processing and control.

Moviestar was presented at Filmhuis Den Haag September - October 2009.

An introduction to writing DSP code with Jamoma DSP is at http://blog.74objects.com/2009/12/03/writing-dsp-objects/ . For people curious about the structure of the C++ code underlying Jamoma this is a good place to start.

The Multiplayer by Marlon Schumacher is a MaxMSP-based application for general purpose multichannel file playback and ambisonic decoding, developed as part of the OMprisma Library for IRCAM’s OpenMusic 6.1.

It is implemented as a set of modules complying with the Jamoma framework.

Multiplayer 0.1b7 is now available as part of Ircam Forum.

http://www.jamoma.org

Jamoma is an open-source project for structured programming in Max/MSP/Jitter and is based on modular principles that allow the reuse of functionalities where all parameters remain customizable to specific needs.

Jamoma is in development for more than five years and is used for teaching and research within science and the arts.
It has provided a performance framework for composition, audio/visual performances, theater and installation gallery settings. It has been also used for scientific research in the fields of psychoacoustics, music perception and cognition, machine learning, human computer interaction and medical research.

Features include:

* A large and peer-reviewed library of modules for audio and video processing, sensor integration, cue management, mapping, and exchange of data with other environments
* Extensive set of abstractions that facilitates everyday work with Max/MSP
* Specialized sets of modules for work on spatial sound rendering, including support for advanced spatialization techniques such as Ambisonics, DBAP, ViMiC and VBAP
* Modules for work on music-related movement analysis
* Powerful underlying control structures that handle communication across modules
* Strong emphasis on interoperability
* Native OSC support, thus making it easy to access and manipulate processes via external devices and interfaces
* Comprehensive documentation through maxhelp-files, reference pages and growing number of online tutorials
* Easily extendable and customizable

Jamoma 0.5 was a major effort. Originally it was envisioned as a port from Max 4 to Max 5. However, we did a lot more than that, and significantly overhauled major portions of Jamoma to dramatically improve performance, stability (particularly on Windows), and ease of use. We have also improved the documentation, distribution, and organization of Jamoma.

Here are some resources to get started with Jamoma 0.5:

• Free Download
• Jamoma 0.5 Tutorials
• Mailing lists and forums for users and developers
• Papers on research concerning or related to Jamoma

Requirements: Jamoma 0.5 requires Max 5.0.8, and works on OSX 10.4 or later (Intel) and Windows XP or later

Jamoma is licensed as GNU LGPL. Jamoma is an open source development initiative with more than 20 contributors.

Development is supported by BEK - Bergen Center for Electronic Arts, CIRMMT - the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology, McGill University, Electrotap, GMEA - Centre National de Creation Musicale d'Albi-Tarn and University of Oslo with additional financial support, a wide range of institutions and funding bodies. Further details can be found here.

If you have installed Jamoma for the first time and you were so excited that you were beginning to use Jamoma without reading the "getting started" section in the ReadMe.rtf, then you have probably seen this kind of dark color scheme.


This is not the way Jamoma modules should look like.

In order to let Max5 know about our custom made interface objects (e.g. jcom.ui), you have to to the following:

1. please go to Options->Object Defaults.
2. Click on the lower left corner on the file symbol "load settings"
3. choose one of the color schemes starting with "Jamoma", e.g. "JamomaMax".

Then Jamoma will show up like this:

For everyday work with Jamoma, I personally like the JamomaGraphite color scheme. But for a performance situation, where you want a darker background, you should check out JamomaNoir or JamomaKulerQuietCry.

Release candidate 10 for Jamoma 0.5 is now available for download. Mac only so far, but hopefully the Windows installer will be up later today. Enjoy, and please report any problems you might find.

With this version we have officially dropped support for PPC processors on Mac.

Joseph Malloch recently created a new mapping module based on his DOT Mapper.

The DOT mapper is a network-based peer-to-peer mapping network and associated GUI, built for digital musical instrument mapping in the IDMIL at McGill University.

In addition to Jamoma's jmod.mapper, jmod.mapperContinuous and jmod.mapperDiscrete this module offers an alternative way of creating mappings.

Beside other cool things, Joe's module can create mappings within Jamoma, but also to environments outside the Jamoma world.

Demo: DOT Mapper + Jamoma from Joseph Malloch on Vimeo.