Jamoma

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.

During the Jamoma development workshop last week, the development team got invited to the Matralab at Concordia University in Montréal directed by Sandeep Bhagwati who holds the Canada Research Chair for Inter-X Art.
In his work, Sandeep explores the artistic world between composed, predetermined structures and free improvisation. An approach which he calls "comprovisation".
We discussed how Jamoma together with the Virage sequencer could be used for comprovisation. We also listened to some spatialization work by Navid Navab which was carried out with the help of Jamoma.
It is always exciting to see (and hear) how Jamoma get used.

After more than a year of hard work and 17 previous beta versions, we are finally on the home stretch of releasing Jamoma 0.5 .

Last week I did a lecture and worksop for the Musikkteknologi students at NTNU in Trondheim. Wednesday I did a presentation of artistic work and discussed experience and reflection on them. Thursday I did two 4-hour workshops providing an introduction to spatialisation.

For the workshop Jamoma was used for rapid prototyping, and we found time to look into, test and listen to VBAP, ambisonics and DBAP. Unfortunately no time for ViMiC or the HoloSpat bridge.

The Jamoma blog and wiki have now moved to a new server at BEK. In the process we are also abandoning Zope and Plone, the system used in the past for content management. Instead we are now using the wiki server that ships with OSX Server. Hopefully we will all experience this to be much easier to maintain, edit and contribute to.

With the new architecture it will be much easier to be to add media (images, audio and video) to wiki and blog pages. We have therefore decided to try a new approach towards the documentation of Jamoma, in particular tutorials. Instead of embedding the tutorials in the Jamoma repository using web design software, we will set aside one section of the wiki for tutorials. Hopefully this will make it much simpler and faster to write tutorials, so that we at last can get some of the great features developed over the later years properly documented.

This was first posted 06/30/2008 07:05:00.

This was first posted on 06/28/2008 10:12:00.

Just after NIME most of the Jamoma developers gathered in Albi for a hectic development workshop generously hosted by GMEA.

The agenda for the workshop was pretty simple:

• Get as far as possible on porting Jamoma to Max 5
• No new features
• Canard heaven

We're not all the way there yet (except for canard heaven), but we certainly came a long way. Today Pascal has uploaded the first beta for Jamoma 0.5 (check the front page). If you want to give it a try, please take note of the following:

• Jamoma 0.5 only work with Max 5.0.3 or higher. Max 5.0.3 was released earlier today.
• So far it's Intel-Mac only. Windows and Universal Binary to come once we've got some compiling issues sorted out.
• It's buggy, and not yet ready for prime time. So if you're contemplating using Jamoma for real-life projects in the near future, it's better to stick to the previous version for the time being. On the other hand: If you have the patience to accept bugs and flaws, and want to help out in testing the new version, it will be much appreciated! If so, please sign up to the user and/or developer mailing lists, and report problems there and/or at the bug tracker.

Thanks!

This was first posted 05/10/2008 08:58:24.

Yesterday we were notified that a paper on Jamoma was accepted for ICMC 2008. We will also have a paper on the OSC namespace used for Jamoma presented at NIME 2008.

In addition there will be a panel session at ICMC entitled "Towards an interchange format for spatial audio scenes" set up by Gary Kendall, Nils Peters and Matthias Geier. SpatDIF - Spatial Sound Description Interchange Format, proposed by Nils Peters, has been developed in close relation to Jamoma development, with Jamoma being the primary test platform for implementation.

This was first posted 05/04/2008 08:47:47.

Jamoma 0.4.6. was uploaded a few days ago. It's mainly a maintenance release, and offers quite a few bug fixes as compared to 0.4.5.

Change log can be found here.

This might be the last Max 4.6 compatible release of Jamoma. Current development is now geared towards providing Max 5 compatibility, and we hope to have that ready sometime the comming summer.

This was first posted 12/13/2007 04:46:14.

This week we are having a Jamoma developer conference in Brussels, generously hosted by IMAL. Alexander (1, 2, 3) has been writing some blog posts on ongoing discussions and work.

Today we have been discussing and reviewing the OSC namespace. As the functionalities implemented in parameters are growing more complex, it is an ongoing process reviewing and structuring the resulting OSC namespace. It is not only a question of moving towards syntax specific to Jamoma, but also trying to understand the underlying mechanisms and problems that maker us move in the directions we do. By searching for more general underlying principles we might be able to make more informed choices for Jamoma, but the discussions can also be presented and reviewed in a more general context, and we are currently considering writing a paper for e.g. NIME on the topic.

The discussions seems to be suggesting a partly standardization or organization of OSC namespaces, approached through the specific problems, issues and needs we run into along the way. Currently there are at least three areas of work that hint in this direction: (1) The tree-like structuring that is typically in the form of /computer/module/parameter, (2) the introduction of classes inside modules, such as the /limiter, /saturation and /record classes in the jmod.output~ module, and (3) the namespace for accessing the attributes of each parameter.

The following OSC message has served as a "worst case" scenario for the discussion:
/degrade~.1/audio/channel.left/gain:ramp/drive/parameter.get

Having discussed different ways of designing a message like this one, we seem to have agreed that the meaning of the different separating signs used need to be precisely defined:

• . (dot): Used to indicate instances of a specific class.
• / (slash): Used to indicate branching according to the OSC specification.
• : (colon): Colon is used to split the total OSC message into two parts. The first part is describing where you want to go. The second part describe what you want to access there.

The separation is a result of the functionalities implemented as part of jcom.parameter and jcom.message (ramping, clipping, unit conversion, etc.). These functionalities are commonly available to all parameters. While the part before the colon describe what parameter to access, the section after the colon provides access to the various functionalities available for each parameter, and represents a standardized namespace. Dave introduced the analogy to how URLs are generally designed. The first part of the url (www.jamoma.org) describes what server to access, while the next part (/wiki/workshops) describes what to access on the server.

Below is an attempt at structuring the namespace inside the paramers. This is very much a work in progress.

Message                                               Category       Description

- [ ] /module/parameter
    - [ ] General for the module
        - [ ] :namespace/dump
        - [ ] :dump/values
    - [ ] value stuff                                                These ones are not fixed.
        - [ ] :value/get                              value          get the value of the parameter
        - [ ] :value                                  value          set the value (why would you want to do it this way?)
        - [ ] :value/range                            range
        - [ ] :value/range/get                        range
        - [ ] :value/range/clipmode                   range
        - [ ] :value/range/clipmode/get               range
        - [ ] :value/step/inc                         value          Increase by one step
        - [ ] :value/step/dec                         value          Decrease by one step
        - [ ] :value/step/size                        value          Set the step size
        - [ ] :value/step/size/get                    value          Get the step size
        - [ ] :value/unit
        - [ ] :value/type                             type
        - [ ] :value/type/get                         type
    - [ ] Conditioning
        - [ ] :repetitions                            repetitions
        - [ ] :repetitions/get                        repetitions
    - [ ] ramp stuff - including drive and function
        - [ ] :ramp/drive                             ramp/drive     Select what mechanism is driving the ramp
        - [ ] :ramp/drive/get                         ramp/drive
        - [ ] :ramp/drive/parameter                   ramp/drive     Pass additional parameters to the driving mechanism
        - [ ] :ramp/drive/parameter/get               ramp/drive
        - [ ] :ramp/function                          ramp/drive     Select what mapping function to use for the ramp
        - [ ] :ramp/function/get                      ramp/function
        - [ ] :ramp/function/parameter                ramp/function  Pass additional parameters to the function
        - [ ] :ramp/function/parameter/get            ramp/function
        - [ ] :ramp/function/parameter/names/dump     ramp/function  Get the name of all parameters for the currently used function
        - [ ] :ramp/function/parameter width          ramp/function  This is an example (valid for the tanh function)
        - [ ] :ramp/function/parameter/get width      ramp/function  This is an example (valid for the tanh function)
    - [ ] ui
        - [ ] :ui/freeze                              ui
        - [ ] :ui/freeze/get                          ui