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Delicious Max 6 Tutorial 23: Live for the Swarm

· 3 min read
Matthew Ragan
Matthew Ragan
Pixel Pusher

One of the on-going semester projects that I've committed to is regular (read weekly) online MAX tutorials. I'm currently enrolled in a course that's focused on Media Installations, and while I have taken a semester of programming learning Processing I'm not proficient enough to rely on Processing for creating interactive programs. The Media Installations course has a heavy MAX component to it, but we don't have much direct instruction in class about how to actually using Cycling 74's software. Given this reality, I've leaning on the web to help me learn MAX.

Production image

So far I've bounced between a few different sources for online instruction. I started with Peter Batchelor's set of MaxMSP tutorials which were wonderful. I'm currently about third of the way through his materials, and know enough to feel an itch for more complicated instruction. Thanks to YouTube's recommendation bar I stumbled onto dude837's (Sam Tarakajian) YouTube channel and tutorials. dude837 has great material, it's interesting, fast paced, and funny. While Batchelor's tutorials are great, they do sometimes feel a little slow – don't get me wrong, there are plenty of times when I need a slow tutorial. Using both of these channels as resources has left me with a mixture of general and creative instruction – which has been a nice mix.

This week I'm going to tackle Sam's Delicious Max 6 Tutorial 23: Live for the Swarm.

This semester I have two courses with conceptual frameworks that overlap. I'm taking a Media Installations course, and a course called New Systems Sculpture. Media Installations is an exploration of a number of different mediated environments, specially art installations in nature. This course deals with the issues of building playback systems that may be interactive, or may be self-contained. New Systems is taught through the art department, and is focused on sculpture and how video plays as an element in the creation of sculptured environments.

Handy things to keep in mind​

  • http://www.maxobjects.com – a database of max objects
  • Option Click brings up the Help File
  • fsaa – Full Screen Anti-Aliasing
  • Freezing Attributes keeps them from changing when you load a patch