You Didn’t Know it, but Max Is the Software Behind a Ton of Great Maker Projects

Craft & Design
Max Microsite

Max Microsite

Today, Cycling ‘74 celebrates their thousandth user-created Max software project with a cool microsite (available here) that serves as an archive for all 1,000 projects. 

For those of you not familiar with Cycling ‘74, the company is best known for producing Max (formerly Max/MSP), a Mac and PC software for creating custom digital signal processing environments. It sounds intimidating, but in my experience the software’s biggest audience is with artists and musicians interested in creating unique interactive experiences.

One need only to browse the new microsite to get a sense of the software and its audience. Project #705, (shown here), is an experiment that uses Max to create a virtual holiday dinner using Skype and controlling the movements of a table full of telepresence robots by tracking family members’ head movements.

Another example, Project #179 (shown here), is a self-contained music synthesizer submitted in 2011 that reacts to the sight of people dancing.

YouTube player

The microsite also includes the first user-created project ever submitted to Cycling ‘74 (shown here). The project was submitted by Oli Larkin back in 2005 and uses Max to control several audio plug-in parameters simultaneously.

To see more of the projects, check out the Cycling ‘74 1000 Project Microsite.

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I make stuff, play music, and sometimes make stuff that plays music. Fan of donuts, Arduino, BEAM robotics, skateboarding, Buckminster Fuller, and blinking lights.

View more articles by Donald Bell

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