NATO.0+55+3d modular, page 13/14
Personal Reflections
More Personal
I trained as a composer. I've been using Max since 1992, off and on, and only in the last couple of years did I begin to approach a level of comfort which I'd characterize as fluency, although I still keep the manuals by my side most of the time. Before NATO came along, I mostly used Max and MSP to create tools, rather than pieces. If I needed an audio interface for live performance, I'd write a patch that used a MIDI fader board to trigger and control audio playback from my hard drive. If I had an idea for a particular sound treatment, I'd build a patch to realize it. But generally, the `work` -- making the pieces -- was done out of Max, using a sequencer.
One of my principal frustrations as an electronics-based artist has been the lack of `venue` for recorded music (apart from releasing CDs). I don't generally perform my work live. Until recently, I've mostly approached the problem by writing semi-flexible scores that accompany live performances of dance or theater, so that my `canned` music could be heard in an active space. With the introduction of NATO, the landscape shifted for me.
What NATO offers me is a new approach to venue. The idea of creating self-contained, distributable and DYNAMIC work that combines visual and sonic elements is irresistible to me (I'm also a photographer, and have been searching for ways of uniting the two art forms in my work). I've avoided Director because I've never seen results that had any more than just basic dynamism, by which I mean `performance deviations`. I want a framework in which ambiguous, shifting and poetic work can happen, under total control. Max is an ideal platform for this purpose, because it permits both serial and parallel processes, and is time-oriented -- the basic unit of Max is the millisecond (and, soon, the sample). Combined with NATO, Max finally permits me to invent my own venues -- intimate, digital performance spaces -- where my work can be more fully realized.
Where the combined platform of Max/MSP/NATO really excels is in the ability to create a synthesis of many different audio and video techniques. I can easily and efficiently combine on-the-fly sound generation with audio buffer playback, all layered on top of an existing audio track being read from the hard drive, while I cut in and out of video clips, perform realtime manipulations to a different set of films or stills and layer text over the whole thing, all under precise timing control. I tend to build a fair amount of semi-randomness into my work -- different audio, different video, different timing relationships. All of these possibilities are easily managed with Max (and therefore NATO). And NATO permits total control over the visual space. It's a mixed-media dream.
In the last several months, my use of NATO has undergone an important development, since I've been concentrating more on performance in preference to standalone, self-contained pieces. For this purpose, this platform is the only one I could imagine working in -- it's completely open and far more customizable than I need it to be. As my technical and aesthetic needs have grown, I've had no trouble accommodating them using Max/NATO. My next move will involve folding the self-contained work into a performance context. With Max and NATO, I expect I'll have no trouble.
For me, the greatest significance of NATO is that it has transformed Max from wonderful toolkit software, into a viable authoring environment, virtually overnight. Through NATO, I've rediscovered Max in a very meaningful way, and I'm using it to accomplish tasks I'd never considered before -- not just with video, but with audio and text work as well. It's caused me to reconsider my views about computer-based performance. Before NATO, Max was useful. After NATO, Max is indispensable.
Is it easy? No. It isn't (although it's easier than it sounds). Is the challenge worthwhile? Absolutely. With Max under my belt, NATO was pretty straightforward to learn (although I keep the manual by my side at all times), but I wouldn't suggest that it's easy. As with any deep software, it will take me years to fully grasp the possibilities, which is a feature I cherish.
all materials on this site (text, images, etc.) © 2000-2001 Jeremy Bernstein