Max 6 Public Beta Released
Cycling ’74 released a Public Beta of the AV Synthesis Graphical Programming Language called Max, which is now in version 6. This is the first time Cycling ’74 offered a Public Beta of it’s software used by Artists and Musicians to create anything they can imagine. Peter Kirn wrote a good article about Max 6 on CreateDigitalMusic.com. I tend to agree with Peter that artists and designers are lucky to have Max around for so long.
It has been interesting over the past decade to witness the amount of languages and environments made available for artists to realize their work. When I entered college at RPI in 2000, there was a difficult barrier between the artist and computer: the computer programming language. And then there was Max/MSP. C and it’s derivatives undoubtably made many right brained thinkers think twice about making complex art with a computer. Since then, several efforts have been made to integrate programming in the artist’s toolset. Graphical programming languages like Max paved the way for many of these efforts including Pd, OpenFrameworks, Arduino, Processing, Quartz Composer, and JQuery. It will be interesting to see how Cycling ’74 competes with these other languages, or at least adapts to their availability. As long as Max has become more stable, I am ready to jump back on the Max bandwagon after a lengthy foray in Web Design, Arduino, Objective-C, and Processing.
Cycling ’74 has kept up with the times in its latest release, updating the Jitter OpenGL toolset and making a 64-bit Audio Engine. I am most interested in the ways the gen~ object can make patches more efficient, finding new ways to work with OpenGL with the changes to Jitter, have you checked out the Nodes object? Many users will appreciate the new Project Manager. Newbies to Max will find it easier to learn the graphical programming language by using the new Wheel Menu. For a longer rundown, check out Peter Kirn’s article or visit the Public Beta site.
Dive in to the new Max 6 now by downloading it from Cycling ’74′s website.
