Dear Ge, I'd like to share some notes on some of the more philosophical points here. That's what a approaching new year will do to you, I suppose like a cross between well wishes and new year's resolutions. * Meanwhile, the ChucK community continues to grow both in and out of
academia.
I think this is great and indeed essential. I briefly addressed a similar point at the round table discussion at STEIM's jamboree. It's my humble opinion that one of the great weaknesses of popular culture is getting stuck in what's fashionable at the moment while one of the great weaknesses of the academic world can be getting stuck in a "ivory tower" with little eye for practical applications. I think keeping in touch with both can bring great benefits for both. "Peer review" is one of the pillars of science and I honestly can't think of a better way to peer review work on subjects like interface design or synthesis methods than putting them on a stage (of whatever kind). Similarly a bit of research can be very beneficial to artistic practice or plain entertainment. I don't mean that as a substitute for a paper or emotional investment at all, but as a tool fo rincreasing the quality of both. I think we are doing very, very well here and that this is a perspective from which we can learn and gain a lot more still in the future.
* Along this line, we would like to articulate the following point: major general language features that are introduced as part of ChiP *will* be fully released in the main distribution (only iPhone/smule-specific features will remain proprietary for now). This is by design when we structured Smule. You see, most of us at Smule care about, use, and release open-source software, and we genuinely want to build an ecosystem where things can be as open as possible and remain mutually beneficial. We shall keep moving forward in this way.
To me this didn't need extra explanation. Clearly the iPhone is more closed then I'd like but I have to recognise that without that aspect and the control it brings it likely never would've gotten as popular as it is. The iPhone is very standardised and popular which brings some very interesting properties. Clearly Smule (amongst others) has been able to bring experimental interfaces to electronic sounds to people who would never otherwise have been interested in such experiments and it has done very well indeed. I think this can only be beneficial. To me it's very funny that a mainstream news source like Fox seemed quite sceptical about using the tilt sensor in laptops for music while a audience that's nearly as mainstream like the iPhone's audience has been delighted by *the exact same thing*. I really don't think the average Ocarina customer is very concerned with maximising the bandwith between the performer's intentions and the sound synthesis parameters (nor should they have to be). To me this is a exact analogy of what I wrote about above and a very good thing. If somebody could please send a note to the developers of most DAW's, various performers and accedemics who make me think of the word "critical theory" (regardless of the topic the paper is actually on)? Thanks ;¬).
* ChucK releases: it's been a while since the last release, so perhaps not many are holding their breath for the next release. It's coming, for better or for worse!! File IO is finally in place, along with several other features. miniAudicle MAUI for Windows and Linux are nearing completion as well. Stay tuned!
Sounds great! I'm very much looking forward to both of those. A million thanks again for everybody's time and efford. Full steam ahead! Yours, Kas.