..on or around Thu, Jul 12, 2007 at 09:04:55AM +0900, Karl D.D. Willis said: > I have used Max/Msp/Jitter for some time but would love to see PD > grow and grow. > When I first looked at PD several years ago, GEM was still pretty > funky to work with and Jitter was solid. > > But Max/Msp/Jitter is not so easy to teach.
i've taught PD with good results on a few occassions. if you work slow and cover base concepts in a non-rarefied language people can be up and running in a few days. some people have difficulty with concepts such as 'variables' or conditional tests so i found starting with a primer on the basics of programming - using PD in examples - gives them enough to design with greater independence and imagination later. Derek Holzer teaches PD very often and is now something of an authority on the topic. perhaps writing to Derek (as Adam suggests) could be a good start to thinking about building a small course around it? > I have tried myself and another long time user/object maker is > currently teaching it here in Tokyo and told me it was a lot more > difficult than it seems. > > What is huge here is Processing. They recently launched the first > book about Processing (in Japanese no less) and had a launch demo/ > event that was completely packed out. > There are now several (English) books on Processing available too: > http://www.amazon.com/Processing-Programming-Handbook-Designers- > Artists/dp/0262182629/ > http://www.amazon.com/Processing-Creative-Coding-Computational- > Foundation/dp/159059617X/ > > But yeah, it is simple to learn, it's sauce is open, it's > documentation is great, you can graduate to programming in Java, it > plays well with Arduino... > But then, it's a bit slow for computer vision, it's interface is > quirky, you actually have to write real 'code' rather than move cool > blocks round screen... > i also think Processing is great but it suffers the Java misnomer of build-once-run-anywhere. it is also very processor intensive: AFAIK it doesn't yet exploit the richness of modern GPU's, so all actual processing is CPU side. more-so, it's only really good for graphics development. PD or Max/MSP are really useful for network-wide messaging, real-world to digital interfacing, number shaping, signal-processing etc. that said, i think Processing is a far better context for for teaching graphics programming and object-orientation in general. relatedly, one very fine 'framework' you might like to look into is: http://openframeworks.cc/ the interface is C++, which isn't perhaps so great for starting out with programming of course.. another is vvvv http://vvvv.org/tiki-index.php but it is all DirectX/Windows which greatly limits it's usefulness. another issue here - one not covered enough - surrounds the ethics of teaching people software many/most will have to steal to use. on more than one occassion i've seen a Max/MSP teacher handing out cracked copies of the program to students. this of course is no different from multimedia courses in NZ (and elsewhere) requiring students to somehow 'aquire' NZ1000.00 worth of software to complete a degree they've already paid for.. julian Madrid, Spain -- http://julianoliver.com http://selectparks.net emails containing HTML will not be read. _______________________________________________ Ada_list mailing list [email protected] http://aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/
