[PlanetCCRMA] Norwegian Computer Music

[joey.a]

> Message: 1
> From: Hans Wilmers <hans.wilmers@notam02.no>
> To: planetccrmanews@ccrma.Stanford.EDU
> Date: Wed, 07 Nov 2007 16:04:02 +0100
> Subject: [PlanetCCRMA] live-CD
>
> Hi,
> I have made a live-CD based on fedora 7 and a good bit of CCRMA.
> It's still in test phase, and for norwegian keyboard as default, but if
you
> are interested you can give it try:
>
> http://www.notam02.no/notamlive

When I first followed this link, I ended up arriving at
http://www.notam02.no/DSP02/en/index.php?news=8.

This was by far the simplest, fastest, and cleanest computer music software
download I have ever attempted. (Thanks also to Sun Microsystems Java).

The man-machine interface is surprisingly flexible and intuitive, and I was
up and running in a couple of minutes.

Despite Instruksjoner.txt being in a Scandanavian language, I found it far
easier to understand than the corresponding (English) help for both Snd and
SuperCollider.

Within half an hour I had a musical introduction laid down, and within half
a day I had the first few minutes of a more substantial composition,
using a sound sample from my earlier foray into computer music machinery
design, a
 musique concrete source I discovered long years ago (after I had to shelve
that original computer music research),
and a Latoofargian chaos function, computed using SuperCollider.

In contrast I seem to have been struggling with SuperCollider for a couple
of weeks now and have, as yet, only mastered about 10% of it, at best.
As for Scheme/Snd, I still have not managed to run even a single instance of
exemplary code, without getting an error message.

Why is it that Northern European researchers seem to be so much better at
the ergonomics of the man-machine interface than American researchers?

(I recall that the University of Aarhus "Egg" was, for me, the best read in
the early years of the Computer Music Journal, matched only by Bill Buxton's
live presentations of University of Toronto SSSP innovations, at the 1979
Computer Music Conference {Chicago})

I particularly liked the fact that:

(1) This software package appears to be cross platform compatible, and a
doddle on Windows (Planet CCRMA does not even span different versions of
Linux)
(2) Notamo2.no refreshingly emphasised concrete music sources throughout, in
their short sound demos.
(3) Half of those demos were produced by primary school kids, which speaks
volumes for the achieved ergonomics of the interface.

> The DVD contains much more, especially those nice CCRMA-menues and all of
the
> defaut-apps, but there are compatibility issues with some hardware.
>
> I'll be more than happy for feedback!

I am downloading this much larger package now. You did not say whether this,
too, has cross platform compatibility. (I currently get 3 times the screen
capacity under Windows, than I do under FC7, and I know my way around it
better.)

> Best regards,
> Hans

Ditto

James Harris