Freedom and Constraint in Computer Music
Presented on the Software Max/ MSP and with the Scripting Interface Note~ for Max
Björn Gottstein
The following considerations come from the observation that the work with electronic storage and computers was for composers the promise of an incredible freedom and many possibilities. Those freedoms are however always restrained by elementary technical restrictions. The composer of electronic music has an ambivalent contact with his means of production. The example of the supposedly particularly «flexible» software Max/MSP and its dependency on MIDIStandard will allow for an assessment of those restrictions. At the same time one will discuss how far the implementation of a complement within Max/MSP (as in the case of the scripting interface Note~ for Max developed at the research department of the Basel University of Music) managed to counter those restrictions, as well as which questions this raises.
