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Distributed tools for interactive design of heterogeneous signal networks

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Abstract

We introduce libmapper, an open source, cross-platform software library for flexibly connecting disparate interactive media control systems at run-time. This library implements a minimal, openly-documented protocol meant to replace and improve on existing schemes for connecting digital musical instruments and other interactive systems, bringing clarified, strong semantics to system messaging and description. We use automated discovery and message translation instead of imposed system-representation standards to approach “plug-and-play” usability without sacrificing design flexibility. System modularity is encouraged, and data are transported between peers without centralized servers.

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Notes

  1. http://www.arduino.cc/

  2. The OSC path refers to the text string identifying the semantics of an OSC message.

  3. Note that there do exist many decentralized statistical analysis approaches, such as graph-based techniques that can distribute successive reduction steps throughout several computational nodes [16]. Application of such techniques to libmapper may be possible, and is the subject of future work.

  4. http://janroimaging.com/

  5. http://idmil.org/projects/prosthetic_instruments

  6. http://www.openframeworks.cc/

  7. http://libcinder.org/

  8. https://www.ableton.com/

  9. http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~gary/rtmidi/

  10. http://www.arduino.cc/

  11. http://firmata.org/wiki/Main_Page

  12. https://github.com/IDMIL/firmata-mapper

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Acknowledgments

Development of libmapper has been supported by funds from the Fonds de recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC) of the Quebec government, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the NSERC/Canada Council for the Arts New Media Initiative.

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Correspondence to Joseph Malloch.

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Malloch, J., Sinclair, S. & Wanderley, M.M. Distributed tools for interactive design of heterogeneous signal networks. Multimed Tools Appl 74, 5683–5707 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-014-1878-5

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