back to list

FWD: A belated announcement

🔗COUL@ezh.nl (Manuel Op de Coul)

1/31/1996 9:33:48 AM
Date: 30 Jan 1996 16:42:34 -0800
From: "Robert Marsanyi"
Subject: A belated announcement
To: "AlgoComp" ,
"Michael French" ,
"HMSL list" ,
"SonicArts"

A few years ago now (!), I completed work on a graphic programming environment
called Wire. It's since been used at CalArts and Mills, and it was fully my
intention to release it to anyone interested, but somehow I never got around
to it.

What Wire is

Wire is a programming environment based on a simple dataflow model. Wire
includes classes of objects that implement simple execution units, which may
be interconnected and organized hierarchically to make larger objects. Wire
programs (or patches) may be created, edited and run visually. Wire includes
classes of objects that implement an interactive unit-generator model for
attached DSP hardware, as well as classes that deal with MIDI, implement
simple math functions, tables, recorded event streams, method invocations for
HMSL objects, and so on. Wire patches may be embedded in HMSL hierarchies, or
used to specify HMSL functions or otherwise be controlled from the standard
HMSL Forth environment. New Wire objects may be easily implemented in HMSL,
even while Wire is running.
HMSL is an environment for performing, composing and experimenting with music,
developed at the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College, Oakland, CA,
through the late '80s and early '90s. It is designed primarily for real-time
use. It is available in implementations for the Amiga and Macintosh
computers. Contact Frog Peak Music for more information on HMSL (the address
is in the inside cover of the Wire manual). Wire is written in HMSL.

Wire is a useful tool for prototyping DSP programs, and implementing programs
where the logic is split between DSP and host processing.

System requirements

There are two ways to run Wire: as a standalone application, or in conjunction
with HMSL. To run standalone Wire, you need a Mac or Amiga, optionally with a
MIDI interface. To use Wire's DSP functions, you need hardware compatible with
the HMSL DSP library (a GMP 56001 system, a Digidesign Audiomedia I card or
Sound Designer hardware). To run Wire with HMSL, you need a machine running
HMSL 4.20 or higher.

How to get Wire

FTP to ftp://music.calarts.edu/pub/HMSL/DSP. There's two files there: one for
Amiga (lzh), one for Mac (hqx). The manual is inside, in MSWord, PostScript,
RTF and text forms.

--rbt

Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl
with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Thu, 1 Feb 1996 02:52 +0100
Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI)
for id RAA17778; Wed, 31 Jan 1996 17:52:14 -0800
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 17:52:14 -0800
Message-Id:
Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu
Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu