FLOSS Manuals: Pure Data (2006–)

Pure Data (or Pd) is a real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing. Pure Data is commonly used for live music performance, VeeJaying, sound effects, composition, audio analysis, interfacing with sensors, using cameras, controlling robots or even interacting with websites. Because all of these various media are handled as digital data within the program, many fascinating opportunities for cross-synthesis between them exist. Sound can be used to manipulate video, which could then be streamed over the internet to another computer which might analyze that video and use it to control a motor-driven installation.

GNU General Public License version 2

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bang. Pure Data (2006)

“Pd (aka Pure Data) is a real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing. Pd is free software. It is subject of a constant process of change, revealing new characteristics with each application. Is it a tool/media/instrument? Is this a question that can be answered? Is it a decision that needs to be made at all?

This publication is a compilation of texts describing different approaches to Pd, a profile of its usage and development. It is contradictory, and at the end, one finds oneself with a lot of open questions, on a technical level as well as on a philosophical one.

The 1st International Pd-Convention in Graz in fall 2004 was the motivation for this book. The authors participated at this meeting, and an accompanying DVD shows some of the works that were presented at this occasion.”

With articles from: Frank Barknecht, Reinhard Braun, Ramiro Cosentino, Günther Geiger, Thomas Grill, Cyrille Henry, Jürgen Hofbauer, Reni Hofmüller, Werner Jauk, Brian Jurish, Andrea Mayr, Thomas Musil, Michael Pinter, Miller Puckette, Marc Ries, Winfreid Ritsch, Andrey Savitsky, Christian Scheib, Susanne Schmidt, Hans-Christoph Steiner, James Tittle, Harald A. Wiltsche, IOhannes m zmölnig.

Edited by Fränk Zimmer
Publisher Wolke, Hofheim, 2006
Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 2.5 License
175 pages

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Vilém Flusser: Writings (2002)

Ten years after his death, Vilém Flusser’s reputation as one of Europe’s most original modern philosophers continues to grow. Increasingly influential in Europe and Latin America, the Prague-born intellectual’s thought has until now remained largely unknown in the English-speaking world. His innovative writings theorize—and ultimately embrace—the epochal shift that humanity is undergoing from what he termed “linear thinking” (based on writing) toward a new form of multidimensional, visual thinking embodied by digital culture. For Flusser, these new modes and technologies of communication make possible a society (the “telematic” society) in which dialogue between people becomes the supreme value.

The first English-language anthology of Flusser’s work, this volume displays the extraordinary range and subtlety of his intellect. A number of the essays collected here introduce and elaborate his theory of communication, influenced by thinkers as diverse as Martin Buber, Edmund Husserl, and Thomas Kuhn. While taking dystopian, posthuman visions of communication technologies into account, Flusser celebrates their liberatory and humanizing aspects. For Flusser, existence was akin to being thrown into an abyss of absurd experience or “bottomlessness”; becoming human required creating meaning out of this painful event by consciously connecting with others, in part through such technologies. Other essays present Flusser’s thoughts on the future of writing, the revolutionary nature of photography, the relationship between exile and creativity, and his unconventional concept of posthistory. Taken together, these essays confirm Flusser’s importance and prescience within contemporary philosophy.

Edited by Andreas Ströhl
Translated by Erik Eisel
Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2002
Electronic Meditations series, Vol 6
ISBN 0816635641, 9780816635641
229 pages

review (Sean Cubitt, Leonardo Reviews)

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