Last week I had the privilege of visiting Stetson University’s Digital Arts Program in DeLand, Florida. I knew Nathan Wolek from the early days of MSP, at which time we were both grad students: Nathan working on the GTK Granular Toolkit while I was working onTap.Tools . We later worked together on bringing Hipno to life.

Time goes by quickly and I had never had the chance to see the program that Nathan is shepherding at Stetson. Knowing Nathan, and having caught the occasional glimpse of theMobile Performance Group on Youtube (see video above), I figured that some good things were happening. But… Wow! The program is completely amazing.

The first thing they’ve done is truly collaborate across disciplines and across departments. I’ve seen lip service to this at too many institutions to mention, but at Stetson they are actually doing it. It’s pretty exciting to see. The faculty of the digital arts department bring expertise in digital audio, sculpture, realtime video performance, electronics, etc.

Two things really stood out during my visit. One was a show by Stetson faculty memberMatt Roberts entitled Waves Walks . I find it difficult to put my finger on what was so ‘right’ with the works in this show, but I think part of it had to do with how all of the elements both within the works and between the works integrated so well to form an extremely strong impression. The different works sonically engaged different spectral regions so as to not interfere with each other but rather work together to make it feel as though you were fully immersed in a surreal coastline environment.

Following a day with 3 lectures (one focused on MaxMSP, one on music technology and entreprenuership, and one on listening, aesthetics, and electronic music history/literature), I had a day to discuss the future of the GTK with Nathan. And I also had another standout moment from the visit: a meeting with Stetson student Eric Baum.

Eric showed me his Max patcher, which is a more evolved version of this Max patcher . He was producing some really interesting results. To make it performable, he showed me a double-neck guitar that he had built and retrofitted with a bunch of sensors, some of which he made himself. Here’s the part that really blew me away: he had been using an Arduino and switched to the Teabox. Why? Because the results he got were so much better.

The Teabox gives much higher resolution, a lot faster, and the electronics in the Teabox do a significant amount of signal conditioning to produce more usable results. It’s pretty cool to hear about someone who can pull together the skills and experience to make an Arduino work, then turn around and replace it with a Teabox because it works so much better! It was nice way to wrap up a really great trip.

My thanks to Nathan and everyone at Stetson for their gracious hosting, spotless organization, and an inspiring experience!