John, the semi-conductor.
John is an application meant for collective free improvisation, which was born out of the needs encountered in free improvisation practice with the Orchestre National Electroacoustique.
Namely, John was invented as a virtual companion to find stimulating answers for issues encountered in collective free improvisation, like precise timings for transitions between contrasting parts, articulations of large movements, or the proposal of unusual scores taking us off the beaten path.
It is made of two parts :
- a score editor which can generate random scores based on constraints and probablities defined by the user
- a real-time “conductor” displaying the score during live performance
Its name refers to both John Cage and John Doe.
The original development was made with Max (quite a challenge!), then ported to a reactive web app.
