Welcome to PuréeData!

PuréeData is a net-art experiment that implements a web interface to an instance of PureData, a dataflow audio programming environment. To hear the sound output, listen to this MP3 stream with your favorite audio application.

Ready to dive in? Check out the list of supported objects and some helpful PureData tutorials! For technical information, check out How PuréeData works.

This application is open-source and in-progress, and currently works best in Google Chrome. If you'd like to pitch in, the source code is maintained on GitHub! We're still testing and developing PuréeData, so it has some limitations. We need your help to complete it! If you find any bugs, put 'em in the tracker—your help is greatly appreciated!

PuréeData was dreamed up by Ted Hayes and Sofy Yuditskaya in 2010, and implemented from then to now by Ted with the indispensable aid of the Pyata library.

Ted Hayes is a poet-inventor: conceiving objects and experiences that explore the sublime and the enigmatic through recombination and deconstruction. He is a proponent of what he has dubbed “Research Art,” or art as science experiment, and actively investigates the themes, technologies and ramifications of autonomy, emergence, semiotics, pattern recognition, and neural networks.

Ted’s works range from a group of language-inventing robots to a mythological city-founding ritual for soprano and string quartet, is a graduate of NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, and is recently the recipient of a New Radio and Performing Arts commission. His operating principle is, in a word, poetry: to pique with enigma and confound with beauty. See more of Ted’s work at http://log.liminastudio.com.

What on earth do I do with this thing?

• PuréeData is a "dataflow patching environment," which means you connect boxes together to generate a flow of information and audio signals.
• To get started, try making a new object, such as "osc~ 440", which generates a sine wave at 440hz. This can then be connected, or "patched," to other objects that accept signal inputs, such as the main outputs, "send~ left" and "send~ right".
• Connections between objects and messages can be made by clicking on an outlet of one object and then clicking on an inlet of another object.
• Connections can be deleted by checking the "Disconnect Wires" toggle button and then clicking on the connections you want to remove.
• To hear the audio output of the patch, click on the "Listen" button. This is an MP3 audio stream that is typically about 5 seconds behind "real-time," so you won't hear your changes immediately.
• The square boxes are "messages," which can be clicked on to send their information to another object. For instance, sending "300" to the second inlet of a "metro" object will change the metronome's rate to 300ms.
• For more in-depth tutorials on dataflow and audio synthesis, check out these helpful PureData tutorials!