F LOW

Karlheinz Essl fLOW 2.0 ambient sound generator © 1998-2001, vs. 2.0 http://www.essl.at/works/flow.html About fLOW is a DSP computer program running on Apple Macintosh G3 machines. It generates an ever-changing and never repeating soundscape in real time that fills the space with flooding sounds that resemble - metaphorically - the timbres of water, fire, earth, and air. Originally, this soundscape formed the basis of the site-specific work-in-progress fLOW that was carried out in numerous steps and took place in various location with changing musicians from different fields like New Music, experimental jazz, free improvisation and New Electronic Music. For each performance, the soundscape was interpreted and commented by live-musicians. Each realisation was developed for the specific place, taking into account its individual socio-cultural context. Besides music and sound, such a realisation could also include light installations, film projections, performance aspects, elaborated time scores and computer-generated Playing Strategies (http://www.essl.at/works/playing-strategies.html) Shareware registration fLOW 2.0 is released as shareware. Please register your copy to ensure the further development of this program. You can purchase a registration code for $ 15.00 online from KAGI: http://order.kagi.com/?5BM Double-clicking on the "Register online with KAGI" file in the distribution folder will automatically start Netscape and open this URL. Only registered users can record the output to disk and include their own sound material. System requirements • Apple PowerPC G3 with at least 16 MB of free RAM • MacOS 8.6 or better (9.1 recommended) • Currently fLOW only works with the built-in sound hardware of your Apple Macintosh computer using the SoundManager. ASIO drivers or external hardware is not supported. If you have such gear, it is recommended to start your computer with all system extensions off (by pressing the shift-key during startup) so that there will not be a system extension conflict. In fact, fLOW does not require any system extension, only the SoundManager that is already included in the Mac OS. Quick intro • Double-click the file fLOW_2.0 to load the program. • The soundscape will start automatically. You can stop and restart it by selecting "stop" resp. "start" in the pull-down menu on the main screen. • The program will run entirely on its own. By selecting change in the pull-down menu the program will use a different selection of its basic material. • As a registered user, you can replace the four built-in basic sounds ("water", "fire", "earth", "air") with your own material. Just go to the "Samples" menu and select your 16 bit uncompressed AIFF files. Please note that the program uses only mono files; if your sounds are stereo, only the left channel will be used. Due to memory limitations, the sound files should not exceed 60 seconds. However, if you really wish to use longer samplers, you must increase …