Max/MSP struck me like a very opinionated and schizophrenic elderly camel, who's been across the desert many times: it's wonderful and indispensable in certain situations, but it will get mad and spit on you if you don't treat it right, and it's butt-ugly, and some Max programmers have a way of cultivating and celebrating that butt-uglyness. (See any of AntiOrp's Nato.0+55+3d code!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nato.0%2B55%2B3d

The author of Nato.0+55+3d, Netochka Nezvanova, aka "nameless nobody", "=cw4t7abs", "punktprotokol", "0f0003", "maschinenkunst" (preferably spelled "m2zk!n3nkunzt"), "integer", and "antiorp":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netochka_Nezvanova_%28author%2...

A typical AntiOrp-style NATO patch:

https://enacademic.com/pictures/enwiki/78/Nato.0%2B55%2B3d.p...

Some neater examples, and an in-depth description of Nato, by Jeremy Bornstein:

http://www.bootsquad.com/old_site/nato/nato00.html

Max has got layers and layers of experience built up over the decades, but no one clear model or consistent way of doing things. It's got so many different opinions, or programming paradigms, that aren't necessarily consistent with each other and don't fit together well. Some people love it, because it happens to have the combination of programming paradigms that they like. But when you're starting out, it's hard to figure out the best way to do anything, because there are so many different competing ways. In that sense, it's extremely un-Pythonic, like visual Perl.

Here's a video that shows some great examples of Max/Nato code. Remember, this was before Cycling '74 created Jitter (which pissed off AntiOrp who considered it a rip-off of Nato). Nato supported many features of QuickTime, including reading and writing live RTP video streams over the network. So Nato "operators" would exchange live QuickTime RTP video streams back and forth over the network (both LAN and Internet) and jam together in live distributed performances, sending the video from one Mac to the other, near and far, mutating and remixing and layering in live video each hop, projecting it on screens, and feeding it back and forth between different "operators" who were writing and editing the code in real time.

Max_MSP_nato.0+55+3d 's_app_run_on_El_Capitan_test 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0kQcnetR9M

Here's more about Nato:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16753758

>Nato.0+55+3d (released in 1999) was an amazing but notorious extension for Max that enabled live programming of real time video manipulation, networking and display.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nato.0%2B55%2B3d

>"At the time of its release (the summer of 1999), NATO.0+55+3d was in demand as it appeared several years before other similar infrastructures such as GEM and Jitter (released by the makers of Max/MSP in October 2002). Earlier software such as Image/ine developed in 1997 at STEIM was drawing in a similar direction, but the fact that NATO.0+55+3d was operating inside the Max/MSP framework, using its "visual programming" protocol, provided at the same time greater ease of use and more flexibility, allowing the user to create his own applications and tools. It gained popularity among video artists and performers, who were using it for a large variety of purposes, prominently for live performance and interactive installation."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22352276

>Bravo! If you enjoyed that anti-Max performance art trolling, but thought it wasn't spectacularly hyperbolic and sociopathic enough, I recommend looking up some of the classic flames on the nettime mailing list by Netochka Nezvanova aka "NN" aka "=cw4t7abs", "punktprotokol", "0f0003", "maschinenkunst" (preferably spelled "m2zk!n3nkunzt"), "integer", and "antiorp"!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netochka_Nezvanova_(author)

>Netochka Nezvanova is the pseudonym used by the author(s) of nato.0+55+3d, a real-time, modular, video and multi-media processing environment. Alternate aliases include "=cw4t7abs", "punktprotokol", "0f0003", "maschinenkunst" (preferably spelled "m2zk!n3nkunzt"), "integer", and "antiorp". The name itself is adopted from the main character of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's first novel Netochka Nezvanova (1849) and translates as "nameless nobody."

>She (or he or they or it) were the author of the NATO.0+55+3d set of extensions for Max, which predated Jitter:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nato.0%2B55%2B3d

The most feared woman on the Internet

http://www.salon.com/2002/03/01/netochka/

>Netochka Nezvanova is a software programmer, radical artist and online troublemaker. But is she for real?

>The name Netochka Nezvanova is a pseudonym borrowed from the main character of Fyodor Dostoevski’s first novel; it translates loosely as “nameless nobody.” Her fans, her critics, her customers and her victims alike refer to her as a “being” or an “entity.” The rumors and speculation about her range all over the map. Is she one person with multiple identities? A female New Zealander artist, a male Icelander musician or an Eastern European collective conspiracy? The mystery only propagates her legend.

Cramer, Florian. (2005) "Software dystopia: Netochka Nezvanova - Code as cult" in Words Made Flesh: Code, Culture, Imagination, Chapter 4, Automatisms and Their Constraints. Rotterdam: Piet Zwart Institute.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070215185215/http://pzwart.wdk...