Mrmr is a wonderful tool for turning your Apple mobile device into a multi-touch controller for performance and controlling visuals and music. It allows custom control layouts, it’s beautifully geared to things you can do with your fingertips, and it’s fully open source. As is often the case on this site, we have two messages. One is about a specific technology to play with, the other about the broader possibilities of digital work.

The specific: Our friend Eric Redlinger has ported his Mrmr open-source OpenSoundControl multi-touch controller app to the 2.x firmware for iPhone and iPod touch. We’ve got screenshots, as seen above or via our Flickr stream, and Eric is looking for beta testers from the CDM community. (More on that in a second.)

The deeper issue: Beyond just Apple’s device, there’s a new opportunity to make controllers standard, open, and self-configuring. Why would you want to do that? Eric explains the vision:

Controlling your multimedia performance or installation with a handheld touchscreen device is cool, but what do you do when your friends want to spontaneously participate using their devices? Typically a long tutorial follows in which you explain what OSC and MIDI are and how they need to find and install a special app, then configure the server and port settings, etc. And, oh yeah, you’ll need their device’s IP number…etc.

Now imagine that conversation being like this: Go to the appstore on your phone right now and download this app. Launch the app. Play.

That’s Mrmr (pronounced murmur), and it exists already for the Mac and for the iPhone/iPod, with clients for other devices to come. Although it is not yet on the appstore, you can beta test it today. Ed.: Damn. I still want to pronounce it “mister mister.” -PK

Mrmr consists of a couple of protocols to specify the type and screen location of interface control ‘widgets’, and specifies a way to send the resulting key presses, slider values etc. back to the VJ/DJ app of your choice. It uses standard OSC for its messaging protocol so it works with any existing app that supports Open Sound Control support.

What this means for you is that you can design a custom interface for your Max/MSP/Jitter / Pure Data / Quartz Composer / etc. environment and push that interface onto your phone, and onto others’ phones, providing a great new way to add multi-user, collaborative elements to your set!

And, of course, this ultimately has implications not just for the multitouch Apple mobiles but future multitouch technology, too.

Project page / wiki: http://poly.share.dj/projects/#mrmr

How to get involved in the beta: Eric is definitely looking for testers. now has the testers he needs! Stay tuned!

You’ll need to email your device ID of your tester iPod touch or iPhone running the 2.x firmware. There are two ways to go about that. Here’s a set of instructions for how to find the ID:

Providing Your iPhone Device ID to a Developer

If you use that approach, be sure to put “mrmr beta” in the subject header.

Even better, Erica Sadun has built an app for the job.

Ad Hoc Helper [iTunes Link]

Download it, run it, and it automatically sends off an email with the ID with the subject line already filled in.

Either way, address your emails to eric (at) share [dot] dj with the ID — and let us know how it goes. We hope to have more support materials up on using mrmr very soon, so stay tuned.

Updated: Eric’s testing list is full! But while the beta testers and Eric work on making the app stable in preparation for release, do stay tuned — we’ll have quite a lot more on OSC and how to use it soon, and will keep you posted on official mrmr for firmware 2.0 availability!

If you still want mrmr right now, it’s available on jailbroken 2.0 firmware via Cydia.

Apple’s iPhone — and the significantly more affordable, doesn’t-have-to-be-a-phone iPod Touch — are essentially pocket-sized, intelligent multi-touch controllers. Hooking them up to visual software as controllers simply requires some app on the phone to transmit data, and some way of dealing with that data on the computer side. We’ve already seen this a bit on Create Digital Motion, and we’ve been covering some of the specifics of parsing data with Pd (Pure Data), the open-source, tri-platform patching software, on Create Digital Music this week.

Here’s the basic setup:

On Your iPod/iPhone

You have two options of software to use on your iThing. (You’ll need to “jailbreak” your device, as these are not — and may never be, for all I know — approved Apple apps.)

1. mrmr by Eric Redlinger of Brooklyn (top right):  open-source, editable control screens (requires Mac-only software to edit). See our interview with Eric, including some examples with Quartz Composer.

2. akaRemote.app by Masayuki Akamatsu of Japan: not open-source, not editable, but comes with a set of useful control templates, and you can transmit data to the app. See our look at a recent release. Upcoming Mac-only visualist app 3L has its own special akaRemote-based bridge called i3L, which also runs on iPhone/iPod Touch; see our look at i3L with artificial eyes.

On Your Computer

While the iPhone and iPod Touch have Apple logos on them, all of these apps send OpenSoundControl data. That means any OSC-compatible software will work, which is gradually including more visual software, as well as modular apps like Quartz Composer, Max/MSP/Jitter, Pd/GEM, and vvvv. (I love saying that last one … vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv. Okay, moving on.)

Of all of these, Pd is the one solution that’s free, open source, and runs on any platform. That means it’s also a viable candidate for translating incoming OSC data to more broadly-compatible MIDI. (i3L has you covered, as it uses a MIDI bridge.)

We have not one but two sets of tutorials / example patches for working with Pd on Create Digital Music, using a patch like Cesare’s, pictured above:

Control Music and Visuals with iPhone/iPod, Free Via Pd

Tutorial: More iPhone/iPod Touch Control With Open-Source Pure Data

So, Is It Worth It?

I usually don’t ask that question, preferring instead to report on what other folks are doing. But it is always worth asking yourself — and it is an entirely personal question. I’m not totally convinced in the case of these devices that I’d want to buy one solely for VJing, but then, what makes this so cool is that it adds on additional functionality to a device. (Too bad Apple is being so uptight about third-party development, but at least there’s an SDK — and plenty of hackers ready to break Apple’s rules.)

My own preference remains squarely with tangible controllers and tactile feedback, especially as some of the advantages of multi-touch are diminished by the iPod/iPhone’s diminutive size. But I absolutely see the argument for using these. What do you think, dear readers?

Click to play

Mrmr is an open protocol for mobile devices. It is used to dynamically create user interfaces on your iPod Touch or iPhone which respond to client apps in a multi-user performance environment.

Okay, that sounds awfully dry. Let’s try that again.

Mrmr lets you control Quartz Composer applications (or really , any compatible OSC implementation)over Wi-Fi from your iPod Touch or iPhone. Now you, too, can dance around like a lunatic while still controlling your visuals from the dance floor. Did we mention it’s multi-user, as well?

Mrmr is the brainchild of Eric Redlinger, researcher-in-residence at Brooklyn Polytechnic University’s Integrated Digital Media Program. He has leveraged the iPhone’s OS X underbelly and 10.5’s new Quartz Composer features to allow this sort of functionality.

I had the lucky* chance to interview Eric and ask him a few questions about Mrmr and the iPhone. Apologies for the quality of the interview, it was very spur of the moment.

Mrmr is a work in progress, but I think the results so far speak for themselves.

*(ok, no so lucky, my desk is right next to his, but somehow I had not seen Mrmr in action until just recently…)