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Live Interactive Multimedia Performance Toolkit

Project description
The LIMPT system is a combination of software and a control-language which allows creators and performers to flexibly and dynamically structure a wide range of performances which include interactive or new media in their practice. It provides a means for intelligent interconnection of a wide range of devices, sensors and applications; artists can work with the instruments or software suites they are already used to – or can simply use systems of visual or sound cues.

The system architecture is based around a number of clients, typically running on laptops, each of which is connected over standard networks (wifi, ethernet) to a central server. A client collects and filters activity and tells the system when something significant has happened (this is known as an event). It also presents messages from the system to the performer, these are usually cues of one sort or another; a spoken command, a piece of text or an image. The central server stores rules and runs performances; keeping track of what is happening and sending cues when the triggering circumstances arise

In the LIMPT system, the flow of a performance is shaped through a set of rules. These rules are written using the eMerge live performance scripting language. They have two parts; one (or more) events to look out for and one (or more) commands – things to do when the event(s) happens. A LIMPT performance project contains all the rules that govern the generation of cues to performers (or other performance elements such as computers, lighting desks, projection systems etc).
Client Software download (zip)
This is a zip archive of the LIMPT client. Download to your machine (right-click) and then expand the zip archive. To get started, you'll probably want to follow the guide (see next link).
Guide to using the LIMPT system (pdf)
This guide takes you through configuring and starting up the LIMPT client, the features of the LIMPT system and then gets you started on experimenting...
The eMerge performance scripting language specification (pdf)
This detailed guide explains the grammar and syntax of the eMerge scripting language which is used to control performance in the LIMPT system.

This page was last updated on 4th September 2010