Puredata

From PlayAroundWiki

Pure Data with many patches open (netpd project), (image fromWikipedia)

Pure Data, also named PD, is a real-time graphical programming environment especially focusing on sound, image and graphic processing. It is also an open source software mainly initiated by Miller Puckette who is also the developer of Max/MSP.

PD and Max/MSP are very similar and usually are used in electronic music field. The difference is that PD can do image and audio processing simultaneously by using GEM extension. Besides, PD provides an experimental function of database definition and accessing.

The main spirit of Pure Data programming is to treat the data in open-ended way. Therefore, the data can be processed into image or graphic, not only can be processed into sound or MIDI. The functions of Pure Data can be easily extended and the PD developer community is growing rapidly to let PD grow very soon. During the growing time, there are many artists use PD to create interactive work or electronic music.

Reference：

* Pure Data Community Site
* Wikipedia
* FLOSS Manuals
* Pure Dataflow - Diving into Pd
* List of PD objects
* pure:dyne live GNU/Linux distribution