Hexahedral vertex permutations [Max]

Spent the weekend reading analyses of Xenakis’ Nomos Alpha, so I knocked up a little hexahedral permutation program instrument. Vertices are parsed out as x,y,z and can be hooked up as parametric controls based on the hexahedron’s position in 3D space! Hooray!

Xenakis uses isomorphic permutations of a cube to order elements of a set using pretty standard permutations (rotate 90º, rotate 180º, etc). His process is much more based in boolean logic and set theory, but I took the basic principal ofusing the isomorphic permutations as parametric controls, but running in real time. So you can drag the cube about, or animate it, and it spits out a bunch of numbers which you could use to control anything. (ie. bow technique, dynamic, durations, pitch, or whatever digitally!).

A Thomas DeLio article on Nomos Alpha largely ignores Xenakis’ use of hexahedral vertices and looks at the set more simply: thats worth looking at:http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/843739?uid=3738032&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102363132331

Code is here (albeit in an awkward, copy-and-paste-into-Max kinda format)