I don’t think it’s any exaggeration to say I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today if it weren’t for the Wii LoopMachine. That crazy project developed in my dorm room and finished in the University of Edinburgh Sound Design studios at 4am on deadline day four years ago took off in completely unexpected ways, and lead to my work being shown all over the internet, in newspapers, and of course of Dragons’ Den. It lead to collaborations with amazing game developers, artists, performers, and many others, gave me visibility that lead to artistic residencies, grants, and contracts, and allowed me to found Lucky Frame three years ago last month.

Lucky Frame, I’m happy to say, is about to embark on a very ambitious and awesome (in the truest sense of the word) project which we will be announcing in more detail in the coming weeks. I have had very little time to work on the Wii LoopMachine for the past year or so as it is, so this seems like a good opportunity to turn the LoopMachine into freeware. Details can be found on the official website, but in a nutshell – the full version of the LoopMachine is now free to download. The website will remain intact, and if you want any Max patches just let me know. I will still be using Wii remotes for various projects here and there, and I’ll post them as they happen. If you’d like me to develop any Wii-based music software just get in touch!

On a side note, the release of the Kinect and Playstation Move have certainly stolen a bit of thunder from the Wiimote. These are both very exciting interfaces to say the least – a wonderful friend sent me a Kinect recently and I’ve only just starting exploring the possibilities it offers. However I think that the increased power of these interfaces is in some ways offset but the exponential rise in complexity in terms of coding and development. Whilst Wiimotes provide a steady stream of numbers for each axis, the Kinect creates a full 3D map of a space, and it is much harder to create a system to use that in a creative way. I think this hurdle could be overcome by the recent SDK announcement, but for the time being I still believe that “simpler” technologies like Wii remotes have their place.