DARWIN GROSSE: This is an example of a little program that I put together that kind of shows what presentation mode is for. This is an example of how I like to work on a program when I'm designing the logic. You kind of move all the user interface elements out of the way. I put my logic in the center, I put my output stuff on the bottom so it sort of flows the way that I think about an FM synth program. The problem is this isn't what I want to see when I want to do a performance. I want all my contrls to be close together, and since in a midst of a performance it's sort of being like war, I need stuff to be really big and easy to grab.

So what performance -- or what presentation mode does is it allows me to take and change the geometry and the location of all the stuff that I'm going to interact with during a performance. I can make it big, I can make it visual, but in now way did it change the program logic style that I'm used to working with when I'm in [SOUNDS LIKE] geek mode, and this is my programming mode where everything is laid out logically and this is my performance mode where everything is big and easy to get at. And when turn things on and I turn knobs, I get the kind of feedback that I'd expect to see while I'm performing, and it kind of helps in performing about what my performance is going to do.

We get a lot of people who want to experiment, because again what this allows you to do is get at the elements of media. You can take audio files, you can take images, you can take MIDI controllers, you can take -- I do performance with a Wii remote controller. You can take all these different devices and cause them to interact. I mean sometimes what you really want is you want your video that's playing on a back wall to actually help create the audio, or you want the movement of your Wii controller to cause the video to jerk. All of this kind of transcoding, just using one set of information to affect another set of information is something that we do, I think, better than anyone.