MuzHack | Arve Knudsen
MuzHack
MuzHack is a free and open platform for publishing/sharing (typically open) music technology, developed by Arve Knudsen in cooperation with the Norwegian sound research centre Notam. The project is completely open source (MIT license), and hosted at GitHub.
MuzHack aims to become the standard platform for publishing open music hardware projects and sharing their designs with the community. To this end, it provides a comprehensive, searchable, catalog for browsing projects and pages for individual projects. On project pages, one is presented with pictures of the product, a textual project description, instructions for reproducing the project as well as downloadable files required for the project’s reproduction. Projects are tagged for grouping and searchability.
Those in possession of a MuzHack account are able to create projects of their own, and of course edit their own projects. Project creation/editing is quite slick, for example textual parts (description/instructions) are written in Markdown format with live preview à la Stack Overflow. The Markdown format allows for rich text formatting pretty much ideal for technical purposes, while remaining easy to read and write. Pictures and files are included through drag and drop and are uploaded to MuzHack’s servers.
To support the MuzHack community, we have created a complementary forum based on the innovative Discourse technology. The forum is intended to aid in discussions related to MuzHack and its content, but is meant to be rather open ended and we would like for it to be an arena for discussions about artistic practice in general.
BIO
Arve Knudsen
https://muzhack.com/
Born and raised in Oslo, Norway, Arve Knudsen is an experienced software developer who started programming in C++ in the late 90s. Around the same time he realized that he wanted to make music as well, and started to learn to play the piano. While choosing to pursue a career in software development rather than music, he has stuck with the piano and tried to combine his interests in music and technology throughout his life.
Knudsen took his Master’s degree in Computer Science at the University of Oslo, for which he wrote an open source cross platform package management system, called Simula Conduit. After graduating, he started working as a software development consultant taking on cross-platform desktop projects. He has since worked with a slew of technologies, learning e.g. programming languages as dictated by projects he has taken on.
In 2010, while working for Microsoft Development Center Norway in Oslo, Knudsen switched to developing for the Web rather than desktop platforms, so he learnt JavaScript/HTML/CSS and has since honed his skills in this domain. Additionally, he has explored audio programming for the Web, as exemplified by his porting the ChucK music programming language to JavaScript and developing the ChucK Demos online repository of playable ChucK demo programs.
In late 2014 Knudsen started developing in cooperation with the Norwegian Notam centre what he considers the culmination of his combined interest in music and technology: MuzHack, a free and open online platform for publishing/sharing (typically open) music technology projects. In 2015 he moved to Stockholm, Sweden, and is presently in the process of relocating to Berlin, Germany.
