In the arts, there is increasing interest in creating artworks that combine sensing with realtime media control to create interactive experiences. Artists working with these technologies are adopting distributed computing for many of the same reasons others turn to networks, including flexibility and scalability. Unfortunately, artists new to working with distributed technologies for physically interactive digital media face significant technical hurdles that continue to prove time-consuming even for the more experienced. Especially difficult for neophytes is the interconnection of distributed devices. Kolo was developed to facilitate the creation of interactive environments using sensor based media control.;Kolo provides a high level API which allows application authors to interconnect and reuse supported devices with the same interface regardless of whether they are running on a local or networked Kolo processes. This same API is easy to extend, allowing developers to incorporate new sensors and media elements using a consistent framework for device control and data transport.;To promote quick adoption by authors, Kolo's API is designed with relatively few core abstractions, requiring the understanding of six concepts: knobs, values, subscriptions, groups, relationships, and arbitrators. Kolo's scripting language, Nebesko, addresses problems presented by distributed interactive applications by creating a finite state machine that natively supports state transitions based on distributed object state, their interconnections, and time.;Together, Kolo and Nebesko, meet the needs of artists by providing a framework for authoring physically interactive applications in the arts.
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