Over the past several decades, graphical dataflow programming environments have emerged as influential computational paradigms across music, architecture, and media art. Systems such as Max/MSP and Pure Data have become foundational tools in computer music and interactive sound design, while parametric modeling platforms such as Grasshopper 3D and Generative Components have reshaped architectural design practices. Although these environments operate within distinct disciplinary backgrounds, they share a common computational logic: design is articulated not through linear instruction, but through networks of relations and dependencies.
I ask: how can the visual dataflow paradigms of Max/MSP and Pure Data be understood in parallel with the parametric modeling environments of Grasshopper and Generative Components, and what does this reveal about shared logics of generativity across sound and architectural design? Rather than treating these tools as domain-specific software solutions, this study approaches them as manifestations of a broader epistemology of computation, one in which composition (whether sonic or spatial) is understood as the construction of systems rather than objects.
In Max/MSP and Pure Data, musical composition is reframed as the orchestration of signal flows, feedback loops, and real-time control structures. Similarly, in Grasshopper and Generative Components, architectural form emerges from parametric dependency graphs in which geometric relationships, rather than fixed shapes, define the design outcome. In both cases, authorship shifts from specifying final artifacts to designing generative conditions. The composer and the architect alike operate as system designers, shaping behaviors, constraints, and transformations that unfold dynamically.
