Open Sound Control

An open, network-based protocol for communication between computers, sound synthesizers, and other multimedia devices, developed by Matthew Wright and Adrian Freed (1997). OSC sends human-readable address patterns and floating-point values over UDP/TCP, offering higher resolution and more flexible addressing than MIDI. It is widely used in accessible digital musical instruments, adaptive controllers, and bespoke assistive technology that integrates sensors, sound engines, lighting, and visualisation software, because it lets designers define custom message schemas matched to an individual performer's movement vocabulary.