OSC sends named messages over the network: /scene/3/intensity 0.82, arriving at whatever listens on the port. Against classic MIDI it offers floating-point resolution, human-readable addresses, and network transport, which made it the connective standard of interactive art.
TouchDesigner, Max, Resolume, lighting consoles, and tablet controller apps all speak it. A typical rig maps a DAW or controller to OSC and fans messages out to visuals, lights, and effects at once.
Its looseness is the tradeoff: no standard vocabulary, so every pairing needs its address map agreed. That is configuration cost the all-in-one route (device inside the DAW, Photism’s model) exists to delete.