So, I am really tired of this low quality plastic trash all around. Take a look at my mobile. This phone is about nearly two years old. Since the first days the keyboard was so lousy, that it was impossible to really play any game with it. After one or two months I made a firmware update “to enhance the java for mobile capabilites”. The result was that the keys on the side weren’t working. And you maybe know, that Siemens do not support older versions of firmwares. So, in short: I wasn’t able to change the volume of the speaker inside the phone. And because I had a very silent setting at the time I made the update, I was practically unable to make calls at the street, because I could not understand my partner on the phone. It took me about 1,5 years to figure out an alternative way to set the speaker louder again. And oh, the keys still not working.

When the phone was about 1,25 years old, that plastic thing at the top fell out. Never mind. I found this cellphone always ugly. I was deciding for technique over style when in bought it. But most annoying is the newset BIG BUG of this phone: the keys fell out! This were not that problem, if you could touch the blanket keys with your fingers. But the keys are somehow that kind of crap, that it is almost impossible to touch a key without touching other keys besides.

To make this long story short: I will never buy a Siemens phone again. Or at a larger scale: why aren’t there any mobile phones, that are a little like the iPod. Beautyful, functional und robust. And WITHOUT THE NEED to replace it every two years. Yes, I really hate all this plastic crap all around the mass market.

Read My Mobile Digest No. 1

So, I am really tired of this low quality plastic trash all around. Take a look at my mobile. This phone is about nearly two years old. Since the first days the keyboard was so lousy, that it was impossible to really play any game with it. After one or two months I made a firmware update “to enhance the java for mobile capabilites”. The result was that the keys on the side weren’t working. And you maybe know, that Siemens do not support older versions of firmwares. So, in short: I wasn’t able to change the volume of the speaker inside the phone. And because I had a very silent setting at the time I made the update, I was practically unable to make calls at the street, because I could not understand my partner on the phone. It took me about 1,5 years to figure out an alternative way to set the speaker louder again. And oh, the keys still not working.

When the phone was about 1,25 years old, that plastic thing at the top fell out. Never mind. I found this cellphone always ugly. I was deciding for technique over style when in bought it. But most annoying is the newset BIG BUG of this phone: the keys fell out! This were not that problem, if you could touch the blanket keys with your fingers. But the keys are somehow that kind of crap, that it is almost impossible to touch a key without touching other keys besides.

To make this long story short: I will never buy a Siemens phone again. Or at a larger scale: why aren’t there any mobile phones, that are a little like the iPod. Beautyful, functional und robust. And WITHOUT THE NEED to replace it every two years. Yes, I really hate all this plastic crap all around the mass market.

Read My Mobile Digest No. 1

Still tweaking the magnetosphere. I got tired of not knowing where the gravitational fields were so I gave them the appearance of a fuzzy white sphere (by rotating overlapping ellipses so they always face the in-applet camera. Additionally, the magnetic particles are now dynamically sized, which effects the particle’s mass and charge. The gravity fields are also dynamic.

I haven’t made any progress in finding a way to translate 2D mouse positions into a 3D rotating environment but I wanted to have multiple gravitational fields. I tweaked them to behave more like negatively charged particles so that they would push away from each other but still attract the small positively charged particles.

Next step is to hook it up to the sonia engine to make them audio responsive.

Oh, and here is another video.

Still tweaking the magnetosphere. I got tired of not knowing where the gravitational fields were so I added a toggle that lets me turn them on and off. Gave the magnetic particles dynamic sizing, which effects the particle’s mass and charge. The gravity fields are also dynamic.

I haven’t made any progress in finding a way to translate 2D mouse positions into a 3D rotating environment but I wanted to have multiple gravitational fields. I tweaked them to behave more like negatively charged particles so that they would push away from each other but still attract the small positively charged particles.

Next step is to hook it up to the sonia engine to make them audio responsive.

Oh, and here is another video (coming in a couple minutes).

A while back, I started doing some experiments with magnetic attraction and gravitational fields. I had seen a video where drops of ferromagnetic fluid were placed in a weak magnetic field. The drops, which all had like charges were pushing away from each other, but ultimately were drawn to the center of the weak magnetic field. As the drops jockey for position, they eventually stabilize in smooth spirals not unlike the spiral patterns seen in the center of sunflowers.

I cannot seem to locate the original video, but I found this which shows some pretty nifty ferrofluid effects.

Recently, I revisited my magnet experiment and cleaned up the code. I wanted to see if I could make a tessellated sphere by placing a bunch of charged particles in a gravitational field but making the gravitational field repulse if the magnets come within a certain distance from the center of the grav field.

This sample video shows a bunch of points organize themselves into a sphere.

Couple of 2 dimensional examples: 1, 2.

As some of you might have noticed all my sites where down for the last three weeks. I want to thank everyone who contacted me (or at least tried to) in order to find out if I’m alright - fortunately there was no problem with me - only my server had a serious one:

After more than two years of smooth running it decided to take a permanent nap right on the evening before I started into my holidays. After several failed attempts to reanimate it the support person told me that the only way to get it running again was to reinitialize the whole machine - which means that all data gets overwritten. And as there is more to my server than just the websites I had to download all important things. And even with DSL this took almost all night. So in the morning all I could do was to press the red “reinitialize” button and install some emergency mail accounts - there was no time to setup all my domains or reupload the websites as my train was due to leave.

So right now I’m trying to make everything work again - which is a hell of a work as the internal structure of my server is now very different from it was before and lots of tweaks or libraries that I had installed over the course of the last two years are now gone. So if you find anything that does not work as it should feel free to tell me.

So, in short: i am “out of my office”. You can visit me speaking at a panel on 25.8.2005 at the c/o pop on Cologne (Fair for electronic Popculture) or 3 days later on the Netaudio Gipfeltreffen rolling the virtual turntables.

To fill this offlinegap you can visit the brandnew redesigned webpage of 2063music.de and listen to the excellent two new releases from Phoenelai and Phonout.

So, in short: i am “out of my office”. You can visit me speaking at a panel on 25.8.2005 at the c/o pop on Cologne (Fair for electronic Popculture) or 3 days later on the Netaudio Gipfeltreffen rolling the virtual turntables.

To fill this offlinegap you can visit the brandnew redesigned webpage of 2063music.de and listen to the excellent two new releases from Phoenelai and Phonout.

I packed all .jars and natives (both Windows/MacOSX) in a single installable zip file for Processing. It can be found here. All the files contained in the archive have to be copied into odejava/library folder into your Processing libraries folder. I also included Apache and Odejava licenses, I think that’s ok as far as the binaries of those liraries are only redistributed.
The little falling boxes example can be now downloaded there.
Problems have been reported on MacOSX which are discussed in the Processing forum.

Me encantó ver, en la exposición “La Bauhaus de fiesta 1919-1933” (Del 29 de junio al 4 de septiembre en el CaixaForum), cómo algunos de mis artistas favoritos (tan austeros, tan funcionales, tan germánicos) tenían fiestas semana si, semana también. Con disfraces de Marianne Brandt, invitaciones de Herbert Bayer, carteles de Josef Albers, tarjetas de Paul Klee, decorados conceptuales (La fiesta del metal, “1/3 de blanco, 2/3 de color”…), los eventos debieron ser envidiables.

Lo mejor, saber un poco más de la vida cotidiana de aquel maravilloso experimento pedagógico que fue la bauhaus.

A while ago, a friend sent me a link to a Flash presentation of a speech by Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig on free culture, given at Oscon 2002 but the issues are still very current. In his beautiful and moving half hour speech, Lessig touches on the history and evolution of copyright law, Mickey Mouse, the brothers Grimm and The Simpsons, the increasing control of a few over common culture, DRM and the Broadcast Flag, software patents, free software and the EFF.
If you want to watch only one presentation on copyleft issues, this one would be a good choice.

link to a flash file of about 8.5MB in size

Si quisieras, por ejemplo, hacer que processing leyera el input de tu tableta wacom o tu webcam y max/msp lo tradujera a sonidos, o que un ordenador estuviera recibiendo información de sensores y otro (ya sea en una red local o en internet) estuviera generando cualquier output (visual, sonoro, …) de acuerdo con los datos recibidos, tarde o temprano te toparías con que la comunicación entre programas, sensores y/o ordenadores la realizaría un “algo” llamado OpenSound Control (”OSC”), pues:

OpenSound Control (”OSC”) is a protocol for communication among computers, sound synthesizers, and other multimedia devices that is optimized for modern networking technology and has been used in many application areas.

Genial. Es lo que necesito para desarrollar alguna cosilla que me ronda la cabeza últimamente. Pero… al buscar algo de documentación (”beginner’s-friendly” por favor), me he encontrado que no hay casi nada al respecto y lo que hay está muy disperso.

Es por eso que he pensado en recopilar los (escasos) recursos útiles que me he encontrado:

Open Sound Control: State of the Art 2003

Aparentemente todo lo que necesitas saber sobre OSC, incluyendo una descripción de sus componentes, las principales implementaciones (Max/MSP, SuperCollider, Reaktor, Pure Data…) y una relación de beneficios.

Open Sound Control, An Overview

Explicación de la gente de ixi-software, creadores, por ejemplo de Picker y SpinOSC. Una introducción a OSC más general y menos académica que la primera. Probablemente mejor para empezar si no tienes ninguna idea.

OpenSound Control Specification

La especificación completa. Yo empecé por aquí y no lo recomiendo, aunque siempre conviene tenerla a mano. Especialmente útiles los ejemplos

Capítulo sobre OSC en el manual de OSW

Open Sound World es un entorno de programación extensible creado por los mismos que el protocolo OSC (el CNMAT), de funcionamiento parecido a Max/MSP y otros lenguajes de “cableado”. Aunque esta es la descripción de una implementación específica, los ejemplos provistos ayudan a comprender el funcionamiento general del invento.

OpenSoundControl Application Areas y Managing Complexity with Explicit Mapping of Gestures to Sound Control with OSC

Para que veas lo que se puede hacer

Si alguien tiene algún otro recurso que compartir, coméntelo y lo añado a la lista.