The beginning of the acadmic year must be upon us, because Ben Fry and Casey Reas just released the latest round of bug-fixes and updates to the Processing libraries and development environment. The changes are meticulously documented here (update: corrected link!) . There are also changes to the structure of the learning resources and discourse forum and Casey is collecting links to third-party tutorials here.
I don’t remember how I arrived at sonenvir, a
research project that investigates applying sonification in a number of scientific disciplines, in order to develop a general sonification software environment.
but after seeing Psycollider , I’m really glad I did.
Psycollider is a windows port of the popular Supercollider real time audio synthesis programming language. As far as I know, it used to be only for the mac. Then there was a Linux version and someone was working on a Windows one, but this port seemed too outdated and inactive for me to bother trying it.
Yesterday, when I found it with a nice installer and simple instructions, I couldn’t resist installing it, and after figuring out a couple of oddities, I’ve been able to make some noise…
More on this to come soon, I guess.
tags:psycollider sonenvir sonification supercolliderpsycollider, sonenvir, sonification, supercollider
I don’t remember how I arrived at sonenvir, a
research project that investigates applying sonification in a number of scientific disciplines, in order to develop a general sonification software environment.
but after seeing Psycollider , I’m really glad I did.
Psycollider is a port of the popular Supercollider real time audio synthesis programming language. As far as I know, it used to be only for the mac. Then there was a Linux version and someone was working on a Windows one, but this port seemed too outdated and inactive for me to bother trying it.
Yesterday, when I found it with a nice installer and simple instructions, I couldn’t resist installing it, and after figuring out a couple of oddities, I’ve been able to make some noise…
More on this to come soon, I guess.
tags:psycollider, sonenvir, sonification supercolliderpsycollider, sonenvir, sonification, supercollider
Sascha Pohflepp got in touch to let me know about his final project at UDK in Berlin, titled Between Blinks & Buttons. Nice one Sascha.
Between Blinks & Buttons are two projects about the camera as a networked object. Through making their photos public on the internet, individuals create traces of themselves. In addition to their value as a memory, each image contains a multitude of information about the context of its creation. Cameras become context-recorders which create references that go well beyond taking a photo.
Through this metainformation, every image is linked to the precise moment in time when it was taken, making it possible to see what happened simultaneously in the world at that instant. This work tries to focus the user’s imagination on that other, to create narratives that run between one’s own memory and a stranger’s moment which happened to coincide in time.
Blinks is a table-top interactive, where projected photos are scattered on the surface. Placing a glass prism over a photo causes it to refract the light to the sides of the table. The really clever part, is that this light contains projections of other photos taken at exactly the same moment in other locations (the software searches Flickr using the api). The user can browse photos through fragments of time, and also upload their own photos via Bluetooth.
Buttons is camera that takes other peoples photos. Buttons has no optical input, by pressing the button you remember your moment, but it also retrieves the stored moment of others from the internet on Flickr. You then wait for a Flickr user to upload a photo taken at the same time as your moment. Created using a mobile phone, Mobile Processing and custom PHP code. Watch video. Great stuff.
Sascha Pohflepp got in touch to let me know about his final project at UDK in Berlin, titled Between Blinks & Buttons. Nice one Sascha.
Between Blinks & Buttons are two projects about the camera as a networked object. Through making their photos public on the internet, individuals create traces of themselves. In addition to their value as a memory, each image contains a multitude of information about the context of its creation. Cameras become context-recorders which create references that go well beyond taking a photo.
Through this metainformation, every image is linked to the precise moment in time when it was taken, making it possible to see what happened simultaneously in the world at that instant. This work tries to focus the user’s imagination on that other, to create narratives that run between one’s own memory and a stranger’s moment which happened to coincide in time.
Blinks is a table-top interactive, where projected photos are scattered on the surface. Placing a glass prism over a photo causes it to refract the light to the sides of the table. The really clever part, is that this light contains projections of other photos taken at exactly the same moment in other locations (the software searches Flickr using the api). The user can browse photos through fragments of time, and also upload their own photos via Bluetooth.
Buttons is camera that takes other peoples photos. Buttons has no optical input, by pressing the button you remember your moment, but it also retrieves the stored moment of others from the internet on Flickr. You then wait for a Flickr user to upload a photo taken at the same time as your moment. Created using a mobile phone, Mobile Processing and custom PHP code. Watch video. Great stuff.
I am quite surprised that I do find no mention of Line Rider yet on MXNA - since it’s one of the most charming Flash games I’ve seen for a very long time and the idea is so simple: draw some lines on an empty canvas and then have a little guy on a sledge sled it down. My respect to the great coding!
There are already lots of post on youtube showing amazing stunts that people have built with it.
Lately I have been very interested in the evolutionary process, and how it can be applied to creative media. The more I think about this, the more I am convinced that elements of evolution can be used to improve creative processes of various kinds.
Take the 'typical' design process, which might look something like this:
Here we start with a set of possible design solutions, illustrated as coloured blocks at the bottom of the diagram. There is a round of competition here, in which we generally choose two or three individuals from our population of solutions as the most fit. We then subject these individuals to another round of competition, resulting in one 'good' solution. Once we reach this point, there are typically a few rounds of 'optimization' in which our solution is tweaked into it's final form.
This process is generally good at finding a 'good fit' solution, but it is not well suited to finding a 'best fit' solution. It is a survival of the fittest process; but it neglects to include two of the most important elements of evolution - namely mutation and repeated hybridization.
An Evolutionary Design Process (EDP), then, might look like this:
Here, we start with the same population of initial solutions, and we perform the same initial selection of our most fit individuals. However, rather than performing another selection on this small group, we instead perform a hybridization to create a new population of solutions. This process is repeated until we reach a solution that we are happy with.
I’ve finished (at least for today) tweaking the blog. Some new features:
There are still some things to do, like translating categories and adding (removing) some csstyling. But that’s pretty much it for now. Please, let me know any errors, comments…
*Nota: si ves esto a través de un lector de rss y quieres ver la entrada en castellano, ven al site.
I’m performing some upgrading-fixing changing here, so expect funny things during the next (hopefully) hours.
The Gestalt and Genetics Algorithms libraries added to the Libraries page
I was getting bored looking at the old grey site, so I spent a few hours tooling around with CSS and created a new look for this blog. It's brighter, bluer and generally a bit more organized. I've also enabled a few cool features, so if you see some strange things happening, please don't be alarmed.
So yesterday I gave a talk about my experience with processing at the begining processing workshop which is being held at Hangar by Joan Soler.
First part was about my reasons for learning-using-loving processing and how I’ve managed to use it in a commercial context. Then I went into a tutorial explaining the ascii video sketch. Finally i improvised an explanation of a del.icio.us information visualization project I had done at a previous workshop, which i think turned to be the most interesting thing for the audience.
It was my first experience as a speaker and although i don’t think it went too bad, the ascii tutorial didn’t work as I expected. Going too deep into code details doesn’t seem to be approppriate for a one hour session. Lesson learned.
Anyway, here are the slides (in spanish only) and the source files for the ascii tutorial.
Thanks very much to Joan for inviting me and to all the assistants for not leaving the room.
So yesterday I gave a talk about my experience with processing at the begining processing workshop which is being held at Hangar by Joan Soler.
First part was about my reasons for learning-using-loving processing and how I’ve managed to use it in a commercial context. Then I went into a tutorial explaining the ascii video sketch. Finally i improvised an explanation of a del.icio.us information visualization project I had done at a previous workshop, which i think turned to be the most interesting thing for the audience.
It was my first experience as a speaker and although i don’t think it went too bad, the ascii tutorial didn’t work as I expected. Going too deep into code details doesn’t seem to be approppriate for a one hour session. Lesson learned.
Anyway, here are the slides (in spanish only) and the source files for the ascii tutorial.
Thanks very much to Joan for inviting me and to all the assistants for not leaving the room.
tags:barcelona processing.org workshop barcelona, processing.org, workshop
Well a post has been a long time coming because I have an odd setup with computing at the moment as I’m still kinda homeless.
But that doesn’t stop me from writing a Genetic Algorithm Library. I’ve had a tough few weeks of testing as I’ve gone head-on against my own lack of common sense, publishing tid bits here and there and realising those said plans were either unworkable or just plain stupid. The final result I’m happy with though, as I am with my new print project Eye for an Eye. My next plan is to fix my dodgy Flash portfolio menu and crack on with the AStar library. I finally understand what Mr Carden was up to and with a few refinements to allow some pan-dimensional path-finding I should be able to mock up a road-test soon (I will be sure to credit Cardy-boy for the bulk of the algorithm, there’s little I can improve upon).
This has already been exhibited at the Wiring page but I repeat it here because it’s pretty cool and it reminds me that I really want a Wiring board when I have money again.
I came across this animation package in my surfs. I nearly recommended it to a friend but I realised she was still at uni so I said she better learn Flash or After Effects instead and get a job when she leaves education.
And I shall mention Tim Hunkin whose inventions and drawings I quite like.