This year’s Macworld, due to hit San Francisco in January, is shaping up to be an epic event for visuals and motion graphics. True, Macworlds of late have paled in comparison to the heyday of the conferenece, but this year looks extraordinary, especially if you’re interested in motion graphics and visuals, especially since there’s a mini Flashforward rolled up into the goodness and the whole event takes place on the eve of Flash 9’s release. I’ll be in on the action with a session on January 10 (just slip out of one of the other events and drop by for an hour if you have to), and will be in the area all week — read, we should have some great parties.

And, Flash aside, I’m fairly certain this will be the first appearance of Processing at Macworld, so anyone else who wants to find ways to slip Processing onto the show floor, let me know.

Some brief highlights:

Flash @ Macworld

This is what I’m most excited about: all the joy of Flashforward meets the revived joy of Macworld Expo. Top figures from Adobe and some of the leading gurus of the Flash community will be converging in a full day of awesome Flash power. My personal picks:

• Keynote: Product managers Mike Downey (Flash) and Mike Chambers (Apollo), among others, will talk about Flash on the Mac.
• Animation with Flash: Chris Georgenes will talk about animation and will even deconstruct some finished examples.
• ActionScripting: Here on Create Digital Motion, we’re all about cutting-edge generative graphics, which means you’d better learn to dig into some code. Aral Balkan will lead two sessions introducing ActionScript and bringing in a little AS3 discussion.

Flashforward @ Macworld, January 8 [Full agenda]

Advanced Flash and More Sessions

What’s missing? All of this focuses on Flash 8 Pro and ActionScript 2, and it’s fairly intro organized. Fortunately, Rick Shupe is doing an all-day workshop Wednesday that will get into Flash 9 and ActionScript 3 (the latter being useful even if you’re focused on open source, fully code-based development):

Advanced Flash

As usual, Macworld coolness conflicts. Sit in the back of Rick’s event and sneak out for my own one hour, or we can start a letter-writing campaign to try to convince Rick to take an early lunch break at 11a. Or my session can come on a field trip into his session. Or we can just crash it. Or I can use it as an opportunity to show off streaming video by appearing virtually at his session. I know I can come up with some solution here.

The Power Tools Series 1 and Power Tools Series 2 conferences have lots of other cool stuff happening, too, covering Adobe Creative Suite, Apple’s production tools, and video production.

Reactive and Interactive Animation and Visuals

Now, my session is only an hour fifteen minutes, but I intend to pack as much eye candy - tricky demo - bizarre strageness into the event as possible, even if I have to wrangle three MacBooks just to get it all running.

US902: Playful Animation and Motion Graphics that React

Sensors? Check. Generative animation? You bet. Live video input and motion detection/analysis? For sure. I’ll be focusing on free tools, so open source Flash, Processing, and Quartz Composer. I also want to keep this accessible to people who have never seen this stuff before, so if you know some non-mavens attending Macworld, please encourage them to drop by. And they’ll get to play with sensors and motion input from cameras, too. If I can turn my Macworld session into an interactive rave, I’ll do it.

Can’t Make it to California?

Needless to say, between Flashforward and all of these other sessions and events, you’ll be able to get as much on Create Digital Motion as I can blog during Macworld week. I’ll also make sure to include complete notes and some code/patch samples for my session so no one has to miss out. (That said, there’s still time to book a flight or try to convince your employer that you should come to Macworld. Remember when employers all used to pay for that? Sigh.)

Calling Readers

Are you a visualist / interactive designer / motion graphics artist based in the Bay Area, or planning to attend Macworld? Drop me a line via the contact form, as I want to keep track of CDMx readers who will be around. Party schedules are generally packed, but there’s talk of doing a visualist/VJ event during the week, and I’ll at the very least plan a meetup. Windows users are welcome, too, of course. actionscript, adobe, Apple, events, Flash, Mac, processing.org, quartz composer, tutorials

• Installation : Déplacements (français) / Déplacements (english)
• Artist : Manuel Braun
• Exhibition : bbb, Centre régional d’initiatives pour l’art contemporain, Toulouse, France
• Dates : October 2006
• Developped at : Aix-en-Provence School of Art
• Video: Déplacements

This is a work that Manuel Braun developped for his Diplôme Nationale Supérieure d’Arts Plastiques in June, and which has just been exhibited in Toulouse at the Centre régional d’initiatives pour l’art contemporain. It is a 5 x 5 pixel array made out of computer fans. Each fan represents one pixel which together make a very singular display. On that display runs an artificial life program based on Coway’s famous Game of Life. It‘s a beautiful work, quite mesmerizing and yet very simple. When Brigitte Bosch from the bbb gave me « carte blanche » to select the work of a young multimedia artist for an exhibit she was preparing, I chose this work — principally because I wanted to defend a certain tendancy we currently have been exploring in the Atelier Hypermedia : i.e. the move away from purely screen based work by introducing visual algorithms increasingly into the phyiscal space. But I was also particularly happy with this work having watched Manuel’s research over the years on the infinite variations one can inflict on the idea of the « pixel ». I felt with this work that he had evolved from the research stage into a coherent phase plastique. And finally there is the fairly obvious (and humorous) reversal of the role of matérial/mimetic component, a sort of digital form of the old support / surface debate.

I don’t usually talk about other people’s work here, using this blog mostly as an easy form of communication. But I probably should talk more about my students’ and former-students’ works, as their work is so influential to my own, especially given the very particular structure of the Atelier Hypermedia. I’m also mentioning it here because this work was the first final-year diploma installation to use Processing and more importantly the PicoIP Processing library Stéphane Cousot and I developped last year for Jean-Pierre Mandon’s PicoIP project. When I look at the work we were doing with Macrodobe’s Director and the work we’re now doing with Processing, I think the change was definitely worth it.

Thanks to the the students in my icm class, I developed a Processing library that grabs values from Apple’s sudden motion sensor. The library is a JNI implementation of Unimotion by Lincoln Ramsay. It hasn’t been tested in the new macbooks, so let me know if it works for people!

Download the library here.

The above video is a brief demo of it in action. . . Now, what to use it for?!?!?

Stefan Kühn, a cartographer at the University Trier, Germany, has extracted all the geo coordinates embedded in articles on Wikipedia. The WikiProject Geographical coordinates is a Wikipedia project for ensuring standardized geocoding of locations in its articles.

Google Earth fans bent on instant gratification can simply download a KMZ file and start surfing. But more importantly, coders and infoviz geeks can get a comma-separated text file (CSV) with coordinates, titles and Wikipedia categories for all points.

Link: Geocoordinates from Wikipedia for Google Earth

PHP function that returns file size of a given file as a string indicating size in kilobytes or megabytes, depending on whether the file is bigger than one megabyte.

function filesizeFormatted($filename) {
	$val=filesize($filename)/1024;
	if($val>1024) return "".number_format($val/1024,1,"."," ")." MB";
  return "".number_format($val,1,"."," ")." kb";;
}

Last week, I posted Plumage, a small application that renders feathers from Flickr photographs. This week's project is more spatial and more floral. Petals (http://www.blprnt.com/petals) grows a collage of generated flowers from any .JPG or .PNG image. You can either search for images with Flickr tags, or enter in the URL for an image of your choice. The application then starts to grow a population of flowers, using your image data as a 'soil base'.

When I was a kid, I used to love those giant flower beds that spelled out words, or grew into slogans… now I can create one of my own from any image I'd like.

As always, I'd welcome any suggestions or comments. 

I was randomly browsing the web when I came across this video. This is a very dynamic and funny talk given by Luis von Ahn showing how the processing power of a human brain can be used to improve image search on the web by playing fun games (ESP game and Peekaboom).

This brilliant idea is currently used in Google image labeler.

• Exhibition: ENIAROF 0.2 (Arcade + Performances + Installations + Mudwrestling!)
• Exhibition Dates: 1 + 2 December, 2006
• Exhibition entrance: Free for all ages! (as in software, as in beer)
• Organizer: Antonin Fourneau
• Workshop: ENIAROF 0.2 Video Arcade
• Workshop Dates: November 21-24 & 28-30 + December 1 & 2, 2006
• Workshop participation: By application/invitation only
• Workshop organizers: Douglas Edric Stanley & Antonin Fourneau
• Location: L’atelier Hypermédia, Aix-en-Provence School of Art
• Website: ENIAROF
• Blog: ENIAROF Blog
• Info: Interview with Antonin Fourneau

Ok, here we go again…

Well, Antonin has made it official: The Eniarof 0.2 Video Arcade Workshop is now open for applications. We will have students participating via my Atelier Hypermedia along with those of the Atelier de Recherche Interactives from the national design school in Paris (ENSAD). Added to the mix, whatever stragglers want to join the party and are ready to follow the DOGMeNIAROF.

We will be designing quick & dirty ENIAROF style « attractions » for the Video Arcade section of ENIAROF 0.2 (December 1 & 2) - which will be held again this year in « lovely Aix-en-Provence »®™. All works will use Processing, Arduino, Wiring, or some combination thereof. Attractions must work starting December 1st and run until late December 2nd. Attractions should be interactive, but there are places within ENIAROF for non-electronic based attractions, so all that is negotiable, as is the available space. That said, we are asking for stragglers to bring their own equipment, as space is already tight, unless they want to team up with another ENIAROFer on a collective project with already-provided equipment.

Code will be kept small and simple, and imagery as economical as possible. We have found particularly inspiring recent low-bit commercial games, such as the excellent Bitgenerations (video), as well as installations such as Loopscape by the always brilliant Ryota Kuwakubo. These signs reassure us that there is still a simple (and elegeant) branch of playable machines.

For more information, Antonin gave an excellent interview at Regarde explaining what ENIAROF is, describing some our recent exhibits, and previewing what the next workshop should be like : [Interview with Antonin Fourneau]. You can also read more about ENIAROF via Marie Lechner at Libération/Écrans [Arborescence, art numérique à Aix-en-Provence et jeux à Marseille] and these two articles on Fluctuat : [Villette Numérique 2006] & [La nouvelle fête foraine]

My latest project is Blossfeldt Fractals. It is a generative composition of plant forms based on photographs by Karl Blossfeldt. The gorwing algorithms used is similar to L-System, but with additional image processing functions.

Don’t forget to check out the video which describes the process of making Blossfeldt Fractals.

Last week I had lunch with Alex Beim and Clive Goodinson, who started the Vancouver Chapter of DorkBot. We decided to join forces and try to get regular meetings going in town for people who are doing interesting things with computers. 

We're going to hold the first official meeting of DorkBot Vancouver on November 7th, in the back room of the Irish Heather. the goal of this first meeting is just to flush people out from behind their computers, and give us all a chance to meet each other over a drink.

So, if you are in Vancouver, and you are interested in the fusing of technology with art and music, please come out and join us.

I'd like to use this thread as a kind of RSVP list, so if you're planning on attending, please add a comment and introduce yourself, so that we can get an idea of numbers. Note that you don't have to be a 'computer nerd' to join us - anyone is welcome.

Surface lib and perlin noise experiment

Author: eskimoblood

Keywords: processing.org 3d surface perlinnoise

Added: October 23, 2006

Creating PDFs in Processing and post-processing them in Adobe Illustrator, I frequently find myself wanting to do things like adjust global transparency levels, colors etc. So far that's been frustrated by the rather poor color adjustment options built into Illustrator, but today I finally got impatient enough to look into a scripting solution.

Illustrator has had Javascript support since CS 1, exposing the document object model to anyone with a bit of scripting savvy. Adobe is good about publishing technical documents, perhaps a holdover from the days when they relied on PostScript to build their empire. So anyone can go to the online scripting documentation and download a complete PDF with a description of the Illustrator API.

As might be expected, coding Javascript is not without its troubles, and I found myself having dotcom flashbacks to the days when I would do client-side scripting. In particular, debugging is always been a pain with Javascript, especially when one is not intimate with the DOM and API. Fortunately, the ExtendScript Toolkit provided by Adobe functions both as a IDE and a debugger. Still, I find myself wanting a few nice details, like the possibility of displaying a progress bar when a script is executing.

To give you an idea of the oddities of coding for Illustrator, I am posting a script that allows the user to input a multiplier, which is then used to adjust the opacity of all path items in the active document. This covers for the lack of such a function in Illustrator proper. To be honest I was surprised at the speed with which I was able to accomplish my goal. I would seriously consider this as a way to do brute-force post-processing of vector files.

That said, I doubt it will ever be as fun and quirky as Scriptographer…

// OpacityAdj.js - JavaScript for Adobe Illustrator CS
// Marius Watz - http://workshop.evolutionzone.com
//
// Adjusts opacity for all paths by a given multiplier.
 
// Prompt user for input
var mult=eval(prompt("Multiplier for transparency",1,"TransMult.js"));
 
// $.writeln() is used to write to the JavaScript console
$.writeln("Multiplier: '"+mult+"'");
if(mult==1) alert("Multiplier is 1.0. No changes made.");
if(mult<=0) {
  alert("Multiplier can't be zero or negative.");
  mult=1;
}
 
index=0;
 
// Get active document from the global Application variable "app".
doc = app.activeDocument;
 
if ( doc.pathItems.length > 0 && mult!=1) {
  thePaths = doc.pathItems;
  numPaths = thePaths.length;
  for ( i = 0; i <numPaths ; i++ ) {
    pathArt = doc.pathItems[i];
    newval=pathArt.opacity*mult;
    if(newval>100) newval=100;
    pathArt.opacity=newval;
 
    // Provide some feedback for complex documents.
    if(index%500==0) {
      percstr=""+((index/numPaths )*100);
      decimalPos=percstr.indexOf(".");
      if(decimalPos!=-1 && (percstr.length-decimalPos>4))
        percstr=percstr.substring(0,decimalPos+2);
      $.writeln(percstr+"% - "+index+"/"+numPaths );
    }
    index++;
  }
  $.writeln("OpacityAdj.js done.");
}

A rather long graffitti thing. A movie of a wall being endlessly redecorated.

This AStar in Flash I intend to read when I finish sorting out my Flash portfolio (this is like the fourth re-write, but each version is looking a bit more proffesional than the last). He claims it’s very fast so I shall compare it to the library I have so far and see if mine can be improved.

A DNA logic gate computer (courtesy New Scientist). Nope, not a GA, but uses strands of DNA.

Robot swarms (courtesy New Scientist).

Some rather entertaining warning signs. Most could adorn a Processing piece or two.

Whoop whoop! Flash 9 Beta for Linux.

Like a Pen. New video by The Knife.

Triumph of the Heart. Bjork video by Spike Jonze. A pity I can’t find the video of the making of this promo, it’s really cool. It kicks off with a guy who complains that he was really looking forward to working with Spike Lee.

The Physics Whiteboard. Yes you’ve already seen it, but I’m linking it for reference purposes.

We Have Explosive. Future Sound of London. Am recently introduced to the work of Run Wrake. I’ve added him to my Artist favourites on the left.

About the Process. Many graphic artists responding on how they develop their ideas. A fatty pdf to download.

Battle of the Bands. Linked about a zillion times on Newstoday. But it is really good.

Line Rider. Linked already on P5Blogs but relinked here for my own use.