A first pass at my Neural Networks in processing tutorial is ready for public consumption. So, before you go and consume a turkey, consume this link. And let me know if it makes any sense at all. . .? The examples are still trivial — Linear classification, Solving XOR — but I hope to develop some more advanced pattern recognition examples soon!
More just-in-time-for-ENIAROF portraits to give you an idea about who is behind this project, what sort of things we’re interested in, as well as a glimpse of some of the work produced at the Atelier Hypermedia. This time we’re featuring Antonin Fourneau: inventor and organizer of ENIAROF, researcher at the Atelier de Recherches Interactives (ENSAD), and hacker/artist/coder working in the field of video games.
Here is one of my favorite works of Antonin, which he developped in collaboration with Erational for the FAN project at Villette Numérique 2004:
It’s a mini foldout Ping Pong table with two Gameboy Advance consoles connected to each other via a local network (cf. GameboyPong). The ball is then sent back and forth across its « net » via the digital network connecting the two consoles. This fed into Téléférique’s concept of FAN, which created an actual/virtual mix somewhere between « PC Tuning » (cf. JackyPC), Origami, and networking.
Some aspects of this work grew out of two workshops at the school: PLAY+MOBILE and a workshop with Chris Csikszentmihalyi at the Laboratoire L.O.E.I.L.. He then evolved all of these experiments into two projects which he presented for his diploma in 2005: ENIAROF, an innovative alternative to digital arts festivals (i.e. Villette Numérique); and The Gameboy Nucleus:
Here is a YouTube video, or you can click here for Quicktime format: GBA Nucleus #1, GBA Nucleus #2:
The Gameboy Nucleus explores many of the issues we’re interested in at the Atelier, and is basically a physical externalization of the interior structure of the Gameboy. Each of the components you see here (Music Box, Woodpecker Toy, Button, …) are externalized forms of internal registers in the Gameboy. By connecting them up you activate or change the state of these internal registers, and thereby affect the internal algorithm. Although I have been speaking in my writings and workshops for many years about the spatialization of algorithms and the externalization of code, I never actually thought of it in such concrete terms. It really is fascinating to see how he designed it. I also find the drawings just as interesting as the actual working forms: it’s interesting to see how he created physical forms of counters (« i++ »), loops (« for(;;) »), randoms (« rand()% »), and so on. It’s quite lovely to hold code in your hands like that.
Here is a photo of one another work from about the same period, one of his contributions to ENIAROF, the Pince Vocale (scream to get an origami robot out of the onscreen « factory » game and into your hands):
Since September 2005, Antonin has been at ARI in Paris, where he has been expanding this work into a whole series of game console manipulations, some of which he presented at the Tokyo Dorkbot in late September:
One of these works, the Noisy Nucleus was also featured as one of the installations at this year’s Festival Emergences (note: as mentioned previously here, ENIAROF was given « carte blanche » at the festival this year, as a sort of bar-room entertainment between musical acts; a role we were — for once in our lives — happy to fill, given the nature of the project). The central idea to the Noisy Nucleus is that the output of one video game or console (joystick, video output, sound, etc) can be used as input into another video game. He basically hacks into the protocol of various game peripherals (SNES, etc), and creates a transcoder/recorder, allowing signals of one machine to pass into another. For example, while playing streetfighter you can also be mixing a breakcore soundtrack
Click the above images for this Quicktime video clip taken from Antonin’s presentation at ARI.
Finally, for this year’s Arborescence, he and Jankenpopp built a series of ENIAROF-style video game consoles. Two of Antonin’s proposals are worth mentioning. The first is a street-fighter with only one joystick: you basically fight against yourself. In the second, the « jump » button has been connected to the video output of Donkey Kong: whenever you jump the screen goes black; and since you have to jump a lot in Donkey Kong, this makes the game very hard to play:
Here’s a YouTube clip of the modified Street Fighter:
And then finally, comes this year’s ENIAROF, which Antonin is frantically preparing as we speak:
I will mention this later on the blog as we get closer, but if you happen to be at the Chicago Art Institute at the end of the week, Antonin and I will be giving a webcast presentation on the last wednesday of this month (11:00 am). This is part of our cross-atlantic teaching collaboration. We’ll see if we can record that somehow and put it onto some podcast (haven’t gotten around to making one yet).
Yet another in-preparation-for-ENIAROF post. This time we’re looking at a recent series of small video games that inspired us for the design of the workshop. The series is called bitgenerations, and is further proof that Nintendo currently is hovering just about as close as a multinational corporate video game company can to coolness. Just when it looked like the Gameboy platform was on its last legs (well, maybe it still is), Nintendo releases this very elegant, simple and very playable series of more or less abstract games. 3xd matrixes and pixelshaders are totally absent here, we’re talking hardcore pixels. Some of it is so simple that it could almost have been designed for the Atari 2600. It certainly feels like a nod to Nanoloop (which really opened up the Gameboy platform), especially when you listen to the soundtracks which have been designed with a lot of care, and un certain goût for 4-bit noise generators.
The original of the whole lot is Soundvoyager which I like to play while walking around Aix-en-Provence. No, that doesn’t get me hit by a bus, because Soundvoyager is a game you play entirely by listening to the audio. You can easily play the game without looking at the screen, and indeed little by little the images dissapear from the screen as you play anyway, requiring you to navigate within the various games entirely by using your ears. It’s a suprising concept, and is one of those things you have to play in order to understand. But here are some videos anyway, just to give you an idea:
The key to playing is having a good pair of headphones, as all the games use left-right stereo panning.
Some other interesting games are Orbital and Coloris:
Although it isn’t as beautiful as things like lia’s work, it’s definitely trying to wander around the same territories, especially games like Dotstream which is one of my favorites: instead of moving sprites, you draw directly onto a scrolling background layer (probably mode 0 in Gameboy programming-lingo). Since the background image is basically a buffer, I’m figuring they’re just drawing directly into it. But since that’s also a tile-only graphics mode, maybe they’re programming in mode 5 (8-bit color, maximum resolution) and creating their own scrolling routine (might be easier).
Going back to games like Scramble, you are in a side-scrolling landscape and have to avoid objects, with the added twist of having to avoid the robot players that are also drawing in the same environment.
If you’re interested in purchasing these games, you can find them at Play-Asia, although they’re probably easy to find on some filesharing network as well, although I don’t know which one. (ok, so, I like the packaging…) For those that are participating in ENIAROF, I will be bringing all of them so you can try them firsthand.
To continue the series on cool student work from the Atelier Hypermédia, and just in time for ENIAROF, comes this small portrait of Jankenpopp (pronounced Jan-ken with a hard J), i.e. Pierre-Erick Lefebvre. Janken has been a longtime collaborator on projects such as 8=8, my assistant for the Objets orientés objet workshop in Genève as well as for the Concrescence algorithmic cinema platform where he contributed significantly to the project. Until recently he was a student in Aix-en-Provence, and is now starting his post-graduate studies in the Atelier de Recherches Interactives at the prestigious ENSAD in Paris. Finally, he and Antonin Fourneau will be bringing the rest of ARI to my Atelier this Tuesday to create the next great noisy, goofy, dopey, thumping, stumbling, bumping, @#!&ing, beeping and booping machines for the ENIAROF Video Arcade.
The first thing you need to know about Jankenpopp is that he’s one of of those kick-ass mashup DJ breakcore dweebs:
He has several online albums you can download at: jankenpopp mp3s, my favorite track being Nova Swap.
The second thing you need to know is that he’s a lazy-ass programmer who makes totally cool mini-software online, i.e. however he feels like it, just piling on the code until he get’s what he wants. Usually it looks something like this (click on images to play, requires Shockwave) :
And then, the final thing you need to know is that all that occasionally gets rolled up into a ball and turned into more complex (and well-programmed) audiovisual musical ensembles where the images/programs play/generate the music:
Both of the above videos are collaborative efforts, but there are certain sections that have his signature all over them.
Oh, and I forgot, although it was also mentioned here earlier: he created the Jankenpopp-666 soundfont, for my Cubed installation at ZeroOne San Jose:
It’s just a little more than a week from now until the most eagerly awaited conference of this year will start: Flash on the Beach 2006 in Brighton. I’m very proud to be part of it especially since the speaker lineup is so very impressing. Here is my schedule for the three days of the conference:
Day 1: Monday 4th Dec 2006
This will be my “Day of the code” - so’ll take full dosage of hardcore Actionscript development info that is out there:
Which means I will start the day with Tink’s session Introduction to Flex 2.0 for Flash Developers. Then I’ll treat myself with Branden Hall’s Explorations with ActionScript 3. Afterwards I’ll try to learn something new for me: Revolution 2 by Nicolas Cannasse. After all this my head will probably smoke so I’ll end the day with something for the eye. So I will relax with Phillip Kerman and Practical Effects: Special Effects with a Purpose
Day 2: Tuesday 5th Dec 2006
After hopefully responsible drinking on the Flash on the Beach Ice-Breaker Party I will be in the proper state to enjoy Brendan Dawes and Contains one scene of sheep skinning - even though I’ve seen his session in Austin this year, just listening to the way he is getting his message across is a very special pleasure in its own. The next session for me will no doubt be the one of my buddy Marcos Weskamp: Creating meaning from chaos!. Then I’ll attend Peter Elst’s JavaScript Flash scripting your tools of the trade - which is a topic I definitely need to brush up again. Marked in deep red in my calendar is Keith Peters with ActionScript 3.0 for Animation. And I’ll close that day with Hillman Curtis, Hillman on Video
Day 3: Wednesday 6th Dec 2006
Okay, to be honest: after the party I will probably miss Geoff’s early morning session Flash in a Web 2.0 world but I hope that my brain has started to function again at least for Jobe Makar talking about Creating Multiplayer Flash Games. I will definitely not miss Hoss Gifford’s Creative Evolution: Behind the Scenes and this time I’ll not forget to count the amount of F*CKs he will manage to cram into these 75 minutes. My last session for that day will be Chris Curzon / Artificially Intelligent Actionscript since in the slot after that I’ll be standing on the stage myself presenting Mashup Baby! for the last time ever.
A giant Japanese robot escapes the studio to shoplift and beat up children. Awful music, great idea….
A giant Japanese robot escapes the studio to shoplift and beat up children. Awful music, great idea.
Recently I had to think a lot about an eventual hardware and software configuration for a personal project - still on progress. Basically my aim is to provide PCs with a pre-installed software. The software has to be, as usual, visually and interactively compelling. After a bit of research I wanted to share my actual […]
Recently I had to think a lot about an eventual hardware and software configuration for a personal project - still on progress. Basically my aim is to provide PCs with a pre-installed software. The software has to be, as usual, visually and interactively compelling. After a bit of research I wanted to share my actual […]
Some days ago, I added a list with my last bookmarks in delicious to the sidebar. As soon as it began to work, I realised something: as in most cases I didn’t change the bookmark’s title and I usually left the extended description empty (trusting heavily in tags as a retreival tool), most of the links said very little about its content.
The thing I love most of delicious is its cognitive economy, and I use delicious for myself. I thought that adding that extra information would be cumbersome, so I thought of removing the thing on the sidebar.
But instead I began editing titles and adding some extended descriptions. Now it takes me something like 10 to 30 seconds more to add a link, but instead of losing, I think I’ve taken advantage of it:
So as it happens with blogs, if you do things for yourself, but publicly, you do them better.
Is it a penguin? A tooth? A surfer from the future? Whatever it is, this announcement sure does make me happy. Read more about it at Create Digital Motion, one of my new favorite blogs!
Java has long been freely-available, but now the entire Java platform and source code are fully open source and free under the GPL. Sun has posted a resource center for the announcement:
It’s not available yet, but a new open source implementation of the platform and Java Development Kit, dubbed the OpenJDK, is in the works, as well:
Both the virtual machine and the compiler are up now, with the remainder of the components due in the first half of 2007. Even JavaHelp is getting open sourced. The GPL classpath exception will allow developers to create closed-code projects on top of this project, as well.
Well worth reading, Sun’s Tim Bray has posted a blog entry with some frank answers to some of the obvious questions:
Java is Free (via Download Squad
Most of us are unlikely to spend much time hacking around with Java itself, so why is this important? I think it’s significant in that it helps ensure the long-term health of the Java platform. Java has gotten huge, and Sun hasn’t always been able to keep up. One of the most typical sacrifices has been desktop multimedia, like weak video support.
The Processing community has repeatedly hit against the limitations of Java in developing Processing. Many of the performance issues aren’t (contrary to popular belief) inherent weaknesses of Java; some are, but others have to do with some of the darker, cobweb-filled portions of Sun’s Castle Java. The Processing developers have their hands busy, but given Java’s popularity in academia, it’s not hard to imagine someone addressing these issues.
Forking versions of Java indeed sounds a little scary, but that’s where Sun’s corporate conservatism actually becomes an asset. Sun still controls the Java trademark. Bray puts it this way:
However many forks there are, it ain’t Java unless it’s called “Java” or has the coffee-cup on it. If it has the name and cup, it is Java and it’s compatible. And Sun will absolutely enforce that in court if we have to. We have in the past and we will again.
You know what that means: get ready for as many stands-ins for the word “Java” and the image of a coffee cup as you can stomach. Let’s see: Bali? Jakarta? (Or, going the other route, Macchiato? Frappuccino — oh, wait, probably not that one, unless Starbucks decides to adopt open source development.) An image of a travel mug? An espresso machine?
Honestly, though, this could be a win-win situation. Imagine an academic institution building a multimedia-savvy version of Java that strips out the stuff you don’t need and is optimized for multimedia performance. You can use that if you like, but you know that the thing that’s still called “Java” isn’t going to splinter into a zillion different, incompatible versions.
Another hope is that this will bring better cross-platform support. Java doesn’t run nearly as well on Linux and (even worse) the Mac as on Windows. The Linux side is definitely more onboard with Java thanks to the announcement; just look at the open source project page and you’ll see GNU Project founder Richard Stallman, Ubuntu Project founder Mark Shuttleworth, and luminaries like Tim O’Reilly. Don’t forget embedded platforms, too, which are also now covered by the GPL. I just hope someone over at Apple looks at the lackluster performance of Java on the Mac.
Meanwhile, Windows users can still benefit from having a fantastic Java development and deployment platform. (It’s true; Java really does run best on Windows. Something strangely satisfying about coding for Java on Windows and ignoring the usual Microsoft stuff.)
I’m sure O’Reilly will be glad to step in and publish lots of books on the subject, as well; you’ll see their logo on the new projects. (Hey, I love a publisher that actually helps move technology forward, as opposed to the typical publishers who can’t even be bothered to sell books!)
The other safe bet is that there’s plenty of rejoicing at Adobe headquarters, given Adobe’s love for Java, the open source Eclipse IDE, and other technologies. Now, Adobe, about open sourcing the Flash compiler … any new thoughts on that?
I don’t believe open source and (specifically) the free software movement are always the solution to everything. Proprietary software has done wonderful things, and it’s a business model that makes sense for certain projects. But in the case of Java, as even Sun admits, this is a no-brainer. It’s great to see an older tech company like Sun taking the chance. I think the whole Java platform will benefit.
Now, I return you to your regularly-scheduled Processing coding.
coding, development, java, open source, processing.org, programming, trends
Well I did release a new flash folio to lure prospective employers, but when I went to Newstoday for a quick crit it got such a beating I started work again. This time, no dodgy Flash components, I’m making my own. And the new one will be pure AS, I’m aiming to have only two lines instancing an external class on the .fla timeline and nothing else. Nothing smells better than pure, undiluted code. For a quick cringe at my last attempt go here. It does however boast a html parser that I want to iron out the bugs and build into the new flash.
Tomorrow I’m off to London to see a talk by Harold Cohen at the Imperial College, he’s going to reveal new developments with AARON. Phase one was the exploratory cave painter (my favourite really), phase two was the figurative portraiture maker and now he is about to unveil phase three. If it’s particularly interesting, expect a report later this week. If there’s enough material in my notes I might write it up for furtherfield (who I wrote an article for the other week).
Links of Leisure:
New Beck Video (Michel Gondry)
Walking across water at the London Design Festival
Blosfeldt Fractals
Open Code (online Processing)
OpenFrameWorks
Jeff Han about his multi-touch interface
Video music animation
Online generators
Article on design grids
ReacTIVision used for a PureData type patch jam
Links of Utility:
Color Codes Matching Chart
Essential Web Skills (pdf)
Undocumented Tween / Easing classes for Flash
Raw CSS examples
CSS Float Tutorial
Html to Xml php parser
Unobtrusive Flash Objects
Detect and embed Flash objects
Flash key combinations
Second Life models from Blender
Free Art for designers
I heartily warn oldschool Atari ST owners to stay away from Dungeon Master RTC. One shouldn’t be staying up till 3am to kill a dragon (thank god I’ve completed it and can carry on with my life). There is a Java version of Dungeon Master but the maps and graphics aren’t very faithful to the original, at one point you can’t even get a much needed key.
So today is a historic day for Java. In just a few hours (17:30 GMT) Sun will officially announce that Java is released under GPL from now on. Free at last!
Not only does this mean bugs will most likely be fixed far quicker than ever before, but now Java will also get much better support under Linux, Ubuntu and other open source OS environments. So this is an interesting bit for artsy folk too, since that might have impact on which tool/language to chose/support on these platforms. Being able to freely distribute Java yourself also removes another stumbling block for producing standalone apps.
In general it really seems this decision will help Java to “thrive” even more (incl. on even more platforms), or if you’re more pessimistic, at least give it better chances of survival. Being a programming language, it makes sense to hand over control to the people who are using it the most… That is not to say Sun hasn’t been quite good with that in the past (better than M$ or Adobe in any way). And even though you’re free to branch off and create your own fork of the language, the Java name & brand will remain under Sun’s control in order to ensure compatibility and their business. That’s not a bad thing at all.
(via ongoing)
On another slightly related note, Adobe has recently contributed parts of their AS3 virtual machine, dubbed AVM2, to a new OSS project hosted on Mozilla.org, called Tamarin.
“Source code from AVM2 being contributed to the Tamarin project implements ECMAScript 4th edition language features such as namespaces, classes, and optional strongly typed variables, and includes a Just In Time (JIT) compiler that translates ActionScript bytecode to native machine code for maximum execution speed.
The Tamarin project will result in an ECMAScript 4th edition engine that Mozilla will use within the next-generation of SpiderMonkey, the core JavaScript engine embedded in Firefox®, Mozilla’s free Web browser, and other products based on Mozilla technology. The code will continue to be used by Adobe as part of the ActionScript Virtual Machine.” (from the FAQ)
Safety in numbers. It’s interesting to see how both Sun and Adobe at least in parts have taken the risk to engage in a symbiosis with the Open Source world in order to protect themselves and/or even gain advantages over competitors. Microsoft’s Sparkle is posing a serious (potential) risk to Adobe’s product offering (Flash/Director). However, by open sourcing their development efforts, both Sun and Adobe have gained access to a potentially vastly increased community of contributors. It seems the repeated success of concerted and well managed large-scale open source efforts demonstrated by Mozilla and Eclipse (Callisto) is finally gaining momentum and support from other areas of the industry.