faceCloth_sur(ta)face is the latest installment on faceCloth, which runs on the MTUI multi-touch interface.

A collaboration with smallfly. See http://facecloth.prisonerjohn.com for more information.

Cast: prisonerjohn, smallfly

A nice article by Peter Hall about the IAC video wall is out in the June issue of Metropolis Magazine. The article mentions our work at ITP on the “most pixels ever” Processing library . . . which we will release soon for beta experimentation!

faceCloth - sur(ta)face

Multi-touch implementation of faceCloth.
Collaboration with prisonerjohn.

Cast: smallfly, prisonerjohn

Some sketches from the first day of Ben Fry’s Processing class here at Anderson Ranch. What was striking to me is that you really can cover the essence of setup and coding syntax in a day, even for people not familiar with programming/Java. You’re instantly translating code into visuals, so there’s immediate feedback — not a big slog through how the environment works before something actually happens.

Since I have spent some time with Processing, I took the opportunity to try to push some of the examples in a different direction. Speed is not necessarily my forte (with anything, really), but it was fun to try to throw together a sketch as quickly as possible. I didn’t even worry about checking for errors; I actually decided that if the compiler was regularly throwing errors because I accidentally left out a parenthesis, that meant I was moving fast enough. Even though we’re starting at the beginning, though, I’m rapidly filling up holes in my knowledge about Processing and picking up endless tips — it’s really extraordinary to get the chance to work directly with Ben Fry himself! And not only is it an opportunity to get close to the source, but, as I expected, he’s a fantastic teacher, as well.

I’m also trying a new way of working, which is to regularly keep a visual log of what I’m doing. Plaqs’s Skitch, a hot new Mac app currently in beta, takes care of that nicely. It allows me to quickly take screen grabs and post them either to my Skitch page or (as here) Flickr, so I have a record of various iterations — some successful, some less so. More on that and how TextMate makes life easier with Processing coding on Mac soon.

Stay tuned for more…

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Read the rest of Processing Workshop Day 1: You, Too, Can Learn to Code (0 words)

© Peter Kirn for Create Digital Motion, 2007. |
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Creating audio reactive software with processing is not the problem but making a video from it can become a painfull work. Everything works great in real time but when you want to save frames as it takes some time for each to save, the sound is quickly out of sync with the image.

After some headhache I came across a wonderfull topic in the Processing forum where Dave Bollinger gives one of his great pieces of knowledge. The method is simple: just read the spectrum step by step instead of real time analysis and everything will work fine.

I’ve done some video with this trick, one on Murcof music and another on a friend composition:

There’s only you - Processing Visuals.

Murcof Processing Visuals.

The two sketches use almost the same code.

I don’t know how I came across this one but it really was a cool experience. I gave a little workshop on Processing in the Art school La Cambre, here in Brussels.

A friend was talking about future workshops with Pierre Huyghebaert (teacher of Art numeriques) and they found that they hadn’t anybody to talk about Processing. And that was the moment I came in! (or my friend talked about me).

And so I gave my very first workshop. I was kind of afraid but Pierre is a very nice and interesting guy and everything was cool and easy. I prepared some exercises for the students from very basic programmation to some physics stuffs. But the workshop was much too short so it was just a little initiation for people who never heard about Processing. But it seemed the students (and Pierre too) liked my talk. Hope they all take some more time too look at this wonderfull tool.

Technique: A bike handlebar mounted mounted webcam is processed by a laptop, creating a time lapse where the exposures overlap (no movement is lost). The audio comes from pitch-shifting recordings from a large solenoid (modified bass speaker) which were capturing most low-frequency vibrations. More here: http://rpi.edu/~mcdonk/AmbientLapse/ I went to and returned from Radioshack, around 23 minutes away, and composited the return path in reverse using overlay mode. Going and returning are panned slightly left and right, respectively.

I added some mass to the bass speaker, effectively introducing a low-pass filter. I wanted to use the bike like a record needle, and play the street and sidewalks.

Cast: Kyle McDonald