This website simply has the right name: Folklore is a collection of stories and anekdotes from inside the Machintosh Company. Perfect for a sunday morning and essential to keep your good-to-know skills improved.

small excerpt (camera in hand, sorry) of projection for MFA during college night. the rythms are from djbaldur (a.k.a. djezus, www.djezus.org), the visuals by myself (getting better, i think).

[made with www.processing.org]

Cast: amolins

An installation exploring human spectacle. The viewer is presented with two interpretations of themselves; their movements and the composite of themselves in their space generate sound.

Cast: kyle

Look at this beautiful video from LoadingReadyRun. It’s about how to talk like a pirate. Some background: on the 19th September is the so called “International Talk like a Pirate Day“. Maybe good to know. So don’t be surprised if you read blog postings like this or that. You can even game like a pirate and don’t we all like to remember the lovely Monkey Island? According to Wikipedia the Sims2 on the Nintendo DS also have a Pirate Day on the 19th September. I am absolutely not sure if I go with the Pirates or better choose the Ninjas.

[via]

It’s no secret that a major update to Max/MSP/Jitter is coming from Cycling ‘74, with a major overhaul of the underlying code and an entirely new, friendlier interface. What has been secret is just what that upgrade will look like. We still don’t know what it’ll look like visually, but Cycling ‘74 today released some new details about what it is and isn’t.

In short, it promises to be:

• Easier to use: Multiple undo, debugging tools for patches, and a visual catalog for perusing objects.
• Easier to learn: Integrated, rewritten documentation, even including Web links.
• Easier on the eyes: A new, zoomable patching interface with lots of new goodies — that’s not only skin deep, but makes patches easier to navigate.
• Mo cross-platform: A new code foundation should make Max more modern, reliable, easier to support on C74’s part, and better supported across OSes. It even opens the possibility of someday seeing Max/MSP/Jitter on Linux and not just Mac/Windows.
• Not full of gobs of new objects: Normally this is not a feature, but here, it’s a good thing: by introducing only a few objects, the new Max focuses instead on improving existing objects and building a better environment / platform for the future.

I’m meeting with Cycling ‘74 this week at AES, so hope to have more details then, including more on what’s changed for Jitter users. Audio users should note a big caveat — Pluggo support won’t be present in Max 5 at launch, which is critical to using patches as audio effects and instruments in other hosts, though it sounds as though that may be added at an undetermined point in the future. But on the visual side, it looks like it could be a pretty smooth upgrade: most patches and externals should be compatible, with some potential updates needed for tools that have special UI features. (I imagine some patches will look a little odd, too, once they hit the new UI — worth keeping that older Max copy around, just in case.) Overall, looks like good news. Naturally, we want to know more. Lots more. Soon. I’ll keep you posted.

Java and JavaScript support will continue to work. And that means Processing is supported, as well (via mxj), so this could be a great Processing prototyping environment, or a way of coupling Processing with other features. (See jklabs MaxLink. And yeah, it really does work … very cool. Viva Java.)

Cycling ‘74 Releases Max 5 Details: Bringing Max Out of the 80s, into to the Future [Create Digital Music] Cycling 74, development, java, javascript, Jitter, Max/MSP, patching, previews, processing.org, programming, software, upgrades

© Peter Kirn for Create Digital Motion, 2007. |
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I was quite busy this last days, and for making the things a bit more spicy the Air agency call me for a nice job for Amnesty international.

I was directly seduced by the general idea, recreating the face of prisonners with only one symbol. That’s the kind of concept I really love. Doing a complex illustration using only one unique simple shape. The eternal fight between simplicity and complexity.

The only problem with that job was (as usual) a really really short deadline. I knew about the job on wendsday at 4pm and the ad had to be printed on thursday in the morning. Finally we get a little more time (one more day) to finish it and Jonathan (a crazy photoshop magician) give me a really big help to put all the layers I made with Processing together.

Agency: Air belgium.
Artistic Direction: Laurence Van de Putte
Generative Design: me
Photoshop retouching: Jonathan Steelandt

Made with modified source code originally written by Peter de Jong. Get it at http://www.harukit.com/p5skch.html

Sample code to use mouse wheel events in Processing.

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in april i saw joseph weizenbaum in mannheim. i am really happy that i managed to see him again. weizenbaum is one of the most influential persons since i met him at rotis symposium in 2001.

last week i was invited to fh potsdam’s fritzing workshop and gameplaces talk in frankfurt.

the fritzing project is an attempt to develop a visual software for designing pcbs in physical computing. some of the arduino guys were there: massimo banzi, david mellis and tom igoe. i presented some projects of me and my students and described the way how we are working with arduino. due to the short time of the semester my students are using only breadboards instead of pcbs. this also enables an incremental and try&error learning process. tom igoe’s statement about the lack of women in physical computing was not present in my documentation and also some others.

wednesday i was invited to speak at gameplaces talk in frankfurt. i showed some game related projects of my students. the connection between experimental interface design and new game interfaces was quite promising.

Here is a simple example showing how to use unlekkerLib to output and input 3D geometry in STL format.

// STLBoxes.pde - demonstrates how to use unlekkerLib to
// import / export STL geometry data.
//
// Marius Watz - http://workshop.evolutionzone.com/
 
import unlekker.data.*;
 
STL stl;

public void setup() {
  size(400,400, P3D);
  frameRate(25);
  sphereDetail(12);
}
 
public void draw() {
  translate(width/2,height/2);
 
  if(frameCount==10) outputSTL();
  else if(frameCount==11) readSTL();
  if(frameCount12) return;
 
  background(0);
  noStroke();
  lights();
  rotateY(radians(frameCount));
  rotateX(radians(frameCount*0.25f));
  fill(0,200,255, 128);
  stl.draw();

}
 
public void readSTL() {
  stl=new STL(this,”Boxes.stl”);
  stl.normalize(400); // scale object
  stl.center(); // center it around world origin
}
 
public void outputSTL() {
  float rad;

  stl=(STL)beginRaw(”unlekker.data.STL”,”Boxes.stl”);
  for(int i=0; i200; i++) {
    pushMatrix();
    translate(random(-200,200),0,-random(400));
    rotateX(((float)(int)random(6))*radians(30));
    rotateY(((float)(int)random(6))*radians(30));

    rad=random(5,25);
    if(random(100)>5) box(rad,random(50,200),rad);
    else sphere(rad);
    popMatrix();
  }
  endRaw();
}

As I said last week, I’m also using robert penner’s easing equations in openFrameworks, so I’ve ported them to c++.

This has been relatively straightforward, but, as with the actionscript to java conversion, I’ve run into some nuances between languages and I’ve definitely learned the hard way (read “wasting some hours of my life”) why pre and post increment operators can be evil.

Grab them here

For usage, you can have a look at the openFrameworks app provided. If you want to have a quick glance at the types of movement, see the easing applet (p5 version).

Being this a programming exercise, it will have improvable things for sure. I’m thinking of some, but if you know anything, please let me know.

tags:c++ easing openframeworks c++, easing, openframeworks

Rapid prototyping objects generated with Processing and output to STL using unlekkerLib.

I’ve just uploaded a new Processing library called unlekkerLib. It is a collection of tools and code snippets I use frequently, and which I’ve now just barely cleaned up enough for other people to use. Instead of releasing them piece by piece, I’ve decided to bundle them together in a package hierarchy.

The main reason I decided to release it now is the STL export code I’ve written for my rapid prototyping projects. Several people have asked for the code, so I wanted to get it out there for you to play with. Obviously, it works as well with Processing as it does with regular Java.

Caveat emptor:There’s not much documentation but I do provide the source code. This is v.0001 - the very first release, so it’s pretty basic. See below for an idea of what the library contains. Right now the most exciting new component is the unlekker.data.STL class, which supports export and import of STL stereolithography files for rapid prototyping. Have a look at the Javadoc for more details.

Updates will appear here: http://workshop.evolutionzone.com/unlekkerlib/.

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