Music by Trentemoller.
Built with Processing and captured with Fraps.
Captured from my last live visual set.
It’s all realtime, so there’s certainly some mistakes and bad notes. That mean too that all the pictures are generated in live. I have no loops, no prerendered footages. It’s all improvisation. Things move according to the beat, to the music frequenties and to my little fingers pressing buttons and switching knobs and faders.
Cast: Simon
I’m sure most of us have been in a crowd at some point where an inflatable ball has been punched, tipped, or pushed from person to person. There’s an easy kind of cooperative game that develops, as people naturally try to keep the balls from hitting the ground. Alex Beim of Tangible has taken this idea forward with his Zygote balls, which are equipped with a microprocessor, and internal LEDs. These very large high-tech beach balls are interactive – people can tap, bounce, or punch the balls to get them to change colour. The result is simple, engaging, and fun. When dozens of these balls are released into an audience, the effect is quite stunning. Check out a video of some Zygotes in action here.
What makes the Zygote even more interesting is that each ball can be used as an input or an output device. Connected wirelessly to a central computer, the balls could be synchronized to music or to any other type of activity. Conversely, user interaction with the balls could play sounds, trigger graphics, or queue events. In this way, the zygote could act as a giant, bouncy mouse.
Zygote is already on the road – they will be bouncing around with The Chemical Brothers in October. Tangible is actively looking for more audiences for Zygote, so if you are an event producer, musician, or performer that could use some giant, ball-based fun, get in touch with Tangible via their website.
Meta-Control live visuals performed live by Ali Demirel @ Richie Hawtin’s Club Phazon performance in Tokyo, Japan.
Meta-Control is created by Ali Demirel & Burak Arikan using ‘Processing’.
Cast: Ali M. Demirel, arikan
<>TAG kindly invited me to give 2 lectures about my Processing works in the context of their Information Aesthetics 2 symposium. First I’ll be joining Mr. Casey Reas and Aaron Koblin @ Mediamatic in Amsterdam, this Thursday at 2030h.
The Information Aesthetics symposium will then take place at the Spui Theatre, The Hague on Saturday from 1400-1800h. Marius Watz and Manuel Lima (author of Visual Complexity) will also take part in this so am looking ++forward to see what everyone has been up to recently and of course to the discussion about our varied approaches.
Last but not last, I (under the Moving Brands moniker) will be responsible for the re-staging of an adaptation of the KEF Muon audio visualization – this time unfortunately without the Muon speakers & LED floor – but projected in the amazing space of the Richard Meier designed city hall of The Hague. This will be happening throughout Friday and Saturday.
Some time ago, I wondered how could I take some notes about the music I was listening to.
After having a look at the last.fm player source code* I instantly saw what a stupid thing I had suggested. In no way I’d be able to figure out that bunch of c++ classes (not that it made any sense to try, just to implement such a simple thing).
I thought of some other alternatives, mostly involving desktop widgets, but as far as I could see, none of the options could cover both my local music and the last.fm player (for when I’m listening to radio). I gave up the idea.
But one day, while sending a recommendation to a friend via the player I realized that I could write some text in that text box. Could I send recommendations to myself? Yes. And how could I take those recommendations out of last.fm? Luckily, they offer an rss feed for manual recommendations in their web services.
So I hacked together some code that parsed my recommendations and sent the ones with my username to my helipad notebook (not public, so I don’t have much to show). I set up a cron job and… You can see that I still use it in my rss feed.
The code is so trivial (and so tied to helipad in my case) that I’m sure you can do it better quickly, but in case you are interested, I could try to clean some of the php mess and send it upon request.
Although they are kind of personal, I’ve been thinking of publishing the notes directly here, since the rss feed is public anyway (and explicit sharing can improve your personal content, I think)
As a side note, I think last.fm could get some value of implementing such a thing. On one hand users could get some sort of musical microblogging, like a contextual twitter. On the other hand, since the info is always from last.fm, it could really enrich artists, songs and album pages, and more seamlesly than the current shoutbox, in my humble opinion.
* yes, I learned how to use subversion. Now I can’t live without it.
tags:last.fm notetaking last.fm, notetaking
Marcus Wendt has published a new Processing library called libCollada, providing 3D export in the Collada 3D format. Collada is XML-based, and is intended to provide support both for basic 3D geometry and more advanced 3D authoring features like shaders and physics.
The obvious question is why another 3D format? Well, I guess the ones out there still aren’t good enough. Collada looks very complete, but most importantly is not tied to a single software vendor. It comes with a range of Open Source libraries for importing and exporting for various languages, and so could easily become a good choice for Open Source developers.
I recommed subscribing to Marcus’ Infostuka blog for technology- and design-related news. His own projects like Gestures on Sound show a great eye for computational work.
Sorry for being a bit off-topic.
Dearest readers,
i’ll be moving to London shortly to start working on a few freelance projects during the next months and would love to share a flat with other friendly creatives. Therefore i’m looking for a nice & reasonable priced room in the Shoreditch/ Hoxton Sq/ Victoria Park/ Bethnal Green area. Looking to move in ASAP.
I’m social/ friendly/ tidy/ dedicated/ up for a drink/ able to import good german beer as well as able to prepare great Wiener Schnitzel and other good food.
Let me know if you have or know of a nice place – please contact me via einbekannterfernsehstar [at] gmail * com
Thank you.
Marcus
Being an actionscript head, I’ve frequently used rober penner’s easing equations in processing*. To avoid copy/paste each time I’ve packed them as a processing library.
While I was at it, I discovered a couple of implementations (1, 2), but I was almost done, and wanted to learn how to make processing libraries anyway.
So in the hope that it is useful to somebody, here it is:
http://jesusgollonet.com/processing/pennerEasing/
*I’m also using them in openFrameworks, so I’ve begun porting them to c++ too. They’ll be here when I’m done.
tags:easing library processing.org easing, library, processing.org
New software from HeHe added to the exhibition.
Update 15 September 2007: I have fixed the code so it will now run on Windows too see also Processing and ChucK ‘Hello World’ demo A couple of weeks ago colleague Barth mentioned to me. I knew the works of http://acg.media.mit.edu/ John Maeda and Ben Fry from a number of years back, but I found it too small, too closed at that time. Now I was surprised by the growth of the platform and the community. I decided to give Processing a try during my holidays. More about that work later… Linked on the Processing site I found ChucK, a new audio programming language. I see a lot of possibilities to create audio by visual means. I have created a demo application to let Processing and Chuck talk to each other through OSC. The demo loads 4 audio files. Volume and panning values are controlled by Processing and sent to ChucK. ChucK analyses the sound spectrum and sends back analysis data. This is a non interactive sketch, but interactivity would be trivial to add. PS: if this demo looks a bit …
Update 15 September 2007: I have fixed the code so it will now run on Windows too; when a new process is created it now uses Runtime.exec to set the working directory to data . My first Processing and ChucK demo had a major pain you needed to start and stop ChucK from the command line. No longer! In this new demo Processing sends out messages to monitor.ck . When this program no longer receives any updates it shuts down ChucK. So starting and stopping ChucK is now done by Processing. The demo sends mouse coordinates (x and y) to a ChucK application, helloworld.ck , to change freqency and harmonics of a ‘Blit’ (STK band limited impulse train). This is how the demo looks like (listen with headphones): Downloads (updated 15 September 2007) Demo application (Mac, Windows, Linux) The Readme text with installation instructions Source code for Processing and ChucK
The autumn/winter 2007 COS collection graphics in situ.
The process of making it was taking a nice walk in a park gathering leaves for inspiration (Victoria Park in London provides an excellent selection). Through scanning and then abstracting these to simpler version in illustrator I ended up with naive leafs ready for 3D, to avoid a completely flat feel I imported them into the 3D application Modo and gave them a slight bend + extrusion.
7 leafs were used in total allowing for multiple different groups (enough to make the animation differ to break the monotony). (the 7 is seen here with a random set of leafs blowing across the screen).
The orbiter is an interactive sound environment by Vera-Maria Glahn and Marcus Wendt.
It invites you to reach for the stars and play their music!
These videos can hardly represent the surround sound quality of the installation, but to get an impression please use headphones and/or a good audio setup!
» Polar Scene A / Polar Scene B
» Solar Scene A / Solar Scene B
» Sawtooth Scene A / Sawtooth Scene B
» Kunsthochschule Kassel, Setup
» Kunsthochschule Kassel, annual exhibition 2007
» Microarchitecture Lounge exhibition at Tendence07, Frankfurt/Main
The Orbiter takes possession of all senses. It is a place for visitors to lay down and relax, watching the firmament above them. With a small gesture, just pointing upwards, the visitor can insert new stars into orbit with unique visual and musical characteristics. The player is enveloped by the instrument; the music filling the ears, the body and space.
The dream of reaching for the stars is as old as mankind itself. The mathematics of planetary orbits, the perfection of natural geometrical forms fascinates scientists and artists alike. Even music principles as tonality or phase displacement are based upon computational ideas and find correspondency in the Orbiters structure.
The music is played on concentric circles, with higher tones on the outside, bass notes nearer the centre. The bigger you let a star grow before you pull back your hand to insert it into orbit, the louder it plays.
Like the stars orbit on the large ceiling screen above the player, the surround sound orbits in the room on 4 high-tone-channels, supported by a bass box and a solid bourne sound speaker underneath the player`s couch, making low basses physically sensable.
Each version of the Orbiter features various scenes with different graphics, sounds and behaviour. Some create an illusionary nightsky firmament, playing more melodic or ambient sounds. Others experiment with the possibilities of graphical abstraction and rough synths, allowing you to even play drum’n bass-like sounds.
The installation is based on custom-built software using latest gaming and computer vision technology, performing real-time analysis of a camera image of the player as well as generating 6-channel-audio and video signals. The video analysis is written in C++, instructing SuperCollider for the audio generation, Processing for the graphics.
I figured I may as well lend a hand spreading the news that Casey and Ben’s Processing book is finally available. Check out some prices here and get your order in! I suspect this book will be an invaluable resource to anyone with an interest in Processing. Mine is already on the way!
EDIT: Processing: A Programming Handbook is available in Vancouver at INFORM (50 Water St., in Gastown).