Interface 27 from CyberPatrolUnit on Vimeo.

There has been a long tradition in live visuals and motion graphics, inherited from many other media, of maintaining a “secret sauce,” or the guarded formula of eleven herbs and spices. Ironically, for all you hear today “DIY” and “open source” in the same sentence, a lot of the motivation for doing something yourself has historically been doing something no one else can. Keep your secrets, and raise your value.

As our friend Bryant Place / CyberPatrolUnit sends over this latest set of live clips from a recent gig, and I browse through the comments, and reflect on the conversations I had last week at OFFF and during and following my own talk there, though, I’m struck.

The world has changed. First off, the Internet isn’t really about secrets. Your value is almost in direct proportion to how much you can share. Connections are forged through links of mutual exchange and good will. It’s not just about sharing your output or getting fans (the MySpace model), but sharing with a network of enthusiasts, and fellow artists. Those are the people from whom you often get real support (artistic, technical, and personal), gigs – and inspiration. (Even if you hate 8-bit music, that community is a really amazing model: their work to support each other and advocate for the whole subgenre has been I think the single biggest ingredient in their viral success.)

The visualist community increasingly itches not only to improve the quality of their own individual work, but everyone around them. A lot of us are in a battle for the future of this whole medium. Some parts of the world are devoid of live visuals, while others have mass-produced club visuals filling the nightlife.

Before I get carried away, the video itself is just the latest from the ongoing Interface 27 series. It employs a touch interface to control abstract visual pictures formed from streams of particles.

The reason I’m pulling back into the larger question is that these visuals are enabled by a library for Processing, a library we’ve seen here previously, developed by Memo Atken:

MSAFluid for processing (and Java)

If you’d rather use openFrameworks, there’s that version, too, as pictured below running blazingly fast:

ofxMSAFluid for openFrameworks

There’s even an ActionScript 3 port, in case you want to code Flash on the beach.

ofxMSAFluid for openFrameworks from Memo Akten on Vimeo.

So, why do I bring this up? Well, the work done on Processing (Ben Fry, Casey Reas, contributors like Karsten Schmidt, and others), on openFrameworks (Zachary Lieberman, Theo Watson, and their own team), and Memo’s own library, based in turn on many other libraries and implementations, was all a big risk.

It’s not an easy thing to put blood, sweat, and tears into open source. None of those people has exactly gotten rich in the process – not even via the ways you’re supposed to profit from open source, doing the lecture circuit and such. But on the other hand, we’re seeing things that would have been otherwise impossible.

And there’s artistic merit, too. Bryant’s work looks different than Memo’s. The library actually takes on a new life as it gets in someone else’s hands. Bryant actually just wrote me:

As for the Interface video - mention how cool it is that people like Memo post code for other VJ’s to tweak and use.  Mention “FaderTouch” - a 100buk touchscreen off ebay that “vjFader” programmed - using a rear projection onto a translucent screen/ touch sensor we were able to use processing in a very intuitive way.

I got the “mention” part down, I guess.

The responsibility is partly ours to make all of this work: file bug reports, fix bugs if you can, document your work, properly credit the people making it, write documentation for projects, and so on. But it’s not hard to see an ideal start to happen:

1. Person x makes a library / framework.

2. Person y build on that library to make their own tool – and contributes it.

3. Artist uses the tool, gives back to the project, goes in a new direction.

4. More and better work spreads, the project grows, the medium grows, and the audience grows.

None of this happens automatically. We all have a lot more work to do. But having stood onstage in front of a few thousand people calling for just this, it’s nice to keep opening my inbox and seeing it happening. We’re seeing the first seeds planted for what could ultimately be a larger ecosystem. Now, I know there’s also a big gap left – Processing doesn’t have nearly enough contributors, bug squashers, or documenters, and it’s one of the biggest projects, so you can imagine what happens when you get upstream to libraries and the like.

Over the coming months, I think we’ll continue to look for opportunities to help structure some of that involvement and to explaining how you can contribute, too. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, go play with some particles.

For more on Bryant, here he is on his current activities:

- I just did Coachella with [Friend of CDM and contributor] Momo, and in the near future, will be heading to Detroit for http://www.myspace.com/detroitmusicfest

I’m not on the website, however, Kero.fm and Derek Michael - two people who essentially helped build the festival from the ground up 10 years ago - are booking me to play with various acts including CLP, Richard Devine, Drumcell, Busy P (which I did a solo VJ set with at Coachella) so I am super excited to be a part for the first time this year.

Here is a cool video from previous Interface 26:

http://www.vimeo.com/4145774

After Detroit - Mutek.

http://www.mutek.org/

There are also some killer podcasts from past Mutek - http://www.mutek.org/podcast

I am going to meet artists, see the latest AV performances, attend workshops.

I’ll be at Mutek, too, so see you there.

I was recently contacted about the genetic algorithm library I wrote a couple of years back. I remembered it having a bug or two so I decided to give it a quick polish before recommending it. A quick polish turned into a furious scrubbing. Then into total dismantling and then rebuilding with new parts. There were some gaping huge holes in the logic behind the framework of the last version but hopefully the new build is more reliable. Plus it not only works as a GA, but as a tool for splicing arrays of information as binary - that you the user can control how you see fit.

Genetic Algorithm Library for Processing or Java

When I get time I will alphabetise the reference and add some graphical examples. For now, I’m putting up the bare bones so it can be used and abused.

Also, a shout out to Konami Code Sites who were kind enough to add RobotAcid to their list. Go check it out for some geeky finger foolery.

As an unrequested favour to my new host, I decided to move the link list on the site over to JQuery. Originally the link list was an aggregate of at least 10+ php files that were then hidden by scriptaculous. And the mark up to get the hiding to work was pretty ugly. I’ve now switched to dynamically pulling in the link lists for a nicer page loading experience and for less demand on the server’s cpu. And the script to pull this off is quite small:

// hide all divs$(document).ready(function(){ $(”div”).hide();});// Accordion toggle categories and ajax load empty categoriesfunction toggleContent(id) { // id also serves as a file path for the file to be loaded var div_id = “#”+id.substr(id.lastIndexOf(’/')+1); var jdiv = $(div_id); // if div contains a noscript item, load content from id if(jdiv.children(”noscript”).length > 0){  jdiv.html(’loading…’);  jdiv.slideDown(”normal”, function(){   jdiv.load(id+”.php”, function(){    // capture inner html and switcheroo with loaded text    var html = $(div_id).html();    jdiv.html(’loaded’);    jdiv.slideUp(”normal”, function(){     jdiv.html(html);     // hide all subcategories     $(”div”, div_id).each(function(){      $(this).hide()     });     jdiv.hide();     jdiv.slideDown(”slow”);    });   });  }); // otherwise just slide the div open and closed } else {  $(div_id).slideToggle(”slow”); }}

Not to mention that it took very little time to learn, despite JQuery syntax looking fairly scary.

i worte a little tunnel effect using the copy command and a transparent rectangle in processing.
i use no perlin noise in this sketch, just a plain random and copy command that scales the image and a transparent rect, to make
the older pixel fade out. (don’t ask me why it has to be 19 pixel less then width, but when i use 20 it gets dragged to the lower right corner)

copy(10, 10, width-19, height-19,0,0,width, height );
fill(0,10);
rect(0,0,width, height );

click here to see it in action

code:

/**
* a tunnle effect by Guru
*/
void setup() {
  size(300,300);
  frameRate(25);
}

void draw() {
  noStroke();
  copy(10, 10, width-19, height-19,0,0,width, height );
  fill(0,10);
  rect(0,0,width, height );
  pushMatrix();
  translate( width/2, height/2 );
  stroke(255);
  strokeWeight(2);
  for( int i = 0; i < 360; i++ ) {
    stroke( 255, random(255), 0);
    point( cos(radians(i)) * 7, sin(radians(i)) * 7 );
    point( cos(radians(i)) * 8, sin(radians(i)) * 8 );
  }
  popMatrix();
}

on saturday the 2.May i was invited as a speaker to the second Osliper Computer-Workshop-Day.
This time the workshop was about processing and arduino. read the summary by Franz on his blog (in German), to see some of
the examples we made.

like the first OCWD (which was about python, django and pylons)
it was really a whole lot of fun, and i’m looking forward to the next ones

Fall into music-history in hundred blissful minutes. (via)

The constantly brilliant netlabel Pause-Music goes on and on, pushing the boundaries. Alex Mauer is about to release his third album “Vegavox 2″. The special thing is, that the album will be actual released on NES carts.

“What you see in the video is the title screen and part of the first song. Each of the songs feature original artwork by Alex Mauer.”

In a recent interview Rich and Eirik from Pause talk about history, making and goals of the netlabel. Pause started PLUS some months ago. It is a special section on the netlabel, dedicated to game-soundtracks.

“Having been involved in the indie gaming scene for a number of years, and having enjoyed quite a few soundtracks from indie games, I just couldn’t see why there wasn’t a central site for that stuff. So when we made Pause I immediately thought that I wanted a section for that as well.”

How do they come up with all this awesome sound and artwork? Eirik: “I always try to be as strict as possible when deciding upon what to release or not. There’s so many netlabels out there, so in order to stand out I think you need to set the bar pretty high.” Rich: “If we both like it but aren’t crazy about it though, we probably won’t release it. We try to keep a high standard so that the things that we do release are really great. At least, in our biased opinions. And we ask that people send us finished or close to finished releases so that we know exactly what we’re working with.” This guys are outstanding.

You may have noticed I’ve stopped posting the source code for the fractally generated works, as the code is just the same every time, with tweaks here or there. If you want to try reproducing this one why not take the source code from an earlier work, and see if you can work it out. You’ll probably end up with something way better than my efforts that way.

ITP Spring Show 2009 from Winslow Porter on Vimeo.

ITP Show

Cactus is as always very, very charming. (via)

The weblog True Chip Till Death got an in-depth interview with Oliver Wittchow, the very creator of the Nanoloop-gameboy sequencer. Oliver tells some very interesting things about the history and the making. I want to highlight some “magic things”, that are also remarkable for the locally interested people. He speaks about the first public performance of Nanoloop:

The first public performance I did with Nanoloop was in spring 1998 at a ‘lo-fi contest’ at the Liquid Sky club, Cologne. I started selling it in late 1999, initially only within Germany. Worldwide sales began in 2000.

And it seems, that this event was somehow a historical one, also with other interesting contributions. Oliver continues:

I remember one guy who brought a matrix of chemical test tubes, filled with different levels of water. Below the tubes, there was an array of small electric heating plates which were controlled real-time. When a tube was heated, the water started boiling and made a sparkling sound. Some tubes were closed with rubber corks which popped up when the water boiled. Due to the different filling levels, the sparkling and popping sounds had different frequencies for each tube so that he could actually play melodies via the popping corks and create some very fine and crispy sparkling pads. The sound was recorded with one or more mics held in place very close to the tubes. A very elegant concept I think.

This is what music is about, isn’t it? And this is over 10 years old now! Eventually the cool netlabel-people at netaudio-cologne are going to repeat and go on with things like that?

PS: This is the first part of the interview at True Chip Till Death, the second will follow shortly.

You eventually know Pixeljoint. A great community for making and sharing pixelart. They do challenge or competitions on a regular basis and it is somehow a duty for me, to point you to that recent one, that has just finished. The topic was “twenty years of GameBoy”. The challenge was about creating “Mockups” of virtual GameBoy-games that nobody did (so far).

The results are absolute charming, since the origial GameBoy only used 4 levels of grey. You can vote or check out the forum-thread with all submissions. Another good overview of the best contributions can be seen at the weblog Randomrocket. Pixelart will live forever!