blog.blprnt.com - Processing

Glocal at the Vancouver Art Gallery

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:01:57 -0700

This photo shows 3 of 4 projections panels in the VAG cupola. Note that the image on the right has not been fully mapped to the panel shape (yet).

I have been working since January on The Glocal Project, a large-scale contributive art project being run out of the Surrey Art Gallery's TechLab. The team as a whole has been developing a series of simple software applications designed to act as creative and pedagogical tools for both individuals and educators.

A couple of weeks back, we had the chance to bring some of our work out of the lab and into the Vancouver Art Gallery, where we presented a large four-screen projection in the Gallery's rotunda cupola.

A grid of images from a single camera feed mapped onto the cupola panels

Technically, this presented a challenge. Not only did we want to have four linked screens in which images could overlap - we also wanted the projections to be 'mapped' to the four curved panels of the cupola. All four panels together would be shown in 'flat' form on four plasma screens. To add to the confusion, we would be running four live camera feeds into the system - three webcams and one wireless DV camera. 4 cameras. 6 computers. 8 screens. As has been the case for much of the Glocal project, we turned to Processing for a solution.

Colour Economy Vimeo Channel

Tue, 27 May 2008 20:21:49 -0700

Rather than continuing to blanket this blog with videos from my current project-in-progress, I've set up a Vimeo channel which those of you who are interested can subscribe to. I'll be posting a lot of videos there as changes are made, to document the process and to gather feedback where I can.

Here's the URL: http://www.vimeo.com/coloureconomy

There are a couple of new videos up there already - please drop by and have a look.

The Colour Economy: The Gap Between the Rich and the Poor

Fri, 16 May 2008 11:39:53 -0700

What if pixels were free? What if they could trade their computer-given red, green, and blue values in pursuit of a profit?

The Colour Economy imagines an artificial economy of pixels, in which individual 'traders' exchange colour. In this pixel performance, the seed image creates a region in the bottom right which is wealthier than the regions surrounding it:

As the economy develops, this wealthy population separates itself physically from the traders with little colour capital.

Here are three video renders of the system unfolding:

The Colour Economy: Can't we all just get along? from blprnt on Vimeo.

The Colour Economy: The Gap Between the Rich and the Poor from blprnt on Vimeo.

The Colour Economy: In the end, we will have more important things to worry about from blprnt on Vimeo.

Market conditions fluctuate in each run of the simulation, so though some general things remain constant with each seed image, the performance happens differently every time.

Flashbelt 2008 is going to break my brain

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:14:42 -0700

Flashbelt 2008 is looking to (once again) raise the bar for creative web technology conferences. I've said this again and again over the past five years - if you are going to choose one conference to go over the year, make it Flashbelt. The speakers' list this year is perhaps the best ever - here's a little taste:

Robert Hodgin (Flight404.com)
Jared Tarbell (complexification.net)
Mario Klingemann (quasimondo.com)
Seb Lee-Delisle (sebleedelisle.com)
André Micheller (andre-michelle.com)

And there's more. Check out the conference site for the full list, and to get a taste of what each presenter will be talking about.

The theme of my talk this year is emergence. It's a concept that has been central to my work from the start and over the last year or so I have been thinking a lot about the role that emergence plays in the creative process. Here's my official session description:

"Emergence refers to the way that complex systems and patterns arise out of relatively simple interactions. In this session we'll look into some of the ideas behind emergence, and will explore in detail the role it plays in the creative process. We'll talk about the role that emergence plays in a variety of diverse areas, including AI, economics, and philosophy. Along the way, I'll show a variety of new generative works which tread into emergent territories, and will unravel some of the underlying code that brings these projects to life."

Processing Tutorial: Spherical Coordinates

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 17:34:38 -0700

Tutorial notes: This is a short (well, sort of short) tutorial intended to demonstrate how to use Spherical Coordinates. The example here will be built in Processing, though a similar effect could be achieved in virtually any environment. This is a low-level tutorial - it assumes basic programming knowledge, but doesn't do anything particularly complex. Click here to see what the resulting looks like in action (click!). It looks fairly basic, but I am going to follow this tutorial up with some examples of how we can use this system as a base to do some more interesting things. Enjoy!

Typically when we are working in three dimensions, we use the standard Cartesian coordinate set - x, y, and z. While this is suitable for most cases, it is easier and smarter to use a different set of coordinates when we are rendering spheres, or placing objects in orbits around points in 3d space. In this tutorial, we'll take a look at Spherical coordinates, and we'll walk through an example in Processing to show how it all works.

Spherical coordinates are much easier to use when we are dealing (surprise, surprise) with spheres. This is a similar reason to why we use polar coordinates when we are describing circles or ellipses in two dimensions. Indeed, spherical coordinates can be thought of as polar coordinates with one extra dimension:

Cartesian 2d: x,y
Cartesian 3d: x, y, z
Polar: θ, r
Spherical: θ, ø, r

From the vault: Freeze Tag!

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 17:00:47 -0700

I am just finishing up a tutorial post on using spherical coordinates. It should be up on the blog sometime over the weekend - I need to go over it with my editor's comb one more time, and insert some links here and there.

While I was uploading the sample files to my server, I stumbled on an old Processing project that I had completely forgotten about. In Freeze Tag, a group of Tagger particles chase a group of targets. When they catch the targets, they freeze them. Targets can be unfrozen by their friends, but they risk becoming frozen themselves in doing so. It's a fairly stable system, for a while, and it's fun to watch.

Check it out here. I would like to revisit this and maybe combine it with some newer projects that I am working on. I'll add it to my list! As always, comments or questions are appreciated.

Ⓕield Update

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:59:03 -0700

A few months ago, I posted about Ⓕield, a development environment for making digital art. At the time, the project was nearing release, and it seems that some time during my vacation the folks at the Open Ended Group have made it available for download.

Check out some of Ⓕield's features here, and then download it and give it a try. I haven't had a free moment to dive into it yet, but I am hoping to be able to do so over the next week or so.

Note that this release is a developer release and is not yet a stand-alone application. Hopefully that will be coming soon!

Umbrella Storm - Video 1

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 14:01:19 -0800

Umbrella Storm on White from blprnt on Vimeo.

Check out the stills rendered in full res here.

Umbrella Storm

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 12:47:52 -0800

I've posted a quick set of images from a Processing sketch that I've been working on this week. It started with a desire to understand spherical mathematics a bit better, progressed into some experiments with swarming on a sphere, and ended with a whirling tornado of umbrellas!

I'll post a video here when I get the chance - in the meantime, check out the Flickr set.

Ⓕield

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 16:40:18 -0800

Marc Downie and the OpenEnded Group have produced a wide variety of very impressive digital works over the last few years. Now, they are preparing to release Ⓕield - the authoring system that Downie has developed to power a lot of their work.

In fact, Ⓕield is described as a meta authoring system - an authoring system made to build authoring systems. It is meant to allow digital artists to create custom applications suitable for individual projects. From the website:

"..an authoring system as flexible as it is powerful: flexible so that the artwork can be revised, recast, and reconsidered as rapidly and as radically as creative collaborations usually demand; and powerful so that new algorithms and control structures can be created from scratch rather than simply selected from a limited menu of preset options."

Written in Java, Ⓕield will no doubt be subject to many comparisons to Processing, and indeed the two tools seem to share a lot in common. However, there are obvious differences. While I am certainly a fan of Processing's clean, text-based interface, Ⓕield's feature list makes me drool: :"embedded user interface elements, node-based editing, timelines, advanced language constructs, and fine-grained Mercurial integration, and more." It sounds almost too good to be true. It's unlikely in any case that a cage-match will be required - since Ⓕield and Processing are both Java-based, they will be able to play nicely together.

Anymails

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 20:08:24 -0800

I am loving Carolin Horn's Anymails - a playful visualization of e-mail traffic using animated single-celled creatures. It's nice to see something as ordinary as e-mail represented in such a fun way. I want my e-mail box to look like this!!

Now, if it could just code up a pizza...

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 11:19:35 -0700

The amazingly productive Daniel Schiffman has posted a tutorial which explains how to get your telephone talking to Processing. Check out this video, in which a phone pilots a ship through an extremely wide chunk of space.

I can see a lot of uses for this technology in installation art - since it allows people to interact with a processing piece via their mobile phone. Once I get my head wrapped around some of the non-processing tech involved, I'm going to give it a try.

Zygote: Interactive Ball

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 11:18:33 -0700

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.

Processing: A Programming Handbook

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 14:02:11 -0700

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).

Something Fishy

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 23:46:38 -0700

Over the last few months, I've been getting back into an old hobby. In case the computers and the comics weren't dorky enough, I've taken up fish-keeping to make sure my dork level stays up near 10. I have three aquariums running, with a mix of community fish. One of the tanks is in my office, about three feet from my computer. As it turns out, three feet is just enough space to run the cable for my webcam, so I can digitize the little suckers and do what I want with them.

On the weekend, I hooked up the camera to Processing, via the marvelous JMyron library, and coded up a little system to render the fish in a 3D space. It's pretty rudimentary for now, but it works, and it's fun to watch.

I think it is the movement of fish that most attracts us to them, and it is interesting to see that movement abstracted to the screen. I've pushed that abstraction quite far, replacing the fish with symbols and visualizing their movements with dynamically-generated shape-streams. It's really quite pretty. Unfortunately, the MovieMaker library isn't cooperating for me, so right now you'll have to be happy with some screenshots, via Flickr. Hopefully, I'll get a movie up soon.

I am sure this project will change over the next few weeks, as I poke and prod and change things here and there. I will keep you posted...