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."

The latest Generator.x event focuses on digital fabrication and generative systems. Central to the event will be a workshop, in which a small group of 15 participants will investigate the technology and and techniques involved in bringing digital projects into the physical.

The workshop is free, but space is limited. If you are interested in attending, check out the event page to find out how to submit your application. Generator.X: Beyond the Screen runs from January 24th - February 2nd, in Berlin. Which, as many times as I may check, still remains 8013km away from Vancouver.

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.

I headed out into the rain on Monday night to watch the Vancouver / San Jose game at my local. While the game was a write-off, I the conversation certainly made leaving the house seem worthwhile. I ran into my friend and colleague Simon Levin, who was having a drink with Urbana-Champagne based artist Kevin Hamilton. Just in case the geek-quotient wasn't high enough, we were later joined by technologist and open-source hardware evangelist Danial Jollife. In lieu of a transcript of our heated conversation, here are a few links that resulted.

First, Kevin tipped me off to the work of Marc Downie, which I had somehow managed to remain unaware of. The image above is from Downie's project Enlightenment, in which software attempts to digitally reconstruct Mozart's most difficult musical structure (the coda to the "Jupiter Symphony"). Commissioned by the Lincoln Center, the installation is presented on a set of ten screens, one for each instrument in the electronic orchestra. According to the site, Enlightenment is the highest-resolution live digital artwork ever created (though Schiffman may have something to say about that).

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.  

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.