king talk

The people over at deviantART have a nice new HTML-Webapp called Muro. What does it do? It allows you to draw artwork using semi-generative brushes, that give any stroke a very unique appeal. Also, it has been done entirely without Flash, so it will also work on most mobile devices.

No matter what you code and design, natur can top this aesthetics in some special way, like this video about a swarm of starlings. The complexity of the system is just impressive. Starlings become dots in a this natural particle system and I end up questioning myself: »How can this work out?« Thousands of birds in flocks and they don‘t collide. Researchers found out that each bird always pays attention to the same number of neighbors, whether theyre closer or farther away.

Starlings can almost always see many more nearby birds — but the number of may be closely tied to birds cognitive ability. The direction of the flock can be coordinated by each birds tracking six or seven other birds. This is remarkable! A very different kind of cognitive skill that has its own complex aesthetic. The behaviour of this swarm could also be programmed in lines of code. Every dot has its own parameters in the whole system. Flight404 even did a project calles Birds which simulates this whole process in a virtual and even aesthetic way. This swarm is a perfect example how nature influences the digital world.

via Audubonmagazine

The second part of our workshop CODE = DESIGN took place in Graz last weekend. This time we focused on the ways in which code could be used to generate print content. Many thanks to all the participants and congratulations for your great results! We created a Flickr set for them and you can also see them in the slideshow below.

First of all: We’re back in Munich! After a lovely little bus tour that took almost 36 hours nonstop, we can finally start publishing some in-depht updates about what we actually did in Madrid.

Our new installation Quasar Interactive now has its own microsite! It’s still a little beta, but we’ll keep updating it as we finalize our project documentation.

Also, we took the liberty of uploading the following little clip to YouTube in order to give you a peek into what Quasar Interactive actually is. Sorry for the crappy audio quality – again, we’ll have something better up as soon as possible.

We’ve been working late to bring you this piece of audiovisual art. It has been created for an article that will appear in the next WEAVE magazine (should be out in early march), where we describe the making of it.

So, what is it you ask? It is an audiovisual composition that is based on a single set of MIDI notes. Those notes influence both music and graphics at the same time. We did not take the usual route of creating a piece of music first and then find some visualization for it; instead both elements have been developed at the same time. When we decided to change something with the graphics, the changes immediately influenced the music as well.

We find this approach most fascinating and are thrilled to explore it in more depth as soon as possible.

There’s also a Flickr set for this. Oh, and it has been done with Processing and Live.