king talk

From spirals, to abstract lines to jellyfish. I love to iterate from basic mathematic algorithms into different directions. Again, the math behind the whole thing starts to fade into the background while movement and aesthetics start playing the primary role.

For the ones interested, the basic formula I’ve been building all this on is the following:

x = a * exp(k*phi) * cos(phi)
y = a * exp(k*phi) * sin(phi)

wherein a is the general size of the spiral and k determines how much the spiral grows with each iteration. phi itself is the iterator, increased by a given value at every step. If you want a nerdier form of this formular, check this out.

Additionally, I am using a midi controller (this one to be exact) to influence various parameters in real time.

Oh, and yes, there’s also a Flickr set for this!

One of the most interesting aspects of generative art for me is when the outcomes of your code reach a point where the underlying mathematical and logical concepts are completely obscured and the image or animation stands entirely for itsself. This is what happened with the third iteration of my logspots / colorspots experiments. The outcome: re-birth. A set of images where even I as the creator have problems with understanding.

Unfortunately, this also leads to sort of a problem. I sometimes create hundreds of versions of my code when experimenting. Afterwards, when I select which versions are suitable for further refinement, I’m often having a hard time reproducing how exactly the code worked at this particular time. So, if anyone has any special techniques or tools to keep track of a ton versions of code, I’d appreciate any suggestions.

Everybody knows Pong – one of the earliest arcade video games which is simply based on the elementary idea of tennis. We decided to take this concept one step further, so Phil wrote a nice color tracker, which is capable of tracking two different hues. In this case it recognizes two different socks put over the hands of each competitor. We were using a installation made of white corrugated fiberboard found in the leftovers from Atzinger Verpackungs GmbH in Munich. The tracking cam is a second hand PS2 eye toy camera which we bought for 14,99 EUR at gamestop store just around the corner.

The well-known software we were using is processing, a programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) built for the electronic arts and visual design communities. We had to build the prototype both quickly and cheaply, so it was more important to be functionally efficient rather than aesthetically perfect. In the end the whole assembly cost us 15 EUR and took just an afternoon to build.

This pong game is in fact a mashup of the results of our 24h toyhacking session which took place on Friday, and the week-long SHARE project from Yannick Assogba  (MIT Media Lab / Sociable Media Group)

I’ve been playing around with some branching algorithms quite a bit lately and here’s some first results. Though this is still very basic in terms of math, one can already achieve a remarkable number of different visual styles by changing just a few parameters of the code – and that is the reason why I love generative design! You can see some of that diversity in the flickr set.

Made with Processing.

»Field« is a development environment for experimental code and digital art in the broadest of possible senses.

It looks like a mash-up of processing and vvvv. Using the advantages of node-based and text editor programming in one single software. It was developed by the openendedgroup and has been developed over the course (of the MIT media lab) of many years. While there are a great many development environments and digital art tools out there today, this one has been constructed with two key principles in mind:

Embrace and extend — rather than make a personal, private and pristine code utopia, »Field« tries to bridge to as many libraries, programming languages, and ways of doing things as possible. The world doesn’t necessarily need another programming language or serial port library, nor do we have to pick and choose between data-flow systems, graphical user interfaces or purely textual programming — we can have it all in the right environment and we can both leverage the work of others and take control of our own tools and methods.

Live code makes anything possible — »Field« tries to replace as many »features« with editable code as it can. Its programming language of choice is Python — a world class, highly respected and incredibly flexible language. As such, »Field« is intensely customizable, with the glue between interface objects and data modifiable inside »Field« itself. »Field« takes seriously the idea that its user (YOU) are a programmer/artist doing serious work and that you should be able to reconfigure your tools to suit your domain and style as closely as possible.

More short movies of »Field« can be found here…
go out at grab your own… ; )

Additional technical informations about »Field«. It …
… is exclusively developed and tested on Mac OS X 10.5
… is Open Source, licensed under the GPL v3 (You should read the license)
… has a JavaIInterface … renders with OpenGL
… writes in Python / builds in Jython

via Benedikt Groß