Project 2: Phase 5 - Ummts Ummts Ummts
Project: Emergence and Navigating Space

The phase 5 / presentation build of the program:

The program is a music visualiser that responses to music frequency and beat. The tiles "bounce" depending on the frequency (the faster the music, the bigger the movement on the z-axis). The colors of the tiles respond to the beat (each time a beat is detected, the color hue advances slightly in the spectrum). When the user interacts with the tiles, the tiles are "energized" and this energized state is highlighted by the white glow and amplified movement. The energy of each tile fades over time. As a bonus, the tiles flip either horizontally or vertically if the programming picks up quick flicks from the user. In addition to the visual interactions, the program can be controlled by an array of keyboard commands (scrub track, next track, toggle touch, toggle fade function, display track, copyright information, etc). Check out the high resolution images for a closer look.

Note: Working on movie capture, the program seems to be shy.

Finally, I'd like to thank Prof. Casey Reas for another intense but exhilarating quarter working with code. And of course, most of all, for not being mad when I spilled an entire cup of coffee (dark with a touch of half-and-half) in the computer lab. Yikes.

Download Program:

Tracks used in the program are by Daft Punk from their Alive 2007 album.

Windows (102.95 MB)
Mac OS X (102.75 MB)

Keyboard Command:
Q - Toggle Cursor Touch
F - Toggle Fade-In / Fade-Out
S - Toggle UI Display
R - New Tile Plain
T - Show Current Track
P - Show Track Progress
N - Next Track
M - Mute
> - Fast Forward
+ - Increase Tile Amp
- - Decrease Tile Amp
C - Copyright Information
SPACE - Take Screenshot









High Resolution Images (click to open in new window)

Sun, Mar 23, 2008  Permanent link

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Project 2: Phase 4 - Code, Recode, Repeat
Project: Emergence and Navigating Space

I decided to tackle the third dimension for this project. It's the first time I've worked in 3D with Processing and pretty much ever so I knew there was a lot of work ahead of me. I began writing the prototype program in small bite size chunks starting with a grid array of cubes. I had a rough idea of the visual quality that I want but like most my programming projects I find inspirations as I work. I wrote in small improvements here and there to get a better feel of the visual and also the structure of the program itself.

The first alpha build was running P3D but it was sluggish rendering the number of objects I wanted on screen. I switched over to using OPENGL for speed and some flair (e.g. additive blending). I had a bit of trouble figuring out how to use multiple textures (or any) in the OPENGL environment. I decided to take the source code from a simple program released by Flight404, strip it down to only its rendering code, and recode my program on top of it. It took quite a bit of work figuring out the way around the 404 code but it did exactly what I was looking for (see screenshot for BETA with OPENGL). From there the basic structure of the program was more or less finished and it was time to polish the interaction, build an interface, and add eye candy.

Sat, Mar 22, 2008  Permanent link

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Project One: Emergence // Lines
Project: Emergence and Navigating Space

Direct Video Link

Mon, Jan 28, 2008  Permanent link

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Programming Emergence / Emergence Programming
Project: Emergence and Navigating Space

For this project, I want to make a visual software that analyzes the topics of autonomous agents + swarm intelligence. I did some poking around online for good algorithms and examples for both Processing and Flash (Actionscript is a bit more mushy compared to Processing ).

Meiotic Clusters



I particularly like the Meiotic Cluster project by Levitated design. I like the way it uses simple geometric shapes with alternative black / white fill to create organic forms. The overlapping of the black and white shapes creates negative space against the color contrasting the background. the position (perhaps size) of each shade is then randomly generated to create new and original forms. There is also an alternative version that uses squares instead of circles. I think it looks even more interesting.



This is a project is not open-source but I think I can build something like this from scratch with Processing with relative ease. The simple program will serve as a good starting point for my original piece.

I want to write a program that explore the relationship between individual objects within the context of a swarm; the way the behavior of an individual object or marker affects the mass. A lot of ideas are still floating in the air right now but I think I'll have a much better feel of my direction when I start writing code.

Another link for future reference of object interactivity:
Gobble Theory

Wed, Jan 16, 2008  Permanent link

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Skyscraper Airport of Tomorrow - via BoingBoing

.. a 200 story building capped by and airplane field eight city blocks long and three city blocks wide. A lower level offers a port for lighter-than-air craft. Hangers for planes and airships occupy the top fifty floors.

by Nicolas DeSantis
1939 Popular Science




The Spaceport of Tomorrow.

7 decades later, we are looking at space travel with similar attitude as people once thought of airplanes. The idea of space travel has long been romanticized by science fiction novels. Are spaceports going to be as common as airports are today by 2080? Air travel never gotten the consumer popularity that the artist had hoped. Will we be flying Virgin Spaceline to vacation on the moon or one of many space resorts?

Wed, Jan 9, 2008  Permanent link

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