It’s finally happened: I’ve taken the first steps into the world of microcontrollers, by buying an Arduino Starter Kit. It’s fair to say I’m stupidly excited. As much fun as it is wielding around Wii remotes and playing with PS3 cameras, you get a sense with Arduino that projects have far greater (if any) boundaries.
There is some reason behind me nerding out with yet another toy though: there are plans in the works to create an interactive installation at the next Finders Keepers markets. More on that once we sign off on the project, but I’m excited enough about it now to post a picture of an LED on my blog.
In the meantime, I’m working my way through the excellent Making Things Talk, by Tom Igoe. For anyone interested in these types of projects, but totally not sure where to begin, I definitely recommend getting your hands on a copy of this book.
Just a quick update to the Live 2 Processing work…
Now with added colour.
…the main goal here was to get Processing to send messages back to Ableton Live. These come in the form of OSC signals, which bang out MIDI notes that I’ve assigned in the Max For Live patch. I also worked the percussion effected rectangles, so they are now responsive to individual drums (kick, snare and hats).
Whilst I’m still learning, it’s quite nice being able to use a graphical programming language, as opposed to a language-based code – flashy lights keep me more satisfied than sexy syntax. Once again, here are the patches for you to (mis)use as you will…
The other night, Gentleforce invited me around to help with the audio/visual collaboration between himself and Julapy, for his upcoming album launch performance(s). Gentleforce will be performing with Ableton Live, so it was a bit of an opportunity to start working with Max For Live, to get his computer talking to Julapy’s excellent live openFrameworks based visuals.
I don’t know a great deal about openFrameworks (other than it quickly becoming the tool of choice for many live/interactive visualists), but it does seem to have much in common with Processing, so whatever I work on should port fairly simply to openFrameworks. I’m still finding my way around Max For Live, so the wonderful (and free) Live 2 Processing plugin by Wiggle was a perfect place to start. It wasn’t long before Julapy weaved his magic with openFrameworks and was receiving peak audio values from Live via OSC.
I’m currently putting the finishing touches on the music line-up for The Finders Keepers markets in December. I’ve been looking after the stage at the markets for a while now, and slowly we’re trying to make music a larger part of the event.
One of the ways I’ve tried to make the music more interesting is to take the same approach that the organisers have with designer applications: keep it fresh, different and interesting. I’ll put out the music line-up once I get confirmations from all the artists, but I am quite excited about this one: there are a lot of artists that will be new to the markets.
Also new for these markets is a set designer. Michelle McCosker is super-talented and will be putting together some larger-than-life set pieces for us. I’d better not go into too much detail about this just yet either. However, the addition of set design has also given me the prospect of adding some live visuals to the stage, which I can talk about…
There are plenty of excellent programs out there which handle live visuals. However, I decided to try my hand at putting something very simple together in Processing, just to see what I could come up with. I will put the code up as I progress, for any suggestions or advice you have – feel free to put it to use if you like.
For this project, I’m using the excellent GSVideo and GLGraphics libraries, which already seem to give Processing some much needed grunt in the visual department. I’m still quite new to the world of OpenGL, but it seems to be heading in the right direction for those of you interested in getting your hands dirty.
To say there is a lot of buzz around the launch of Max for Live is something of an understatement. It’s done nothing short of send Live-loving music geeks into a frenzy around the potential for new ways of processing audio and connecting technologies. This last point is what I’m interested in, and seeing as I’m doing a lot of chatter around OSC for my Sound Media 2 / Advanced Multimedia Authoring project, I thought I should take a quick look at what Max for Live means for anyone else dealing with OSC.
MaxMSP and its (less attractive, but nonetheless charming) open source cousin PureData both allow for custom routing of not just audio signals, but a wider range of protocols. MIDI has been hanging around for a long time now, and it’s ability to communicate a large amount of data is pretty poor. This is why we’re now looking to protocols like OSC to deal with higher bandwidth inputs.
When I began working on my data[origin] project, I did take a look at the ability to tap into the LiveAPI via Python script, but pretty quickly I realised that with my limited knowledge of code, I was going to spend more time trying to understand it than moving forward. In the end I converted OSC to MIDI, which has it’s own set of problems but was a little bit more entry-level friendly. The addition of Max for Live will basically make OSC natively available within the Ableton environment.
In addition to the routing power of Max, there will also be live visual capabilities in the form of MaxMSP’s sister software, Jitter. This makes the package more exciting to me, because it will mean that much more can be done directly out of the single Ableton environment. It also makes the US$299 price tag (for owners of Live 8 – more confusing if you’re not an owner) a little more palatable.
Of course, if you’re just a music producer, Max may not offer you enough to justify the high price tag. I think it’s a more interesting prospect for those looking to extend live performance from the laptop to allow inputs from weird and wonderful controllers and output to screens, lighting, or really anywhere that your imagination takes you. If you’re a Live 8 user, you can download the public beta of Max for Live. I’m doing just that and will report back with my experience over the next couple of weeks.
I finally attended my first Dorkbot event last night at Serial Space. I was very impressed. The presenters – Harriet Birks and John Tonkin – both showed us interesting work, but what I was really inspired by, was the way they broke down all their concepts, processes and technologies involved for the audience. Tonkin was particularly generous with his experiences, describing his installation to us, right down to the components used.
Each dorkbot is different and is driven by the needs and interests of people in the local community. But generally, the main goals of dorkbot are: to create an informal, friendly environment in which people can talk about the work they’re doing and to foster discussion about that work; to help bring together people from different backgrounds who are interested in similar things; to give us all an opportunity to see the strange things our neighbors are doing with electricity. dorkbot isn’t really a forum for formal artist talks or lectures, but rather a chance for diverse people to have friendly conversations about interesting ideas.
The director of Sydney Dorkbot is Pia van Gelder and after spotting that we were new attendees, she made the effort to introduce herself and make us feel welcome. I don’t pretend that Dorkbot is for everyone, but being interested in this kind of DIY technology culture, I have found it generally disheartening that those responsible for creating the work can be so protective of the technologies which should be available to everyone. Dorkbot feels like it sits at the other end of the spectrum: a little utopian group of nerds, hackers and tinkerers, who want to help each other out where they can. I’ll definitely be back.
One of my perennial favourite blogs, ISO50, has just posted a general guide for colour management. This is an area that really seems to have been glossed over in my education, so it’s great to see an attempt to present these concepts in a straightforward manner.
Colour, and colour management, is nothing short of a science and any artist or designer (whether you work in print or on screen) wanting to learn more about it should definitely check out this post.
I was eyeing off the Novation ReMOTE 37SL, but in my effort to create a smaller desktop footprint, I’m thinking that perhaps ditching the keyboard altogether may be a good idea – it’s not like I’m actually capable of playing anyway. So I took a look around at the ZeRO. Then I spotted that there’s a new one coming out. Right now. And it’s sexy. And now I want one. Damnit.
"a reasonable person would find it offensive" - I haven't seen a lot of reason in the art vs child pornography debate... http://j.mp/bxMO2B 23 hours ago
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