flicker
Yay! It’s complete!
I’ve finished writing my first piece of generative art for a long time. I wrote about my plans recently.
Not surprisingly, I used Processing, and took an OOP approach (Object Oriented Programming), to represent four loops of film, each projecting a square of colour, slightly overlapping with the next one,on a blank wall, and with each loop containing only plain coloured frames, but with one frame in each loop a pure black to create a flickering effect.
I call it Flicker, and it’s based on the 1975 work ‘Shutter Interface‘ by Paul Sharits, as described in ‘Brian Eno: Visual Music’ by Christopher Scoates:
The films are all out of phase/sync and therefore a multitude of variational states of interactions between them is set in (potentially perpetual) motion. For Sharits, the fades and dissolves were “‘active’ punctuation for the ‘sentences’ being visually enunciated” and in their variable syntax recall a Chomskyan notion of grammar.”
I’d like to post the sketch so you can see it running, but it doesn’t work in Javascript mode, so here’s a still from my sketch, though, being a still image, it entirely misses the point of the flickering. You’ll just have to image a brief interruption of each square at random intervals:
…and…action!
I don’t normally write here about my work, but things are so exciting that I want to record and share what’s going on.
This year, being the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War is getting everyone in the museum world thinking about how to commemorate the events. So it’s not just Michael Gove’s little tizzy about ‘Blackadder Goes Forth’. There’s going to be a lot more discussion of the subject everywhere.
St Neots Museum is planning an exhibition and associated activities, including building a mock-up trench, making simple periscopes like the ones used by soldiers in the trenches, and some more stop motion animation. This time, however, instead of holding specific workshops for animation, which result in a lot of separate, very short animations, we’re going to leave a set, laptop and camera in place, so that visitors can add a sequence to an ever-expanding film. Bruce, one of the museum volunteers, has built three sets which can be swapped out at any time. One is a seascape, complete with waves and deep Atlantic rollers, incorporating slots for ships and submarines to glide along and capacity for plumes of water caused by torpedo explosions. Another scene comprises an intricate trench complex with anti-tank defences, removable slabs for craters caused by bomb explosions to appear and simple paper tanks for children to colour, cut out and and assemble then animate. The third set is for aerial warfare with cut-out biplanes ready for dog fights. My next task is to draw up a storyboard to suggest ideas for sequences.
We spent last Friday testing the sets, which was a useful experience because Bruce could make some minor modifications over the weekend. We’ll shoot another series of tests tomorrow. Some people think I get paid to play, but I call it Research and Development. And yes, I enjoy it, but there’s nothing wrong with that!
have you heard the one about…?
Seeing Frozen the other day, with its ubiquitous images of snowflakes and ice shards, made me think again of fractals and recursion, which in turn reminded me of the old programming joke:
Q. What’s the definition of recursion?
A. recursion, n, see recursion
Which then reminded me of the other programming joke: there are only 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who don’t. And that, in turn, led me to a Google search for programming jokes, which led me to this selection, most of which I hadn’t heard before.
the shapelessness of night
I recently went to the Louise Bourgois exhibition at The Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh which includes her series of drawings called Insomnia Drawings. I usually sleep well, but tonight I’m wide awake, so I’ve been reflecting with admiration on how much she achieved when everyone else was asleep. One of the books available in the exhibition included some memorable quotes from Louise, such as “water is a metaphor for the shapelessness of night” and ” he completely disappeared into silence”, the latter being the title of one of her works in 1947. I’ve sometimes wondered if that will be my fate one day too.
The gallery shop was also displaying a copy of ‘Brian Eno: Visual Music’ by Christopher Scoates which I hadn’t heard of before. I only managed to flick through it but could immediately tell it contained a lot of inspiring material from Brian, so I bought a copy. I’m sure it will be quietly influencing, encouraging and inspiring me over the weeks to come. In some ways I would like the extra hours for production available through insomnia, though I know it can be a crippling condition. But look at how much Louise Bourgois achieved in just one year of sleeplessness.
transforming a room into a responsive, fluid architecture fed by ambient noise
How cool would it be if a room could physically change in response to events? I remember Bill Gates writing in his book ‘The Road Ahead’ about the house he built where sensors adjusted lights and displays in rooms according to who entered them and their previously stored preferences, but I’m not referring to that. That was published way back in 1995, in the days of Windows 95, before Windows ME, XP and the execrable Vista or the currently bad Windows 8. It was the year when the Internet really entered public consciousness. So a lot has happened in the nineteen years since then. Even so, the very thought of a “responsive fluid architecture fed by ambient noise” is probably enough to turn Bill weak at the knees. Seeing it for oneself would have involved travelling to the Mapping Festival in Geneva earlier this year. The festival looks really exciting, though. As usual, I’ll keep watching Create Digital Motion to see what’s unfolding.
television as controllable light source
Last night I read more of ‘Brian Eno: Visual Music’ by Christopher Scoates and came across Eno’s use of televisions as light boxes and looping recordings of music with Daniel Lanois. There was also a description, photograph and diagram of ‘Shutter Interface’ , the 1975 work by Paul Sharits, which involved four projectors each showing a loop of single- colour frames that overlapped on the wall, creating a mix of hues. Each loop had one black frame to introduce a flicker that interrupted at different moments in the four cycles.
The films are all out of phase/sync and therefore a multitude of variational states of interactions between them is set in (potentially perpetual) motion. For Sharits, the fades and dissolves were “‘active’ punctuation for the ‘sentences’ being visually enunciated” and in their variable syntax recall a Chomskyan notion of grammar.”
The reference to Chomsky may seem high-falutin’ but it refers back to an earlier passage which discussed the linguist’s theory of
“…linguistic competence in which he argued that language has an infinite set of sentence combinations, which became known as ‘generative grammar.'”
It occurred to me that creating an equivalent work in Processing would be very simple, so I immediately started writing one, though my initial thought of using an OOP approach may have been slightly over the top, but that depends on how far I might want to take this. In these days of Processing, Arduino, LEDs and ubiquitous computers, it seems odd to think of Eno regarding television to be “.. the most controllable light source that had ever been invented…”, but the availability of simple alternatives doesn’t diminish his work.
Furthermore, this nocturnal burst of programming spurred me on to resume work on my abandoned path-following Saffron Mandala sketch and my as-yet unstarted slitscan sketch. From past experience I’m wary of promising imminent future posts on these sketches, because there are other things to deal with such as work, family, food and house but I also need to catch up on sleep too. But these are now my projects to focus on.
kickstarter
I’ve invested in two Kickstarter projects so far: The Nature of Code by Daniel Shiffman and B Squares by Jordan McRae. Of these two, I’ve had and will have more use for the former. I’m not a musician, but I’m seriously considering investing in the Motion Synth by AUUG, a device and app to “transform your iPhone or iPod touch into an intuitive and expressive motion-controlled musical instrument.”
The AUUG app converts your iOS device’s motion sensor data into signals for shaping sound, and transfers these signals to other iOS sound apps or external devices. The AUUG app does not produce its own sounds, but instead acts to control other iOS audio apps running on the same device (as well as external devices), thereby giving the user the freedom and flexibility to choose from a much larger range of sounds than a single app could provide.
The AUUG app can be installed on iPhones (4S and up) and iPod touch devices (5th generation and up). It:
- Lets you play notes and alter their sound through motion.
- Is simple to use and can be set-up within seconds.
- Can expressively control a vast array of sounds on your iPhone or iPod touch by ‘playing’ other audio apps.
- Allows you to intuitively shape vocal harmonies and effects in real time by controlling harmonizer hardware devices or effect apps.
- Can wirelessly control software on a laptop or desktop computer.
- Can control non-wireless music hardware via MIDI cable.
- Will allow you to design your own forms of motion-based sound control, and share them with others.
I’ve long been a fan of Laurie Anderson with her vocal pitch adjustments, and body percussion. I don’t know what she uses these days but the sight of her playing back the recording tape on her violin bow was very striking. and this seems to be an excellent opportunity to have a digital equivalent tool.
digital natives in the binary business
I was blown away today by the Victor Skipp exhibition at Kettles Yard. Each piece is a word, which makes the exhibition a book. It’s the way the words are arranged that gives it the richness.Visitors have the freedom to read sentences as they wish, read the words in whatever order they wish, in effect creating their own metaphors or imagery.
I particularly like the implied domestic hearth and chimney with bronze figures on either side like fire irons or Glaswegian ‘Wally Dugs’, a drawn ladder apparently disappearing up the inside of the chimney, and leading to a celestial image of stars on a slate:” one hundred holes within one whole, each in its own whole of yet another whole”.
Indeed, text throughout the exhibition is pregnant with potential. These resonated with me particularly:
The Year of Mythical Thinking
The Lost Inheritance
The Binary Business
…space consists of things we do not see, or only half see, in a blurred entirely out of focus way.
I would like to think that as a digital native, I too am in the binary business.
nuclear
Like a sinister version of Aaron Koblin’s Flight Patterns, Isao Hashimoto has created a beautiful time-lapse of every nuclear explosion, mapped and counted by country. I must be either ignorant or naive because I hadn’t realised how many there were during the 1980s. Cue soundtrack of Radioactivity by Kraftwerk:
“…Chernobyl, Harrisburg; Sellafield, Hiroshima; Chain reaction and mutation; Contaminated population; Stop radioactivity; Is in the air for you and me.”
novelty waves
Matt Pearson aka zenbullets is a prolific coder and a writer with interesting insights. His 100 abandoned artworks have inspired me to create my own interactive pieces, and I enjoyed working with him on the Erasure exhibition four years ago. His book Generative Art is an excellent introduction to the subject, so it’s wonderful news that he’s recently found a publisher for his latest book, Novelty Waves, already available in eBook form. I, for one, will be getting hold of a paper copy, since that’s my preferred format for reading, but the dead tree version isn’t available quite yet, so I’ll have to go digitally initially. Even so, I think I’ve just found the first item for my Christmas wish list!
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