Showing only Notes + Links tagged programmingon creativity, art, & design

by Casey A. Gollan

The Generative Manifesto (Curiously enough written by hand)

1. Attention to detail that only hand made generate work can allow. (You can go depper into structures using code.)

2. Realtime output and compositional control, we hate to wait. (It is inconceivable to expect nonrealtime systems to exhibit signs of life.)

3. Construct and explore new sonic environments with echoes from our own. (Art reflects human narrative, code reflects human activity.)

4. Open process, opens minds, we have nothing to hide. (Code is unambiguous, it can never hide behind obscurity. We seek to abolish obscurity in the arts.)

5. Only use software applications written by ourselves. Software dictates output, we dictate software. (Authorship cannot be granted to those who have not authored!)

See also, these two definitions of generative art:

Generative art is a term given to work which stems from concentrating on the processes involved in producing an artwork, usually (although not strictly) automated by the use of a machine or computer, or by using mathematic or pragmatic instructions to define the rules by which such artworks are executed.
— Adrian Ward

and

Generative art refers to any art practice where the artist creates a process, such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other procedural invention, which is then set into motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to or resulting in a completed work of art.
— Philip Galanter

Got a projector this afternoon and tried playing with the Processing app I put together to take notes about music on an animated timeline.

My projector was stuck low to the ground inside a heavy A/V cart, however I realized it would be ideal to have the projector on the ceiling and pointing down at a table to be able to work horizontally. Drawing on a perpendicular surface fairly low to the ground was no fun. Also, I’d like a jog wheel so I can quickly scrub back and forth.

I kept getting the feeling, as I was drawing, that it wasn’t that revolutionary to have a vertical line and time code scrolling across my page. But once I shut the projector off I realized how much richer the simple animation had made my note-taking experience. I feel like having the soundline was incredibly helpful for understanding the structure of the song (see those thick black lines? they represent different acts in the piece. look how differently they are proportioned!), but as always I wish I was at this point a week ago to see where I could take this into the realm of color, rather than just sort-of-random marker scribbles.

One of the projects I’m currently working on is translating a piece of music into a color relationship, but I’m having trouble unpacking the dense composition.

I was looking for a specific musical analysis tool that I wanted to use today but I couldn’t find it, so I decided to take a shot at building it for myself. It’s a super-simple Processing app (tentatively given the imaginative title of “soundline”) that augments note-taking for time-based media.

How it works

1. Tape a blank piece of paper to the wall.
2. Set up a projector to project the soundline interface onto your sheet of paper.
3. Select the audio that you wish to work with.
4. Press play, listen, and start taking notes or doodling as the projected line and timecode scan from left to right, in sync with the exact duration of the song.

Why use it?

• Imagine that the paper represents the song as a timeline from the start (on the left) to the finish (on the right). The soundline helps you place your notes and doodles in the linear context of the song.
• Want to remember a specific musical transition or recurring pattern? It’s easy and totally painless to capture the tiniest details and then return to them later. Simply make a dot or hatch mark on the page and write or draw a short reminder. When you want to return to this point to study it further, just use your computer to scrub through the song until the soundline is touching the mark. Hit play and observe your notes in sync with the sound.
• Write, draw, paint, use different colors, paste stickers, draw connections, use graph paper. The possibilities are endless.
• If something isn’t specifically related to a point on the timeline, nothing is arbitrarily stopping you from noting it anywhere you want at any time.
• The simple animation transforms your blank piece of paper into a time-based notepad that allows for densely layered, unobtrusive, and organized annotating, second-by-second.

The concept is sort of like Muji’s brilliant Chronotebook, a daily planner with a clock in the center of each page, allowing you to make radial time-based notes about the day:

In fact, maybe a radial interface would be another good experiment! I’m going to actually play with this tomorrow and see if it helps me understand the song.

Manifold and P_Wall

Liza has an awesome post up full of pictures of “experimental projects in architecture with respect to digital fabrication” by architects Andrew Kudless/Matsys.

To hopefully look back on and laugh at: “My First Processing Sketch!”