pocode is a new open-source C++ library designed by Potion for the production of interactive media across multiple platforms. The frameworks provides a robust, high-performance software infrastructure that allows for the creation of all types of software, from simple visual sketches to elegant mobile apps to entire software applications.

Continue reading.... Pocode – New open-source C++ library by Potion [c++]

(This essay was commissioned by Centre national des arts plastiques for Graphisme en France 2012)

- Edited by Casey Reas and Chandler McWilliams -

Technical mastery and innovation are part of the rich history of visual design. The printing press is the quintessential example of how a shift in design technology can ripple through society. In the Twenty-First Century, innovation in design often means pushing the role of computers within the visual arts in new directions. Writing software is something that’s not typically associated with the work of a visual designer, but there’s a growing number of designers who write custom software as a component of their work. Over the last decade, through personal experience, We’ve learned many of the benefits and pitfalls of writing code as a component of a visual arts practice, but our experience doesn’t cover the full spectrum. Custom software is changing typography, photography, and composition and is the foundation for new categories of design practice that includes design for networked media (web browsers, mobile phones, tablets) and interactive installations. Most importantly, designers writing software are pushing design thinking into new areas. To cut to the core of the matter, we asked a group of exceptional designers two deceptively simple questions:

1. Why do you write your own software rather than only use existing software tools?

2. How does writing your own software affect your design process and also the visual qualities of the final work?

Continue reading.... Designing Programs [Theory]

All of the visuals in the above video were created using NyArtoolkit for Processing. NyARToolkit is an augmented reality toolkit built with 100% pure Java. It is derived from ARToolkit-2.72.1. Like Processing itself it’s open source and free! In this tutorial you will learn how to use it to place computer generated imagery correctly onto real world footage. To do this in real-time NyArtoolkit uses markers – black and white images – to determine the three-dimensional position and orientation in the real world. Most likely you will have seen something like this before, but now you will learn how to do it yourself using freely available software.

All right so let’s start with the general setup. What do you need to get started?

Continue reading.... Augmented Reality with Processing [Tutorial, Processing]

Another year of iPhone/iPad development but there haven’t been many apps that have caught our eye as there have been in the past. Nevertheless few that stood above the rest, both in their conception and how they make us think about technology. As an increasing number of apps saturate the AppStore, now in their 100s of thousands, we’d like to remain optimistic that this platform will continue to grow and not just by large development studios and those that reiterate but rather as an exciting, creative and above all – “innovative” place to push ideas to.

10. Composite [iPad, openFrameworks]

Inspired by the neo-dadaist collages of Robert Rauschenberg, James Alliban’s Composite allows you to remix your surroundings to create graphic compositions. Users can paint pictures using live video stream by simply pointing their iPad towards your subject drawing over it. Pixels are captured and transfered onto canvas. A different way of looking at painting.

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9. Photo/Nykto [iPad, openFrameworks, Games]

Photo/Nykto is an experimental game conceived by Annelore Schneider and Douglas Edric Stanley as part of the “Unterplay” project at the Master Media Design —HEAD, Genève. Edric describes at as a game for nyktophobes and photophobes. It is played by switching on and off the lights in order to avoid reaching the edge of the screen. Photo/Nykto is one of the few apps that explores interaction with the device beyond the device itself. We like to think of it as “spatial interface” one that allows iPad to become an aggregator of physical activity.

Soon in the AppStore

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8. Planetary [Cinder, iPad]

Created by the collective consisting of Ben Cerveny, Tom Carden, Jesper Sparre Andersen and Robert Hodgin, Planetary by Bloom is a way to explore your music collection using planetary system. Application, created using Cinder framework allows you to navigate dynamically created by information about the music on your iPad. Fly thorough the stars that represent your favourite artists, visit planets (albums) or listen to the moons (tracks).

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7. Windosill [iPad, Games]

Previously available for Mac and Windows, we are glad to see Windosill by Patrick Smith (Vectorpark.com) finally make it’s way to the iOS.  An adventure puzzle game filled with peculiar objects, your task is to resolve abstract but yet logical puzzles to progress from room to room. For fans of the original, this is not just a simple port. The Windosill for the iPad was built as a native iOS app and customized the behavior of every element to the iPad’s touch interface. Bonus features include a sketchbook gallery of concept and development artwork, the option to instantly skip to any room you’ve already completed and two special settings, unlocked when you complete Windosill: Complex Gravity, which allows you to manipulate objects by tipping your iPad, and See-Thru Mode, which makes everything translucent (giving you a sneak-peek into how Windosill is put together). Fantastic addition to the AppStore.

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6. OscilloScoop [iPhone, iPad, Sound]

Created by Scott Snibbe and Graham McDermott and originally designed by Lukas Girling, “OscilloScoop” is a culmination of about 15 years’ effort trying to create musical creation tools that is more like a video game. The process began back in the 90′s at a research lab when Scott Snibbe and Lukas Girling worked briefly with Brian Eno and Laurie Anderson on some of the concepts. The app, playfully called OscilloScoop, presents a trio of brightly colored stacked spinning crowns. Touching a crown trims or builds up its edge, like a spinning disk of clay. As you carve into this disc, the music changes, and you effortlessly produce hip hop, techno, electro, and other recognisable forms of music. Scott Snibble describes the process much like a DJ spinning records, but you create original music of your own, rather than merely cutting between tracks.

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5. The Infinite Adventure Machine [MaxMSP, iPad]

The Infinite Adventure Machine by David Benqué is a computer program which generates fairy-tale plots. Based on the work of Vladimir Propp, who reduced the structure of russian folk-tales to 31 basic functions, the project addresses the difficulties of automatic story generation which David explains remain an unsolved problem for computer science.

Not available – Prototype

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4. field [iPhone, iPad, openFrameworks, Sound]

Created by Rainer Kohlberger with sound by Wilm Thoben, field is an abstract audiovisual app that uses realtime camera feed as input. Brightness, saturation and color are interpreted, and translated into a constructed grid. The realtime image triggers different sounds as you pan around. Included are five different modes which you can switch through by double tapping the screen. Very addictive and playful take on  live video as medium to generate both visual and sound patterns.

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3. Last Clock [iPad]

Originally created in 2002 by Jussi Ängeslevä and Ross Cooper when at the Royal College of Arts in London and developed for the iOS by NewMediology (Danqing Shi), Last clock is a clock app that uses popular slit scan technique to keep you in factual time, human time and remote time. Just like any other analog clock, the app has three hands: one for seconds, minutes and hours. The hands, however, are made of a slice of live video that gets scanned to the clockface. With different refresh rate for the three hands, the three time circles reflect the rhythms of the space at different temporal resolutions. The app also allows you to stream the last clock camera feed over the internet.

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2. Sword & Sworcery EP [Games, iPhone, iPad]

The long awaited “21st century interpretation of the archetypical old school videogame adventure” by Superbrothers finally hit the AppStore this year. The response was amazing quickly became one of the most popular games of the year. If you haven’t had a chance to play with it, xmas break seems like a perfect opportunity. Easily the best iOS game this year.

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1. Björk – Biophilia [iPhone, iPad, Sound]

Having seen many apps over the last few years, I don’t think anyone expected Biophilia. If you don’t know about it, is an iPhone/iPad release of Björk’s latest album created in collaboration with Scott Snibbe and her longtime design collaborators M/M (Paris). Comprising a suite of musical pieces and interactive artworks, Biophilia is a unique experience where different elements are weaved together with both sensitivity and precision. The experience is unified, building on different layers of visuals and sound. It’s a simple must! (Read also our special Making-of Virus)

It’s that time of the year when we slowly begin wrapping up the 2011. Before we say goodbye, lets take a quick moment to look back at some of the best and most memorable projects of 2011. There is no mechanism in deciding these and neither-nor all projects here are spectacular and magnificent but instead we feel they offer a brief insight and a form of introduction to what may lie ahead.

10. MIT Media Lab identity [Processing]

In 2010 MIT Media Lab approached TheGreenEyl and E Roon Kang to update their identity for the lab’s 25th anniversary. The team developed an algorithmic logo using Processing in an effort to capture the dynamism and diversity of the MIT Media Lab. The invisible grid around which different things happen symbolizes the environment the MIT Media Lab provides, academically, physically and intellectually.

9. Tele-Present Water [Arduino, MaxMSP]

Created by David Bowen, Tele-Present Water installation draws information from the intensity and movement of the water in a remote location. The wave intensity and frequency is scaled and transferred to the mechanical grid structure resulting in a simulation of the physical effects caused by the movement of water from this distant location. Elegance and ephemerality of data beautifully staged by David Bowen.

8. ExtraFile File Formats [Mac]

In the world populated by file formats and continued fight over ownership, open source and value of data, Kim Asendorf created ExtraFile, a conceptional software with practical usage. It’s main intention is to offer an alternative to the static system of image file formats. It is also an attempt to address an alternative image file format, a piece of art, far away from the mainstream and commercial standards.

7. Ping! Augmented Pixel

In the decade when videogames were born, everything virtual looked like rectangular blocks. From today’s perspective, the representation of a tennis court in the earliest videogames is hard to distinguish from a soccer or a basketball field. ‘PING! – Augmented Pixel’ is a videogame by Niklas Roy and one of the very few augmented reality projects that really explores the space between physical and digital. Niklas built a custom piece of hardware the intersects the signal between the video camera and television, inserting a classic style Pong game that you control using a finger positioned between the two mediums. Simplicity and ingenuity at it’s best.

6. Little Printer [Objects]

2011 wil be remembered as the year of thermal printers. Just as we have forgotten about the tech, a wave of projects have spread across the web. One that especially stands out is the Little Printer by BERG and giving us an “alternative” insight into how we may interact with digital information int he future. Little Printer may live in your home, bringing you news, puzzles and gossip from friends. Use your smartphone to set up subscriptions and Little Printer will gather them together to create a timely mini-newspaper.

5. Written Images [openFrameworks, Processing]

Although first launched in 2010, Written Images book finally landed on our desks, in it’s full glory it’s an unique artifact, printed in very limited numbers, is the first of it’s kind – a ‘programmed book’. Created in collaboration with more than 70 media artists and developers from across the world, Written Images is continuously regenerated for the digital printing process, offering each reader a unique experience. Each artist programed an image creating application that is generated for each print of the book.

4. Cascade [Processing]

Cascade is a by NYTimes R&D department that allows precise analysis of the structures that underly sharing activity on the web. Initiated by Mark Hansen and working with Jer Thorp and Jake Porway (Data Scientist at the Times) the team spent 6 months building the tool to understand how information propagates through the social media space. While initially applied to New York Times stories and information, the tool and its underlying logic may be applied to any publisher or brand interested in understanding how its messages are shared.

3. Particles [openFrameworks, Arduino, Events]

Particles was an installation by Daito Manabe and Motoi Ishibashi exhibited at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM]. The installation centers around a spiral-shaped rail construction on which a number of balls with built-in LEDs and xbee transmitters are rolling while blinking in different time intervals. The idea was driven by simple desire to both understand and represent particle behaviour in physical form. Besides the sheer complexity of the structure installed, the position of each ball is determined via total of 17 control points on the rail. Every time a ball passes through one of them, the respective ball’ s positional information is transmitted via a built-in infrared sensor. During the time the ball travels between one control points to the next, this position is calculated based on its average speed. The data for regulating the balls’ luminescence are divided by the control point segments and are switched every time a ball passes on a control point. Fantastic work Daito + Motoi!

2. Communion [Cinder]

Earlier this year on show at the La Gaîté Lyrique in Paris and created by Universal Everything with FIELD, Communion is a room sized installation creating almost a 360º environment. The final piece includes an array or evolving creatures going through stages of development – evolution from simple to complex with human like properties with generative behaviours, deeply immersive and “a celebration of an audio visual synesthetic experience”. Read our special.

1. Solar Sinter [Objects, Arduino]

Solar Sinter by Markus Kayser is most definitely one of the most inspiring projects this year, aiming to raise questions about, energy and manufacturing. Markus designed a 3d printed that uses solar rays and silicia and heated sand to solidify it as glass in any shape or form. A combination of Arduino, ReplicatorG software, laptop computer and a bunch of custom made components, Markus took the printer to Sahara desert near Siwa, Egypt, for a two week testing period. CAN is proud to be the first to write about the project, the video on Vimeo now measures almost a million views.

We are happy to announce that after months of hard work, and even more to come, Resonate Festival has launched it’s full site and tickets are now available for purchase.

‘Resonate’ is an initiative by “Magnetic Field B” in collaboration with CreativeApplications.Net and Dom Omladine in Belgrade. It’s core aim is to set a new standard in the arts industry by creating a new event platform for inspiration, networking, information, knowledge sharing and education. It brings together distinguished, world class artists, with an opportunity of participating in a forward-looking debate on the position of technology in art and culture. But Resonate is also much more than just a festival, expert seminar or exhibition of visual arts. It is a project broad enough to encompass areas ranging from software engineering to visual arts theory, but also to create a bridge between culturally separated segments of the artistic and intellectual scene through a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach.

Taking place in Belgrade, Serbia from 16th – 17th March 2012, the event will give visitors an overview of current situation in the fields of music, visual arts and digital culture. Guest artists, lecturers and other participants have been chosen to represent the cutting edge of the contemporary creative industry in Europe. Interactivity is the key feature of contemporary communications and as a festival of new media, Resonate will be structured in such a way to reflect this fact on several levels. First of all, that means the interaction between audience and authors, or audience and art forms, as visitors of the festival will be active participants and will have contact with the authors through workshops, lectures, multimedia installations and the music program.

- 20 speakers from Europe, Asia and North America
- Collaborations with both national and international educational institutions
- Talks, workshops, panel discussions, performances and concerts
- Day and night programme (DJ Sets, Live Audio/Visual Performances and Concerts)
- In the heart of europe, city of history and culture – Belgrade

Featuring Nicholas Felton, Josh Nimoy, Jer Thorp, Greg J. Smith, Regine Debatty, Champagne Valentine, Niklas Roy, Benjamin Gaulon, Martial Geoffre-Rouland, Karsten Schmidt, FIELD, LAb[au], Rafaël Rozendaal, United Visual Artists, Written Images, Jürg Lehni, WARP, onedotzero and many more.

…and this is just the beginning. Yet to announce are night event details including 2 headlining acts, audio-visual performances, DJs, workshops, screenings, panels and more. You will not be disappointed!

Tickets are now on sale (Only €40.00). Book now and save 50% on the door price. Only available for few weeks and in limited numbers.

Dates: 16th – 17th March 2012
Location: Belgrade, Serbia 

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Organized by Alex Myers and Jeff Thompson games++ is a 12-hour game development event where participants build games from scratch in a defined time period. Designed as a collaborative, communal making experience, games++ lives up to the heritage of its name: to incrementally add to the pool of amazing, experimental, one-off games in the world.

This event is a low-key, hard-working environment designed to get you making in an intense way – something that can be hard to do when sitting at home. Collaboration and conversation is encouraged and there will be mini-sessions throughout the day to encourage discussion, beta-testing, and general good-times. games++ is open to video game makers, artists, programmers, psychogeographers, designers, and anyone else interested in spending a day making something from scratch.

Friday, November 4, 2011  |  9am-11pm | Drift Station Gallery  |  1746 “N” Street (at 18th)  |  Lincoln, Nebraska, USA

Register here

Visual programming languages, languages that create programs by the manipulation of graphical elements, as opposed to specifying lines of text, have seen an increased popularity in recent years both in audio and video synthesis. Some of the more well-known environments, ones that are regularly used for projects that are featured on CAN,  include VVVV (real-time motion graphics and physical IO)  MAX/MSP (real-time music and multimedia), Pure Data (ostensibly an open source equivalent of MAX/MSP) and Quartz Composer (video synthesis for MAC).

Visual programming owes its many of its conventions for the representation of information and programs from Flowcharts – a lesser used term for these kinds of environments is Data-flow Programming. VPL’s date back to the late 60′s. A good example is the GraIL system (GRaphical Input Language) a flowchart language entered on a graphics tablet developed by the Rand Corporation in 1969.

DMX-LED Patches – Kalle Karlen

Continue reading.... Patch Schematics – The Aesthetics of Constraint / Best Practices [Theory]

From October 21-23, the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University will conduct the third episode in its conference series, “ART && CODE”, dedicated to the promotion of computational thinking in and through the arts. This time, our theme is “DIY 3D Sensing and Visualization” in plastic and performance media — “Kinect hacking”.

Organized by Golan Levin (@golan), this is the first “kinect-hacking” conference. It celebrates arts-oriented and tinkering-based approaches to interaction research. Also interesting to note that scholarships for women are available, described on the event main page. Speakers include some stars well known to CAN readers, such as Zachary Lieberman (oF), Kyle McDonald, Elliot Woods, Joel Gethin Lewis (ex-UVA) with also a diverse array of workshops utilising popular programming toolkits (P5, oF, Ard, MM/J ,Pd, etc.). Erkki Huhtamo, media arts historian (“media archaeologist”), will provide some historical perspective.

Continue reading.... Art && Code [Events]

(A Generative Art Lost Chapter)

Through the process of writing Generative Art there were various tangents and miscellaneous-mad-shit that, usually in the name of brevity and clarity, ended up on the cutting room floor. What follows is one such tangent reworked into a brief tutorial. In the week that the Processing 2.0 Beta gets its release this would seem an appropriate time to share this on CAN, as it mentions one of P5-2′s coolest features: publishing to HTML5.

The tutorial is in three sections:

1. “… A Practical Guide Using HTML5″

To me, the why is always as important as the how. So first allow me to explain why this is relevant, even though it didn’t make the book.

2. Processing to JavaScript – The Ridiculously Easy Way

HTML Canvas for Processing Users. The two minute version.

3. Generative Art in JavaScript – The Harder, But Still Ridiculously Easy, Way

Cutting out the middle man. How you might get started with nothing but a JavaScript enabled browser to hand.

Continue reading.... Generative Art In HTML5 [Processing, JavaScript, Tutorial]