ofxUI is an addon for openFrameworks (version 07) by Reza Ali that easily allows for the creation of user interfaces aka GUIs. ofxUI also takes care of widget layout, spacing, font loading, and widget callbacks. ofxUI can be easily customized (colors, font & widget sizes, padding, layout, etc)

Continue reading.... ofxUI – New GUI addon for your openFrameworks projects [openFrameworks]

Bowyer is a new company by Vadik Marmeladov, Sergey Filippov, a man known as “The Client”, and Ilya Kolganov. In this interview we talk through their first collaborations, philosophy, process, commercial projects, and future plans.

“Craftmanship is attention to details. Luxury is attention to unnecessary details.”

Typical phone games and apps retain a certain average appearance with a target on mass-market appeal. Design is usually not a priority, and as a result, often mediocre. Unlike the fashion industry, for instance, app development is young enough that nichés have not yet developed fully. Seeing this gap in the industry, Bowyer wished to target luxury markets.

“About 2 years ago while working on a commercial website we came up with a simple app for a luxury brand,” Vadik explained. The screen would be completely black, and through in-app purchases, individual diamonds could be bought and populated on the screen. The concept would be a reflection of physical diamonds: holding no real value other than the inherent scarcity and cost of ownership.

Continue reading.... An Interview with Bowyer – UIDesign + Funware + Luxury [Theory, iPad, Interview]

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]

Here is a portfolio of a french web designer named Gildas Paubert experimenting with processing js. (go in the « play mode ! » section).

Continue reading.... Playing with Pixels [Javascript, 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)

Experimental kite designed by Sash Reading with Ivan Morison from the Studio 10 Arch at the University of Westminster. The kite was fabricated and engineered by Queen and Crawford. The kite features 1700 3d printed connectors, carbon fibre rods and cubenfibre aerospace fabric.

This video below shows the kite’s test flight in Jersey.

Continue reading.... Three Cubes Colliding [Objects]

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.

Christian Fiebig designed a computer interface that makes suggestions to the designer while he’s working. In his version, the computer follows a structure in the making via a webcam and instantly generates other design suggestions based on any special parameters programmed by the designer.

It’s like having a colleague in your workshop, giving you direct feedback.

Continue reading.... Computer Augmented Crafts [vvvv]

How did we get from command line to computer interfaces we know today? PlosBlogs’s NeuroTribes offers an insight into the sketchbook of Susan Kare, the Artist who’s high-school friend Andy Hertzfeld, the lead software architect for the Macintosh operating system, offered a job to design fonts for the Mac.

Inspired by the collaborative intelligence of her fellow software designers, Kare stayed on at Apple to craft the navigational elements for Mac’s GUI. Because an application for designing icons on screen hadn’t been coded yet, she went to the University Art supply store in Palo Alto and picked up a $2.50 sketchbook so she could begin playing around with forms and ideas. In the pages of this sketchbook, which hardly anyone but Kare has seen before now*, she created the casual prototypes of a new, radically user-friendly face of computing — each square of graph paper representing a pixel on the screen.

Continue reading.... The Sketchbook of Susan Kare [News]