Imagine VJing with a stream of live snapshots from partygoers — or playing live data from the Web on email statistics as though it were a musical/visual instrument. The ability of tools like Processing to make numbers fluid opens up new interfaces to the storehouses of data on the Web — but also makes them friendly to artists and visualists.

I’ll be doing a workshop at South by Southwest Interactive in Austin with S. Joy Mountford, formerly VP Design Innovation, Yahoo and leader of the Yahoo Design Innovation Team aka yHaus. Joy certainly knows her stuff — not only did she lead a ground-breaking team at Yahoo, but she’s also supported student work and research and has a long history in interaction design including working on the original QuickTime interface. We’ll talk about the work being done, where we think these technologies are going, and how you can give it a try yourself.

Data as Art: Musical, Visual Web APIs [Event Page, SxSWi]

5:00 pm - 6:00 pm, Sunday, March 9

When Adobe acquired Macromedia, a lot of people thought that’d be the end of Director. After all, Director and Flash have had increasingly overlapping capabilities for some time, and Director seemed like something people used years ago. Think again: talk to people doing interactive design, and Director — for better or worse — lives on.

With the Director 11 update announced this week, that’s unlikely to change any time soon. New in this release:

• Vista support on Windows, Intel support on Mac
• Bitmap filters (a la the bitmap API in Flash 8/9, I’m assuming)
• Full JavaScript support and Code Snippets
• Enhanced Flash support with CS3 and Flash Video support
• Built-in physics via AGEIA PhysX
• Native DirectX 9 3D support

Now, anyone for a Voyager interactive CD-ROM (as pictured right, from the Director heyday)?

Physics and 3D? Impressive stuff. So I should be excited, right?

You’re an incurable font geek and you love sound. Can’t choose? Combine them. The MeekFM synth is both a visual synthesizer for typography, and a synthesizer — it actually sonifies the letterforms you generate. This is synesthesia on such a high geeky level that my mind is blown wrapping my head around it. But I love the approach — and while I can’t search even my deepest serif fetish to work out how anyone would come up with this, perhaps there’s a parallel for other generative visuals. Think synth.

meekfm.org [Official Project Page]

via: The Meek FM Typographic Synthesizer [Synthtopia]

Previously:

Illuminating Lettering as Digital Process, in Elegant, Open-Source Mac NodeBox

Free, Open Source, Remixable Fonts, and Embedding Fonts in Flash 9 / AS3

I used to be resistant to the idea of coding. It wasn’t just fear that I couldn’t do it, though that was part of it; it was also the sense that I wouldn’t be able to get to the actual art and music making if I got too involved in programming. And, actually, that bit can be true. But a group of pioneers, working on projects like Processing, OpenFrameworks, and other intelligent development frameworks, has been working really hard to make code an elegant an expressive tool rather than a hindrance. Processing has reached widespread popularity because it does this really, really well — even if you’ve never programmed before.

I’ll be teaching a three-part class on Processing at Harvestworks in New York next month. If you’re in the area, there should still be openings if you’d like to sign up (and if you’re enrolled, feel free to holler hi here — if I hear from you in advance, I can help tailor the course to your needs).

For intermediate digital artists, even those who have never coded before, we will introduce techniques in Processing. Processing is an elegant, high-level, Java-based tool designed to make coding friendly to artists. We will learn how to create generative art in just a few lines of code, building interactive works in minutes. We’ll also look at some of the deeper possibilities for manipulating data, video, images, sound, and MIDI and other I/O. The emphasis will be on basic sketches that help introduce fundamental coding skills.

Wednesdays, March 5, 12 and 19, 6:30 – 9:30pm
$325/$385

Class page / signup @ Harvestworks

The class will specifically focus on how to make video, 3D visuals, MIDI, and sound work for performance. Making Processing a performance tool definitely involves some particular skills. But I’ll also use this as an opportunity to teach very basic coding techniques so that unfamiliar programming topics can immediately generate something on the screen or some sound, since that’s part of the appeal of the whole tool.

But what if you’re not in New York?

We’ll soon have CDM Labs up, which will include examples from the team at CDM, plus other stuff from around the Web, not only in Processing but related tools, as well. I’ll use this as a playground for the course, so what I share with them, I can share with you. And, honestly, we hope this will help discipline us here to keep coding and keep documenting. More on that soon.

I’m also hoping to refine this course into something that can be offered elsewhere; if you’re interested, get in touch.

More on Processing:

Random sketchbook of mine, the kind of stuff you can put together in minutes

Flickr Processing pool

Processing videos on Vimeo

Processing tag on Create Digital Motion

Official Processing exhibition page

Sure, the name of the site may be Create Digital Motion, but don’t get me wrong — we know digital is evil. Or, specifically, digital gets real evil at certain times. There are the latency-inducing, problem-causing HDMI cables when VGA or S-Video or Composite would do the job, the “look at our brand, new storage format” trend that turns out to be “look at the hideously onerous, new copy protection method we’ve just invented.”

We know a little bit of our soul died when we brought in all this digital tech to our work. (Happy side note, though: my eyes now glow red. It’s totally awesome at parties.) So, we now proudly present The Battle for Analog, a completely nonsensical look at the analog world we might leave behind. (Well, unless you carry some mobile VHS decks to a gig, which could be a great idea … a little magnetic distortion live, anyone?)

And to kick things off, we’ve got a look back at VHS’ stand against the puppy-killing DVD, via our friends at the All Retro, All The Time, Retro Thing. So, at the risk of “boneheaded nostalgia” as someone described this in comments on RT, I present this mock VHS PSA from musclebeaver, with music from the Transformers music proudly playing in the background:

And, uh, yeah, it does appear to have been crafted in After Effects. Where is that Export to VHS option in CS3, anyway?

PS - I think Blu-Ray winning out over HD-DVD is finally Sony’s revenge for losing on superior Betamax.

The Mac may be in the spotlight these days, but Windows may boast the broadest access to freeware and open source tools for live visuals.

The latest edition: VisualJockey, as pointed out (alongside other free Windows tools) by beatfix on comments.

VisualJockey: Real-time Animation

You get a pretty powerful set of tools in this app, first introduced in 1999:

• Full Windows support, including Vista
• Alpha support throughout; image, AVI, QuickTime file format compatibility
• Global keystone capability
• MIDI, multi-monitor support
• Compatible with FreeFrame plug-ins (open plug-in spec for visuals)
• Sound beatmatching, internal LFOs with lots of waveshapes
• Generators for particles, patterns
• 2D color filtering, effects, blue screen
• 20+ transitions or custom bitmap transitions
• 3D support for 3DS import, primitives, 3D animation
• Export to AVI (which means it can double as an editor)

In fact, VisualJockey’s approach I think is unique — a set of tabs controlling different approaches, a hybrid blend of other interface paradigms. Want a timeline? A reactive sound system? A modular, generative 3D patch? It’s all in there. The UI is decidedly retro, and you get more flexibility from true modular patching environments, but at this price, if you feel like you want another tool in your belt, it’s hard to resist. And with export, this could be handy to have around alongside your existing tool of choice.

But VisualJockey is just the start — here are a few more from beatfix (and me):

Fixate from Aaron Sjogren on Vimeo.

Aaron Sjogren shares this VJ test set from an installation last week. It raises an important point — even as we’ve talked about the importance of getting “out of the box,” rectangles can be cool, too. (Notice: combining multiple 4:3 rectangles already means you escape the bland aspect ratio.) And it illustrates the importance of good documentation, ideally in an actual environment. (Previously reliant on pricey cameras, cheap HD can give you great results if you know how to use it!)

I love the idea that communities like Vimeo will help raise the bar for visualists sharing their work.

Full HD version available on this video’s Vimeo page, along with more from Aaron.

And since Aaron wasn’t sharing, anyone care to ID the visual app in use on his Mac? (I also think people are warming to dudes standing behind computers, much as eventually we got used to people manning synths and mixers.)

I couldn’t be more excited than I am now about the future of createdigitalmotion.com. After starting out in the shadow of createdigitalmusic.com, CDMo has some good stuff coming, and we owe that to your enthusiasm, feedback, and the great work you’re doing. To do all that we really want, and to continue to support CDM’s cost in hosting, bandwidth, time, and other resources, we do need your support. I address that in some detail on Create Digital Music, so do read there for a complete picture of where we’re at, and where I’m at, as we look forward on CDM.

We Need Your Help: Support CDM’s Future

Create Digital Motion does face some unique challenges: the live visual community remains in its infancy, which is why, in comparison to countless websites and dozens of print publications for digital music production, there’s almost nothing specific to live VJs and visuals. Reader support is more important than ever.

If I’m going to ask for your support, though, I want to give even more back. We’d love to spend more time on development and content to make Create Digital Motion far more than it is. Support for CDM — even if you can only spare a couple of dollars, which we understand as working visualists — is a vote for that future. We’ll keep you updated on how that’s going and what we’re working on.

If you can give us support, we do appreciate it — and be sure to include in comments that you’re a CDMo reader. But most of all, we appreciate you as readers. Thanks for your help.

There are some serious, high-profile indications that big artists are beginning to embrace alternative licensing for their content, whether it’s pay-what-you-wish distribution, “please remix this for us” marketing campaigns, or genuinely open content. Whether that’s just a brief fad or the sign of things to come, it’s too early to say. But R.E.M. have at least uploaded a full eleven videos, nicely encoded in MPEG4, under an open source license:

Supernatural Serious Album Page, with vids

R.E.M. Releases New Videos Under Open Source License [ReadWriteWeb, via vade]

R.E.M. aside, I wonder: will at least some VJs embrace open content, perhaps even exclusively?

Now, this isn’t without caveats:

Solar, with lyrics. from flight404 on Vimeo.

People can argue and theorize about digital art as a medium all they want. The answer is as simple as a simple word:

Iterate.

Do it over and over and over again in little bits developing techniques. Start small, add small, but keep adding over and over and over again. Iterate.

flight404 does that about as well as anyone in the Processing community, and it shows. His latest visualization of a Goldfrapp tune, now with lyrics, is stunning. And the addition of lyrics shows that these kind of techniques aren’t just eye candy — they can convey information, and do it elegantly and expressively.

Robert’s techniques are typically far from real-time, so part of why I enjoy them so much is they’re a challenge to those of us on the performance end to figure out how to do more interesting things live.

The other interesting thing here is the beat detection. Eventually, he wound up adding the beats manually, as detailed in the post linked here. That in itself is telling to me — as a composer, having worked on scoring and how things line up creatively, I’ve always found indirect relationships compelling. So this speaks to me of the importance of creating some imperfect algorithms, algorithms that don’t always line up so they challenge our ear and eye to make the connection.

Oh, and I love the fact that “Frankenstein” appears in the end, like a cameo by Alfred Hitchcock.

Solar, with lyrics [ Flight 404 ]

(It’s a long weekend in the US, so I figured we could handle double the inspiration.)