You know the ideal audiovisualist setup: two PCs, one running sound, one running visuals. But connecting those two machines can be less than ideal. Enter EthernetMidi, a completely free implementation of MIDI over Ethernet. It’s Windows-only for now – the Mac has its own free MIDI-over-IP implementation built into the OS. But there’s reason to root for EthernetMidi even if you’re not a Windows user primarily: the project is open source, and work on a Mac and Linux version means this could be the first tool to allow MIDI-over Ethernet between different platforms. (Pay no attention to the “LinuxSampler” name – they need a new moniker.)
Showing off how powerful this can be, pure_angles has put together a detailed tutorial for combining to favorite tools, Ableton Live and Resolume.
Experimenting in the projection lab; photo: hc gilje.
videoprojectiontools, the powerful and intuitive Max/MSP/Jitter-developed Mac and Windows tools for projection mapping, just got a nice update. The new version has OpenSoundControl (OSC) support - and yes, despite the “Sound” in the acronym, it’s really more like Open … Control. Max is not required to use the patches; they’re standalone.
Yet again we see some advantages of using OSC:
The implementation so far for OSC includes preset and cuelist access, and layer fades,pos x and y, scale x and y, and videotracks selection from the individual sources.
With OSC you can now sync several computers and trigger presets from a OSC-able application (which can run as a background application).
Head to the site for downloads, tutorials, and documentation to get you started.
Apple, apparently unclear on what multitouch clients actually are, have chosen to reject Memo Akten’s brilliant-looking MSA Remote client for the iPhone/iPod touch. The free(!) app could empower installations and performances with the standard multi-touch protocol TUIO, as used on the Reactable (and, thus, by Bjork, among many other folks).
This is, sadly, the kind of second-guessing developers Apple has been doing far too much. But it’s also clear that Apple is a company that listens - when people shout and complain and gripe. So in that spirit, I’m shouting and complaining and griping, on the more-trafficked music site:
Please help us by spreading the word. Apple’s mobile device is too good to let it be crippled by bad judgment. And it’s equally important to say, loudly, vendor restrictions are not a feature. I hope that promising platforms like Google’s Android benefit from their comparative openness, because I believe it makes a different to art - not for philosophical reasons, but for concrete, practical ones. And this is a perfect example.
In a word: yummy. Or maybe that’s “bouncy.” Memo Akten’s brilliant ofxMSAPhysics brings open-source physics programming to the C++-based OpenFrameWorks environment, an artist-friendly combination with an elegant API. Coding physics doesn’t require an advanced degree. See today’s post on the beautiful My Secret Heart to watch this library in eye-popping action.
particles
springs
attractions (+ve or -ve)
collision
replay saving and load from disk (temporarily disabled in current alpha release)
custom particles (extend ofxMSAParticle and add to the system)
custom constraints (extend ofxMSAConstraint and add to the system)
custom force fields (extend ofxMSAParticleUpdater and add to the system)
custom drawing (extend ofxMSAParticleDrawer and add to the system)
By the way, don’t assume that the C++ folks get to have all the fun. Aside from the relatively simple but fast-and-useful traer.physics which inspired this more sophisticated outing, Java has stuff like:
There’s also a java.net project to bring the Open Dynamics Engine to Java, though I’m not sure that that’s terribly current. Java folks, feel free to chime in. But then, if you’re looking to migrate from Processing to OpenFrameWorks, this looks tasty indeed.
On Monday I had a CT scan. If you haven’t already, every visualist should go for a ride in a computed tomography machine. It’s the best mix of futuristic medicine and video geekness I’ve ever encountered. As happens with most medical imaging these days, I came away with both a collection of printed films and a CD full of images. However, unlike previous scans and xrays which were generally disparate grainy stills of amorphous organs or bones, these prints showed hundreds of clear, consecutive slices through my body.
Yes, that’s my heart and lungs. I love technology so damn much.
Looking at the films I knew immediately that I should be able to use the frames to create an animation. Checking through the CD I found a folder of images named “CT000000″, “CT000001″ etc. Some quick googling informed me that these are DICOM format files, which contain both patient information and imagery.
Anyone on Windows who works with images should know the fantastic, free image viewer/toolkit Irfanview - it’s the VLC of the still-image world! Irfanview has a plugin in its default bundle which allows it to read and operate on DICOM files, as long as they have a .DCM extension. Fortunately Irfanview’s batch functions feature both Rename and Convert, so I was able to quickly go from the aforementioned folders of consecutively named, extensionless files; to folders filled with consecutively named .BMPs, which any visualist will recognize as a Good Thing.
From there it was a quick hop to After Effects [tag on CDM], and I was able to scrub a timeline to look through my organs. Quite the definition of “freaky technology”. The human body is quite full of various blobs and tubes though (well mine is anyway), so instead of turning this into a blobby animation I spent some time colour correcting to isolate just the brightest points: My skeleton.
At 25FPS the animation only lasted 11 seconds, so I used After Effects’ time stretch and frame-blending (the “high quality” morphing type) to slow it down and stretch it out. This looks great for the most part, but some sections have quite obvious frame-morphing distortion going on. I also applied the “CC Wide Time” effect, which onionskinned 8 frames before and after. This gives a better feel of the 3D volume, as opposed to the “narrow time” version, which shows only one frame at a time. This is more accurate, but slightly harder to understand.
And yes, I do feel that my skeleton is epic enough to warrant Mogwai Fear Satan.
So I’ve had a great time with my small CT scan, enough to hope that I get sent in for another one soon so I can scam the technician into scanning my whole body. In the meantime, I’m sure there’s more which can be done with this imagery. Looking at the slices, it seems as though I should be able to turn them into a 3D model of my spine… Which I could get printed and give to my girlfriend as ear rings.
I’ve been looking around and haven’t been able to locate any tools which will convert flat slices in to 3D data. I’m sure that at least a couple of CDMsters have done so in the past though. Any suggestions? Would anyone like to send me their CT scan data so I can make a 3D model of their skull?
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