Gbloink! 2020

I gave a workshop in December on writing music sketches for Android devices in Processing.

And in preparing it, I discovered that there's a new audio library that's standard in Processing 3.0, called Sound. That works on both desktop and Android apps.

So in the last couple of days I decided to try an experiment.

I got a Processing draft of Gbloink! I'd done a few years ago, that didn't play its own sounds, just sent OSC messages to a PureData patch - which worked but was a faff to set up - and swapped out the OSC messages for playing simple notes using this new Sound library.

And, it works.

Obviously, it's not a sophisticated sound at the moment. And not even as rich and varied as old Windows MIDI from the original Gbloink! which is now 22(!!!) years old.

Nevertheless, it's a promising start. It feels like finally it might be possible to produce a reasonable new version of the program that can run more or less out of the box, and be fun and pleasant to listen to.

I'll be working more on this over the next few months. And on some other "Sound Toys" I've made, that have only ever existed as slightly klunky experimental versions for live use, but weren't packaged for general consumption.

I have a feeling that this year, that will change. And I'll finally have something fun for you all :-)

If you want to try the new Gbloink!, it's currently available for Windows and Linux from this page : http://gbloink.com/play.html 

When I find someone with a Mac who can make the Mac download, I'll make that too. And, obviously, I'll be working on getting it onto Android. That's the real holy grail of this.

Gates of Dawn

Windows has spontaneously imploded for me, leaving me unable to use FL Studio or other music software I'm used to. So, I'm taking the opportunity to get to grips with Pure Data.

The problem is, I've always found the UI of PD fairly fiddly and off-putting. I don't want to have to think about laying everything out in 2D space when all I'm really interested in is the flow relationship between objects. Also, I've never ... ahem ... quite worked out how to do reusable components. It looks laborious to me.

Theoretically, I'm much more attracted to the SuperCollider approach of writing code. But that has some quirks. Also PD seems to be running in more interesting places (eg. as an engine in Android and iPad apps) than SuperCollider.

Because of this I decided to look into the text representation of PD patches. It's very low level, but easy to understand. So I had a quick go at creating a Python library to generate it.

The first (after a day or so of work) draft is now up on GitHub.

Already, I'm pretty excited about this. It works the way I want to think about synthesis. Objects are connected by function composition. Here, for example, is how you take any signal and turn it into a feed to FM synthesis.

def fm(sig,id=1) :
    return sin(sigadd(
                sig,
                sigmult(
                   phasor(num(slider("fm_freq_%s"%id,
                                            -1000,1000))),
                   num(slider("fm_amp_%s"%id,-500,500))
                )
           ))

Every time you call functions like "phasor" and "slider" you get new instances of the objects, added to the patch. So this is actually a declarative description of the relations between objects. It's partly inspired by my playing with signals in Elm-Lang. Though there's nothing similarly clever happening here, it's just producing a text-file.

Sliders controls are layed out automatically. Once again, it's very crude and lacking. But enough to make a small workable instrument.

Anyway, as I continue to explore Pure Data I'll do it by adding to this library. Will keep you posted with updates and some musical examples soon.

End of MA Show, September 15th

I'm coming to the end of my MA in Computational Studio Arts at Goldsmiths. 

It's been a lot of fun and I've had the chance to play with a whole stack of things I've wanted to get into for a while, including Physical Computing (Arduino + electronics, 3D printing and other desktop manufacturing technologies, motion tracking etc.)

For a while I was seriously thinking that I may go on to try a PhD in the same area, but I'm tending away from that now. (In which case I have to find something else to do with myself.)

In mean time, here's the joint end-of-year show, just down the road from Kings Cross station in London. Opening night is the 15th September.

"All Your Pont" Revisited

I'm continuing to update my Goldsmiths portfolio. Added a page for the motion tracking / projection mapping game we did in Paris.




Here's a link to the full portfolio

Flower Brush Revisited

Flower Brush revisited.



At the beginning of my MA course at Goldsmiths I wrote a little graphics program I'd been thinking about for years. It illustrated a simple principle : painting with multiple dumb agents. Later on, thinking more about patterns and reading about William Morris and wallpaper design I realised that simply by making the brushes "wrap-around" when they went off one side of the canvas I could make far more interesting repeating patterns.

Soon after I'd implemented the change, I found SpoonFlower, which does on-demand printing on fabrics and uploaded a couple of patterns. You can see (and buy) them here.

Anyway, it's nice to be able to go back and find a new twist on an old sketch. There's more promise in the original Flower Brush idea than I've really done justice to, even now. But this feels like a good step forward.

Here's something I've been up to recently. At an Erasmus get together of computer and game artists in Paris 8, I co-invented and programmed part of this live action, retro-styled video game. (I'm not in the video because I had to leave early, but kudos to the rest of the team who pulled the bits together to make it all work properly and made this awesome video.)

ALL YOUR PONT ARE BELONG TO US // installation 2011 from Tatiana "Iarn" on Vimeo.

Making monsters ...

What's up with Phil? A quick blurst of news.

It's a long story I may go into later, but I got kind of burned-out working on the last project I was on. So I decided to take some time off and apply to go back to university. I'm now at Goldsmiths college in London, doing the MFA in Computational Studio Arts.

This is quite a departure for me. I've tried being a scientist (but really don't have the attention to detail and statistical rigour for it), hung out with philosophers (and felt tempted by philosophy), and married an artist. But I've never thought of myself as *being* an artist. Or even *wanting* to be an artist. (Despite all the music I make.) I'm not sure I do now. There's still some puritan part of my brain which finds the whole thing rather self-indulgent and disreputable.

OTOH, here are two things I find really attractive :

a) the idea of being a "craftsman". That is, an expert maker of things.

And

b) the idea of artist as self-directed "gift-giver"; that is, someone who's work is inspired by what they want to give to the world rather than reacting to commission.

Of course, the world is full of programmers who say "I'm looking for a job where I can write what I want instead of having the pointy haired boss telling me what to do."

Well, artists are effectively living that dream. (Though, naturally, having to cope with the financial constraints that inevitably follow.)

So part of what I'm looking for on this course, is to stretch that part of me. Not so much the part which makes stuff up, which is fairly extended anyway, but the part which turns vague dreams into real things. A lot of it is to do with observing and modifying my own attitude and values. Even getting a bit more disreputable if it helps me push things forward ;-).

Inevitably the course is starting with some "learn to program for artists" type courses. Which aren't exactly an issue for me at the moment. But we're getting shown some nice graphics and sound related tools like Processing and openFrameworks (the latter of which I hadn't seen before).

And, soon, we'll start working with multi-touch, audio processing, and what Goldsmiths call "Physical Computing" which is all the magical, device-swarm, circuit bending electronics stuff. This is something I've wanted to get down to for a while, but haven't had the structure or time. I hope this course will give this to me. And if all goes according to plan, some of my device ideas may become reality.

Meanwhile, you can look at my ongoing course sketch-book (starting with Processing sketches.) I'll keep using this blog as my main "artistic" blog. So expect to see more art and music appearing here. I'll also use ThoughtStorms for further notes and ideas. And any swarm music I make will probably also find its way to the Gbloink site.