Designing myUniverse (part 01)

I decided to bring you in my furious train running through those strange & sometimes abstract electronic & digital territories of my research.
Before to understand where I want to go here, I’d suggest you to read this post.

So at the same time, I begin to design some very early bits, I’m also sketching many ideas using evernote & skitch.
First ideas

The basic statements were:

As many great & strong (and especially personal) ideas, that one came naturally.
I always thought about it since around 1 year, but it became clearer since one month.
I need a meta tool.
Something stronger than a straight (even if some are a little bit non-linear) sequencer.
Something that could be that everything I need.
Something evolvable & which I could change, modify, improve not only during 1 month, but more, further in the future.
Something not only for experimental music.
Something that could drive me into very new and uncommon music research approaches.
But something fun at the same time !

Those statements had not really evolved but are more defined today.

The way I’m currently taking is:
I’ll design a 3D world with interfaces providing a way to compose and play.

Compose means : I’m placing objects, with particular properties and I’ll save maps (= presets), and I’ll restore maps etc.
Play means: I’m moving my current position into that world, altering objects, or not, observing, listening.

So there would be at least 2 strong parts :
- visuals
- sounds

Many frameworks exist for all of these jobs to accomplish.

First frameworks chosen
At first, I’m strongly involved in Max6 (and MSP & Jitter, less in Jitter saying … til today!)
I’m also strongly involved in C++ side of OpenFrameworks. I mean, I can add libraries to it, play & twist it etc.

My natural choice, at least for the core & brain logic is Max6
I could generate everything in Max6, from visuals to sounds.

Because I want to explore another new world for me named SuperCollider, I’d probably go with it for all the sound related stuff.

The idea is also to have 2 different binaries running not at the same place in memory ; intuitively, I feel that thing better than generating everything in the same one, even in Max.

The second reason for SuperCollider is the easy ability to create/set synthesizers & their voices programmatically ; indeed, everything is natively done programmatically in SuperCollider.
OSC is totally native in SuperCollider and it will be the way I’ll glue the two parts.

First explorations
I entirely dived in Jitter today.
I already knew a lot about it but now, I’m inside.
Especially, I tested Javascript (JS) with Jitter.
Indeed, as everything (or almost everything) in Max, you can use the patcher only, but you can also code some routines by typing code.
JS is totally integrated inside Max6. The 1.5 is very fast now.
It means you can wire a lot of stuff on one side or use JS to make the same thing on another.

It can be totally required as soon as you want to have a dynamic number of stuff. Stuff equals objects, in the sense of OOP especially.
In my case, how to deal with the creation/remove of a bunch of objects in my 3D meta environment only with patch objects ? It would be a pain, and I know that because I already worked A LOT like that in Max.
So, let’s go programmatically, we’ll have more efficiency both in the development step but in the use too !

In my system, I’ll use, directly Java and not JS
Since Max6, Java in Max is again easier.
Indeed, you can code, compile without leaving Max which is very powerful & ergonomic.
The object mxj is used to execute the code inside one and only one JVM launched in Max. Mxj also takes care of all communications between the JVM and Max itself.

Circle packing for iOS …

My life is a technology & art exploration.
It can be defined more as explorationS. Plural is important.

I love the circle shape.
A lot of concepts are related to that shape.

You probably see DIGITAL COLLISIONS, I’ll release in few hours MOBILE MOOD MACHINE … every time the circle is here or there.

Here is a picture processed with a java algorithm around the circle packing concept.

Here is a nice scientific publication around the concept :
http://web.sau.edu/lilliskevinm/wirelessbib/CollinsStephenson.pdf 

I’m currently designing a small application.
You’ll be able to take a picture (or grab one in the library of the iOS device), you push a button and it calculates a nice circle packing with circles having the color of the mean of all color “under” the circle (on your picture)

The render is nice.
Maybe a couple of button to tweak (maximum size of circles, border contrast etc) but not sure.

You’ll be able to share the picture on Twitter, Facebook, Email and much more social stuff.
Maybe we could make a little packing contest

Let’s see how it can go

A very early prototype…

Prototyping a drone machine driven by a processing script providing particles movements.
The sound engine is made with Max6.
The communication between the controller part & the sound engine is made using Open Sound Control protocol.

My purpose, here, is to make a prototype for further targets, one target being iOS.