Pappmaskin.no

Noah (6) and Leo (4) creates their own “art car“. A great environmentally friendly DIY project to do with your kids.
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I downloaded my first copy of Processing (Processing.org) a few years ago, but I have never gotten past the initial few demos and small tutorials. I’ve been interested in generative computer art for many years, evt since I first saw the work of Marius Watz in the mid nineties and had a stint reading dadaist poetry and cutups, but I’ve never had the time to play with this stuff myself. Or the brains to handle the math, hehe. But then I came across this tutorial in Computer Arts #149 (The June 2008 issue), where there are a few really interesting tutorials, which basically gives you enough info to understand the key consepts that you need to create some very interesting apps, like the one below (slightly modified of course, I added random colors among other things).

Read more and see the running java app after the break.
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I’ve been thinking alot about making a soundbased installation in Adobe Flash, using sensors and switches, and I’ve gotten around to making a few small eksperiments/prototypes as research, which I’m planning to share on this site later.

But I also found this old experiment I wrote in Flash 5 (!) and wanted to share it. It is a visual sequenzer (*) / sound toy that lets you drag icons onto a “soundstage”, each icon representing a sample. As you press play a line starts moving vertically, and as the line hits one of the icons, the corresponding sound is played. You can also click, drag and hold an icon, and move it on top of the moving line to trigger the sound. There are two types of sounds. The yellow icons trigger different “wet finger on glass” sounds, and the greywhite icons trigger sonar ping sounds.

Open Source

The code is pretty old, and there are WAY better ways of making something like this with AS3, but still, here is the source code (fla) for it (it also includes the samples, which you are free to use in any way you like).

I still think it is a pretty nice little project, but I am toying with the idea of replacing the click and drag with a webcam mounted in the ceiling, and letting people moving around on the floor trigger the sounds. I have quite a lot to learn before I can make something like that, but I’ll get there!

* Ok, so I guess it is a stretch to call this a sequenzer, but I wanted to create a fun, easy and interesting way to generate a sound collage.

marriedtothesea.com

marriedtothesea.com

I came across this really clever cartoonist over at marriedtothesea.com. Just my kind of humour.

Kim sent me this fantastic photoessay made by photographer Mike Belleme
about his “uncle Dirty”. ‘

See the whole thing over at lovebryan.com

A brief history on the thong: When he was in his thirties and doing the truck driving thing, Dirty came across a woman’s thong one day in the passenger seat of his truck. He had no idea where it came from or how it got there. He was about to throw it away when he thought, “Eh, maybe I could wear this on the beach.” Since the thong was about three times too big for him he had to cut and resew the seams to fit his waist. As the years passed he made more and more thongs and stuffed bigger and bigger objects in to the front of them.” – Mike Belleme

face098, originally uploaded by mskogly.