I made a bunch of audio loops yesterday, none of which sound very good together. They all seem to have different beats and tempos and feels and so on. I suppose it would have been slightly more congruous had I figured out how to get csound to work and made my own stuff, but perhaps that is for another time.
Pretty much half the class have been trying to figure out how to manipulate sound in real time (again not following conglomerate LeeChrisPerrySpector's advice to "demo or die"), including us. Processing doesn't have methods for sound written into it, so several people wrote mostly incomplete libraries to ameliorate this, with varying degrees of success. Minim almost never has volume control, which is what we need. Brian apparently is using Ess to control the volume, but according to Lee (and the fact that I couldn't get the library to even load properly) its very unstable. Again we are walking the line.
27 February 2008
20 February 2008
A Dark Room
Our group member from Mt. Holyoke decided not to show up, and so I sat in a dim ASH talking in somewhat awkward bouts with Brian, the demur kid that knows me as well from Animation Forum (was he the one writing QT Sketch?), and again my memory fails me. He, like Omid, also wants to do an interface. We are both lost on the audio part of this. Hopefully we'll have Christine tomorrow as well as some ideas after Lee's enlightening talk (well, it should be, unless he noodles on about 'soul' still).
One bit of progress: We've decided that relying on email for coordination is a bad idea. WOOO!
One bit of progress: We've decided that relying on email for coordination is a bad idea. WOOO!
19 February 2008
In Which Tatiana Does Her Head In, And Learns Why You Start With Processing
Because its easy as pie to start.
Yes, I am looking at you, cheerful Python programmer.
Yes, I am looking at you, cheerful Python programmer.
Digital Patch Cords
The tangle of wires this brings to mind gives me no more solace...
Funny to think I entertained ideas of sound engineering. Now I'm going to have to learn at least some of it quite fast. Oh lovely graphical interfaces, where have you gone?
Now its flying down levels of abstraction. Sound is no more tangible than light, but it is oh so much more mysterious.
Funny to think I entertained ideas of sound engineering. Now I'm going to have to learn at least some of it quite fast. Oh lovely graphical interfaces, where have you gone?
Now its flying down levels of abstraction. Sound is no more tangible than light, but it is oh so much more mysterious.
14 February 2008
Post-Mortem
Cherubim is basically this program that allows you to arrange pre-loaded GIF animations. My original idea was this sort of interactive art piece where little gif animations would roam around a screen, and you could suck them up into bigger arrangements and then be able to tear bits off or explode it entirely.
I made myself useful last night by sitting in ASH 126 and testing the code Omid sent along to me. It took about 2 hours and 26 chapters of Rice Boy before he reappeared and before Cherubim ran without taking a huge chunk of the CPU of the main computer (if it doesn't run on that one, it won't run unless we figure out a way to send it through ASH's shady Beowulf cluster, FLY, which seems to live constantly at 80% capacity).
In this long period, I learned a few things about myself.
1) I was very scared about all of this. Why? Because I had no control what-so-ever over what Omid was doing.
2)There is an upside to being almost cripplingly pessimistic: things are super-uber wonderful when they work out, and when they don't its exactly what you were expecting. THAT GLASS IS HALF EMPTY, BUT ITS GINGER ALE, hell yes.
So after presenting my programs to Gabe, (Lee is still out sick, probably typing away nearly constantly at his email), I loaded Cherubim onto the main computer in ASH and ran it. It looked the same as the night before, but Omid was out in the atrium and he proceeded to show me all that he had done the entire night.
Attach Mode now worked. RETURN allows you to take and move the animations into position with the anchor points.
Resize Mode was added. ALT allows you to chose an animation with a click and resize with keyboard inputs.
Frame Mode was added, allowing you to pause animations, choose a specific one and cycle through each frame, allowing for timing changes or syncing animations. This was no where in our plans but it turned out to be a well-implemented and thoughtful idea.
Attract function was added. When white field is clicked and held in ATTACH MODE, all animations 'suck' to that point. This would later be 'animated', as well as a 'destruct' function as well.
Some primitive level of object and edge detection was written in, preventing objects from being dragged entirely off screen. This was the first stage in what will be a long and involved process to write object interactions into the program, which was part of the original idea.
GIF export function was added. This would be tweaked so that you could export arrangements that you liked and then have them re-imported into Cherubim, thus allowing some kind of recursive arrangement.
Omid was so psyched about this whole thing. I'm sure if it wasn't for his enthusiasm we wouldn't have anything nearly that awesome to show. Right now Cherubim is in 'alpha'. If we return to this, Cherubim beta will have more mouse controls and less keyboard input, some level of object interaction, gif export, more coherent animations, and a slicker interface that would allow the person to control what animations are displayed.
All in all, very impressive.
I made myself useful last night by sitting in ASH 126 and testing the code Omid sent along to me. It took about 2 hours and 26 chapters of Rice Boy before he reappeared and before Cherubim ran without taking a huge chunk of the CPU of the main computer (if it doesn't run on that one, it won't run unless we figure out a way to send it through ASH's shady Beowulf cluster, FLY, which seems to live constantly at 80% capacity).
In this long period, I learned a few things about myself.
1) I was very scared about all of this. Why? Because I had no control what-so-ever over what Omid was doing.
2)There is an upside to being almost cripplingly pessimistic: things are super-uber wonderful when they work out, and when they don't its exactly what you were expecting. THAT GLASS IS HALF EMPTY, BUT ITS GINGER ALE, hell yes.
So after presenting my programs to Gabe, (Lee is still out sick, probably typing away nearly constantly at his email), I loaded Cherubim onto the main computer in ASH and ran it. It looked the same as the night before, but Omid was out in the atrium and he proceeded to show me all that he had done the entire night.
Attach Mode now worked. RETURN allows you to take and move the animations into position with the anchor points.
Resize Mode was added. ALT allows you to chose an animation with a click and resize with keyboard inputs.
Frame Mode was added, allowing you to pause animations, choose a specific one and cycle through each frame, allowing for timing changes or syncing animations. This was no where in our plans but it turned out to be a well-implemented and thoughtful idea.
Attract function was added. When white field is clicked and held in ATTACH MODE, all animations 'suck' to that point. This would later be 'animated', as well as a 'destruct' function as well.
Some primitive level of object and edge detection was written in, preventing objects from being dragged entirely off screen. This was the first stage in what will be a long and involved process to write object interactions into the program, which was part of the original idea.
GIF export function was added. This would be tweaked so that you could export arrangements that you liked and then have them re-imported into Cherubim, thus allowing some kind of recursive arrangement.
Omid was so psyched about this whole thing. I'm sure if it wasn't for his enthusiasm we wouldn't have anything nearly that awesome to show. Right now Cherubim is in 'alpha'. If we return to this, Cherubim beta will have more mouse controls and less keyboard input, some level of object interaction, gif export, more coherent animations, and a slicker interface that would allow the person to control what animations are displayed.
All in all, very impressive.
13 February 2008
80% CPU Usage
The code has been cut down, the animations run...
now for all the other pieces
Its a long night and today is Valentines day
now for all the other pieces
Its a long night and today is Valentines day
Stack Overload Error
Today is do or die. Today is the last day for building wings. I opened up urza this morning and looked at what Omid had accomplished in the night after our meeting in ASH (in which I discovered to my great sorrow that the stylus for the 9x12 Wacom tablet was missing). After loading the appropriate library so that the code would progress past the first line, my computer had a bit of a conniption fit, and only recovered after I had closed all instances of the Processing IDE.
The day before I had written the infamous infinite loop and unleashed the mother of all stack-overload errors on my laptop. My memory was eaten up in a second, allowing not even the task manager to start up (I have a huge complaint with how the task manager is arranged in Vista... why would you put it in some special screen that probably takes up far more memory than it should?). In this instance the limit of my knowledge of computer programming was put in sharp relief. I can't help Omid at all, and neither can George. We have to wait and see what happens. I cannot even see the progress as the code can't run on my computer (yet it does on the Macs in ASH).
I'm in over my head.
The day before I had written the infamous infinite loop and unleashed the mother of all stack-overload errors on my laptop. My memory was eaten up in a second, allowing not even the task manager to start up (I have a huge complaint with how the task manager is arranged in Vista... why would you put it in some special screen that probably takes up far more memory than it should?). In this instance the limit of my knowledge of computer programming was put in sharp relief. I can't help Omid at all, and neither can George. We have to wait and see what happens. I cannot even see the progress as the code can't run on my computer (yet it does on the Macs in ASH).
I'm in over my head.
12 February 2008
Apple Blossoms and Star Turtles
Certainly not the most exciting of sketches, but here are my first running programs:
Apple Blossoms
Uses img.get to collect color information from a pre-loaded image.
Turtle Star
A repeating star pattern built with Turtle graphics (interpreted for Processing by Lee Spector).
note: I've had some difficulty running Processing sketches in Mozilla. I have not tried IE, but I know the Opera browser works.
Apple Blossoms
Uses img.get to collect color information from a pre-loaded image.
Turtle Star
A repeating star pattern built with Turtle graphics (interpreted for Processing by Lee Spector).
note: I've had some difficulty running Processing sketches in Mozilla. I have not tried IE, but I know the Opera browser works.
11 February 2008
A Wind in the Door
So, we have two "real" days to work on this thing that I've spewed from the depths of my mind and that my team-mates have picked up and manipulated. The thing may turn out as monstrous as my inspiration: the Cherubim (that singular plurality) from the book A Wind in the Door.
Here is the fundamental problem with how this project has gone and is going. The conglomerate ChrisPerryLeeSpector foresaw in its infinite wisdom that the groups could not rely on a single person ("to do some super human task") to finish their project. However, programming something like what I cooked up is something far beyond my own meager programming skills, that it may as well be considered super-human from my point of view. If it is beyond the skills of the programmer in our group it is beyond all of us, and there is nothing a single one of us can do about it. If this kid proves to be an arrogant sort, we may just have a disaster on our hands. If he is not, I hope to all gods in ASH 126 that he has the sense to seek help. The process to me is wrapped up in fog. If he has a problem I do not have the knowledge to help him or even look for something that could help him.
IF IF IF!
I've started something and it has rolled away from me as quickly as its conception. We have no recourse. ChrisLee has pointed out the cliff and told us to fly. How many wings do I have to draw to save us?
Here is the fundamental problem with how this project has gone and is going. The conglomerate ChrisPerryLeeSpector foresaw in its infinite wisdom that the groups could not rely on a single person ("to do some super human task") to finish their project. However, programming something like what I cooked up is something far beyond my own meager programming skills, that it may as well be considered super-human from my point of view. If it is beyond the skills of the programmer in our group it is beyond all of us, and there is nothing a single one of us can do about it. If this kid proves to be an arrogant sort, we may just have a disaster on our hands. If he is not, I hope to all gods in ASH 126 that he has the sense to seek help. The process to me is wrapped up in fog. If he has a problem I do not have the knowledge to help him or even look for something that could help him.
IF IF IF!
I've started something and it has rolled away from me as quickly as its conception. We have no recourse. ChrisLee has pointed out the cliff and told us to fly. How many wings do I have to draw to save us?
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