Generative Trees

Magnetic Mesh | A Processing Sketch

This is an evolution of a quick processing sketch I did for Golan's class based on a magnetic physics system. I was incredibly disappointed since I built it from scratch without using any physics libraries, but then it just looked like any other pseudo generic flocking blaaaah. So I decided to turn it into an app to generate interesting background patterns for me to use in my illustrations. You can read me talk more about it on the iacd blog.

This video also illustrations the awesome iterative work process you can have in processing, just building off sketches quite painlessly. It doesn't really pay off to work this way in other coding frameworks like Cinder or OF since it takes so long to test and compile, and it really makes more sense to sit down and figure out what you want and then carefully plan and code. Processing kind of lets you just go with whatever whims you have and test them in these quick and lightweight sketches, I love it.

When I have time, I'll paint large watercolor pattern swatches and use them to texture the meshes similar to this sketch below.

Swoon video

Here's a short clip of the app running in real time.Which basically means horribly jerky half dead laptop time. I swear this flows rather nicely when run properly, but just to give you a basic idea..


Swoon from Alex Wolfe on Vimeo.

Swoon :: Screenshots

Screen captures from my latest Processing sketch. Its a particle system that paints on your screen using input from a webcam and perlin noise. Make sure to check out the video here. You can also move around for some gorgeous abstract effects (since the app pulls the camera data as it draws), but I was tired when I took these : /

Here is a shot of what the app looked like before the webcam data was added in. Perlin noise is computed based on the mouse placement, so the width and nature of these curly wisp strokes are nearly infinite.

Face Synth

faceSynth. Second part of the visual score project, we were assigned someone else's project to make sound/visuals from. I had Gabe's; essentially he had 67 or so images of faces and directions for a percussive piece involving them. I had no intention on doing that, so instead I created this app that takes the RGB values of each pixel in  the face and translates it to visuals/sound.

Eventually I want to rig it up so the audience can take their picture in a booth set up with the appropriate lighting, and their face gets sent to the app in real time, so they can hear their own faces throughout the performance.

Press spacebar to see the face image being parsed, and click to skip to the next one. The sound is still a little wonky/creepy, but I'm okay with it

http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/akwolfe/apps/faceSymphOsc/index.html

waves

And here are some from the waves app

This sketch builds off my last one, extending into 3 dimensional space. Its pretty processor hefty so I have two versions

(hmm so i just discovered that this thing runs at blinding speed if your computer isn't worthless like mine. I'll get around to fixing it, promise : /  )

click here to see waves if you have a decrepit laptop clinging to life like me
or
here if you have a beast of a machine that lets you physically travel through ssh tunnels and bend the internet with your mind.

Flow

Alright so here are some screens from the flow visualizer, my very first experiment with Perlin noise, and actually creating something just for the sake of it with code.

This one was just a practice sketch, based off the processing noise() example, found here. The noise() function works off the algorithm by Ken Perlin to generate a " more natural ordered, harmonic succession of numbers". It was used in a lot of the early movie special effects to generate terrain.

Here, I'm use it to make a sort of pseudo "sine" wave like those generated by music. I took their sample, switched out the lines for points, repeated it on the x, y plane and changed the movement from being dependent on the mouse to an animation. Part of a body of work to connect sound to a physical form for concept studio.

Extremely pleased with myself

Here's the hard links to the apps I've been working on for concept studio. Essentially we had to create a visual score that represents some sort of music, and then we traded and had to create sound out of someone elses. Formal documentation later.


Here are my scores
flow
waves


Reactive sound
This one gets kind of loud, I'm working on dynamically creating sound based on the color values of the pixels, but the results get kind of unpredictable. Press space bar to see the face that its currently parsing.
faceSymp