Ben Thompson – Digital Media

well that was fun…. great to see everyone’s brains and ideas out on display… all singing and dancing and wierd and wonderful.

i was happy with my piecepatchprojectionproject… lamplight illumination worked well, even if the bulb did go minutes prior to showtime… the ideas behind the sketch have most definately got legs, so it might not be ridiculous to expect development in this area of identity/distortion/memory/scale and other underlying themes in the future. as discussed at the presentation, and earlier in this blog, the result achieved is nothing new or astonishing… but as an excercise in using the software… and more importantly understanding what is going on… i believe it to be a resounding success. having started this course as a complete programming novice, i am proud of what i’ve managed to create in two and a bit months, and i’m feeling good about all the information still piling in, loving the learning… and getting my creative mojo ticking again. if i can keep this rate of development going i reckon i could have the skills to be a pretty effective super villain this time next year (performance project?)…we shall see…

i’m not sure what the future holds for me and max… perhaps the odd casual fling… i have a feeling processing might be my soul mate. particularly if i continue down this data produced visual stream.

anyways… time will tell…

fiddling on with the patch again, got it working in 360 x 240 (as opposed to 360 x 160) the problem lay in the jit.scissors object but after some thinking and chatting with mr schofield, a logical solution was discovered and implemented… woohoo.

stuck some sound elements onto the patch, but not feeling it, it all just seemed like a token excercise, not an important element of the experience. i may change this, but its unlikely, don’t think the time is there to knock up the patch of my dreams.

speaking of dream plans….

i wanted to up the resolution of the image, so there would be more circles, more detail, more realism in the image… the problem with this is again time, ripping apart my patch and changing all co-ordinates, sizes, and doubling the amount of data being processed would cripple the frame frate and destroy me with attaching hundreds of objects together. whilst on the subject… it has been made very clear to me that processing is much more suited to tasks such as this… for instance below is an example sketch on the processing site.

…..and don’t i look tired after all my max adventuring.

best not to dwell and wallow…. so… presenting the patch and projecting the produced pixel picture tomorrow, not too fussy about where, but i think space 4 would be best, with it having a HUGEGINORMOUS screen. good. not going to have a live feed from a distance as the point of doing that was to show the images photorealism from a distance, and due to the previously mentioned resolution dilemma, this is no longer happening.

i am aware that what i have attempted to create is not a ground shaking original concept…(daniel rozin for example)…but i must say i feel chuffed at what i’ve created, starting with zero max knowlege and 2 and a bit months in… i can’t wait to make more stuff, learn more stuff, more, more, more.

after much fiddling, and attaching sooooooooo many little stems to objects/integers/messages… then realising the absolute BEAUTY of encapsulation. loads of trial and error has been in operation with varying degrees of success and the logic of MAX/MSP/JITTER is making sense…even so my patches for this project are vast and sprawling,[see below] and think i’ve shrunk them down as much as i can.

then each of these subpatches contains this…..

…this exists 16 times! quite a strain for the old girl… frame rate levels at about 8… more tinkering to be done…

stay posted webslingers. peace.

this image is a scan of visa photo in my passport….. it is the effect i hope to create with a max patch and project for the ‘echoes’ exhibit. what interests me is the simplicity of production… monochromatic circles of different size, and hence density… when up close, the image is abstract and non-representative…. however…. from a distance the image is photo realistic.

is this magical witchcraft and voodoo hoodoo? [no]
or the mind boggling brilliance of the brain? [yes]

my plan is to create live images via inbuilt laptop webcam and project these affected, b&w, circle images onto a screen too close to make sense of…then have a camera recording and displaying the projected image from afar. echoed image…distorted…eroded…a replica…brain tricktwists… best get on with it.

oh… i am aware that a sonic element is required… this needs some consideration as i dont want it to be a token throwaway addition… maybe some sort of mask with harmonica mouthpiece? more thought required.