Jitter Recipes - Top Picks

I have chosen just three recipes as most of the ones I am trying I can't seem to get to do anything, or they don't do anything very exciting.

1) Party Lights [#48]
This is by far my favorite recipe. It emits particles from a point which the user can dynamically interact with. It has settings for glowing and streaks, all of which look very beautiful. I'm a huge particle fan for motion graphics to begin with.

2) Verlits [#41]
This is the first recipe I stumbled upon that I really spent a long time on and was inspired to get in and start tweaking it. There are a few points floating around, connecting to another point via a line. You can change the tension of the connected lines to make the unit behave as a very interesting organic whole. There is some default noise to the particles which make it move around in an interesting way by default.

3) Scrolly Brush [#44]
This one isn't actually that exciting, I thought it just functioned well. Basically you can paint on a surface, however as you paint the surface starts sliding away at a speed and direction you choose, but the image tessellates so whatever goes off one edge comes on the opposite so you can create interesting seamless patterns very quickly.

Visual Music - Mapping Notes to Color

I found the section in McDonell's "Visual Music" on mapping sound to color to be the most interest.

Perhaps I just saw it first because it was one of the few pictures in the article, but reading about it was still very interesting. To know that it was Newton, a physicist, who was discovering similarities between music and visuals was very incredible.

I also liked the section afterwards where it talks about an old organ in 1877which opened curtains revealing colored stained glass representing each of the notes. So even back then there was a curiosity about the blending of music and visuals.

DEREN FOR VIEWING

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x70p4_the-very-eye-of-night-1958_shortfilms

Lorenz Chaos

The chaos I chose to use was known as the Lorenz system. I chose it because it sounded familiar from DiffEQ, but I was mistaking it for "Lorentz," which the Wikipedia article even opens by saying:

"the Lorenz equations, note it is not Lorentz"

The Lorenz system is a parametric function which when mapped over X, Y, and Z, creates somewhat of a mix between a figure-8 and a butterfly. I personally think it looks like two galaxies colliding.

There is not much else I can really say about it, as it's mostly differential equations and nitty gritty that I don't fully understand. I have to say however, it looks quite pretty.

Here is a video of it being formed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYE4JKAXSfY

- David

Pretty Sick Isadora Link

https://vjskulpture.wordpress.com/category/isadora-tutorials/

I wish I found this sooner, but it's full of awesome tutorials for Isadora.

LiveVibe TV, "Opening Minds: People Who Make Video Games"

I had to the opportunity to work “Opening Minds: People Who Make Video Games.” Throughout the week, we helped to set up cameras, audio, and the switcher board to make sure the show ran smoothly. I was able to assist with audio, video, stage set-up, lighting, and synchronization of picture and sound (clapperboard) during the show. There was a nice crowd and the show was a success. One thing that I learned from this show is that you must have many different elements to keep an audience immersed. The house band and interaction kept the audience engaged. Instead of there being down time while the audience had to sit and wait for the next guest, the house band kept them entertained. Also, during the show, there were many different components exhibited.  Samuel Sewall, Next-generation game programmer and developer, displayed his game on the panel screen during his presentation. If that was not enough to excite the crowd, Diana Reichenbach and Hyuk Jang invited audience members to “Explore Ancient Egypt” and actually get a chance to test out their game.

Marko Suvajdzic, owner of Organic to Digital, spoke about his five key elements of interactive gaming: Gammification, Flow Theory, Educational Games, Data Collection, and Adaptive Learning. Gammification is using the incentives that we use in video games to help kids to learn. Kids are always willing to learn if the method of learning is fun. The flow theory is a description of how to be fully engaged in what we do. Suvajdzic proposed the question, “Video games fully immerse you, but how do we do that for learning?” There are many distractions in the world that cause kids to stray from learning in school. But, if we create more educational games where students can have fun while learning, they will be fully engaged while acquiring knowledge. Data collection is important to tracking the success of educational games and what areas can be improved. Suvajdzic stated “collecting data is useful because it stores information that teaches us how to make education more efficient and make it better.” The last concept was adaptive learning. Adaptive learning uses technology, more specifically computers, to help teach students. Suvajdzic thought this concept still had at least five years to develop before it is fully accepted and teachers begin to use technology more for educational purposes.

I was not able to take specific notes for Samuel Sewall, Diana Reichenbach and Hyuk Jang, but they spoke about some very interesting topics. It amazed me that Sewall was so young and heavily involved within his field. Similar to Suvajdzic, he spoke about trying to find a way to make education more fun through gaming. His expertise was coding and he explained some of his methods when creating a game. He stated that at times his group would create a concept and idea and finish creating a game within 24 hours. Reichenbach and Jang introduced a game created for the South Florida Science Center. This was an interactive game that used the Xbox Kinect to take students through Egypt and into the Afterlife. They explained each step from the proposal and initial concept to body recognition and creating characters.

Cremaster 3: Matthew Barney

I watched Cremaster 3 (2002). In the beginning, I had no idea what was going on. There are lots of different types of music and sound effects. Throughout the film, the music genre switches back and forth multiple times. Also, a lot of the sound effects were very dramatized. One thing that I took from Cremaster was that Barney wanted to focus on how sound accompanies visuals. In one part, there was a person spreading some material on a car. To the naked eye, someone may just think this person is detailing or preparing the car for work. But since he added eerie and high pitch squealing sound effects, it seemed like something crazy was about to happen. After a few minutes, the film got very weird and actually was a little bit scary with children carrying dead bodies and a lot of dark images.  It was kind of sad to see them destroy such nice cars. This reminded me a little bit of Fluxus artists when they destroyed musical instruments and called it a form of art.