I have been going through the Quick Start Guide which is very useful and having finished it, I have a Processing sketch that will playback a file and display the audio spectrum and waveforms which is pretty cool. I can see how I should be able to use the audio controls to manipulate an image, so I think I’m going to start having an experiment with applying the similar concepts to other images.

For anyone that doesn’t know what a fractal is, it is effectively a geometric image that repeats itself infinitely no matter how far in you zoom. They are usually irregular appearing images, but they are “self-similar”.

The koch is a snowflake star shape and is one of the earliest fractal shapes to be recognised.

For an interesting look at how it replicates as you zoom in and how self-similar it is, have a look at the Java applet over at ArcyTech.

The feedback was part of a practice peer review, but he went into some detail on how i could fix up my current code so that the lines follow on from each other and how to reduce the load on the CPU per cycle with the same effect. The advice is greatly appreciated.

View the new version online here.

The changes and source code are after the jump.

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If you look at my Deviant Art account at all, you’ll notice that it is absolutely full of fractal stills. I also had some big A1 and A2 fractal prints on exhibition, as well as an animation, at a recent inter-university festival between QUT and UQ. So I can easily say that fractals are definitely where my love in art is at. Since I first began experimenting with fractals, there has been one particularly big influence in my work, and that has been the work of Scott Draves aka Spot.

Spot’s work has been of interest to me basically since I began working with fractals and it continues to do so.

He has done a lot of work in fractals and started the Flam3, Electric Sheep and Dreams in High Fidelity projects, all of which are quite influential on my work, both in fractals and in other computational arts.

Not all of his work has been focused on fractals, but many of his idea’s share similarities with them. One example of this are his Dub Visuals which take chaotic still images and morph them, to form other still images in a flow similar to that of the evolution of his fractal animations.

I have previously done fractal animations where they are synced with music, both music performed by another artist and music that I have composed myself. However, this hasn’t been done in real time and has been a long process to setup each portion of the animation and sync it up with the music. Ultimately, I would love to develop a way of rendering fractals, even low quality or low resolution fractals in real-time based on audio input. Basically this would be combining the work I have done previously with the basic concepts of what I did for KKB210 where I did a series of lines and boxes that responded to audio input. The lines one was probably getting close, though ultimately no where near as detailed as I would like it to be, and definitely nowhere near as chaotic and fractal-like as I want.

That is my aim though and hopefully I will get to it sooner or later.

This version should allow further development to make the lines even more random by separating all the variables, where the original was more limited since the numbers were largely defined within the line parameters.

This version is also technically more stochastic then the first one as well as the lines are added to and built on using the += command to add the new line position to the previous line position. Unfortunately this still draws a new line every frame that is not necessarily joined to the line from the previous frame.

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Walking lines are effectively randomly generated paths that the lines follow to create a random image.

I have been using Processing for this particular focus. Thus far I have random lines, however they don’t follow any particular path as of yet. This is effectively still walking lines as the position of the lines is added to and built on. Unfortunately this actually draws a new line every frame that is not necessarily joined to the line from the previous frame.

Have a look at it online here.

The code used to do this is extremely simple and just involves a few random variables based on the width and height of the canvas. I don’t believe this is entirely stochastic because the randoms are tightly controlled, but it is random within its boundaries (unless you want to get into the nitty gritty of it, which I don’t).

The source code is available after the jump.

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This semester, I am moving on to KKB211 - Computational Arts 2, so again, this blog will be used as an online portfolio of my development in the area of computational arts. The aim is to develop a series of works by the end of the semester that can be used as exhibition pieces as part of a computational arts exhibition at QUT Kelvin Grove.

It will also act as a process diary to help my keep track of my development and help me filter out the not so good works so I can focus more on the ones that are worth pursuing.

• Audio Responsive Particles.

Portfolio Item 2 -

• Audio Responsive Lines.
  

Portfolio Item 3 -

• Kaleidoscope.

It is available online here along with the full source code.

The changes made to fix this are pretty simple, and the code changes are shown below.

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The file, dancing_balls.qtz is online here.