Computational Arts by Matthew Brown

Finally had time to start experimenting with things for my KKB210: Computational Arts 1 Assignment 3. For this assignment, we have to write 3 computational artworks.

My first experiment is using Java and the Processing development environment. It is based on one of the week 4 exercises we did to create moving boxes that leave a motion trail.

Using this, I have added the mouseX and mouseY inputs to position and resize the box depending on whether the left or right mouse button is clicked.

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Pure Data (Pd) is a real-time graphical programming environment based on Max/MSP. It uses patches to write audio, video and graphical programs and can be used for computational arts.

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Adobe Flex is similar to Flash in that both of them use the same graphics engine and they both allow you to use Actionscript.

However, Flex is free, open source, and is written using MXML. It consists of Actionscrupt libraries that give access to the Flash drawing engine and a compiler, however, rather than compiling through the development environment such as in flash, it is done via the command line. Flash is also based more around the time line than Flex.

Flex has similarities to HTML and to my understanding is based on XML, so most of it seems fairly easy to read to me. The Actionscript files are virtually the same as the appearance of the Actionscript files you would use in Flash.

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The second exercise of the week 7 KKB210: Computational Arts 1 tutorial was to have a look at a couple of files, cube-marilyn.qtz and 5-marilyn.qtz and effectively combine the two. The first file, cube-marilyn.qtz has a rotating cube, with a single Marilyn image on each side similar to what we had to make in the first exercise, except that it has two extra interpolations, so it now has one for each axis that it can rotate on. It also has a different duration on each axis, so it creates the appearance of changing speed. The second file, 5-marilyn.qtz contains a grid of four Marilyn images. They are all the same original image, but each of the four runs variations of exposure adjustments, gamma adjustments, alpha masks, colour inverts and other effects.

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During week 7 of KKB210: Computational Arts 1, we were introduced to Quartz Composer. Quartz Composer uses patches to create a composition framework of audio and video through different classes and protocols.

Our first exercise was to make a rotating cube and apply the provided Marilyn painting to each side in a different colour. This was reasonably easy as the colours could all be controlled just by changing the settings in the cube Patch Inspector.

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