What I have created here is floating plasma that slowly floats from the bottom to the top of the screen and accumulates at the top. Audio input is taken from the microphone and combined with an LFO so that it is constantly varying between the base colours that the LFO covers and then other colours dependent on audio spikes. The audio input is also used to make the plasma “shy”, that is, as the input volume increases, the plasma starts to get smaller and disappear until the volume starts to subside again, then it comes back.

The basis of this is created with a Quartz Flame Image patch, ideally, I would have liked to redo this with a more controllable particle system, but that is for another time.

Download the Quartz Composer file here. Note that this requires OS X 10.5 Leopard. It will not work in Tiger as I have used patches that were not available in Tiger.

Check out the video below which shows the visualisation running with the song “Wired but Disconnected” by duckett.

Processing is available for Mac OS X, Windows and GNU/Linux, so you can use it on pretty much anything. This is a big bonus since it was designed with the intention of being a live programming environment for Java as well as a computational design education tool.

As Java is cross-platform, it is only logical that Processing be as well.

In 2005, Processing won a Golden Nica from the Prix Ars Electronica international cyber-arts competition. Subsequently in 2006 the Rockefeller Foundation awarded Fry and Reas with a New Media Fellowship in order to help fund and support the continued development of Processing environment.

Processing has been used in quite a few big productions as well, aside from live programming (also know as VJing). Fry alone has had works created using Processing appear in the movies “The Hulk” and “Minority Report”.

Considering how widely it is used and how long it has been around, it is interesting to note, that it is currently only in version 1.0 BETA still.

Processing aims to remove the need to spend time setting up a graphics rendering environment, it’s already done. So all you need to do is get in there and code some graphics.

The Processing Development Environment (PDE) is designed to behave much like a sketchbook. Just open a new tab and you’ve got a new file to code in, it’s as simple as that. This keeps all of your related sketches (programs) in an easy to navigate “sketchbook”.

It is designed for OS X, and this is probably part of the reason I have not come across it before since it was only November that I seriously started using a Mac.

Impromptu uses the Scheme programming language and is particularly suited to live programming, however in using it myself, it is obvious that the features built into it to assist live programming make regular programming much easier as well since changes can be made on the fly.

Impromptu is developed by Andrew Sorenson from QUT. As I am studying computational arts at QUT, it would be almost impossible to not come across Impromptu sooner or later.

My tutor and lecturer have both commented that as far as generating computational audio, Impromptu is one of the best development environments as it is oriented strongly around time and timing so that things can be scheduled accurately. Apparently other environments over periods of time can start to get slightly out of time, where Impromptu doesn’t.

It also supports a whole heap of graphic generating options, such as OpenGL rendering and vector drawing, along with many more, which is quite nice.

I haven’t used it in depth, but my experience with it thus far is that it is very straight forward and simple to use. I have never written anything in Scheme before, but it seems easy to learn and the Impromptu environment helps make it even easier.

The audio that is used is MIDI generated and follows the standard outlined on the MIDI Manufacturers Association website.

Thus far I have seen examples of and written my own drum kit, bass line, and I have been experimenting with an entire musical piece as well, slowly. I’ll be going through these things a bit later on.