Web Developers and designers unite! What’s that? You need a time and a place? Well how about June 8th — June 11th at the Holiday Inn Metrodome in Minneapolis? Apparently there’s a pretty awesome get together being held there called the Flashbelt Conference. For the fifth consecutive year the folks at pilotvibe — a local company specializing in music and sound design for interactive media — has put together this Adobe sponsored convention as a way for Web art wizards to network about their net works. This year’s meeting of the minds boasts an impressive panel of industry leaders and speakers, including Mate Steinforth of Psyop and Robert Hodgin of Flight404. Workshop sessions, recruitment events where designers and developers can shop their talents, and a forum for students to have their portfolios critiqued are among the array of activities. So whether you’re established or aspiring to become a part of the web community, Flashbelt is worth the trip.
We covered Flight404 several months ago and even then we were blown away by the work Robert Hodgin was doing with Processing. Nearly ten months later, we're still in awe of his stunning visuals, but this time around we're crushing on his latest animation creations, Magnetic Ink and Solar. Also created using Process video, Hodgin's breathtakingly transformative works of computer generated art show a chaotic hairball masterwork in black, white and grey and an otherworldly, colorful source of life and light, respectively. The animations are made even more stunning by the musical accompaniment in the form of music from The Flashbulb.
Both Josh and I have written in the past about the open-source image and animation programming language called Processing. In those earlier posts, you’ll find links to several neat-looking doodads made with Processing. The real trick with any new technology, though, is to use it for truly something useful rather than just “neat.”
Today, our friends at NOTCOT spotted what is surely a step in that direction. The discovery is Anymails, a program written by Carolin Horn and Florian Jenett that forms a visual representation of your email inbox as, basically, a computerized Petrie dish. The program comes as a result of Horn’s MFA thesis project, which was titled “Natural Metaphor for Information Visuzalization” (I have serious thesis envy right now). This is kind of hard to explain—and you may as well just watch the videos for yourself on the website—but basically Anymails turns your inbox into a colony of microbes that swim and squirm their way around your monitor, acting out metaphorically what is going on informationally in your inbox. The reason I say that the project is useful, is that it provides a non-numerical way to understand the flow of information. Right now it might be easier to just look at a number if you want to know how many unread messages you have. But what if you’re trying to discover whether emails from work or emails from friends generate a greater strain on your mental resources? The potential of a visual representation such as Anymails becomes obvious. Plus it’s, you know, totally fun to watch.
There’s something at MIT, wouldn’t you know it, called the Aesthetics + Computation Group, whose aim is “the design of advanced system architectures and thought processes to enable the creation of (as yet) unimaginable forms and spaces.” Two thoughts. First, can somebody tell me where this annoying ‘+’ for ‘and’ thing started? Second, isn’t it interesting that to imagine something we have to first have a language to imagine it in? Kind of like before there could be Funk, James Brown had to invent the Funk vernacular, or like this New Yorker article on the Pirahã from a while ago.
One of the languages that the Group has created is Processing, “an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation and interactions.” Basically, Processing is a non-proprietary tool that computer programmers and visual artists can use to create things that they couldn’t previously. There are a lot of great examples of Processing’s potential on their exhibitions page — Josh has previously covered the use of Processing at Flight 404, and I particularly enjoyed this little gem, which is fairly mesmerizing and looks to me like the rapid construction of some very gnarled muscles. Also check out the Muon Launch, Grass and Circle Packing pages. This stuff will keep you entertained for quite awhile, and true to its origins, probably leave you grasping for words to describe it.
Creator of Flight 404, the music visualization god that created those intense, dramatic and jaw dropping videos we saw back in March is at it again. Magnetosphere is his iTunes plugin version that combines magnetism, gravity and pure awesomeness to deliver an insanely bad-ass iTunes music visualizer. It’s like a cross between Star Wars hyper speed and Jackson Pollack for your own personal viewing pleasure. Coincidentally he’s also the co-founder of the Barbarian Group– the pixel pushing mega-men who have been behind some of the most successful (and creative) projects in a long time (they partnered with Crispin Porter + Bogusky on Subservient Chicken). Downloads of the plugin are available for both Mac’s and PC’s– what are you waiting for?
Like they said– The last iTunes visualizer you will ever want for.
The following videos might be some of the most compelling, moving and yet indescribable pieces of animation and music as visual art I’ve ever seen. Animator and borderline-genius Robert Hodgin worked with Processing, an open source programming language to program images, animation and sound to build these videos. What started for me as just reading an IM and viewing a simple video entitled ‘Supernova‘ turned into a mind-blowing exploration of some absolutely incredible musical visualization. Seriously, words can’t describe these clips. Be sure to check out Magnetosphere and his other work– jaw dropping. A standing ovation, thanks Mike!
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