Software over the rainbow

An openFrameworks workgroup has started this week at Hangar. Every thursday until March, the wise Arturo will be there helping you with any doubt that you have. From 19 to 21 pm. +info

The equally talented Chris Sugrue will be doing the same in Madrid’s Medialab. Every friday from 19 to 21pm. +info

Last, and this has been going on for some months now, the incombustible Alba Corral has created an increasingly active spanish speaking processing community, with forum, wiki and more cool projects on the way.

Edit: I almost forget that there is also an introductory workshop to computer sound synthesis taught (with chuck) by Eduard Aylon. In a couple of weeks also in hangar.

So this morning I found that someone had already done an idea which I had been thinking of for some time (probably since I did the Steve Reich’s Clapping Music version in ChucK):

Source code for “In C” by Terry Riley in ChucK

No problem. With the amount of information we have a few clicks away, it’s impossible to maintain the naive belief that our ideas are original.

Having a look at the programmer’s website (ah, curiosity) I’ve discovered why the url sounded so familiar: He’s also the man behind whitney music box, a well known series of animations inspired by the work of john whitney, as described in his book Digital Harmony: On the Complementarity of Music and Visual Art. The post explaining the work is worth a look.

(on a deeper look, I’ve found more gems, such as the article Processing as a first language, as compared to flash, his processing gallery or the JSyd Java Synth)

Anyway, what I find particularly interesting is the exercise of trying to emulate in code art works which weren’t originally conceived for that. We know the construction rules (the score and/or the composer’s instructions) and the final result (the recording), so I see them as ideal programming practice problems.

Because of its main focus on processes rather than final products, I’d say that some art of the 60’s and 70’s is specially suitable for this task. We’ve talked about minimal composers (reich, glass, riley), but I’m also thinking of process art (see Casey Reas implementations of instructions by Sol Lewitt) or even John Cage (whom most famous work has been also versioned by Jim Bumgardner in justone line of chuck code: (4*60+33)::second => now) .

A couple of other examples:

• Piano phase after Steve Reich with source code in JMusic (Java)
• PD Repertory Project: Some live electronic music repertoire pieces in Pure Data (including works by Pierre Boulez, Steve Reich, Stockhausen and others)
• (Update) The Riley-o-matic by Daniel Iglesia, more In C (implemented in, well, C)

Do you know of more examples? Let me know in the comments.

ChucK has gone through some api changes and tasty additions (low, band, high and stop pass filters…) in its last revision. I’ve just updated the edit mode which I did for JEdit. You can get it from here:

Chuck jedit mode updated for 1.2.0.7

For instructions on how to install, have a look at the previous post: JEdit for ChucK

Update: Thomas Friese has sent me a corrected version (mainly with removed duplicates) and has added some missing properties and methods. Now it is the “official” download. Thanks Tasmo!

In my never ending search for a one-size-fits-all code editor, I’ve been trying JEdit for the last couple of weeks.

Reasons? With some plugins, it’s said to be a good choice for ruby on rails; toxi published an edit mode and a lot of abbreviations which speed up the work with processing; it’s multi-platform; and the most important thing, it is extremely configurable, while not being as fat as eclipse.

Until the recent release of the miniaudicle for windows there were very few options for syntax highlighting of ChucK files in this platform, so, using a couple of edit modes from languages that I know better, the ChucK reference and some help from chuck-users, I’ve made a ChucK edit mode. This means that now i have syntax coloring for keywords, ugens, methods and operators.

(Note: the awful colors correspond to the moment in which I decided to stop trying new ones. Don’t worry, they’re configurable too)

To install it:

1. put the file chuck.xml in C:\Documents and Settings\username\.jedit\modes.
2. write this in the catalog file in the same folder: <MODE NAME=”chuck” FILE=”chuck.xml” FILE_NAME_GLOB=”*.ck” />

And that’s pretty much it. You should be seeing some nice color in your chuck files.

If you detect any error or improvable thing or want some additional help, just tell me: jesus {youknow} jesusgollonet.com

So I have begun trying to learn chuck again.

To do it, I took alex maclean’s advice to the letter:

…my best advice when looking for inspiration is to listen to your favorite pieces of music. Listen to the structure behind a piece and think about how you might write an algorithm to create that structure…

(From Hacking perl in nightclubs)

And that’s what I came up with:

Clapping music is a piece by steve reich in which two performers repeat a simple pattern clapping their hands, with a little shifting every eight repetitions (for a better explanation see the wikipedia entry or watch a video).

The structure is so simple that I thought It would be a good starting point for a chuck exercise… And that’s what I did. Each “clapper” is on a stereo channel. The shifting occurs every 4th repetition.

See the code

Hear the result

Credits:

Score image taken from crownpoint

Claps sound taken from freesound (thanks noisecollector).

That is, some of my friends growing up tend to draw, you know
whenever. Start a sketch, doodle in class, pick up something,
refine it, etc. Anyway, these folks end up getting really good,
less out of diligent patience than iterated and distracted
practice. […]

For a process to be sketchy, or like sketching, it should:
- be immediate, quick to engage or start up in
- be incremental, easy to save and resume working on

Maravillosa definición de lo que es un software sketchbook. Lo dice graham coleman acerca de chuck. 100% aplicable a processing.

La princeton laptop orchestra (plork) es un experimento audio-performa-educativo del mismo equipo que desarrolla el lenguaje de programación chuck (del cual ya hemos hablado por aquí) . Como ellos mismos dicen, “auna muchos de nuestros intereses estéticos y de investigación como músicos, compositores y programadores”

… de los míos también. Daría un brazo y medio por estudiar con ellos.