Clonal Colonies Nov 16 at UCSB "Exploring Visual Music" Symposium

The first movement of Clonal Colonies will be screened as part of the Exploring Visual Music Symposium on Nov 16. UCSB Media Arts and Technology (MAT), the Center for Visual Music (CVM) and Corwin Chair present "a one-day symposium investigating the aesthetics, techniques and histories of visual music. The event at UCSB includes a series of 20 minute talks by invited presenters, plus short screenings of historical and contemporary visual music films. Presenters include Clarence Barlow, Cindy Keefer, Jack Ox, Casey Mongoven, and special guest Barbara Fischinger." Plus there will be a screening of contemporary works.

Clonal Colonies at Frequency Festival, Fulldome

Clonal Colonies will be screened at Frequency, the Lincoln Digital Culture Festival, in full-dome projection in the Go Dome, run by Timothy Chesney. Running every day, 18-23 October 2013, 10:00-17:00. Looks like lots of great stuff happening at the festival, so well worth checking out!

Clonal Colonies at Seeing Sound Symposium

Clonal Colonies will be screened at this year's Seeing Sound Symposium at Bath Spa University, running the 23rd and 24th of November, 2013. The programme will include a new collaborative work by animation pioneer Larry Cuba and choreographer Yolande Yorke-Edgell, screenings of classic Whitney brothers films, live audiovisual performance, papers, and more…

Clonal Colonies Receives First Prize, Fresh Minds 2012-13

My audiovisual composition Clonal Colonies received First Prize last week from the Fresh Minds Festival 2012-13. The festival is a public performance of audiovisual artworks by professional artists, student-curated under the direction of a multi-disciplinary team of faculty at Texas A&M University. I was honoured to be recognised along with 2nd- and 3rd-prize winners Ryo Ikeshiro and gruppoGruppo. We had an enjoyable time meeting staff and students, trying out real Texas BBQ, and having great conversations about the places where art, image, sound and science meet.

Nodewebba Generative Music Software Now Available!

The first release of Nodewebba software is now available from BatHatMedia.com, free and open source for Macintosh and Windows.

Nodewebba brings some distinctly wild and crazy music algorithms out of the research lab and into the home and professional studio. The musician can easily create a "web" of feedback-based pattern generators, producing surprisingly fresh and dynamic interlocking melodic and rhythmic patterns for use realtime performance or for studio-based productions.

See the Welcome to Nodewebba video for a taste of what it can do:

Antas Performing PNTC at Wyoming Flute Day

Dr Linda Antas is performing Pater Noster's Tricyclic Companion at the Wyoming Flute Day, Saturday, Sep 21, 2013.

Using CoreImage filters in Openframeworks

Macintosh OSX CoreImage has some nice filter implementations, so it can be attractive to use some of these within Openframeworks. The Gaussian Blur filter, for example, is flexible and fast. So the trick is to get CoreImage to work with an Openframeworks OpenGL textures.

I implemented the following solution in Openframeworks v0.7.4, working on Mac OS version 10.7.5, Xcode 4.6.3. It involves drawing the image to a framebuffer and then passing the texture ID for the framebuffer to CoreImage.

Note that the filename of "testApp.cpp" needs to be changed to "testApp.mm" and "main.cpp" to "main.mm". This changes these files to an Objective-C++ type, which can handle both C++ and Objective-C calls.

Note also that (apparently) the QuartzCore framework needs to be manually added to the Xcode project frameworks list.

N.B.: I have found that on occasional runs of this and similar code that occasionally (1 out of every 4-8 runs), the code generates a CoreImage: ROI is not tilable error, and the CI Filter doesn't run, even if the project is configured at a humble screen size like 800x600. I haven't been able to find a solution online, so if you know the solution, I'm all ears.

The "testApp.h" file:

#pragma once
//  *****************************************************************
//  Demonstration of using Max OSX Core Image filters in an
//  Open Frameworks 0.7.4 project
//
//  Bret Battey / BatHatMedia.com
//  August 4, 2013
//  *****************************************************************

#include "ofMain.h"
#include "QuartzCore/QuartzCore.h"  // One way to get the CI classes


class testApp : public ofBaseApp{

 public:
  void setup();
  void update();
  void draw();

  void keyPressed  (int key);
  void keyReleased(int key);
  void mouseMoved(int x, int y );
  void mouseDragged(int x, int y, int button);
  void mousePressed(int x, int y, int button);
  void mouseReleased(int x, int y, int button);
  void windowResized(int w, int h);
  void dragEvent(ofDragInfo dragInfo);
  void gotMessage(ofMessage msg);

    // Basics
    int     outWidth, outHeight;
    ofFbo   sourceFbo;

    
    // Core Image
    CGLContextObj   CGLContext;
    NSOpenGLPixelFormatAttribute*   attr;
    NSOpenGLPixelFormat*    pf;
    CGColorSpaceRef genericRGB;
    CIContext*  glCIcontext;
    CIImage*    inputCIImage;
    CIFilter*   blurFilter;
    CIImage*    blurredCIImage;
    CGSize      texSize;
    GLint       tex;
    CGRect      outRect;
    CGRect      inRect;

    
};

The "testApp.mm" file, up through the draw() call:

//  *****************************************************************
//  Demonstration of using Max OSX Core Image filters in an
//  Open Frameworks 0.7.4 project
//
//  Note that this has to be a .mm file (Objective-C++), since it
//  combines Objective-C and C++. >>> ALSO main.cpp needs to be changed
//  to main.mm
//
//  On Xcode, you must manually add the QuartzCore framework to the
//  Project / Target / Summary list of frameworks for the build to
//  succeed.
// 
//  Bret Battey / BatHatMedia.com
//  August 4, 2013
//  *****************************************************************


#include "testApp.h"

//--------------------------------------------------------------
void testApp::setup(){

    ofSetFrameRate(30);
    outWidth  = ofGetViewportWidth();
    outHeight = ofGetViewportHeight();
    ofEnableSmoothing();
    ofBackground(0);
    ofNoFill();
    ofSetLineWidth(4);

    // Setup a framebuffer for the drawing. Perhaps there is some way to do this
    // without a framebuffer, but this is the only way I could figure out how to
    // enable grabbing an OpenGL texture to pass to the CoreImage filter
    sourceFbo.allocate(outWidth, outHeight, GL_RGBA32F_ARB); //32-bit framebuffer for smoothness
    
    // SETUP THE CORE IMAGE CONTEXT, FILTERS, ETC
    // The appended .autorelease methods should auto cleanup the memory at exit.
    // Use a generic RGB color space:
    genericRGB = CGColorSpaceCreateWithName(kCGColorSpaceGenericRGB);
    // Create the pixel format attributes... The Core Image Guide for processing images says:
    // "It’s important that the pixel format for the context includes the NSOpenGLPFANoRecovery constant as an
    // attribute. Otherwise Core Image may not be able to create another context that shares textures with this one."
    NSOpenGLPixelFormatAttribute attr[] = {
        NSOpenGLPFAAccelerated,
        NSOpenGLPFANoRecovery, 
        NSOpenGLPFAColorSize, 32,
        0
    };
    CGColorSpaceRelease(genericRGB);
    // Setup the pixel format object:
    pf=[[NSOpenGLPixelFormat alloc] initWithAttributes:attr].autorelease;
    // Setup the core image context, tied to the OF Open GL context:
    glCIcontext = [CIContext contextWithCGLContext: CGLGetCurrentContext()
                                       pixelFormat: CGLPixelFormatObj(pf)
                                        colorSpace: genericRGB
                                           options: nil].autorelease;
    // Setup a Gaussian Blur filter:
    blurFilter = [CIFilter filterWithName:@"CIGaussianBlur"].autorelease;
    // Supporting stuff
    texSize = CGSizeMake(outWidth, outHeight);
    inRect = CGRectMake(0,0,outWidth,outHeight);
    outRect = CGRectMake(0,0,outWidth,outHeight);


}

//--------------------------------------------------------------
void testApp::update(){
    
    sourceFbo.begin();
    
    // For feedback fun, let's not clear the Fbo after the first frame
    if(ofGetFrameNum()==1) {
        ofClear(0);
    }
    // Draw circle
    ofSetColor(20, 130, 250);
    ofCircle(outWidth/2,outHeight/2,10+(ofGetFrameNum()%40)*6);
    // Get the texture ID of the fbo:
    tex = sourceFbo.getTextureReference().texData.textureID; 
    // set the CI Image to link with the Fbo texture
    inputCIImage = [CIImage imageWithTexture:tex
                                        size:texSize
                                     flipped:NO
                                  colorSpace:genericRGB];
    // Blur filter
    [blurFilter setValue:inputCIImage forKey:@"inputImage"];
    [blurFilter setValue:[NSNumber numberWithFloat: 8] forKey:@"inputRadius"];
    blurredCIImage = [blurFilter valueForKey:@"outputImage"];
    // Draw it
    ofSetColor(255);
    [glCIcontext drawImage:blurredCIImage
                    inRect:outRect
                  fromRect:inRect];
    
    sourceFbo.end();
}

//--------------------------------------------------------------
void testApp::draw(){

    sourceFbo.draw(0,0);

}

Bézier-Spline Control Curves in Max/MSP/Jitter

I have made my Max/MSP 6 abstractions for generating Bézier-spline curves available on the software section of my web site. The package includes a Bernstein-polynomial abstraction, a 3rd-order Bézier-spline generator, and a wrapper that expresses a constrained Bézier-spline over time in a form excellent for creating control signal nuance or for reshaping linear inputs to have ease-in and ease-out characteristics.

404 Festival / Fresh Minds

The 404 International Festival of Art and Technology in Rosario, Argentina (Aug 28-31) will be screening the first movement of Clonal Colonies.

I will be participating in an invited residency at the Fresh Minds Festival at Texas A&M University on Sep 26, 2013 to present Clonal Colonies and work with students from theatre, music, performance studies, architecture and visualization.

New Commission from Reykjavik Center for Visual Music

I am honored to have received an audiovisual commission from the Reykjavik Center for Visual Music for a new work to premiere at the Dark Days Festival, Iceland, in January 2014. I am also pleased to announce that my collaborator in the project is the wonderful composer Hugi Guðmundsson. In a significant shift for me, Hugi will be composing the music, and I will be creating the visuals, and we are aiming for this to be a live performance. So I am currently adapting my Brownian Doughnut Warper Motion plugin to OpenFrameworks to work in realtime, via OSC control.
 

Groping Towards the Question

Seth Godin makes the following point in his blog:

Stuck?

It might not be because you can't find the right answer.

It's almost certainly because you're asking the wrong question. 

The more aggressively you redefine the problem, the more likely it is you're going to solve it.

The most successful people I know got that way by ignoring the race to find the elusive, there's-only-one-and-no-one-has-found-it right answer and instead had the guts to look at the infinite landscape of choices and pick a better problem instead.

So, how do we know when it is time to redefine the problem?


Even if one has the "right" question, fortitude will be necessary to answer it.

As a result, the line between necessary commitment and possibly fruitless masochism often isn't clear.

If the boundary was clear, the work wouldn't really be research or art, would it?

For that matter, if the boundary was clear, life wouldn't be life, would it?

Carla Rees performing Pater Noster's Tricyclic Companion July 3

The amazing flautist Carla Reese will perform Pater Noster's Tricyclic Companion again this summer at Nonclassical at the Macbeth in Hoxton, July 3, 2013. More information will be available at Carla's Rarescale web site. The work will also include works for alto flute and electronics, with Michael Oliva.

Clonal Colonies + Complex Systems at Code Control

I will be demonstrating how I implemented and used variable-coupled map networks to create the music for Clonal Colonies at the Code Control European Max/MSP conference. Saturday, March 23, 17:30.

KMH + Fylkingen + Technarte Bilbao

I will be presenting a concert of my video works at Fylkingen, Stockholm, Sweden, at 19:30 on April 4, 2013. The following day will include a master class and seminar at the Royal Conservatory of Music.

I will discuss the technique and aesthetic of Clonal Colonies as part of Technarte Bilbao in Spain. 26 April, 11:00.