After several requests I’ve taken the time to make unlekkerLib compatible with Processing 1.0. Apologies to anyone who’s been inconvenienced by the lack of a 1.0 version.

In particular, STL export should work again. However I haven’t had the chance to test the code very much, so please let me know if you find any bugs.

• unlekkerLib0003c

Beautiful Connections: Mobile artwork for Nokia E71 (see nokia.co.uk/e71)

I recently had the privilege of being commissioned by Wieden + Kennedy to creating an artwork for Nokia’s new smartphone E71. It’s a new model featuring a full QWERTY keyboard, and is intended to function as a complete communication platform for people on the move. As a response to this purpose, W+K’s campaign focused on the idea of “Beautiful Connections”.

My contribution was a mobile app that allows the user to type in a short SMS-style message, which is then used as the basis for a generative animation that results in a visual compositions of curling forms. The final image can then be sent to other users as a MMS or saved to the phone memory for use as a wallpaper.

Technically it was a challenge to get all the different functions to come together in a single coherent application. The project was developed as a pure J2ME app based loosely on an old version of Mobile Processing. To get a smooth rendering style I chose to use the JSR-226 API for Scalable Vector Graphics, which allowed for properly anti-aliased drawings at the cost of a lower frame rate (approx 7 FPS). Standard J2ME graphics would have given 20 FPS, but the final result would have been less attractive.

All interface elements (menus, text input fields and contact information menu) were built from scratch to avoid the lo-tech feel of the default J2ME UI elements. This required quite a bit of work, but it would have been silly to break the organic feel of the application by using the native phone UI. Instead, the decision was made to make the app feel like a completely upgraded experience. This goal was finally achieved through liberal use of transparent PNGs and old school pixel font trickery.

Visit nokia.co.uk/e71 to see the campaign and download the application (it’s free!) Make sure to also check out the four excellent videos produced by Carl Burgess, Universal Everything, Field and SHFT. To complete the Beautiful Connections concept the web site also features an interactive message generator built in Flash that allows you to create images using live sound and web cam input.

My thanks to the Wieden + Kennedy crew for inviting me to do this project, in particular to Sermad Buni and Louis-Philippe Tremblay for their excellent support. My thanks also to Nokia for having the vision of wanting artworks on their phones. Now, if only Apple would create a category for art on their App Store…

Marius Watz: Conical (prints released on Cronica Electronica)

I just completed a new series called Conical, which was initiated as an artwork for the Cimatics festival but never used. So when Miguel Carvalhais from the Cronica Electronica label asked if I would do a cover for Morten Riis’ Digital Sound Drawings, I was happy to have a chance to bring the project to a good conclusion.

In addition to the cover artwork for the album (released as a downloadable rather than as a physical CD), we are releasing a series of 10 limited Conical prints as part of the Cronica Limited series:

Conical is an investigation of a 3D form composed of lines that trace out segments of multiple cones. Seen at a distance, the form becomes a spatial volume. Zooming in, the sense of volume disappears and the form becomes a 2D surface. The image resolves into a complex pattern of optical interference, without any depth cues to indicate its 3D nature.

The 10 prints are 40×40 cm archival inkjet prints, released as uniques and signed by the artist. The price is a modest €125 per print. You can see all 10 images here.

Code, Space, Form, February 3-7 at CMU, Pittsburgh

The eminent Golan Levin has just announced a symposium titled “Code, Space, Form”, featuring C.E.B. Reas, MOS Architects, Ben Pell and yours truly. Hosted by Carnegie-Mellon University, it’s a multi-day affair with lectures and workshops, culminating in an exhibition at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. It should provide an interesting discussion of the implications of generative strategies in art and architecture.

Here is the info from Golan’s blog, hope to see you there if you’re anywhere within range of Pittsburgh:

I am delighted to announce “Code, Form, Space”, a mini-symposium about generative form and digital fabrication, which will be held at Carnegie Mellon University during the week of February 3-7. Nearly all of the events are completely free and open to the public – and include lecture presentations by such distinguished computational artist/designers as C.E.B. Reas, Marius Watz, Ben Pell, and Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample of MOS Architects. I’m co-directing this event in collaboration with Jeremy Ficca (Professor of Architecture and Director of the CMU Digital Fabrication Lab), the CMU School of Art Lecture Series, and the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.

• Code, Form, Space poster and brochure (PDF)
• CMU School of Art: “Code, Form, Space”

Lukas Vojir: Processing Monsters

Czech Processing hacker Lukas Vojir has come up with a great project to test out your coding skills: Make your very own Processing Monster!

Essentially, these “monsters” are little black and white interactive sketches, in which all manners of strange dark creatures stand ready to react to the user’s poking and prodding. It’s surprisingly effective in its simplicity, once again reminding you that simple narrative devices are often the best.

Lukas is currently soliciting collaborators who want to contribute to the online bestiary, if you have a minute I would definitely recommend giving it a go. Now, if only I had the time to make that scary multi-tentacled squid beast…

For more about Lukas Vojir, take a look at his portfolio site rmx.cz or his Tumblr blog.

Multiple JDIC browsers integrated into Processing sketch

A while back I posted a simple hack to open a web browser from Processing by using JDesktop Integration Components (JDIC). A recent discussion on the Processing forums asked about how to use it to open multiple browsers inside the actual Processing sketch window.

My original hack used an instance of org.jdesktop.jdic.browser.WebBrowser integrated into a java.awt.Panel instance and laid out in a java.awt.Frame. That meant that the browser would open in an external window. The discussion on the Processing forum asked specifically about opening multiple browsers in the main sketch window, so I made the following quick hack.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve uploaded a new version of my unlekkerLib library. For some inexplicable reason version 0002 was missing some classes that were needed for certain examples to function. As a result the TileSaver class was broken, which was a serious omission.

You can download unlekkerLib-0003 from the Code & Form Google Code repository. I’ve added the missing classes, but otherwise the library is the same. If you still experience problems please report them here.

MeshLibDemo.pde - Demo of Lee Byron’s Mesh library

Lee Byron has written a neat little Processing library called Mesh which allows for easy calculation and display of Voronoi, Delaunay and Convex Hull diagrams.

Given a set of points, these diagrams calculate the minimal regions around the points (Voronoi), an optimal triangulation of the points (Delaunay) or the polygon shape that contains all the points (Convex Hull). So far the library only supports the 2D versions of the diagrams, but it is in part based on the QuickHull3D java library which also handles 3D hulls.

Byron didn’t include any code examples in the current release, so I hacked up a quick demo.

To run this example, download MeshLibDemo.zip and unzip it inside your Processing sketches folder. The Mesh library is included in a “libraries” subfolder, but you’ll have to restart Processing for the library to be recognized.

I’m posting the full code below for easy reference.

Read the rest of this entry »

I just got an email from Casey saying that processinghacks.com has finally officially been integrated into the main Processing web site. The new URL is http://processing.org/hacks/. Processinghacks was a great initiative by Toxi and Tom Carden, but has ended up in an inactive limbo over the years. Wikis are perfect for letting users contribute their own content, but they also requires a dedicated community to work properly. Sadly, that never quite happened.

Hopefully, the integration into processing.org will provide a little extra motivation for would-be contributors to step up to the plate. There are already links to empty pages indicating topics that should be filled, giving some useful starting points. I know there are some things in unlekkerLib that would fit, but I’ll have to see when I have the time to write them up.

In any case, congratulations to the Processing team for adding a new feature, and thanks to Toxi and Tom Carden for having the Processing hacks idea in the first place…

Contents of Code & Form code library v0001

I’ve decided to put my Processing hacks from the Code & hacks page and consolidate them into a downloadable archive. Thus the Code & Form code library is born. It will contain various demos and hacks, as well as example code for the unlekkerLib library. It should be much easier to publish code this way, since students etc. can simply download the archive and dump the contents in their sketchbook folder for quick access.

I’ve started a Google Code repository for this purpose, which seems a good way to go. I’m still figuring out SVN etc, hopefully I can switch to publishing the unlekkerLib source “live” through SVN once I figure it out. I’ll also publish archives of code written during past workshops to the repository.

There seems to be a growing list of Processing-related Google Code repositories out there, examples include Toxi’s Toxiclibs, interfascia and jddaniels. Do a search for processing.org to find more.