Update: In my eagerness to announce these workshops I made a scheduling error, incorrectly thinking the dates would be March 15+16 rather than 16+17. As a result I need to move one of the workshops to the weekend before, and since the Intro workshop should happen before the Advanced the new dates will be:

• Saturday March 9: Introduction to Processing and Generative Art
• Saturday March 16: Generative Art, Advanced Topics

Sorry for the confusion! On the plus side the Intro workshop might now be a smaller group which should make it nice and intimate.

I haven’t done any workshops in New York since November, so I have decided to offer my Intro and Advanced Generative Art workshops back-to-back the weekend of March 16+17 on consecutive weekends, Saturday March 9 and Saturday March 17.

The venue will be my apartment in comfortable Park Slope, Brooklyn. As usual I have 8 spots available for each workshop, they do tend to reach capacity so get in touch sooner rather than later. Reservation is by email and your spot is confirmed once I receive payment via PayPal.

The workshops will be taught using the most recent Processing 2.0 beta version (2.0b8 as of this moment), and as usual I will be using my own Modelbuilder library as a toolkit for solving the tasks we look. Familiarizing yourself with Processing 2.0 and Modelbuilder would be good preparation.

Make sure to download Modelbuilder-0019 and Control-P5 2.0.4, then run through the provided examples. Check OpenProcessing.org for more Modelbuilder examples.

Note about dataviz: I know there is a lot of interest in data vizualization and I do get asked about that frequently in workshops. I can’t promise to cover data in detail since it’s a pretty big topic.

If you’re specifically looking for data techniques I would recommend looking at the excellent workshops series taught by my friend Jer Thorp. He currently offers two such workshops, titled “Processing and Data Visualization” and “Archive, Text, & Character(s)”.

After a bit of a break I have scheduled two more Intro and Advanced Generative Art workshops. Dates are November 10 (intro) and November 17 (advanced).

As usual I have 8 spots available for each workshop, possibly only 6 if I decide to do them at home in my comfy Park Slope apartment. (Nod to Kitchen Table Coders…)

See the workshop page for details and to sign up, hope to see you there!

Alexander Rishaug & Marius Watz, live audiovisual performance (visuals built with Processing.) For additional documentation see Vimeo and Flickr.

Update: This workshop is now sold out, but I will be doing it again in September. Feel free to sign up to the workshop mailing list to receive updates when they get announced. In the meantime there are still spots on the Intro and Advanced Topics workshops this weekend!

I have just announced a completely new workshop for August 25th: Sound-responsive visuals in Processing. Several people have asked if I would do such a workshop, so I figured it’s about time.

The core of the workshop will be learning a set of simple yet powerful strategies for mapping sound data to visual elements, focusing on how to design systems that take into account how humans experience sound. Where computers see an endless deluge of 16-bit air pressure measurements, human audiences perceive emotional parameters like tone color, rhythm and temporal evolution of sound. The creation of a good sound-responsive system may invariably start with audio processing and data manipulation, but finding a visual strategy that is capable of expressing the subtle time-based qualities of sound is by far the biggest challenge.

In case you are curious about the data strategies we will use to work with a live sound input: Digital signal processing is a vast and complex field, often requiring serious math to work its magic. Choosing simplicity and flexibility over technical genius we will rely on three tried-and-tested techniques: Spectral analysis (FFT), peak following (to keep the input signal predictable or to manipulate it for our own purposes) and temporal dampening (to control the rate of change in the sound data so that we can keep visual changes consistent with how the sound is developing, instead of jerking rapidly in response to the rapidly changing digital audio signal.)

Hope to see some of you at this workshop, I anticipate having a smallish group of people which allows for easier interaction and dialogue between participants. Bring your MIDI controllers, your fuzz boxes and above all your headphones. This should be fun!

I am doing another round of my Intro and Advanced Generative Art workshops on consecutive days the weekend of August 18th + 19th. This could be a good chance to catch both workshops back-to-back.

I will also be announcing a workshop on sound-responsive visuals for the following Saturday August 25th, get in touch if you would like to pre-reserve for that workshop. The official announcement will happen tomorrow.

Hello, megapixel image. Left is a scaled down view of a 4800×4800 pixel image, with the orange rectangle indicating the area that the right part of the image is a 100% view of.

Say hello to an old piece of code that’s been broken for a very long time but just came back to life. That’s right, I finally fixed my tile-saving class for rendering huge images from OpenGL sketches. Searching through the blog archives I’m amazed to see that I actually posted the original code as far back as March 2007 . Even sadder then that I allowed it to be broken and never fixed when Processing 1.0 came out.

But now mega-pixel rendering makes a comeback as part of the Modelbuilder library (what else), logically renamed UTileSaver. It seems to be working correctly for now and if it turns out to be stable I’ll include it in the next Modelbuilder mini-release.

The reason I decided to try to make a fix is that I’ve just started experimenting with using shaders for graphic rendering effects, and there’s no other way to create high-res versions of the resulting images. So I’m very pleased to say that it seems to be working perfectly, with Andres Colubri’s GLGraphics library handling the shader part. Suffice to say, intricate shader effects look amazing at very high resolutions.

Another reason why this is good news: I will be demonstrating this tile-saving technique (as well as working with shaders) in my upcoming workshops, giving participants one more useful tool for real-world computational success. Speaking of which, there are now very few spots left on my June workshops.

Want to learn how to make this dynamic ribbon flower thing? Take the advanced workshop.

After a successful series of workshops in April/May I am now announcing the next series of workshops. Due to the limited number of seats they are likely to sell out, so book your spot now. (Last time, I sold out in less than 48 hours.)

I am also thinking about doing some specialty workshops in July, specifically one on audio-responsive input to generative systems and one on drawing with machines (plotters, CNC, laser cutters etc.) If you might be interested in taking part a workshop on one of those topics let me know, it’ll make it just that more likely to become a reality.

Announcing: Spring Workshops in NYC

• April 21: Introduction to Generative Art (Sold out, waitinglist)
• May 5: Generative Art, Advanced Topics (Sold out, waitinglist)
• May 19: Parametric modeling for 3D printing (Sold out, waitinglist)

Yesterday saw the first of my NYC workshops, introducing participants to principles of generative systems. My thanks to the great group of people who took part, proving once again that one of the biggest perks about living here is the range of people you meet. Who would not enjoy discussing the merits of LISP vs. Processing? Lately I keep bumping into the viewpoint that Java is a stodgy dinosaur compared to dynamic languages like Javascript. Vive la difference, I say.

My biggest takeaway from the workshop? GUI control of parametric systems is great, but realtime rebuilding of models based on GUI control is HOT. Fortunately, such behavior is often not so much harder to produce than simple parametric control. It just requires retaining the information describing the system in a neutral state, then applying parametric modifiers to produce a transformed instance whenever GUI controls are updated. I’ll write up an example and post it when I have a chance.

In other news I have Github’ed the new Modelbuilder source, anyone interested can download it here: https://github.com/mariuswatz/modelbuilder.

This is still a pre-release, but adventurous souls can either compile it from source or use the Modelbuilder-0006 version found in the “exported” folder. That’s the version I used at Processing Paris. More examples are critically needed, I will try to add some in the next few days.

I just got back from an excellent stay in Paris teaching a Master Class workshop for Processing Paris. I was very impressed by the level of the people in my workshop, as well as the results from the other two workshops taught by Andreas Gysin and Julien Gachoadot (v3ga).

My heartfelt thanks go out to Mark Webster and the rest of the Processing Paris crew, for hospitality rendered as well as for the great chance to work with some very talented people. Rumors has it they might hit New York soon, and I can’t wait to help make that happen.

Above is a slideshow of some of the work produced in my workshop. The examples I showed centered on possible uses of my Modelbuilder library and as a result the output typically dealt with 3D geometry. It was a great opportunity to test Modelbuilder “in the field”, giving plenty of feedback as to possible improvements and outright bug fixes.

A new Modelbuilder release is imminent, I intend to release it this week. It will feature a lot of changes that are unfortunately incompatible with previous versions, but I hope the range of useful new tools it includes will make up for that inconvience.

For the Processing Paris participants: Please let me know about any Modelbuilder bugs you found during the workshop so I can fix them. I know about readSTL(), but there are a few more I think.

Here are some links to work by Processing Paris participants, well worth a look. Unfortunately I can only post the ones I know so if you were at the workshop and have a portfolio site please let me know and I will post it here.

• Jerome Saint-Clair
• Matthieu Savary
• Nicolas Barradeau
• Ashley Brown
• Alexandre le Guillou
• Benjamin Gattet
• Everardo Reyes-García

Announcing: Spring Workshops in NYC

• April 21: Introduction to Generative Art (Sold out, waitinglist)
• May 5: Generative Art, Advanced Topics (Sold out, waitinglist)
• May 19: Parametric modeling for 3D printing (Sold out, waitinglist)

Update: The first round of workshops is now all sold out. You can email me to be put on the waitinglists for any of the three workshops. I will run the workshops again in June / July, so sign up for my mailinglist if you’re interested in participating. That way you get word as soon as I announce the next round so you can get a spot early!

This Spring I will be hosting a series of one-day independent Processing workshops in New York, starting April 21. The workshops will focus on generative form strategies (introduction and advanced), with a few more esoteric offshoots like parametric modeling for 3D printing and drawing with machines (working with plotters). I’ll be taking groups of 8-10 people to keep it intimate and allow for plenty of interaction within the group.

The plan is to put together a curriculum of some of my most useful tricks for developing and optimizing generative visual systems, packaged as a series of code scenarios that we will go through together in an informal setting. The workshops should be useful for beginners and pros alike, since they’ll be based on solving real-world scenarios with tried and tested techniques. Participants will walk away with code examples dealing with real-world challenges as well as creative strategies.

Venue is TBD for now, but will likely be in Williamsburg or Long Island City. I am already accepting orders for this round, if you want a spot you should send an email to info@mariuswatz.com with your name, address and telephone as well as the name of the workshop you’re interested in. I will then shoot you back a PayPal invoice and once payment is received your spot is confirmed, first paid first served. I’m expecting these to sell out so reserve early.

Workshops are $150 each for a 6-hour workshop, with a 10% discount for students OR a 10% discount for booking a second workshop at the same time. All the details are listed on the Workshop page.

CATALYSTS – Case Studies in Computational Techniques
New York City College of Technology
186 Jay St V834 Brooklyn NY 11201

March 24, 2012 9:00 – 5:00
Free and Open to Public

Workshops by:

• Phil Anzalone, Atelier Architecture 64 & GSAPP
• Frank Bitonti, FabStudio
• Mark Collins + Toru Hasegawa, ProxyARCH
• Zach Downey, PARABOX Labs
• Erik Verboon, Buro Happold
• Marius Watz, artist

Moderated By: Ronnie Parsons + Gil Akos, Studio Mode[ ] | modeLab
Coordinated by Anne Leonhardt, Sanjive Vaidya, Brian Ringley, Hart Marlow

This event will consist of six one-hour workshops focusing on techniques / case studies that facilitate the implementation of digital concepts into reality. This slam-style event will be conducted by leading practitioners in architectural computation and fabrication.