dave’s blog of art and programming

user generated content

Betablocker-DS can now be programmed, and I’ve spent the last week testing it on public transport (with headphones…) Lots of niggles to fix, and not enough samples, but the basic interface works.

The DS has such a nice feel – it also seems like a more appropriate interface than the gamepad version. It’s still not really suitable for public consumption, but I’ve updated the binary here. Also I’ve started some minor documentation effort here. This version has a slightly altered instruction set to the original version and is still subject to extensive fiddling!

A holiday project run amok, an idea to make version of betablocker for musical livecoding on minimal hardware – eschewing the world of yuppie smartphones for the gameboy ds.

The betablocker virtual machine is up and running, sound is working (although only one sample at the moment) and the tiles are rendered using nintendo’s 2D hardware, with really nice smooth scrolling – as you’d expect I guess. The icons need a bit of work yet, and I’m only using the top screen for debugging at the moment.

The instructions are represented by images, which are designed to only be a little more cryptic than assembler instructions tend to be. No actual livecoding is possible yet, that’s next. Code here, executable here (you’ll need some additional kit to run it on hardware). I’ll provide some level of documentation, when it is actually working.

Scheme bricks was originally designed as a visual programming interface for functional reactive programming using frisbee – an experimental fluxus based game engine built on top of PLT’s FrTime language. I’ve ended up spending the last 18 months beta testing it in livecoding performances with slub using fluxa, culminating in the workshop last week.

This example is one of the “hello world” type scripts in fluxus, a recursive cube structure. It’s the first time I’ve tried this with scheme bricks. Having the interface in the same world as the rest of the objects opens up lots of possibilities, and enters the realm of IOhannes m zmölnig’s “do sinusoids dream of electric sweeps” performances in pure data – code could be written to modify the representation of itself.

Higher priority though, is to spend some time on making the interface itself easier to use :)

A picture from the livecoding workshop in Antwerp, the first time scheme bricks has been exposed to so many people. We covered various synthesis techniques, as well as introducing livecoding more generally. This has given me a lot of motivation to move this stuff further – I’m thinking of putting it in the fluxus distribution as an alternative livecoding option.

The most gloriously aptly named festival for livecoding I’ve ever seen, the Lambda Festival in Antwerp this weekend will see quite a lot of action from Slub. Firstly we are VJing on the Saturday, then the first ever Scheme Bricks workshop on Sunday followed by a performance in the evening.

Finally an actual release of scheme bricks! (make sure you read the README, it’s not user friendly yet).

I’ve unified the maths operations, previously you had to remember if you were working on nodes or numbers (the only two types in fluxa) now you can just use the standard + – * / (before you had to use add sub mul div for graph nodes). This makes it much nicer to program. I’ve also replaced the asterisk in the font, the old one looked like a smudge on the screen.

This is all in preparation for a scheme bricks livecoding workshop I’m giving in a few weeks at the LAMBDA ELEKTRONISCH MUZIEKFESTIVAL.

Alex Mclean, Nick Collins and I have written a paper for EVA 2010 on Visualisation of Live Code (link to preprint version).

In this paper we outline the issues surrounding live coding which is projected for an audience, and in this context, approaches to code visualisation. This includes natural language parsing techniques, using geometrical properties of space in language semantics, representation of execution flow in live coding environments, code as visual data and computer games as live coding environments. We will also touch on the unifying perceptual basis behind symbols, graphics, movement and sound.

The paper includes betablocker, daisy, al jazari and scheme bricks.

Here’s the first full solo performance I’ve tried with scheme bricks – I missed Alex’s sounds but it’s great footage, thanks go to the goto10 streaming/recording crew. More of my thoughts on the festival in general here.

This week it’s finally time for:

At Sign gallery Groningen, the Netherlands. I’m going to be doing a fluxus workshop with Gabor and a scheme bricks placard performance – the first one I’ve tried solo, I think!

chmod +x art The computer as theatre, as writer of love letters, the computer as world, a place for revolution, art as executable. chmod +x art presents artists that turn our ideas, dreams and fantasies about machines and code up side down and show programming as an infinitely intriguing way of creating. Code is a medium. Whether it is used to formulate instructions for a machine, ideas for people or both. The writing of it influences and shapes the creative process of the artist. For that reason, ghost programmers may be left at home. Besides the importance of writing code yourself, it is essential to show that code. Without source, software art remains a magic trick. Do It Yourself and show us your sh*t!