spxlAudioToMidi

View sketch page for source code, Windows, Mac and Linux executables.

A small application made with Processing to produce MIDI control messages from a live audio feed. Auto-levelling frequency band meters are used to obtain “peak” output values across the entire audio spectrum analysed (whereas it is usual to have strong bass response with weaker treble response), and easing is applied to make the levels less erratic. 10 separate monitor outputs are supplied, where each monitor is attached to one of the frequency band meters and that meter’s output is scaled to the particular output range for the monitor, allowing for a reduced final output range as well as inverted ranges. Controls are provided to select the MIDI output device and the MIDI channel to use, as well as for selecting which monitors are connected to which meters and the monitor output ranges.

-spxl

spxlSuperKnob01

View sketch page for source code.

A GUI knob that allows multiple revolutions.

Features:

• Rotation limited to specified number of revolutions in each direction
• Revolutions marker with graduated colour indicator
• Snap to full revolutions (visual cue: changed marker colours)
• Plays well with other knobs (ie doesn’t hog mouseDragged())
• Resizable

OpenProcessing link: spxlSuperKnob01

-spxl

spxlChaser2D3D

View sketch page for source code.

A mouse follower… with another dimension.

Exercise creating a class for the chasing objects, exercising PVector methods for the motion calculations.

-spxl

Studio Kanzen,

this evening I discovered someone/something called “SubPixel”. My sister asked me what videos were mine on YouTube, saying that she did a search for “subpixel” and found something that looked like porn, so didn’t open it at work. Something about a guy with his shirt off and a girl with her hands somewhere near his groin. “No, I don’t think I have anything that looks like porn, or anything with a guy with his shirt off.”

What was she talking about? YouTube. Search.

I see… SubPixel: Clone a Willy Penis Mold Kit Review

Quite amusing, but no, not one of my videos.

Hi, I’m subpixel. I’ve been pushing pixels under that name since 2002 when I started taking club and party photos for Australia’s dance music community at InTheMix: “sub” as in music, and “pixel” as in pictures (digital photographs). On later reflection it occurred to me that the name had other interpretations, such as “subpixels” meaning “images from a subculture”, or “subpixel” being the thing (or person) underlying/behind the images I was capturing, especially since I was responsible for the images and rarely “in front of the camera” in my own photos, or those taken by other photographers in the Sydney scene.

After being an InTheMix photographer for a year or so, and having made many new friends along the way, I was more inclined to go where some of those friends were going, and less inclined to take on ITM photography assignments elsewhere, though still continued taking photos, including as “official photographer” for an underground party called Undercurrents, and today have an archive of some 70,000+ images and short video clips. I was without a camera – I mean a camera I cared to carry with me, since, now I think about it, I did actually have at least one other – for about 6 months two years ago, and found that to be a bit depressing. That slowed me down a bit, and I don’t seem to have been taking as many since then (or perhaps for a while before), though do go through spurts on occasion.

Photo madness in decline, I am still behind the pixels nonetheless. I acquired subpixels.com in 2003, and continued to use the name, especially for creative projects. In 2006, after a late night laptop-and-video-projector good times retrospective for a friend’s farewell at a city fringe music bunker (another friend’s house with a killer sound system and wall to wall wax) in Sydney, I was asked to supply visuals for a live electronic music gig called Laptopjam, and so the subpixel name moved on to be my VJ moniker.

I appeared mainly at live electronic gigs, VJ meetings and house parties in Sydney until I was roped in as resident VJ for a fledgling club night (Mind! Reggae Dubstep) in Brixton by Italian DJ Unity Selekta along with Earl Gateshead [Trojan Soundsystem] when I moved to London in 2008, strangely enough from my Gumtree listing looking for a place to live. Around the same time I discovered a local VJ community, VJlondon, where I made friends, had fun, and through which landed various gigs around London including a couple more live electronic gigs. I also joined the sizeable contingent of VJlondon crew appearing at LPM 2009 – Live Performers Meeting – in Rome, apparently the only Australian representative. Through Dr.Mo, who organised most of the VJlondon gatherings, I met architect and artist Alex Haw of atmos (currently working on the CLOUD for the 2012 London Olympics), with whom I collaborated to realise the Weather Projection installation at the inaugural Smart Light Sydney festival – me, a Sydneysider, scrambling to write the code in London (and in Rome after LPM!), and Alex, a Londoner, scrambling to put together the hardware (and content) in Sydney – such a mixed-up world we live in! Unfortunately I wasn’t able to make it to Sydney to see the result, but I’m back in Sydney now, and have rejoined forces with the live electronics party/promoter Midi In The City as well as taking up residency with the closely related TECHnique crew for their monthly techno parties and festival vibes at the Earthdance Sydney 2009 Campout. I have just completed another international collaboration, this time with Venetian producer and deepindub netlabel founder, Maurizio Miceli: a “VJ clip” for Way Out [DIDVJ002] to promote his latest EP.

You can find clips from and information about past VJ gigs at SPXL.TV, and other stuff like my blog including experiments with Processing at subpixels.com.

Sourcemap – Open Supply Chains

An incomplete Sourcemap for LPM 2009 in Rome, Italy.

Data is based on the artists list on the LPM site.

This Sourcemap was started as a Travel Map and saved, but when attempting to re-edit the map, the “passengers” have each been converted to 97kg of cargo. It would be nice if the map remembered that these were supposed to be human passengers (eg 1164kg is a bit mysterious!).

-spxl

• Users’ IP addresses are not logged (Startpage is currently the only search engine that does not log IP addresses).
• Other data like the anonymous search queries are deleted from the log files within a maximum of 48 hours, often sooner.
• Startpage servers have been enabled to handle https requests using SSL (encryption available in most browsers).

Check the Startpage site itself for more information.

Link: https://startpage.com

-spxl

What is this about?.. A neat little service allowing you to use any of over 1000 freely available fonts for the heading elements on your website by means of including a line of “code” in the <head> section of your page. Sweet beans. :o)

It works by using Javascript to replace each heading element (<h1>, <h2> and so on) by a little box of Flash. If Javascript or Flash is unavailable, the original text/font is displayed. Win-win!

-spxl

New site coming soon: spxl.tv

-spxl

spxlOrigamiButterfly

View sketch page for source code.

This program is an optimisation and modification of the fabulous Origami Butterfly by Kyle McDonald, which in turn is a modification of the Origami Butterfly Method by Jonathan McCabe.

I haven’t changed (at least not that I’m aware of, and not intentionally!) the actual image process, just the implementation and how the the paper folds are determined – well, the last fold, anyhow, which I’ve animated,

The modifications to the implementation resulted in a massive speed gain (about 3x the original), enough to have “smooth” animations instead of one still image every two seconds. The “animation” I have done is pretty basic, and might be extended in future to animate more than the last fold, or to animate that fold in some other manner.

Oh, and I added another source texture – a photo of Funckarma at Plastic People in Shoreditch that I took last year. Neon glow FISK. Awwww yeahhhh. :o)

-spxl

spxlConeWheel

View sketch page for source code.

I’ve been thinking about adding pointy bits to some 3D models, instead of making everything from boxes and/or spheres. Maybe still a bit boxy (eg a square pyramid), but maybe also some nice cones. I saw a while back that one of the geometry-creating modes was a triangle fan, which looked perfect for making cones and pyramids.

Clearly, having just one cone is n’t enough, so I made a spiky ring whcih went through various changes (with varying animations) until I arrived at this. I quite like it when the “cones” drop down to having only 2 sides,  so they are then just flat. Maybe a bit boring if just a triangle, but the arrangement of base-to-base cones here instead leaves a rather pleasant kite shape, reminding me of a blade, perhaps. When there are heaps of them – more than would at first seem sensible, a nice rippling/fluttering effect occurs. Overall it reminds me of an assignment I had in a class on colour to make a colour wheel – the name ConeWheel being a reference to that.

I’m surprised at how fast this runs in the P3D mode (faster than OpenGl in this case?), even with a seemingly large number of “cones”. It is more bright and cheery in P3D mode at any rate, and was chosen to allow posting to OpenProcessing.org.

-spxl