Part of my workday, option “resting points” disabled.

Lately I was thinking about the problem to gather data as graphical input for i.e. motion graphics, that are not that obvious like using mouse, keyboard strokes or random-algorithms. By coincidence then I discovered IOGraph, a meanwhile older tool that was around with the name MousePath and now re-released under the name IOGraph. This small tool captures mouse-movements and writes them into a simple image-buffer – ready to be saved as picture. This tool was mary by Moscow designer Anatoly Zenkov “to brighten up the routine work“, he says. Nice toy to play around with and for getting new ideas. IOGraph is available for Mac OSX, Linux and Windows.

The Creative Applications-blog has got a very good read about good ways to organize visual patch programming languages like vvvv or maxMSP. It deals about top-down and commented vs. chaotic and almost non-organized. It talks about levels of complexity as well. The article talks also about aesthetics. Sure, if we are honest, we all foremost like patching languages not only because the are handy, but also because they most often look extremely pleasing to the eye.

Techno-artist Cie (Broque) spent several weeks of his sparetime on a nice plugin for Renoise that enables pretty decent step-sequencing for live-acts. At a jam-session Cie figured out, that just playing pre-produced sequences isn’t that much fun and he searched ways to get more direct input-possibilities. It is initially design for use with the Novation Launchpad.

Having fun with the Lauflicht Step-Sequencer

The result it this plugin for Renoise. With the Lauflicht you can trigger single steps within the different channels. Some of the highlights include: 8, 16 or 32 steps, unlimited tracks, unlimited patterns, set up for each track a sample, sample bank, a vst instrument or a Midi instrument of your choice. Set for each step: velocity, delay, note values including “note OFF”, note length. Chord mode: insert up to 3 notes in one track and much more.

PS: Cie told me, that he used the Lua-language to make the plugin.
PPS: For those who wants to know. Cie also made some other cool code several weeks ago. He wrote a “Discography-plugin” for Facebook, called “Discoggy“. Read more about it at the Renoise-forum.

Some Demosceners came up with the idea “how much music you can make with one line of code“. It didn’t take long, and some guys came up with some code to experiment with: just put it some strangely technical code onto the software and let the result be heard. After that it didn’t take long and some other guy build a JavaScript-environmnt around this program to make it on the web. After that, some visualizing goodness was added to the thing. You can try it out for yourself at this site.

And this is how it looks like:

Cool thing – it remembers me on some other experiments from the last years, like Tweet-a-sound, Tweetcoding in ActionScript3 or demo in less than 140 characters.

Make Pixel Art is a very promising-looking online-pixeleditor that is currently in its beta-testing-phase. It has got not only a very neat look and feel, but also very concise designed features. There is for example a “shop”, where you can browse artworks of other people in order to paste it into your own artworks. Or a “cube-tool”, that lets you draw lines, that suit isometric-look of pixelart. There is also a version planned for iPad. Really, really promising looking project!

PS: You can get to the beta at the moment at http://www.makepixelart.com/beta.

This is a talk of Marius Watz from the Eyeo Festival. It about code, form, art and code as a form of art… ;) (Sorry for this pun.) Indeed code and code as an expressive artistic medium is one of the topics, that really interests me right at the moment. There will be stuff going on by the way, I will post some news in few weeks. (Just a hint, I work on a scripting-framework for FabLabs and CNC-machines). Okay, enough from me, let’s roll the talk!

Title-Scream is a quite minimal website, an El Dorado for 8-bit and 16-bot game lovers, pixelartists and designers. It is a collection of colorful start screens from console-games of the 8-/16-bit era. Some of the screenshots are animated. There is also some stuff to discover: between well known games like Tetris or Mega Man there are screens of games I never heard of before – like for example some rare games from Japan or the US. (via Buro Destruct)