Expression is a interactive installation of the studio 2Roqs which was shown in Bordeaux, Place Fernand Lafargue. We were invited by the association Amalgames to illustrate this topic : ” If you could express yourself in public, what would you say?”

Expression is a typographic projection based on the sending of SMS. When received, messages were flowing on the first wall wandering slowly around windows, ending their path on a second wall feeding a structural composition representing syntax analysis.

Expression is part of a set of installations exploring typography and public expression, which was initiated by Gravity.

As part of the Siana festival, Gravity was exposed in Belo Horizonte, Brazil and in Nanchang, China.
The application was reworked @2Roqs to accept the management of unicode characters and better filtering of incoming sms messages, through a web application interface.

I am pleased to announce the release of ofxJavascript, an addon developped for openframeworks allowing to use javascript in c++ applications. More to come soon !

I made the visuals for a cool catz & tuff wheelz gig @ 4sans in Bordeaux. Animations were controlled remotely from an iphone thanks to the beloved Mrmr.
Vimeo video here.

We@2Roqs were commissioned to develop an interactive application for the re-opening of Aquarium de La Rochelle at the end of January 2009. The installation uses Vision Factory as the core engine for the rendering.

A more detailed article can be found there, with screenshots of the tool that was used to model the fishes.

The video shows how to import a true type font and use it within the javascript code through the library object. Images are managed the same way, by drag’n'dropping files on the main window.

One can see a quick glimpse on how to handle mouse events by implementing the mouseMoved(x,y) function on the fly.

Tranformations and drawing syntax, as well as 2D/3D coordinates system, is of course inspired from Processing, though minor differences remain (see window.width and window.height for example). Also, you’ll notice the three main functions that are init, update and render. init() has to be called manually to load objects from the library or declare variables to be used through the whole script.

Hopefully I will release a version for Mac Intel at the beginning of February.

Links

• Click to see the video in HD
• Article on Beart.

*deggv stands for Démonstration d’écriture de graphisme génératif à la volée / Demonstration for generative graphics written on-the-fly.

Douglas and Ricardo of the school of Art of Aix-en-Provence invited me to animate a workshop around live coding last week, using the Vision Factory platform.
*deggv was the final result of the work students did during the week and a kind of cadavre exquis de code was performed during one hour, each student relaying in front of the computer to type graphic commands.

The workshop was the opportunity to push the concept of live coding a bit further, by setting up a collaborative live coding between several computers.

The students took part in a programming session on a local server-clients network architecture. The final rendering was done on a server computer connected to a screen. The number of layers was directly related to the number of possible connected clients. Each layer was then driven by a javascript program typed on the client computer by a student and then sent to the server to be run.
For the sake of readability, the rendering was split in four equal windows but could be alpha-blended in one big layer (think of it as flattened photoshop layers).

Basic graphic OpenGL commands were explored, from drawing simple lines to more complex shapes with the use of push() & pop(). Live coding was really pedagogic there, beacause one could see for example that translate+rotate was different from rotate+translate by simply inverting a single line in the code.

Short video

*deggv @ l’atelier hypermedia, aix-en-provence. from v3ga on Vimeo.

Some more links

• Repository for the workshop (bits of code, screenshots, …)
• Abstract machine announce.
• Some more renderings on Flickr.
• Article on 2roqs website.

Some weeks ago I had the opportunity to project visuals during the set of my friends Tuff Wheelz @Heretic in Bordeaux, France. I developped a serie of black and white abstract patterns, all circle-based and sound reactive (very basic beat detection here)

The animations were run stand-alone during the show, with the benefit of not having to be on stage. Though, I was able to drive the transitions and some parameters thanks to an interface embedded onto my iPhone. Mrmr did a very good job there, and it was quite catchy to tap buttons according to the rythm while being watching the gig as a spectator.
I just let some of my neighbors being “vjs” themselves for some moments, they quite enjoyed it and had some fun…hopefully.

More photos on Flickr

Gravity is a collaborative application using buildings’architecture as a projection surface.
The messages sent through sms are split into words and then dropped from the top of the projection. As they fall, they collide with their environment thus creating a structural and spatial cadavre exquis.

I played last wednesday with Sevenfive @ Son’art in Bordeaux, making the live visuals. Was nice !