My Secret Heart is a music and film installation & performance commissioned by Streetwise Opera with music composed by Mira Calix. Working with video artists Flat-e, we created visuals for the 48 minute performance, as well as versions for an installation and short film.

More information can be found at http://www.memo.tv/projects/my_secret_heart.

The visuals were created primarily with custom software written with C++/openFrameworks, with some Quartz Composer elements, rendered AfterEffects sequences and live action footage. The custom C++ app is audio-reactive and user-interactive, allowing the visuals to be 'performed' live with full control over the behaviour of the virtual inhabitants of the cylindrical aquarium-like rig.

Excerpts from the visuals (I recommend the HD version at http://vimeo.com/2131989):

More stills and photos from the piece and performance can be seen at www.flickr.com/photos/tags/mysecretheart

Stills from the piece:
(the short-wide strip along the bottom of the images is the full width of the visuals wrapped around the 16m circumference of the cylinder, while the top is closeup detail)

The Switzerland preview showings of My Secret Heart have come and gone and now we are left with but a pleasant memory, and the images below - and high hopes for the premiere at the Royal Festival Hall and subsequent galleries & festivals.

More images, videos and info can be found at the official site www.mysecretheart.co.uk and
memo.tv/projects/my_secret_heart.

Photos from Lucerne, Switzerland:

Well I finally caved in and bought an iPhone - and my favorite feature (and main reason for buying it) is of course the multi-touch capabilities. So currently OSCemote is my favourite app. Apart from having a few sliders and knobs which transmit OSC (similar to TouchOSC), it also has a multitouch pad which sends out TUIO messages, so any app which responds to TUIO (E.g. anything written with reactivision api) will respond. So I had to try out my visualisation for the Roots Project! Up and running in 5 minutes! Awesome! (I had to rotate the coordinates in my processing code though to have the long end of the iphone screen map to the long end of my desktop screen, slightly annoying that this isn't an option in the app... hopefully soon :P).

This is a demo for a traer like physics library for C++/openFrameworks.
I wrote the lib for a little project with Todd Vanderlin while in Linz, Austria at Ars Electronic 2008 (vimeo.com/1707467). I tried to keep the same API as Traer (so processing code using traer can easily be ported to oF) and it is basically a particle system with springs, attractions, gravity etc (but uses verlet integration instead of RK4).

In this demo I am interacting with the app using the keys:

This is an 'early current state of app' demo for a multi-discipline event I'm working on with Streetwise Opera, Mira Calix and fellow visualists Flat-e, to be showcased at the Royal Festival Hall later this year with quite a few more venues lined up.

The app was written in Processing 0135 and is running realtime at 60fps, though if I add another couple hundred eels it does drop, so I may switch to OpenFrameworks if performance does become an issue (which it probably will). There are occasional freezes in the video which happened while capturing the screen so that is a bit annoying.

I'm controlling the eels using the mouse, keyboard and Quartz Composer (just simple sliders sending OSC to vary some parameters - similar to the 'magnetic force fields' video - I'm quite into this technique now, very quick and easy to setup, and you can have loads of sliders with descriptive names at your disposal to play with, and adjust your internal variables in realtime for tweaking heaven).

The final show will have many many more features, both in the digital realm, and physical... more info coming soon...

I strongly recommend watching the HD version at http://www.vimeo.com/1582196

This is a very early version of a GPU based depth-of-field GLSL shader and sample Processing code. Adjust some parameters and it can also be used to give the scene a nice backlight/glow effect.

This is a demo of creating and visualizing magnetic (kind of) fields in Processing and controlling with a tangible multitouch table and Quartz Composer. It gets more interesting after the 1 minute mark :P

I recommend watching the video in HD at http://www.vimeo.com/1569676

The demo came about as a digression off the Roots project I'm working on with Jordan & Owen - makers of the Bricktable (http://bricktable.wordpress.com/). You can read more about the Roots project at http://www.memo.tv/roots_creating_and_visualising_generative_music_on_a_... and http://bricktable.wordpress.com/about/what-is-roots/ .

Thanks to the windy ways of the web, I've found myself working with some truly talented musicians/techies/electronics experts over on the otherside of the pond in California, on a very exciting interactive, generative audio/visual project. The number of traditional instruments they have and play wasn't enough for them, so they decided to build their own, as one does when in that situation - one of which is the bricktable, a tangible and multi-touch table - and instrument.

I've worked on a number of interesting interactive audio projects, but the approach in this one is quite different and i"m very excitied to be working with the bricktable guys on it.

In one line: You control parameters of a chaotic environment - which affect the behaviour of its inhabitants - which create and control music. 

To breakdown very briefly without going into much detail:

So I started playing with the House of Cards data in OpenFrameworks, but looks like I'm not gonna have time to finish it for a while. So I thought I'd post a skeleton if anyone else wants to play.

**UPDATE: 20/07/08 **
Just added a Processing source file as well using the BIN data (P5_HoC_bin_v1.zip). Demo video below (all interactions are controlled with the mouse in realtime - pulling/pushing etc.

This is the beginnings of a Processing / Java port of the webcam-to-osc/midi app I originally did in Quartz Composer. The source code for the processing version is below, and you can watch (or download) the Quartz Composer version here).

Its quite early days yet and doesn't have all the features I want (scales, realtime sizing of grid etc.), but I'm posting posting it because:
a.) it does work on a basic level,
b.) It was requested on the processing forums and I thought it might be useful...

It doesn't transmit midi, but does transmit OSC, and I'm using OSCulator to forward the OSC messages to midi. I prefer doing it this way because I can have another computer on wifi receive the OSC messages and map to midi (and send to Logic), keeping the CPU on both machines lighter... (or just keep the oscTargetIP as 127.0.0.1 to send the OSC to the same machine and have everything running on one machine. Flexibility is always sweet).

Realtime interactive psychedelic fluid simulation with processing for an upcoming installation. Watch the video below to see it in action, or click here for the interactive version (you will need Java). P.S. it takes a while to load so please be patient!

I just returned from a fantastic week in Aldeburgh courtesy of Aldeburgh Music on the New Music New Media 2008 Workshop, and what a week it was...

Working with 14 amazing contemporary musicians - 6 composers and 8 performers, including cellist Olly Coates and pianist Sarah Nicolls - masters of sound-tech Sound Intermedia; and fellow visualists / interactive tech-geeks at Flat-E we delved into some nice Exploration of Audio Visual Diversity.

Continuation of the particle system evolved into branch-like structures. Few parameters tweakable in runtime. Click here to view (you will need a java enabled browser to run this applet).

/************************************* CONSTANTS ****************************************/
int CLEAR_MODE   = 0;
int CLEAR_NONE   = CLEAR_MODE++;
int CLEAR_CLEAR  = CLEAR_MODE++;
int CLEAR_FADE   = CLEAR_MODE++;
//char[][] ClearStates = ["Clear:None", "Clear: Clear", "Clear:Fade"]
 
 
int BRANCH_MODE   = 0;
int BRANCH_NONE   = BRANCH_MODE++;
int BRANCH_BRANCH = BRANCH_MODE++;
int BRANCH_DRIP   = BRANCH_MODE++;
 
int BGCOLOR = 255;
int MAX_CIRCLE_SIZE = 15;
 
 
/************************************* VARS ****************************************/
boolean bMouseMode = false;
float fHeadSpeed = 2;
float fNoiseSpeed = 1;
int iClearMode   = CLEAR_CLEAR;
int iBranchMode   = BRANCH_BRANCH;
 
int numBranches;
int numCircles;
BRANCH[] branches;
VECTORFIELD VectorField = new VECTORFIELD(2, 0.5, 1, 1);

First test of the Processing language. Pretty basic particle system. Click here to view (you will need a java enabled browser to run this applet).
The code is quite object oriented so should be pretty straight forward to follow, any questions just ask...

import noc.*;
 
 
 
/************************************* VECTORFIELD ****************************************/
class VECTORFIELD {
  private float fNoiseMin, fNoiseMax;    // used for scaling values to white and black
  private float fScaleMult, fSpeedMult;
  private int iOctaves;
  private float fFallOff;
 
  VECTORFIELD(int to, float tf, float ts1, float ts2) {
    init( to, tf, ts1, ts2);
  }
 
  void init(int to, float tf, float ts1, float ts2) {
    float w = 500, h = 500;
    iOctaves = to;
    fFallOff = tf;