Freedom! I cry out for you!

Or: I have quit my day-job to pursue my own personal carrier. Both as an artist as a freelance developer for artists, theater as a teacher. So now I am officially unemployed and seeking for assignments.

But to kill the time I have decided to fix up the explanation of the printing from Max/MSP on Mac OSX and try to make a general patch how to do it. I recently have had a lot of people asking me how to do it, but the instructions I posterd earlier, don't seem to cut it. So time for an update. That post will follow soon.

Furthermore I have finally found the time to start digging into OpenFrameworks, and I must say the results look promising. A bit more memory and pointer management, but all is well that ends well.

But now: finishing my last days at IJsfontein.

Images of everyday life that broach wonderful themes

In the large movement everyday life gets subtitled. The audience sits in a small movie theater and see the outside world as if it were a film. Random passersby play the tragic lead role. The world stops and the lonely individuals engage in a jointed choreography.

A theatre-concept by Dries Verhoeven for Theater Festival Boulevard 2006. In 2009 the show was recreated with new software on new locations.

Sylvain created the software which included the simultaneous recording an playback of the outside world and choreographing unknowing passerby by manipulating the live-images from the world outside the theater.

Just saw this old video of mine on youtube again. More than a year ago and still haven't found the time to finish it. But still pretty cool. It is based on the concept of a 'video cube' through which you rotate (with the metal knob i am holding in this case) your viewport. The video is live btw, only the music is added.

Anyone know any good exhibition spaces, once it is finished?

The most recent changes:

The biggest changes in the months prior to release 1.0 are as follows:

• Libraries – All libraries must be placed in a folder named "libraries", inside the sketchbook folder. Do not use the main "libraries" directory in the Processing distribution, as it is reserved for the core libraries, and is not visible on Mac OS X.
• XML – The XML library is now included by default, so you won't find it in the Import Library menu anymore. In addition, the XML library since 0135 has been greatly improved, making it compatible with far more documents.
• Processing.app – The Mac OS X release of Processing is now a single .app file, more befitting an OS X application.
• Processing.exe – The Windows release has a new launcher based on launch4j. Unfortunately, some machines have a problem with the new launcher that we haven't been able to track down. If you have trouble, please help us find the problem. PDE files are also now double-clickable on Windows.
• OpenGL – All OpenGL sketches now use 2x full screen anti-aliasing. This means that these sketches are always smooth, and the smooth() and noSmooth() commands are ignored. To return to the behavior found in the beta releases, see the hint() reference.
• P2D and P3D – The P2D renderer has returned (see the size() reference) and smoothing is now enabled for both P2D and P3D. Smoothing support is unfortunately incomplete, however, and sometimes thin lines can be seen inside shapes. This is a very high priority bug to be fixed in a future release.
• Candy and PShape – The Candy SVG library has been merged into the core, which brings along a new loadShape() command and a new PShape object. The special powers of PShape will be rolled out in future releases. For the time being, loadShape() works best with the default renderer (JAVA2D). Complex shapes will often appear jagged or not at all when rendered with P2D, P3D, and OPENGL. We've also added better support for SVG files created with Inkscape.
• PVector – We've added a new class called PVector, which is a simple three-dimensional vector (also known as point or tuple) class. This is useful for storing point data, or operations on 3D points.
• Tools – A new Tools API has been created for developers who want to contribute code that extends the Processing Development Environment in some fashion. Let your creativity flow with fantastical contributions like "Color Selector 2.0", "ROT13 Code Mangler", and "I Am Rich". Visit the developer page on tools for more information. Similar to libraries, tools are installed in a folder of the same name within your sketchbook folder.
• Asynchronouse Images – Big JPEGs and small pipes? We've added a new requestImage() that loads an image in the background so that your sketch doesn't freeze when loading lots of large images over a slow connection.
• Present – Present mode (full screen) is handled differently. When run inside the PDE, only Mac OS X uses exclusive mode with Present. Windows and Linux just do full screen windows. When run outside the PDE, all three simply create an undecorated window the size of the entire screen, and on the Mac, an option is added to the Info.plist file to hide the dock and menubar (since that cannot be done programatically from Java).
• Compiler – We've removed the old Jikes compiler and are now using another. We've also tried hard to improve the quality of error messages, though some are still real gems that invoke the complaints of mainframe computers in 1970s films.
• Internationalization – For better internationalization support, we've changed to UTF-8 encoding when loading and saving sketches. Sketches that contain non-ASCII characters and were saved with Processing 0140 and earlier may look strange when opened. Garbled text and odd characters may appear where umlauts, cedillas, and Japanese formerly lived. If this happens, use the "Fix Encoding & Reload" option under the Tools menu. This will reload your sketch using the same method as previous versions of Processing, at which point you can re-save it which will write a proper UTF-8 version.

Java – Linux and Windows now inlude Java 6 update 10 with the download. We still don't have support for Java 1.5 syntax yet, but we hope that the performance boosts in Java 6 will help applications run well.

Also the digital tv-channel Nederland-e will broadcast a special about 'Science on Terrorism', including an item and an interview about i am always here. For those without digital television, it will be available on http://www.nederland-e.nl soon. I haven't seen it myself yet, so feel free to laugh.

Yesterday was the 'kick-off' symposium for the Stifo@Sanderg workshop at the Public Library of Amsterdam. A day full of lectures about the current and future state of affairs in the movie industry (although not all lectures were that closely related to film)

Among the speakers was Bruce Sterling (USA) who talked about the possible futures of film (which he pointed out in the end are all already there) and which (if any) will dominate the future. And as a sidenote he would like to see one of his science fiction novels made into a bollywood movie.

Ton Roosendaal (NL) gave some insights into the great open source software Blender, what it does, how it s developed and how they are able to survive without selling the software. He also showed some clips from the latest open source / open content movie Big Buck Bunny and the upcoming game Yo Frankie.

The most impessive speaker of the day was Floris Kaayk (NL) who has already created some very very impressive semi-animated films (The order electrus and Metalosis Maligna). He talked about his process of writing, experimenting and post-production. Very impressive to see such a young person who is able to realize his own dreams. He also gave a short sneak peak of his coming animation, his first one with a budget.

Jan-Bart van Beek (NL) gave a really slick presentation about Killzone 2 and how the develop this and about the filmic qualities of modern games, even comparing (or is that implementing) camera work and angles from real movies.

Anne Helmond (NL) gave a nice presentation about the whole blogging phenomenon. Old stuff for me, but the biggest part of the audience being filmmakers and alike a nice and clear lacture anyways.

Geert Lovink (NL) closed with the presentation of the Video Vortex book. Or so I think, everybody was distracted by the best of YouTube video he played during his presentation. Hard to focus. (hmmm he promised to put up the site, but i can't seem to find it right now)

Nederland het meest afgetapte land ter wereld.

In het kader van de nationale wetenschapsweek organiseert Science Café Leiden, samen met Scheltema, festifal Key of Life, en de faculteit Sociale Wetenschappen (UL) een middag vol informatie, workshops, installaties, fotografie en discussie over terrorisme, beveiliging en privacy. Met o.a. Bob de Graaff, hoogleraar (contra)terrorisme, Chris van 't Hof, RFID specialist Rathenau instituut, Jeanette Groenendaal, regisseur Cocaïne Fabriek, en debatleider Mieke Spaans, Ikon radio.

Hoe ver moet je gaan in terrorismewetgeving? Moeten we onze privacy rechten opgeven voor een gevoel van veiligheid? Blijft beveiligingstechnologie te kraken? Het bestrijden van ongewenste acties lijkt soms haaks te staan op onze behoefte aan bescherming van persoonsgegevens. Hoe we daarmee omgaan is een zaak van iedereen. We hebben er immers allemaal mee te maken.

Currently it has three main features (the free version has only 1): Buttons, Sliders and Multi-Touch. [The slider screen also features buttons and tabs, but i am guessing it is called sliders because these take up most of the screen.]

Anyhow, the multitouch feature is very nice, although it only goes up to 4 fingers (but who needs more) and i had some ghost fingers in there every once in a while. The sliders seem a bit unresponsive still but i am guessing that will be fixed in a next update. But it has never crashed on me so far (which some apps tend to do a lot) and the data seems to arrive almost instant in my patches.

So i can definitly say i will be experimenting with this App alot and might even feature it in the upcoming max/msp course. But most of all: it takes the wind out of my sails for wanting to create an app exactly like this one (but i am still missing some features, so who knows)

We believe in CCTV as an almost absolute truth, an above-human system literally watching over us. It defines a new urban reality. How do we fit in this panopticonal reality and how do we know if we even exist in it? Does the system register our reality or its own? If we are aware of being watched, are we then still a suspect? Are we then still being watched?

I am always here is a video installation by Sylvain Vriens that deals with CCTV and the way it influences our reality. It features a CCTV-system that monitors the room in which it is present. It does this in real-time, showing the events in the room instantaneous. It seems to show an exact copy of our reality. The monitor and camera hang just above door-height and look down on those visiting the room.

I am always here is a seemingly normal CCTV-system. It hangs fairly unnoticed on the wall of the room and most people will walk past without noticing. But once it is noticed and a visitor looks up trying to see himself, he will only see the surrounding room and just a glimpse of his own image quickly fading out. It is as if he views the room as it would look without him being present.

The CCTV-system creates its own reality by filtering out those things that it finds 'uninteresting'. In the case of I am always here it filters out the people who are aware of its existence. CCTV’s preventive powers are claimed to be based upon awareness. A person looking straight into the camera is fully aware of being surveilled and won’t be seen as a possible suspect and is uninteresting from a surveillers point of view.

View on Vimeo.