Our very own Jess Louwagie and former employee Tim Bramer both made an appearance on Robert Hodgin’s blog - the conference’s closing speaker.

See for yourself here - and be sure to check out some of Robert’s amazing Processing experiments while you’re there. (Thanks for the inspiration Robert - Amazing presentation!)

I had the opportunity to attend Flashbelt again this year. And it was awesome.

This year’s highlight was seeing Jared Tarbell speak again, who’s done amazing work in both Processing and Flash, and is a the co-founder of Etsy, an excellent marketplace for all things handmade! For those who have kids, or like wearing really small clothing, be sure to check out Orange Rhino for some sweet threads from our very own Jess Louwagie.

Jared’s session once again left me speechless. The work was refined and elegant, the music fitting, and the presentation seamless. What inspired me the most of about these speakers, however, was not just their work. It was how approachable they all were. And how apparent it was that their work was fueled by curiosity; a willingness to make mistakes and a stubbornness not to give up.

One of Jared’s pieces that caught my eye was a series renderings that used Perlin Noise to generate forms resembling an iris (of the eye, not the flower).

While analyzing some of his source code (special thanks to Jared for providing it), and listening to Eric Jordan’s mix, Indigo, it became apparent to me the potential of using BitmapData.perlinNoise() and BitmapData.getPixel() to achieve organic, pseudo-random results.

Read on to see my latest experiments - Click the images to see the full-version. They look better … (more…)

One of the key speakers this year at Flashbelt is Processing superstar Robert Hodgin. Processing is an open source programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) that aims to serve as a ‘digital sketchbook’ - used by artists and programmers to create complex visuals, animations and image manipulations.

Former Flashbelt speaker and colleague Nick Longtin recently suggested I give Processing a try. That it was ‘right up my alley’.

I think he was right. Very similar to ActionScript, but with a simplified syntax. Check it out:

ActionScript
var blur:BlurFilter = new BlurFilter(10, 10, 2);
myLogo.filters = [blur];

Processing
filter(BLUR, 1);
image(myLogo);

…. although, you could simplify the ActionScript to
myLogo.filters = [new BlurFilter()];

Here are some of the results from my first Processing experiment (more examples in the rest of the article):

More examples: (more…)

I helped a friend move some furniture this weekend. Up at 7:00 am! Earliest I’ve been up on a Saturday in several months.

Reed DeLapp spotted quite the photo opportunity near the IKEA furniture pick-up, and his iPhone came to the rescue. The quality of iPhone and Treo photos is quite impressive. I don’t think I would even attempt a photo like this with my Motorola Razr, and when these photo opps com along, it’s nice to be prepared (ask Nick Longtin if you’re not convinced).

Check out this tool!

I had every intention of using my recently released SoundData class in an experiment with Papervision3D. I got pretty far: Picked out a good Armin Van Buuren track, had an interesting animation started; just hadn’t added the code to respond to the sound spectrum.

Unfortunately, once I loose a little momentum on one of these side projects, the likelihood of a bigger, better experiment stealing it’s lunch money gets pretty high. I grew rather attached to this latest experiment and, despite it’s somewhat ‘incompleteness’, I wanted to share it anyways.

Special thanks to Seb Lee-Delisle for the inspiration and all his particle work on Papervision3D!

Here’s the experiment. Enjoy! (there are several colors and speeds… so if you don’t like what you get on the first pass… refresh the page

I tend to be a very thorough and detail-oriented person… at least I hope so (there are other words for it, but we’ll leave it at that). So naturally, when I’m writing code - whether it’s xhtml, CSS, ActionScript etc - I try and keep things neat, clean and easy to read. I indent like it’s going out of style, I strive for consistent naming conventions, and I use descriptive variable and function names.

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In an effort to simplify audio visualization experiments with ActionScript 3.0, I’ve developed a SoundData class. The class’s main attraction is centered around the flash.media.SoundMixer.computeSpectrum() method, but it also provides additional control over playback, including startSound(), stopSound() and toggle() methods. The class also allows manipulation over volume and panning.

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I realize it’s been a while since my last flash experiment covering Audio Visualization with ActionScript… but fear not - I haven’t been taking a break. Very much the contrary

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Last week, Adobe officially announced the release of AIR - Adobe Integrated Runtime. My December post on the power and integration of AIR only scratched the surface of what it is capable. In fact, it may have only tilted some heads and failed to communicate the potential of the new technology…

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As many of you know, I’ve been spending a bit of my time exploring the cool features in ActionScript 3.0 - some new, some not. Lately, I’ve been intrigued by the SoundMixer class which has a special method, computeSpectrum(), that essentially takes a snapshot of the wave of a streaming sound (or an embeded sound, but I’m talkin’ 100% code here)…

The finer details quickly boil down to binary data, but the power of this is the potential to create audio-powered animations in Flash.

After a refresher in Trigonometry, some tortellini, and a late night (or early morning), I’m pleased to present latest ActionScript 3 experiment!

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