Still As Life

I had an assignment due on Monday for KKB210: Computational Arts 1, where I had to create 3 computational art works. This has kept me pretty busy over the past week or so, especially since I had another assignment due on Tuesday, just a 1500-1800 word essay fortunately, so it didn’t take up too much time.

For full details on everything I’ve done for this assignment, have a look at my computational arts blog. I’ve learned a lot about various programming environments and languages in relation to computational arts and live-coding. In particular, I’ve found the Processing Development Environment and Quartz Composer quite interesting and fun to work with. Of course, Quartz Composer isn’t a programming environment, but a patching tool.

I have always been particularly interested in fractals and other forms of digital art, so the computational arts subjects at uni were particularly appealing to me, and thus far have been exactly what I was looking for.

I have made a few fractal animations previously, including one for my NSW Higher School Certificate that I synced up with music. On my second fractal animation, I created the music for it myself instead of using an existing piece. Using Quartz Composer and Processing, I am able to make very similar effects, though not fractals, and have them render and animate in real-time. Two of my artworks for KKB210 are actually live rendered animations based on audio input. You can have a look at them here and here. They are both available under feel free to edit them, redistribute them etc, just take note that it is an attribution, non-commercial, share-a-like license (full details are available on http://matthewbrown.net.au), so you do have say where you got it from if you are re-distributing it.

Now, while I am a novice at the whole live-rendered animations to music and the like, I am happy to do some for events where it is appropriate. Let me know at matt at stillaslife dot com.

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All the way back in the start of March, I wrote about a new blog I was working on for my Computational Arts subject this semester, KKB210.

It is located at matthewbrown.net.au and as you may have noticed, the website has been live for a few weeks now. I hadn’t actually posted anything until last week, but as the blog is part of an assessment that is due in a couple of weeks, as well as being part of our final assessment due at the end of the semester, it will have a lot more going up on it soon.

Unfortunately I am currently unable to use Wordpress 2.5 for it as we are required to use a couple of plug-ins which aren’t completely compatible with 2.5 yet.

Hopefully I’ll be able to upgrade it soon as 2.5’s media library would be very useful for this particular blog.

What do you think of the design? It is intentionally simple, just because there is no reason to do a complex design. Once I get some computational works done from this subject, I may use some in the design, but at this stage theres nothing to include.

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I received an email a few days ago from Kel, of “The Travelling So & So’s”, who performed on March 16 at the Defusion party. The email was in response to my perception of what had happened on the night and cleared up some misconceptions. She clarified that it was in fact them that was still setting up late and not the Tricktronix.

To start off with, I would like to apologise for some of my comments. I was mistaken in my understanding that they turned up late. Kel let me know that they arrived at 6pm, an hour and 15 minutes before they were due to start. As a musician myself, I would have preferred to be earlier if I was performing, in saying that though, an hour and 15 should be plenty of time to get setup and have a warm up, assuming that the situation is as promised.

It seems the lack of organisation in regards to the live bands was caused by a lack of space for the drum kit and having to figure out an alternative placement for it, and from the organisers telling them that there would be certain equipment available, which was not there, such as PA speakers, microphones, and microphone stands. So they were not expecting to need to bring these things and had to chase it all up at the last minute. This is why people were arriving late with music gear.

So, I would like to apologise for my conclusion and statements regarding these events and the disorganisation of “The Travelling So & So’s”.

Kel also noted my comments about the large amount of feedback, and I may have misunderstood, but also indicated that I thought their musicianship was bad.

I apologise if it came across this way. As I said previously “They were all good musicians and the lead singer had a great voice…” Being a bass player myself, I am rather jealous that the bass player of “The Travelling So & So’s” gets to jam and play music with such a talented group of musicians.

My main problem with the music was, and still is, that the mix was bad and detracted from the otherwise good musicianship. Yes, I understand a room that is literally a cement box is hard to get a good sound from, I have played in similar environments and am well aware of that. However, that does not change that the vocals were far quieter than the instruments. I could hear maybe half of the vocals, and understand maybe half of that again. I understand that during the warm up, vocals were being improvised and that’s cool, it’s a pity it took two songs before the increasing amounts of feedback from the louder vocals (which were still way too quiet) was fixed.

I am glad to hear that the problems got sorted out in the end. Though it is a pity it wasn’t sooner or it could have been a much better night for myself and all the others that left by 10pm. Kudos to “The Travelling So & So’s” for taking it on themselves to organise the missing equipment and allowing the other bands to use it as well.

Thanks for taking the time to correct my misconceptions and let me know what actually happened.

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Defusion on the 16th of March was an interesting night.

Defusion was the closing party for the Fusion Festival that ran from the 12th until the 16th.

I didn’t attend any of the festival events except for Infusion (the opening party), and Defusion, as I had classes at the times of things I was interested in. I had one of my fractal animations displayed at Infusion, and at Defusion I had a series of fractal prints displayed.

I went to Defusion with Rhi, and I also invited Liza and Evan since Liza actually goes to the University of Queensland and knew where the Cement Box theatre is.

More after the jump.

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It’s times like these that I am especially glad I have already upgraded my computer.

I have been re-rendering a bunch of fractals for print at 300 dpi on A0 and A2 sized paper. Even on the new computer, in order to get them done in time to have the high res images ready for printing for the exhibition I have had to cut the quality down compared to what I usually do them at. I’m looking at 15 hours on average for a fractal that is roughly half the quality of my normal renders, though once printed this won’t be so noticeable. This also results in around 3gb of RAM being used at any one time for the render. This is for A0. A2 I am averaging around 5 hours at half the quality with around 1 gb of RAM being used at any one time.

I’m not game to try and A0 on the old computer at all. I have had an A2 size one rendering though, it has an estimated render time of 40 hours at the same quality level as on the new computer, just so you have a comparison. I have also had to limit the RAM usage on the old computer since it only has 1gb of RAM. This means that instead of rendering the entire fractal, it will render it in 5 blocks which is slower, but it’s the only way I can do it on the old one.

Rendering A0 fractals on the new computer does render it virtually useless. While they on average use 3gb of the available RAM, they push the overall RAM usage up to an average of 98%, even when I close down the majority of things. Thus it is pretty pointless to even try to do anything else on it. Since I have limited the RAM usage on the old computer, it is still usable, but since I’m not rendering anything on the laptop, it doesn’t matter and I may as well let Apophysis have as much of the CPU time as possible.

While my laptop should do a reasonable job of rendering the fractals, since it is roughly half as powerful as Quadzilla (my Macbook Pro is a Core 2 Duo with 2gb of RAM, Quadzilla is a Core 2 Quad with 4gb of RAM), but I need the laptop to be usable all the time for uni and so on.

I would love to render all my fractals at these resolutions, but also at the quality I normally do them at. I’m thinking I’ll pick up another 4gb of RAM soon, though probably not for another fortnight or so since I have rent next weekend and the prints of these fractals are going to cost $56 each. If I get the extra RAM, that should make the computer usable whilst rendering, which means that it will be a lot easier for me to do them like this. Until then though, I could just limit the RAM usage to half and it should also be fine. I’ll just have to have a play around with it once these ones for the exhibition are done.

For those who have only seen my first fractal animation, the one I will be showing on Wednesday is a newer one that I did around September 2007. I also did the audio track for this one.

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