A Brave New World

So I've frightened myself a little, as far as I've come as a graphic designer in this brief alone there still so much I've realised I want to learn. The data bending and corruption has kind of lead me to gain a real understanding of how to process data and source codes, and the possibilities out there are endless. Through the help of Mike, James and Samantha Jones, I have been put on to several new pieces of software. The least daunting is Quartz Composer, a Mac developer program that contains all of a Mac OSX's processing capabilites. It works through source code as well as a manual way of creating, manipulating and triggering data in so many different forms. Much of the software you see on shelves for Mac's is created using Quartz. I'm really excited about learning to get to grips with the endless possibilities it provides.



As well as this James and Mike have are in the process of setting up Jitter for me on a computer in the AV dept. A 3D and real time video processing software, using MAX coding language. The evidence of things you can create through MAX/MSP literally gets my heart rate pounding (I know, I'm a geek).


(A custom patch built by Autechre)

Finally, and the one I've started to get stuck into, processing here's an example of my first ever full coding language-generated visual...



Really unimpressive I know, but its got me pretty excited. It was weirdly satisfying typing for a while - which is visually pretty mundane - then clicking to reveal a little image. My guide so far had been this huge encyclopedia of the history, processes and theories surrounding the program.





I'm obviously at very basic stages and didn't expect to have anything to exciting before the deadline but Processing seems to be an amazing digital environment for me to begin to truly understand data and coding language. I really feel like I've taken a baby step into a whole new world.