radarboy /Projects

These screengrabs are part of a vast pool of sound reactive stuff I’ve been working on over the past year, which is finally getting into a presentable form.

After a long haitus, I completely rebuild the old award winning RBVJ in Processing – but it wasn’t as simple as I anticipated, and it’s still not 100% stable. Once it is I will release the code.

I’m not a programmer, I’m a designer/artist, whatever. However I do enjoy quite a few aspects of programatic design – the fact that code can lead you to unexpected places and taking on a life of it’s own can really surprise you.

I am really most inspired by the visuals of Raster Norton and Ali Demirel, which are pretty close to my own work in both style and substance. I’ve also been thinking plenty about space and I think, along with minimalism, these theme play out a lot in my work. I think the graphics also reflect the way my music production is moving.

I have always believed that club graphics should simple – there is too much noise in the world already – and the simplicity of the graphics allows us to go with the music and find meaning on our own, rather than being shoved down a visual mishmash. Not that these kind of graphics should necessarily be just shown in a club context, but that’s another whole conversation.

The plan is to combine the visuals with my live music/DJ sets – eventually controlling both light and sound through Ableton/OSC/Max.

Soon on a wall/dancefloor in Berlin. And beyond.

Project Links:
Gallery: Here’s the first of a three part set of screengrabs from my work:
http://radarboy.com/george/visuals1.html
Video: (Coming Soon – next week hopefully)

Some technical stuff:
I’ve decided to totally ditch Flash – it is just too verbose, annoying and slow. I actually considered moving completely over to Open Frameworks for speed, but eventually decided Processing was the best bet. Given the strides being made in ProcessingJS – the JavaScript port of Processing, the recent launch of Processing for Andoid and news that Processing 2 will be even better friends with OpenGL. Open Frameworks’ inability to publish on the web was also a clincher. Anyway, I digress.

T-Shirtmaker Fax Edition, May 2007.
Radarboy held an analogue design competition. Rules were simple. Send us a fax and win a t-shirt.

We wish you, your family and friends an extremely happy Christmas and an amazing New Year.

All King Of Africa T-Shirts are on SALE for $2!

Yes, a measly 2 bucks – seriously peeps, Christmas shopping… helloooo! People, mense, china, mfethu, it’s 2-buck-December until stocks last. Buy one, buy all three.

Coming soon. Vol. 4 of Radarboy’s famous TShirtmaker. Watch this space!

A lot of people have been asking for my super-maxi single re-edit of Flash in the Pan’s Midnight Man, that I did for the Midnight Men party. So here we go, all delicious 14 minutes of it:
(Ctrl/Right click to download – 33mb)

Radarboy Midnight Man Re-edit

I know things here have been a bit quiet of late – I’ve been in South Africa sorting my visa issues. But very big things ahead. Say no more. Say no more.

Bike mods in NY.

This started as a Mates Guide for Coney Island. As I was hacking and testing a slideshow for my iPod Touch, I got to thinking how short could I get the loops of audio and still associate an album artwork with it. So this is an experiment using this format.

Download ConeyIsland mp3film here.

I have tested this on an iPod Touch, so I cannot vouch for other media players.

//

Bonus Track!
Here’s a quick how-to… (maintain the song order in iTunes)

Download the zip folder here, unzip, and drop the folder into iTunes. DO NOT drag the files themselves, as iTunes messes up the order. Drag the entire folder into iTunes or to the playlist if you created one.

Another oldish sketch I dug up. The idea was to project it onto a store window, and then a passerby would need to pull open the blinds to see in the store.

It used to be quite processor heavy, so reworked the motion detection code to try and speed it up. By pre-calculating the grid positions on the screen I managed to achieve a significant speed increase.

UPDATE: Just noticed some other places where code can be speeded up. Will update the code when I get time.

View the sketch here.

Here’s the motion detection part of the code:


import processing.video.*;
Capture myCapture;
color newPixel;
color[] prevFrame;
float speed = 10;
float sensitivity = 0.64;
float targetX, targetY, myX, myY, avX, avY;
int cxLoc, cyLoc;
int counter=0;
int totalBlocks=0;
int[] cX= new int[5000];
int[] cY= new int[5000];
// precalculating the grib
void precalc(){
for(int y = 0; y < 30-1; y++){
for(int x = 0; x < 40-1; x++){
cX[counter] = x*(width/40);
cY[counter] = y*(height/30);
counter++ ;
}
}
totalBlocks=counter;
}
void initVid () {
String s = "IIDC FireWire Video";
myCapture = new Capture ( this, width, height, 4);
prevFrame = new color[width*height];
}
void captureEvent ( Capture myCapture ) {
myCapture.read();
}
void motion () {
avX = 0;
avY = 0;
counter = 0;
for(int i = 0; i < totalBlocks; i++){
if(motionTest(i,width/40,height/30)==true){
avX += cX[i];
avY += cY[i];
counter ++;
}
}
if (avY<=0) avY=myY;
if (avX<=0) avX=targetX;
if (avY>0 && avX>0 && counter>0){
targetX=width-avX/counter;
targetY=avY/counter;
}
myY += (targetY-myY)/speed;
myX += (targetX-myX)/speed;
}
boolean motionTest(int j,int tw, int th){
int dc=0; // counter to track number of differences
//print(j);
// ave. out a square
for(int y=0;y for(int x=0;x // int srcPos=((srcY+y)*width)+(srcX+x);
int srcPos=((cY[j]+y)*width)+(cX[j]+x);
// int srcPos=cY[j]*(width)+cX[j];
newPixel = myCapture.pixels[srcPos];
if(abs(red(newPixel)-red(prevFrame[srcPos]))>25) dc++;
prevFrame[srcPos]=newPixel; // update prevFrame w/ current pixel clr
}
}
if(dc>(sensitivity*(tw*th))){ return true; } else{ return false; }
}