Over the summer i have been experimenting with the design of different world structures for an interactive game based on generative/emergent systems. I’ve basically implemented three different spacial formats, exploring different aspects of scale/dimension and extendability. Unfortunately, at present none of the systems seems to fulfil the requirements I have for a base structural format. […]
In a continuation of my Butterflies workshop I teamed up with Lovebytes to produce a region-wide butterfly design project. I updated the software to keep track of over 1400 butterflies that were created in 13 school workshops across South Yorkshire. Laura Mundy and Janet Jennings ran the workshops, producing a vast database of butterflies that […]
To accompany the installation of avseq at phoenix square I was invited to do a performance in the cinema lounge. I took this as an opportunity to try out a new peice of work I had been trinkering with for a while. My generative audio sets have traditionally been written and run as PD patches, […]
Avseq is now showing at Phoenix Square in Leicester. This is an installation version of a game I have been working on for a while now. The short description reads as follows.
“Avseq is an interactive installation that takes the form of an abstract computer game. The player must capture and link sound objects together into […]
I recently asked a question on the shmups forum, how many games have a ‘perfect score’. I was referring of course to shmups, but the question could apply to many games. Snooker has a perfect score, 147 achieved by potting all 15 reds with 15 blacks for 120 points then all six colours for a […]
Artists Daniel Waillis and Davina Drummond develop community art projects for cultural institutions like Tate and southbank centre. Not a Bad World, Is It? was a collaboration with 20 young people from north, south, east and west London to make a new piece of artwork to be projected on to the side of The […]
I’ve been playing with coding my own simple spring/chain type physics for a game idea. My application generates a series of ‘genetically grown’ insect-wormlike creatures that then swim around exhibiting nice elastic spring type animation. The structure of their ‘bones’ is similar to the 3d skeleton builder i wrote, using a bilateral spine model in […]
A year or so ago I wrote a game in C++/OpenGL as part of a little prototyping experiment we ran in the 8453 collective. My entry was a greyscale pixel-art platform puzzler. The gameplay was sort of a cross between chu chu rocket and lemmings. The general flow and interaction was really quite fun and […]
I have recently been working with Southbank Centre London, in collboration with Bernadette Roberts and Gaia Nova to produce large scale generative animations for their multiprojector screen setup in the festival hall. I wrote an interactive animation program using C++/openframeworks that would generate a large range of minimalist and hypnotic animations using simple geometric forms […]
I thought it would be useful to compile a short list of texts I wrote for my “Thinking games” blog. These peices were produced as part of the output of my independent research supported by the Huddersfield DRU ( a joint venture between the University and The media centre). Unfortunately, during the consolidation of several […]
Untitled Application is an interactive sound peice comissioned by MAAP and SAM for the Leeds Expo. Its an open air work hosted on one of the BBCs ‘big screens’, a range of large outdoor LCD displays in major cities of the UK. The peice itself was produced for the LEEDs Expo, a festival of sound […]
Another quick commercial break. In the last few months I’ve been working along with odessadesign on a microsite for the V&A museum for their current exhibition Telling Tales. We were really pleased to be chosen (up against some good competition) and we managed to incorporate some intriguing navigation ideas and a fun interactive exquisite corpse […]
I am generaly not a huge fan of scripting languages. I tend to view everything except C/++ as window dressing that isn’t ‘hardcore’ enough. While I’m aware that this is a ridiculous stance I just can’t help myself scoffing when a new API emerges with some custom scripting language attached that allows us to send […]
I’ve always been interested in the relationship between gameplay and musical performance. Theres a remarkable structural similarity between certain game systems/mechanics and compositional ones. There is also a risk/reward/challenge aspect that is core to both practices. Anyway, for a short talk I took part in for the Leeds Evolution Festival I wrote a quick augmented […]
AudioPool is a project based around a selfsequencing pool of sounds and the representation of those sounds in 2d space. Although this is a fairly old project, Im slowly porting items over from my old website and i thought this deserved a copy. (dont ask if it fails to run, it was written on windowsME!)
The […]
I was asked by the South Bank Centre to work with a childrens workshop group who making papercraft butterflies. Initially they wanted a simple slideshow of the finished butterflies, I suggested a more dynamic method of presentation that would make the childrens work ‘come to life’ in a more exciting way.
To achieve this I […]
I’ve been playing with the quilting nine-block pattern generator idea to create some flower heads. The heads are made out of a random selectin of predefined pixel leaves/petals (thanks alison!). And then arranged according to the nine-block pattern rules. The program actually builds a new OpenGL texture and then writes a 16×16 grid of patterns […]
More shader experiments
This is a port of a port of paul bourkes supershape formula. I originally implemented this in straight code in C++ but after getting my head around how it actualy works (essentially a 3 spirograph function) I decided it would be better run as a shader (since its essentially another parametric surface).
The shader […]
More shader experiments
This is a realtively simple implementation of a curve vertexshader, again this is based on a vvvv curve shader by woei.
The shader transforms a strip-grid via a series of curve ‘handles’ through 3d space. You can control parameters such as twist, curve strength and bias etc. The resulting polys are shaded via directional […]
More shader experiments.
This version is again adapted from the vvvv source, which is a modification of original NVIDIA code by desaxismundi.
Its a slightly more complex shader as it transforms a grid to a sphere whihc is then displaced by interpolated perlin noise. The resulting vertices are also used to calculate refraction/reflection angles for a cube […]