projects
In my spare time, I like creative coding projects, often with webcam
interactions and music creation themes. The code for these projects can
be seen here.
The code itself, unless otherwise noted, is MIT licensed.
I keep a running list of random/bad/maybe-interesting?? project
ideas: todo
live projects you can
check out right now:
- cam-seq: this tool lets you assign points on
your webcam feed to particular notes and synthesizer patches. Then when
the pixels at those points change, a note gets triggered. Current fun
ideas using this: point a camera at trainlines, get a song when the
train arrives; build a “visual instrument” using motors, papercraft,
etc, and point the webcam at it; write a song using pieces of confetti
sitting on a turntable that’s being watched by the webcam.
- gene-synth: this is a page that lets you
“breed” synthesizer patches. All the synthesizer patches you click on
get added to a pool that gets recombinated into a batch of new
synthesizers using a basic genetic algorithm. During evolution, many
patches “die” (become silent) or become unlistenable.
- some webcam toys: I’m fascinated by the
mindset shift that comes about when you’re mirrored by an interface.
This is an area tread by many artists - Daniel Rozin in
particular is an inspiration. But many works treat the mirror as merely
an output, and require complex, fragile, hardware. Our webcams and
screens are a powerful way to build a mirroring experience, and capable
too of using our images as in input.
- hark: a literature visualizer.
- this is a little script that visualizes recurring 4/5/6-word phrases
in a given piece of literature. Some public domain text is included as
an example.
- psg: python site
generator
- this is the primary tool used to build this site, and I built it
specifically to be the minimum viable site generator.
It has just two dependencies, runs anywhere Python and Pandoc can, and
requires no real “installation” - it’s just a script. It’s designed to
do just one thing and do it well, so it fits neatly into the mosaic of
little tools I write for my own purposes.
- There are a few additional scripts tracked alongside the website
source itself for things like backing-up-and-resizing images and
generating the page sitemap, but
psg is the biggest
part.
- pyplot: for poking
at vintage plotters
- this is a small utility I wrote for feeding larger HPGL files into
vintage plotters with limited buffer size. It was inspired/based on
chunker, which is part of Wesley’s
plotter-tools
- p5.js experimenting:
- particle-audio-viz
- At the Recurse Center, I occasionally run a creative coding session,
in which attendees spend 90 minutes programming on a selected prompt.
This project was made by me and Hannah
Robertson, and represents the current audio input visually. Allow
microphone access and drag your mouse across the canvas while making
noises to see it work.
- colorworm!!
- colordrops
- In building a regular creative practice, I’ve been trying to churn
out more little unfinished pieces. colordrops is one.
- These little colorful circles seem to induce a playful mood for most
people. This one is not as interactive as colorworm, which means it
doesn’t quite get you into the “zone” the way colorworm does. It also
isn’t particularly mobile friendly, as it relies on keyboard input.
- snow-hands: this is a little project I put
together for a holiday event. The idea is to set it up on a projector,
and point a webcam at the projector setup, so that the snowflakes can
follow your hands in real time. To test it out, just open the page,
click the screen, and once you’ve allowed webcam access just slowly wave
your hands within view of the webcam.