Creating patterns from mathematics

Over the last few days I’ve been speaking to some Textiles students about pattern, and I mentioned some work I do using maths to generate patterns to create music and images, as well as animations.

The video above was created from a formula built in a program called Artmatic Pro, which isn’t cheap but you can download a demo to have a play with.

There are other tools from the same software company that use maths, including Metasynth which I use to create music – well worth checking out if you’re that way inclined!

The music in the video was composed in Xx, from the same company.

What is Processing?

In her talk on Friday to Level 2 students, Hazel White mentioned a programming language called Processing, a

programming language and environment for people who want to create images, animations, and interactions. Initially developed to serve as a software sketchbook and to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context, Processing also has evolved into a tool for generating finished professional work. Today, there are tens of thousands of students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists who use Processing for learning, prototyping, and production.

(via Processing.org).

It’s a fairly simple language to pick up and then use to create patterns, sketches or animations that can be used in any design discipline, or just for the sheer hell of it. If you’ve never programmed before it’s a good introduction to the topic, though you don’t need to go any deeper than you want. (Ultimately you can use Processing to power external devices if you want to go that far, or you can just watch it draw random patterns on your screen!)

Best of all, it’s completely free. Download the program from Processing.org and try out some of the tutorials or follow the links to some of the examples. There are quite a few books available, from the introductory to the expert. A new one has just been published: Getting Started With Processing, which is about £9 on Amazon.co.uk.

I’d highly recommend dabbling with Processing as a side-line hobby, something to have a go with over the Christmas or Summer holidays to see what you can do.

International App Development Conference & AppJam November 8th – 10th 2010 Dundee

The international App Development Conference and AppJam is coming to Dundee in November:

The event will run  from the 8th to 10th November 2010 in Dundee, Scotland, as part of the week long NEoN Digital Arts Festival.

This key conference will bring together the very best in professional app development from around the North Sea Region.

If you are already an app developer, or someone who is looking to get into app development, this conference is for you – with a program of essential information to get you developing that killer app and connect you with all the people to make it happen!

If the conference itself isn’t your thing, then there’s always the AppJam which sounds quite exciting:

Running parallel to the main conference will be a 48 hour ‘App Jam’ where selected participants will have the challenge of developing and presenting their app concept. Participants will be working together in small, international, multi-discipline teams to develop original ideas and IP with the aim of releasing any new titles developed, and exploiting routes to market immediately after the event.

Get more information at the International App Development Conference & AppJam

New tutorial: Using Word’s Citations Tool to Create Citations and Bibliographies

There’s a new tutorial up – this one will be particularly useful to fourth year students working on their dissertations!

Using Word’s Citations Tool to Create Citations and Bibliographies shows you how to use Word 2007/Word 2008 (PC/Mac) to automatically insert references and bibliographies. Word is really much more useful than most people think and this and other tutorials I’ll post later will show you how to get the best from it.

‘You Gotta See This!’

Rick Curran reviews “You Gotta See This!”, an interesting-looking application for iPhone 4.

It’s a pretty fun app to use to capture some unusual images. You just press the button and it starts to record images as you move around the scene you’re trying to take photos of and then it overlays all the captured images rendered as one big image which can rendered using several themes

via Review: ‘You Gotta See This!’ : Suburbia.

Looks like it might be worth checking out!