Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Processing 1.0 (BETA)

This needs to added to any discourse about physical computing. Processing can be used to interface between many disparate systems of languages: i.e. serial input (Basic/Pix) to MAX/MXP and Jitter, to Python, to Flash. It can output video, complex mathematical shapes, sounds, music, and do just about anything java can do.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Chaos = Order: WUSTL physicists make baffling discovery

Sometimes it takes scientists forever to figure out stuff. Norm White was talking about this when he was explaining the artwork that used AC motors that didn't have the conditioning circuit, or whatever it was called. They lost all torque and could reverse direction very easily. With a series of several of them, arranged in order, they would bounce off of each other until the system would reach an ordered equilibrium, where none of them would hit each other any more.

It would be really interesting to create a flash maquette to simulate this, then introduce random or changing variables to mix it up.