I spoke for a bit about Cinder, it’s basic structure, and went into a bit more detail on how the timeline works. You can look at an edited version of the slide deck. I removed the images of other people’s work (just in case), and instead just provide links to their sites, which you should visit. The slides probably won’t make a ton of sense without someone talking over them to pull it together, but there are code snippets which may be useful to people getting started with Cinder.

• Contributing Code Process.

  Useful overview of git commands for creating patches and submitting pull requests on github.

• Callback sample.

  Shows how to use the callback manager for your own custom events.

• vector<Particle> versus vector<Particle*>.

  Insight into memory layout and management.

• Cinder Syphon.

  An amazing API for cross-application realtime graphics.

• Visual C++ 2010 linking.

  Because I come from XCode.

• Using std::thread.

  A good demo of thread use in a c++ application.

• Vbo Custom Attributes.

  Some discussion of how to provide a useful abstraction to the OpenGL structure.

• Boost::filesystem.

  Simple tutorial for basic filesystem use.

On Monday, I spent the day at Wall Street on Demand in Boulder, CO. I was invited by Christo Allegra to talk about my work and give a brief workshop on the Cinder framework. The talk went well, and I liked presenting in the casual environment of the office; rocking chairs, couches, and cups of tea. My presentation was titled “Sampled landscapes, synthetic terrain” which seems to have gone over well enough.

WSOD has a relationship with RMCAD, and they provided design mentors for students in an their interaction design course this semester. The semester happens to have recently ended, so I also participated as a guest reviewer for their final presentations on Monday. I was impressed by the high quality of the student presentations. The solutions to the problems they defined were fun and displayed well.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t in the area long enough for a proper hike. I did get to go for a brief walk about a reservoir to start my day, though.

I read Holy Land over the past few days while riding the bus to UCLA. Holy Land is a series of glimpses into suburban life and its history, divided up into segments as orderly and mysterious as rows upon rows of houses. The development of LA’s suburbs, the stories of people who stand out, and the ritual of its daily life, are told in fascinating, honest prose. It’s neither a work of praise or condemnation, and highly recommended.

Pete Hawkes designed the postcard (and poster). I wrote a little script that searched twitter for the phrase “I am here now” and saved the results in a file. For a preview of the show, visit the exhibition website.

The opening reception is Thursday, October 14 from 5—8pm.

Becky and I just got back from a trip through some of the NPS administered lands in Southern Utah. We camped our way from Arches to Zion. One of the really great things was being able to see the stars so clearly at night. Of the parks we visited, Natural Bridges and Bryce Canyon had the darkest night skies.

You can see more photos of the night sky on flickr.

I just returned from a week at Anderson Ranch, where I took a printmaking workshop with Jennifer Ghormley. The workshop was a lot of fun, and the overall experience of being at the Ranch was a gift. I met many amazing people, and having a great space to work in and try out ideas made it nearly impossible to sleep during the week. Much more will come out of this once I have the time to unpack and build on the experience.

Snapshots are going up in the ranch photo set.

Written Images is an excellent project in generative bookmaking initiated by Martin Fuchs. He has an open call-for-entries to collect image-making applications. The site copy explains the project’s ambition:

Written Images; a project in contemporary generative print design and art. Its final products will be a book that presents programmed images by various artists. Each print in process will be calculated individually – which makes every single book unique.

I’m making my submissions using Cinder so I can get more comfortable with c++ and the XCode environment. To make my life easier, I added a WrittenImages project template to the excellent TinderBox tool that comes with Cinder. Get the template by either downloading my version of TinderBox (which contains the template), or checking it out on github. You can also look at an example of code generated by the template.

The template sets up your application to receive command-line arguments and handle batch-rendering of files to the provided paths. To use it, open up TinderBox and create a new project. Your settings should be: Target: Basic App, Template: WrittenImages. I think the code inside is pretty self-explanatory for use. To pass arguments to your application in the command-line (Assuming you named your project Sample, which you probably didn’t), do the following:

$ Sample.app/Contents/MacOS/Sample ./more.png ./like.png ./this.png

The reason for the longish path to your application is that the binary is actually in an application bundle. The Sample.app/ is just a directory, and to pass arguments to the application we need to call the executable part directly.

The written images deadline was just extended to July 15, so you still have a chance to make a submission.

Download TinderBox with the WrittenImages template.

Concrete Audio:

Also, a few months ago, Erkki invited some music students over to our studio. Together we performed John White’s Drinking and Hooting Machine. I invite you to listen to a selection from that performance. The piece has a score based on each person’s phone number, but the performance is flexible as it is up to each performer to decide how long each tone will be and how large a drink they will take.

Drinking and Hooting Machine:

Particularly challenging while reading were the passages about the recent success of conservationists in the Gulf of Mexico in creating habitat for oysters (The book was published in late 2009). We are hurtling past the critical point where we need to evaluate how we are shaping the world. Our farms produce more than food, and our factories produce more than products. They create ecologies. At present, they aren’t ecologies which we fit into. The Living Shore presents a past shoreline ecology which we likely cannot return to. Hopefully we will be able to create something similarly robust.