An Entire Video, Created With Code
The technique is called Processing. The artist is Radiohead. The code jockey is Robert Hodgin, and he's just attained guest speaker status at my dream dinner party.
Processing is an open-source computer programming language and environment, born out of the Aesthetics and Computation Group inside the MIT Media Lab. Because it is open-source, Processing is free for download and use, and is an ever-evolving platform upon which artists, programmers, teachers, students, researchers and hobbyists can produce and explore images, animation and interaction.
This video is 100% code. Meaning, once everything was set, he hit play. The music dictated the animation COMPLETELY. If you feel brave, read a little about his process here.
Enjoy.
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© 2008 Capstrat
What a beautiful thing. Write the program, point the program at a MP3 file, and execute the program. All of it's built in parameters and randomness spring to life to create art.
But then again... I can turn on iTunes and see a visual display that moves and changes to the music. When do music-driven visualizers become art?
Obviously this visualization was created for this song. And it's obvious that this program is 1000 times more sophisticated than the visualizer built into iTunes. But would this one still be art if I rigged it up to iTunes to play any song? Does context and reuse change the program or devalue it?
Beautiful. Truly amazing.
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