This weekend I set up a new Painting With Light audio/visual installation at Watermans Arts Centre in London using the new audio playback features in the 1.5 beta.
I also ran a workshop with Exploring Senses through a Brighton Digital Festival Education Award for thirty 13-19 year olds who hacked toys, built a cardboard city for them, created animations about them, and finally used Painting With Light to bring everything together into a digital metropolis! And all in just 7 hours!
And finally, I was featured on BBC News 24 and BBC Global World News talking about the My Robot Companion art project that I’ve been working on in collaboration with Anna Dumitriu as part of my ongoing artist residency at the University of Hertfordshire.
The second 1.5 beta is now available for testing. Only for Windows at the moment as I’ve just moved house and I forgot where I put the power lead for the Mac monitor…
This update features some very exciting new features and improvements to the editing environment:
NEW: Audio playback!
NEW: Layer mask editor!
NEW: Reworked layer blending with 24 new modes!
NEW: Drag textures and brushes onto shapes in the work area
NEW: Duplicate selected shape by pressing Ctrl+D
NEW: Delete selected shape by pressing Delete
NEW: Switch to and from edit mode by pressing Space
Alex May and Exploring Senses will work with young people to design and construct a stunning cardboard cityscape bringing it to life with video mapped projections using May’s accessible software Painting with Light, and populating it with ‘toy hack citizens’.
The event is curated and hosted by Phoenix Brighton. May is an internationally known digital artist working with code and video mapping technologies. Exploring Senses are a not-for profit community arts organisation based in Brighton, who explore learning creatively through play, and working with local communities and young people. Phoenix Brighton is the largest artist led space in the South East and known for creating high quality education activities and exhibitions
Young People’s Workshop
The young people’s workshop is free and open to a limited number of participants aged between 13 and 19. It runs 7:00-9:00pm on Friday 18th September 2015 and 1:00-5:00pm on Saturday 19th September 2015 and participants may attend either or both sessions. Please book via eventbrite to join the workshop sessions and provide a contact phone number and name for the parent guardian.
The event is supported by a Brighton Digital Festival Education Award and is part of Phoenix Brighton’s flagship Artistic Learning Programme.
Public Opening Event
The final installation will be open to the public from 6-9pm on Saturday 19th September 2015. All welcome, no need to book.
Last time we had so many people sign up I had to add an extra date, so even though it’s a while off, do please book up and we can schedule further dates if necessary.
As this is a beta, I haven’t written up the Sequencer plugin just yet, but here’s some basic instructions.
The sequencer automates switching between textures. This can be done manually (by double-clicking on column headers and individual textures) or automated based on time duration or number of times the texture has been played.
Open the plugin window via the Windows Menu -> Sequencer
Click on Texture: Add to add a new texture
Click on Column: Add to add a new column
Drag textures from the Textures window to the rows and columns of the sequencer
Select a sequencer texture by clicking on the header where it says ‘Tex 1’, ‘Tex 2’, etc…
Draw with the normal drawing tools
Rewind Action
When a texture is activated, you can have it:
Just play normally, as though you’d selected it manually
Rewind to the beginning, if it isn’t currently being used on any other shape
Always rewind it
Exit Action
When a texture has finished playing (reaching either its set duration or play count) you can have it do the following actions:
Nothing
Clear – removes the current texture
Jump to next – advances the current texture to the next column (or wraps around to the first column)
Jump to previous – moves the current texture to the previous column (or wraps around to the last column)
Jump to random – jumps to a random column
Jump to column – jumps to a specific column (use the drop-down underneath the action to choose the column)
There are also options for controlling all the rows at the same time. The ‘All to …’ actions do the same actions as above but for all textures.
Other Controls
Double-click on the column header to change all the textures to that column
Double-click on a texture to activate it
Select one or more cell with the mouse and change the duration and/or play count
If you set the duration to 4.5 (for instance) the selected textures will play for 4.5 seconds and then perform the action.
If you set the play count to 0 (zero) the texture will loop infinitely. If you set it to 1 it will play once and then perform the action.
Select one or more cells and click on the Clear button to remove those textures
There was an unexpected change in the ecommerce software that Painting With Light uses to control its registration resulting in licences being made invalid.
NEW: Edit Tool that can move any shape (including Brush and Roller) and edit shapes by double clicking on them
NEW: Mesh subdivision supports linear and bezier interpolation
CHANGE: Vertex mapping is now supported on Bezier, Polygon, and all line tools
CHANGE: Using the mouse wheel, you can now zoom out even further
FIX: Cursor wasn’t always hidden when mouse left the window
FIX: The mapping window wasn’t handling output rotation properly
FIX: The registration system broke due to a change in the ecommerce software