So for my final project I made a Guitar Hero-esque controller. The Pure Data patch is relatively simple and doesn’t look terribly exciting so its not shown in the below video. The basic idea behind this project is that you can plug in a basic chord progression from a folder full of audio clips of chords, with one chord set to every one of the five “buttons” on the neck of the guitar. With the ground being placed where you would strum a normal guitar you can easily play along with a song that has a relatively simple chord progression for the rhythm. All in all the controller works well and is quite fun to play with, the only real “problem” being the lack of very high quality audio files for the chords.

So for my final project, I’m thinking of making a virtual guitar of sorts using the MakeyMakey and Pure Data. The idea would be to make something similar to the paper drum controller that we made earlier in class, however instead of using a small piece of paper with buttons, I would make something resembling a small guitar. I’m not 100% sure what I would make it out of (have to look around the apartment for some nice piece of cardboard of something). The idea would be to have a number of preset chords, with the “buttons” being in the place on the neck of the fake guitar where they would be on an actual guitar. I’ll find mp3s of different chords being strummed, or I’ll generate them myself in ableton. Pressing the “chord buttons” will ideally select the given mp3 in pure data, and then strumming, or hitting the “button” placed on the main part of the guitar would play the selected mp3.

For this patch I wanted to take a gif and apply the ability to change the frame depending on where the mouse is on the screen.
After deciding on the gif of the baloon cheetah and antelope chase I decided as far as sounds went, I just wanted a simple beat that had a changeable tempo so it could be set to fit different parts of the gif appropriately.
Ultimately I set the gif and what frame it plays from to the X-axis and the tempo of the beat to the Y-axis.
I had some trouble with my recording software and couldn’t get sound to work, and then youtube wouldn’t even accept the soundless avi I managed to get. So, while I try to figure that out, I’m going to just put a picture here of the patch so you can get an idea of how it works.
http://imgur.com/uvOoX

I found a slightly more fitting sound effect.
I messed around with trying to get another gif but couldn’t for the life of me get one that both fit the project well and work out properly.

I found this piece of interactive art to be incredibly inspiring: http://www.uva.co.uk/work/always-never
The reason this piece is particularly interesting is because it appears interactive while having no moving parts.All of it is completely stationary, yet how the user stands in relation to it they can see different patterns. Because of the three dimensional effect, depending on where the viewer of the piece stand it has potential to create patterns not only with the materials the piece is actually made of, but with the shadows that are created. I am also intrigued by the idea that each triangle is meant to be based off different sun-dail positions, which can lead to some interesting ideas regarding what the piece might mean, or what it might have meant to the creator. I would be interested in seeing a similar piece created virtually that responded to mouse positions as opposed to where the viewer was standing. Whether it was created with a 3D program, or just created using pixels, the idea has potential to create something very fun to look at and play with. I would also be interested in seeing color patters on a piece like this. In the original every triangle shares the same pale color. If color was introduced, it could ever create a greater variety of what people might see from different angles.

This was my fall-back idea when I couldn’t think of anything to do for the last piece. I wanted to simply do a piece with clouds going by in the sky. However, I ran into the same problems we ran into with the moving gnats in that when the clouds hit an edge/corner in certain ways they would get stuck on it, and since they would reset to x and y values of zero they would get stuck after one loop.
I wanted to add different shapes of clouds, but I wanted to figure out the edge issue first as it seemed more important to figure out.
Sprite mySprite;
Sprite[] sprites = new Sprite[30];
PImage myPicture;
PImage myPicture2;
void setup() {
size(350, 350);
background(200);
myPicture = loadImage(“cloud.png”);
myPicture2 = loadImage(“sky.png”);
imageMode(CENTER);

for (int i=0;i=(width-imageSize/2)-1) {
x=30;
}
else if (x<=imageSize/2-1) { x=30; } else if (y>=(height-imageSize/2)-1) {
y=30;
}
else if (y<=imageSize/2-1) { y=30; } } } I’m unable to get my projects to load properly on the blog currently, so I’m just going to post the code for the time being, and will probably upload a screen shot later or something to show what it should look like when working.

I find a lot of inspiration in trees. For this piece I wanted to give the user the ability to plant a forest…sort of. The idea is that a tree is created in a random shade of green, with a height based on where the mouse is when it is clicked. The only part of this that still bothers me is that if you click to create a small tree, which would appear to be off in the background, it will appear on top of larger trees in the foreground.

PImage myPicture;
PImage myPicture2;
color myColor;

void setup() {
size(500, 400);
myPicture2 = loadImage(“http://www.joshuarosenstock.com/teaching/IMGD3x00_B12/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/background.png”);
background(myPicture2);
myPicture = loadImage(“http://www.joshuarosenstock.com/teaching/IMGD3x00_B12/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/tree.png”); //load this image file (must be in same directory as sketch)
//when sketch is online, put a URL for the image, which must be on same server as sketch)
imageMode(CENTER);
}

void draw(){
}
void mousePressed(){
myColor=color(random(150,220));
tint(myColor);
image(myPicture,mouseX,400-height/2,80,mouseY);
}

I’m unable to get my projects to load properly on the blog currently, so I’m just going to post the code for the time being, and will probably upload a screen shot later or something to show what it should look like when working.

For this piece I wanted to do something representing the different seasons. The tree changes between how it would be seen in the different seasons depending on what quarter of the canvas the mouse is on.
PImage myPicture;
PImage myPicture2;
PImage myPicture3;
PImage myPicture4;

void setup(){
size(500,400);
myPicture = loadImage(“treeeee.png”);
myPicture2 = loadImage(“summer.png”);
myPicture3 = loadImage(“fall.png”);
myPicture4 = loadImage(“winter.png”);
}

void draw(){
if (mouseX

So I’ve been brainstorming for a bit and have some pretty solid ideas for the different sketches for this project.
For the sketch meant to have an interaction with the mouse or keyboard I was thinking of having a simple background that starts more or less blank. Maybe a basic green texture to prevent it from being too bland at the start. The idea would be that clicking anywhere on the canvas would create a small image of a tree, or random size, and a random shade of green.
For the animated sketch I was considering a changing tree. Either a tree changing appearance as it would through the seasons, or possibly a tree growing to full size and then slowly dying away. The idea would basically be to follow the life-cycle of a tree.
Another idea I had revolved around an overhead view of a butterfly with wings that had changing patters. The wings would have patters that changed over-time or in reaction to the mouse’s position. This idea is still very rough and needs some refining, but the other two ideas I’m pretty confident in how they could turn out.

For the second homework I edited my simple snowman picture in processing to be a little more exciting. The center snowball grows to its full size, while the lowest ball appears when the mouse is clicked. The head and eyes are re-drawn with a different background (a slight grey) when the mouse is on different sides of the screen. I found a little trouble with the stroke on the middle circle overlapping the top circle making it look a bit off, but as the top circle is dedrawn every time the mouse passes the center line, once the middle circle has reached it’s max size the top circle will remain on top.