Over the series of studies making up Assignment 2, I’ve grown a lot more comfortable with using Max, and have gotten more familiar with the different blocks and patching as a whole. The visual programming system Max uses took a while to get used to, but I’m starting to like how easy it is to set up things that would be quite complex to program usually. I feel like it is quicker for the big things, but I feel like it takes longer to do some small things (sometimes overcomplicated), however, that may just be because I haven’t got much experience with it yet. I think the most important thing I’ve learnt, is that most of the time, things which sound easily doable are strangely difficult.

Amongst all of this, I’ve learnt a lot about what defines/makes interactivity. The whole idea of giving the audience agency in an art piece is pretty new to me, but it’s really intriguing. The examples of interactive performance pieces from the first week were a little bit dark for my liking. I’m hoping to focus on lighter themes throughout the remainder of the semester, and am really excited to explore audio/music reactive pieces more. I’ve always been really interested in how live visuals at gigs are made, so it’s fun to get to see behind the curtain a little bit. I think next on my agenda is learning how to create good looking particle systems. One of my favourite live music visual setups involved a projector and an Xbox Kinect.

Kinect based real-time 3D particle systems, made by Simon Burgin

One thing I’d like to learn is how to use patterns or overlays to add texture to the audio reactive visuals I did in the first and third study. So far I have only used solid colours, however, I think if I could add some overlays/patterns to them I think they would look really cool.

Note the cool overlays on the circles, made by Carla Zimbler

A long-term goal would be combining these particle systems and textures with visual effects to achieve something like this:

Audio-reactive generative visuals, made by Jonathan Key

I think I’ve consistently challenged myself throughout the process of these studies, which I have thoroughly enjoyed. There are a few things I would have liked to explore further but didn’t have the time to, such as the Java libraries of the searchtweetadd-on (which I already spent quite a while on). I would like to learn more about how to use specific jit objects in the future as well, I think they could have some really cool outcomes. I would also like to start spending time optimizing my patches after I complete them. I feel like there are some tricks I’ve learnt over the course of this assignment that would cut down a heap of clutter in my earlier patches. I think the best way I could improve my work in the coming weeks would be becoming more articulate with the Max objects. There’s probably a lot of things I’m doing that can be done by a single object. I’d also like to experiment with subpatchers and signal routing a bit more, I feel like they’re things which would majorly help my efficiency.

So far in this studio, I’ve learnt that there is a lot of overlap between programming and interactive digital art, because of this, I would like to see how I can bring some of my experiences writing algorithms into what I create. I’m really looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with over the remainder of the semester, and I’m keen to explore the relationship between sound and light further.