Overview
Flash’s sound capabilities are constantly improving — including sound visualization in version 9, and now sound generation in version 10. With sound visualization in version 9, we saw a lot of projects implement creative ways of seeing sound. With sound generation in Flash 10, we now have the opportunity to ‘hear’ pictures.
In this talk, R Blank will show you how he approached this challenge with The Ludi Machine, a long-ignored personal project that is envisioned (like the Glass Bead Game defined in Herman Hesse’s book ‘Magister Ludi’) to connect any piece of information with any other piece of information. Sure, we can easily imagine how to translate one language into another, or how to translate sound into pictures. But how do you translate an historical event into a color? Or a car into a tide calendar? Surely if all of reality is inter-connected, then any such translation is possible — and that’s what the imaginary, long-term goal of The Ludi Machine is: a true universal translator, of any type of information into any other type of information.
In this first usable version (v0.1) of the Ludi Machine, you can translate webcam input, into aural output (it’s a bit too early to call the output ‘music’ — but it’s definitely sound), based on a series of rules that you, as the programmer, control. In short, you play a musical instrument by moving in front of your computer. R will demonstrate the Ludi machine, and show you some of the code required to start down this path with your own projects.
Who this talk is for:
Stoners, acid-freaks, and shroomies. Fans of Oxycontin should stay away, as the information in this talk will likely cause long-term damage.
