Being a little bit more comfortable using Max, I’ve really enjoyed working on assignment 3. I’ve found that there is less of a barrier between what I want to do and knowing how to do it, which has come from using Max more. I’m looking forward to seeing how this continues through the upcoming Assignment 4.

I really enjoyed exploring different ways of using non-tactile interaction in what I create. I kept mostly to motion detection in Assignment 3, but I would like to explore using sound as a method of interaction in future projects.

Through the creation of the major project specifically, I learnt a lot about the OpenGL system in Max/Jitter, I think this would have some really interesting ways of connecting with audio interaction and would be a hugely powerful tool for real-time music/audio-reactive visuals. I decided to follow a tutorial on YouTube to create a gen particle system, which came out well, but it took me quite a while to make the changes to it that I wanted to make, as I wasn’t 100% sure how it was working. I think in the future I will try to spend more time understanding what the tutorial is doing, instead of just copying it out.

One thing I would like to try in the future is using particles as a kind of ‘paintbrush’, I think that could make for some seriously cool designs, especially with nice colours and a pulsing speed/attraction. Being able to export an OpenGL environment as a Jitter matrix would open a heap of doors, I’m sure there’s a way to do it, but I haven’t figured out how! I’d love to learn how to some visual effects on my particle systems, such as glow and motion blur. These would all be a lot easier outside of the OpenGL system (from my understanding).

I’d definitely like to continue figuring out OpenGL in Max, I think there could be some really cool implementations for using it with music videos / live show visuals.

So far I’ve tried to make everything somewhat polished, I think that has worked well, but I am probably spending a little too much time tweaking instead of implementing. I think in the future I should be a little more mindful of this and aim to get something ‘working’ before I get it ‘working well’.

In reference to studies 4 & 5, I would like to explore the idea of keying out the webcam’s background a little more. I think there could be some fun ways to implement that in combination with OpenGL and rendering multiple videoplanes.

Another effect I would love to try out is the ‘missing I frame’ effect that sometimes pops up in poorly compressed videos, which basically looks like a frame of a video has been mapped across the movement of another one (image from one frame but motion from another). This is quite hard to create but I think it might be possible to do in Max. I would like to look into using OpenGL and turbulence noise/flow fields. I think starting to use OpenGL has opened a bunch of doors, even though it is very tedious to work with.

Through this studio, I’m still discovering just how much the technical and the creative can go hand in hand. I’m really looking forward to seeing what is to come in Assignment 4, working with sustained interaction, which I’m imagining will be a little bit of a challenge. I’m thinking it might be interesting to make an interactive video/music video. As you can probably tell by now, I really like exploring the relationship between music and art.