HasCanvas is one of the Chrome Experiments which promote the new HTML5 standard and of course the Google Chrome webbrowser. HasCanvas is based on Processing.js, a javascript version of Processing, and allows visitors to write and save their own scripts. Most of them remind me of the early Flash days, meaningless little toys. But I’m sure that we will soon see some awesome HTML5 websites.
By the way, you will need a modern browser like Firfox 3.5, Safari 4 or Chrome to see the following experiments.
Roger Asling wrote a program that draws polygons which are verified to a reference image. Loop after loop the result gets closer to that image. In this test he used an image of the Mona Lisa, the digital render is made with only 50 semi transparent polygons. It took 904314 iterations to get the final image.
EDIT: Here is an online version of this script, so now you can try it with your own images.
Lee Byron ported one of my favorite java applets called Yellowtail to the iPhone. Yellowtail was developed by Golan Levin back in 2000 as a java applet, a few years later he ported the code to Processing.
Lee got himself an iPhone last week and a few days later he got his Developer’s Certificate. He managed to code this nice version of Yellowtail for the iPhone in just 2 days. You can read some details here.
Karsten Schmidt (a.k.a. Toxi) was commissioned by PRINT Magazine to create his own generative letterforms for the August 2008 cover. He used the Gray-Scott reaction diffusion model in a Processing sketch (an open source programming language) to generate a 3D typographical model. That 3D file was then printed with a 3D printer and photographed for the cover. You can read a short interview with him at the PRINT Magazine website. In this Flickr set you can find more photos and images of the whole process.
Here is a video of an early Processing sketch, the 2D frames where later stacked to a 3D model.
This video ‘Chronotopic Anamorphosis’ is quite simple but the effect is just amazing. It’s part of André Mintz his Marginalia Project. He wrote this piece of software with Processing, which can slice up a video feed horizontally in real-time and display those pieces with a one frame delay. It’s based on Zbigniew Rybczynski’s “The Fourth Dimension”.
Make sure you see the effect when he opens the door!
Yeah, that’s a mobile phone. Well actually it’s a development circuit board for the google Android operating system by Qualcomm. Can you see an iPhone competitor in there?
More info and hardware porn shots at Wired’s Gadget Lab.
Troika, known for their SMS Guerrilla Projector, was commissioned by Artwise Curators to create a signature piece at the entrance of the new British Airways luxury lounges in Heathrow Terminal 5. The result: “Cloud“, a five meter long digital sculpture whose surface is covered with 4638 flip-dots that can be individually addressed by a computer to animate the entire skin of the sculpture. The best part is of course the development pictures and 2 videos of the cloud in action.
This is probably the coolest homemade music sequencer. Made by Roman Haefeli.
A software-sequencer controls 8 solenoids, that knock on different things and therefore produce some rhythmic noise. Made with puredata, an arduino board and a selfmade relayboard to control the solenoids.
E15 is an experimental architecture that places the power of presentation of web content into the hands of those that use it. Based on a dynamic, interactive OpenGL-based scripting engine, E15 exposes an entirely new face to web content, freely modifiable by each individual user.
