The Nest That Sailed The Sky – Winner at Prix Ars Electronica

My video for Peter Gabriel, The Nest That Sailed The Sky, has won an award of distinction at this year’s Prix Ars Electronica. 

from the press release :-

“Glenn Marshall is the graphic artist responsible for Peter Gabriel’s music video “The Nest that Sailed the Sky.” The animation transports viewers into magnificent fantasy worlds in which plantlike organisms sprout, send out shoots and proliferate. The video was created with Processing, an open-source programming language & environment.” ……full list of winners here.

ahem…I’d like to thank…

everyone who introduced/inspired me to learn Processing, and everyone on the Processing forums for their support.

everyone on/at Vimeo for hosting my work, and all the encouraging feedback and comments.

and finally thanks to Peter!

iPhone Development begins

With great enthusiasm, inspiration,  and a certain amount of healthy fear, I can announce I’m beginning development on my first iPhone app. (pictures are just mock-ups).

I had been considering hard which platform with which to push my animation and code art (Zeno and G-synth) onto, i.e. Xbox arcade, PC,MAC etc.  The first influential factor in favour of iPhone was the amazing success stories arising of independent, often one-man developers creating very cool applications, in a short amount of time, and making an awful lot of money.  Further investigation into Apples unique model of support/development/distribution, and the iPhone’s exponential growth and success throughout the world has me given the confidence and inspiration to give it a whirl.

 The second influential factor, was the device itself.  I’ve had mine 2 weeks.  It’s a beautiful, smart piece of kit.  I’m not one to side with any particular brand or ‘team’ i.e. the whole PC/MAC thing, I find it tedious, there are two camps, the cult like semi-religious following of Apple/Jobbs and the equally tedious anti-Apple haters and naysayers.  Both sides are rooted in their blind love or blind hate, all irrational.  I just judge things on their own merit.  Having used PCs 100% my whole life, I’ve no problems adopting this bite of Apple into my world.

So what will I make?  I’ve too many ideas to be honest, and I want to do all of them.  But I can only start with one.  After consideration I feel it wise and practical to build upon the generative animation code I’ve developed for Music is Math, Metamorphosis and the Swan Lake / Bodysnatchers music visualiser.

The idea is to take these videos, and turn them into real time, endlessly generating animations on the iPhone.  The user can interactively move around, rotate, save a snaphot, zoom in and out of these procedurally generated worlds with touch gestures, shaking the phone will randomly alter visuals.   The Music is Math and Metamorphosis worlds probably wont be audio reactive, but they are designed to be watched with any kind of music – I created these programmed worlds to give the illusion of ‘audio reacton’, happening on a subjective level.  Contrary to what a lot of people think, Music is Math and Metamorphosis are not audio reactive, they just appear to be, which was in part the goal of those pieces.

For genuine audio reaction I’ll create a special feature/world, so you can have the same experience seen in the Bodysnatchers and Swan Lake videos.  These will react to any music playing, or to voice/live sound input.

As I finish writing this, the iPhone SDK has just downloaded onto my new Macbook.  I’m literally about to start.  I’ve to learn Objective-C and iPhone tech, and rewrite all my Processing/Java code.  I’ve also to learn how to use a Mac

Motion Graphic Synthesis #5

These are the director’s notes that are part of a funding application for a short film idea I have (see previous post) which employs my G-synth animation software.  The notes help illuminate my underlying philosophy of trying to unify science, art and mystical principles.