Full Articles

Converting MIDI to JSON

18 August 2017

I’ve been working on a generative WebGL music video on and off for the past few weeks, and I needed a good way to synchronise visuals to audio. Realtime audio analysis can be useful, but it isn’t always precise enough. Since I’m creating the music as well as the visuals, I decided to export the music as audio and MIDI, so I could use the MIDI NOTE ON events to trigger animations.

Tags: music, webgl

auto://loop Performer Synth

09 September 2016

I’ve finished building a performance synthesizer based on the Axoloti Core board a while ago, and hadn’t found any time to document it yet. So finally, here’s an overview of the build process.

Tags: music

Getting Started with Axoloti

11 September 2015

I've started writing my second book a while ago. This time, the subject is Axoloti, a platform for creating synthesizers, drum machines, effects processors or other weird instruments. I've decided to use leanpub, so I don't have to work with a publisher. This allows me to sell the book while I'm writing it, and keep the book more affordable. The first chapter is available as a free sample, if you want to read the rest of the book, you'll need to buy it.

Tags: music, writing

Meet Axoloti

02 January 2015

I started making electronic music in 1996, first with the crappy General Midi sounds on a cheap sound card before moving to ReBirth. In 1999, I started playing with decent hardware synths, samplers and drum machines. I spent a long time making music with Ableton Live, and recently I’ve started combining software with hardware again.

Tags: music

Apparatus for Creating Generative Drawings Without the Use of a Computer

15 August 2014

I’ve created a lot of generative drawings in the past few years, and while most of them look great on a screen, I felt that something was missing when I made prints. I played around a bit with inkjet prints, but they didn’t add any value to my work, so I started experimenting with traditional fine arts printing techniques.

Tags: art, exhibition

Going to Milan

25 March 2014

I'm happy to announce that I will be showing my first products during the Milan Furniture Fair at Ventura Lambrate 2014. I'm not going there alone. The fine people of De Invasie organise everything, and a lot of talented Belgian designers will be there too.

Tags: design

Taking Screenshots with Processing

19 February 2014

Sometimes it can be handy to create a screenshot from Processing. In this short tutorial, I'm going to show you how you can do this in Processing 2. I've used this code to create a new piece of net art named Screenshot Inception.

Tags: processing, tutorial

Equilibrium

28 August 2013

If you are in Brighton this month, you should see "The New Sublime", an exhibition with James Alliban, Evan Boehm and many others, including yours truly. You can see "Equilibrium", my new interactive installation from 31 August - 8 September.

Tags: art, exhibition

Creative Coding Playground at Vooruit

11 July 2013

Mark your calendar! At the end of August, there will be a 3-day creative coding workshop/hackaton/whatever at Vooruit in Ghent.

Tags: workshop

Working with the PShape class

23 June 2013

A great new feature in Processing 2 is the PShape class. You can use it to store a shape, as well as its appearance. In this article, we'll take a look at creating basic shapes like a rectangle and an ellipse, and how we can create our own custom shapes.

Tags: processing, tutorial

Announcing Swatcher

21 June 2013

Last week, I launched Swatcher, a new iPhone app to create color palettes on the move. I made the first prototype a few years ago, but never released it because it didn't feel right.

Tags: software development

Drawing Shapes with Holes

17 June 2013

In Processing 1.5.1, there was a function named breakShape(). It was undocumented, and only worked in the default Java2D mode. This function allowed you to draw shapes with holes. Processing 2 has some new functions to create these kinds of shapes. And they are much more stable. Let's take a look at how they work.

Tags: processing, tutorial