social sqncr is the MFA Design + Technology thesis project by Nick Hardeman and Bruce Drummond.
social sqncr is an audio visual installation that allows users to create virtual musical creatures through body movement that act as sequencers. I coded all of the visuals in OpenFrameworks and Bruce coded all of the audio in SuperCollider and we talked to each other via OSC.

It has been a while since I have posted something, but I have a few projects that I never posted from last semester. Here are two to start off with.

Boids in 3D

Boids in 3D from Nick Hardeman on Vimeo.

This project utilizes flocking and Craig Reynold’s boids to move about a 3D environment. The boids circle around sphere and a repulsion force from inside of the sphere is applied to the Boids using the space bar. There is some perlin noise that is applied to them as well. The tails are generated based on some code by Robert Hodgin. The camera movement is handled by a nicely bundled class called Camera by Tobias Jewson.

Techno Tentacles

Techno Tentacles from Nick Hardeman on Vimeo.

This project responds to audio, as well as, video. I am not very good with audio or the terms used, so excuse me if this doesn’t make any sense. But I do know that the audio analysis code by Zach Lieberman uses FFT Analysis. Each tentacle is assigned a certain range of audio, if there are more tentacles, the ranges are shorter. The loudness in each range corresponds to the outward force from the center that each tentacle feels. If all of the channels are really loud, then the tentacles form an image that looks similar to a star fish.

The tentacles attempt to attach themselves to people who enter the frame, it can be either live or recorded video, in this case it is recorded. The sorting of the points on the contour was a tad tricky since they are not returned in order of x, y values, so the a point in one frame might have a completely different index on the next, not to mention that the number of points changes from frame to frame. The tentacles follow the user around and react to audio, look out Dr. Octopus.