Friday, January 31st 2013, Stammtisch #1

https://www.meetup.com/opentechschool-berlin/events/101939482/

How our first meeting went

We had three presentations:

• Works put together by Ramin for accessing the UDK university. A P5control example for defining inputs that modify the behaviour of a sketch on real time. Demo of using a MIDI controller for the same purpose, and a custom built XML file that serves as a bridge between Processing and the controller.
• Using the Move controller and the Russian Roulette example.
• Examples by Abe (linked below).

Ideas for next meeting

• Decide a constraint and everybody then is given some time to create something using those constraints. When done, we place all the programs somewhere (online, on a USB stick) and we run them on one computer where each can explain (if she/he wants) what it does. Some ideas:
  • Draw using circles only, larger than 3 px diameter.
  • Use black and white only.
  • Only do modifications to the pixels array, no other drawing allowed.
  • Do a 10 second animation.
  • …
• Present a technique (mini tutorial) starting from scratch in 10 minutes. The idea of starting from scratch is to help people better understand what’s going on. It’s harder to get into a program that already exists than to see it evolve since its infancy :)
  • Recursive programs.
  • Editing the pixels array to achieve Photoshop-like effects.
  • …
• Build a program collaboratively. We would set some rules that would allow, at the end of the session, to combine the programs written by all participants into a single program. Ideally, each of our programs would be affected by the behaviour of the previous program. In that way we would not be sure of what will happen until the thing is put together, hopefully getting beautiful and surprising results. We would agree on a screen resolution and a frame rate, and then how we would interface with each other. We should define a way in which our program provides a few variables to the next program (so we can use those values as kind of a random() number generator). The goal is that what others do affect our graphics. It’s a bit hard to describe, but I (aBe) can prepare a demo.
• Build programs that communicate with each other using Open Sound Control. There could be one computer running Processing connected to the proyector and listening to OSC messages. All participants would write Processing programs that send OSC messages to the main computer, which then draws on the screen usind the instructions received through OSC.
• Hack your Controller: Tutorial on how to use libraries for Controller use MidiController, PSMove, Gamepads,  
• A cool PSMove Game: We have several of them. 7 I think. We could brainstorm and create a cool multiplayer game\

Web page for our group

Abe Pazos: We shortly discussed creating a web page for the group where people would have profiles, and where we can upload photos, videos and discuss any topics. One easy approach would be to use something that already exists (a Google+ community, a Posterous Space). The other solution is to build a Wordpress blog. Someone (sorry I don’t remember the name) volunteered to do that.

Lorenzo Pilia: Only a suggestion: if these events are going to stay under the OpenTechSchool umbrella I’d suggest to check with the OTS team if they have any recommendations regarding tools they might already have in place that could be used to share projects, have discussions etc. For example they already have several Google Groups in place. The main advantage is that it would give more visibility to the group (OTS is already reaching a lot of people through their network), making it easier for new people to discover these Processing meetups in the future. On top of that, all the shared info could be of use for OTS groups in other cities if they want to start organizing their own Processing events.

Abe: It’s a very good point, and now I feel a bit bad about suggesting the use of this Titanpad, because maybe they already had those tools in place, or places where to comment. I think these pads are great for almost real time interaction, specially when done live while the meeting takes place. Who should we talk to?

Lorenzo: No no! Don’t feel bad at all! How were you supposed to know about this? This Titan thing is so straight forward anyway, it can still be very useful, I wasn’t familiar with it so thanks! Rachel is the person who was there yesterday who’s currently more involved with OTS. Anyway anyone’s who’s interested in organizing things or in genral be part of OTS is more than invited to take part to their bi-weekly breakfast meetings – they’re really really nice people so don’t be afraid. Check http://www.opentechschool.org/contact.html for all the details!

Abe: Ok! :)

Ramin Soleymani: Yes an discussion board to discuss and fix future plans would be good. Lets see what we can get from OTS and what maybe we can make by our own.

Participants (please add yourself):

• Abe Pazos - http://funprogramming.org
• Lorenzo Pilia - http://tiif.it
• Ramin Solymani - http://ramin-ton.net/rs

Links

• Code shown by Abe:
  • https://github.com/hamoid/Fun-Programming/blob/master/processing/ideas/2011/08/15/time_jitterlips/time_jitterlips.pde
  • https://github.com/hamoid/Fun-Programming/blob/master/processing/ideas/2011/09/21/sine_mountains/sine_mountains.pde
  • https://github.com/hamoid/Fun-Programming/blob/master/processing/ideas/2011/10/06/fur/fur.pde
  • https://github.com/hamoid/Fun-Programming/blob/master/processing/ideas/2011/10/12/rot_3d_line/rot_3d_line.pde
  • https://github.com/hamoid/Fun-Programming/blob/master/processing/ideas/2012/04/01/random_vs_noise/random_vs_noise.pde\
• General Processing code-communities 
  • http://www.openprocessing.org/ (p5js)
  • http://sketchpad.cc/ (p5js)

Original here