dave's blog of art and programming

  • Algorave practice

    It’s been a huge amount of time since I recorded anything, but I thought I would a) try and do some actual livecoding practice for the upcoming algorave on Thursday and b) record everything. As usual I’m following my foolhardy approach of improvising both musical structure and sound material by livecoding synth graphs from scratch.…

  • ‘The Marja trio’ – Sonic Bike Experience for Marjaniemi

    I’ve been doing more remote install work on Kaffe’s latest piece she’s been building while resident at Hai Art in Hailuoto, an island in the north of Finland. The zone building, site specific sample composing and microscopic Beagleboard log debugging is over, and two new GPS Opera bikes are born! Go to Hai Art or…

  • Compiling Scheme to Javascript

    Recently I’ve been continuing my experiments with compilers by writing a Scheme to Javascript compiler. This is fairly simple as the languages are very similar, both have garbage collection and first class functions so it’s largely a case of reusing these features directly. There are some caveats though – here is an example of the…

  • New project with the Sensory Ecology and Evolution group at Exeter University

    Time to announce a new a new project with the Sensory Ecology and Evolution group at Exeter University. We’re going to be working on games and experimental online work to bring their research into the evolution of camouflage and animal perception to new audiences, particularly focused on these stealthy characters, the Fiery-necked Nightjar: The group’s…

  • Bike Opera – layering sounds in space

    New advancements on the the bike opera project with Kaffe Matthews include a brand new mapping tool based on, yes you guessed it – Ushahidi which I’ve been using for a lot of wildly different projects recently. This time the work has been mainly focused in improving the area mapping – adding features for editing…

  • Life on an Algorave Tour

    Some pictures taken during the recent Algorave Tour, making people dance to algorithms in Brighton, London, Karlesruhe, Cologne and Dusseldorf. The MS Stubnitz moored in Canary Wharf surrounded by financial architecture: Wandering around during soundcheck, a heavy duty workshop on the Stubnitz: Sound checking with Andrew Sorenson: A speaker close up, one of many: Norah…

  • Random notes from the Live Code Festival, Karlsruhe

    During his talk at the live code festival Karlsruhe 2013, David Ogborn (to paraphrase from my faulty memory) said that livecoding seems a very current thing, that something about it seems to be in the air, so much of what we are doing seems to stick and thrive like a form of bacteria. This festival…

  • Fluxus workshop in Falmouth

    After rushing around Europe doing a lot of livecoding over the last week (more on that soon) I’m really pleased to announce this workshop closer to home in Falmouth: CLAN and CREATIVE SKILLS present: CREATIVE CODING taster session for ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS with Dave Griffiths Friday May 31st 10.30am – 12.30pm AIR building, Falmouth University, Tremough…

  • New Portuguese Bicycle Operatics

    Prepare your bicycle clips! Kaffe Matthews and I are starting work on a new Bicycle Opera piece for the city of Porto, I’m working on a new mapping tool and adding some new zone types to the audio system. While working on a BeagleBoard from one of the bikes used in the Ghent installation of…

  • Al Jazari – ambient occlusion

    A big part of the look of Minecraft comes from it’s Smooth lighting, which includes an illumination model called ambient occlusion. Ambient occlusion darkens areas of an object based on how obscured they are from a wide area light source, for example an entire sky area, as opposed to a point light source. This is…