Aleph Null: new online generative interactive visual art

ALEPH NULL
http://turbulence.org/spotlight/alephnull
by Jim Andrews

[img]http://netartery.vispo.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/alephnull.jpg[/img]

Aleph Null is a new work of interactive generative visual art by Jim Andrews. Written in JavaScript. Uses the new HTML 5 canvas tag. Best viewed by the light of a full moon. That's tonight.

There's also a slideshow of screenshots to give you a sense of what it can look like in full flight. Aleph Null is color music. No audio.

It takes practice to tease the really good stuff out of it. It's like an instrument that way. Or a game in which the goal is to experience color music and create visuals you like. It's like hunting the Snark, beauty or butterflies. Unlike most instruments, Aleph Null will play something whether a person is playing or not. But it benefits immensely by a human player. It knoweth not beauty, is but the instrument of thine own incandesence.

ja

Comments

, Dave Miller

Hi JIm

This is really beautiful, great work, and must have been really tough programming to write this in javascript. One improvement I personally think would be to make the controls easier - I pressed the keys but wasnt sure what I had selected, even though I saw the colours changing.

My wish list - could you add sound? Or make it respond to sound? eg - if I could play an mp3 music file which triggers the generative process? Just an idea, maybe this has been done already?

 all the best, Dave

, Jim Andrews

Thanks for your interest, Dave. If you click the Aleph Null logo at top left or press the '1' key, several visual controls appear.

As for sound, well, I'm not quite sure what I'll do or if I'll do anything concerning sound. I don't think it needs sound, as it stands at the moment. It's more or less complete as a work of art.

But in a later version I might add sound. I'm not really interested in turning it into a music visualizer. There's so much of that already out there. What I would do instead would be to add generative audio. Just as it has generative visuals. And I would tie the audio into the 'color music'. So that the audio was in strong relation with the visuals.

I'd probably use SiON for the audio. That's a tool that allows JavaScript developers to use the Flash audio commands, which are quite deluxe.