LetterBuilder Beta
I’ve been developing this little software application in Processing for creating letterforms and doodles for future versions of the “Scriptor” (here and here) series of digital projections. In fact, I’m moving the whole project from Actionscript to Processing, if for no other reason than that Processing was invented by one of my peers at UCLA, Casey Reas, along with Ben Fry. Processing is also built on Java, which I’m guessing runs a little bit faster than Actionscript, but of this I can’t be sure.
In any case, working in Processing has been great; Reas and Fry really honed in on the types of functionality that would be part of the toolbox of any digital artist, integrating these functions into the relatively simple, nonetheless object-oriented, language to make it quite easy to achieve them — for example, ripping text from the web, or modifying video images in real-time.
http://www.arras.net/processing_test/LetterBuilder/applet/
I’ll have more to report on this later. For now, click through and goof around in there. There is no way to save your doodles as of yet, and there are a few bugs (mostly to do with the scroll bars) that I’m working out. You can more or less learn how to use it by looking at the buttons and reading the text there.
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9 Responses to “LetterBuilder Beta”.
I always admire those who can “grow their own”. And after seeing Brian’s presentation at E-Poetry 2009 (and finally meeting him!!!!) I was really impressed by both his previous work and his future projects. Check out his site above.
But it is a tricky path. As we’ve all seen, with some of Eastgate’s software, so much time and energy can be devoted to creating a package, that when it gets overlooked or its use diminished, it can be a painful process. Processing, is a lovely package, but keeping the community going and updates happening is difficult.
What do others think of this?
I use Flash and lately dhtml and javascript, not because they are always the best solutions, but more out of habit and ease of use. And certainly software can drive the look and feel of work…
cheers, Jason
I think part of my faith in Processing is that it’s based on Java, basically becomes translated into Java before it executes. So to that extent, it’s bound to survive with or without a community of artist and programming volunteers, at least as long as Java does, and I can always expand the language myself by including native Java elements. I’m just not sure at this point whether it will run faster or better than Actionscript.
As for Eastgate, the business model for Processing (if there is one) is entirely different, and the latter is a piece of development software that is/was (I don’t know, actually, never used it) pretty limited, without a scripting language, and which is/was absurdly, absurdly expensive.
Just to chip in and say that, since the tiny bit of Basic I learned in grade 11, I’ve JUST started teaching myself programming in the last couple of weeks (!!) using Processing and it’s thrilling. Philosophically it seems completely different to Flash and other pieces of development software. For now at least, the community around it seems only to be getting stronger and broader.
Brian, I commented on your letter builder on Twitter but just to say again that I absolutely adore it – to me, it’s simply a DIY concrete poetry builder. A machine that is a poem, to reverse Williams’ poem that is a machine.
I love the letter builder and it seems entirely appropriate that an application that makes ‘typefaces’ go crazy, making them break out of the corporate uniform, should leave Adobe’s Actionscript and move to open source Processing.
I’d love to learn Processing, and I’m told it’s pretty accessible, but I’ve invested a lot of time over the past 4 years learning Flash and Actionscript, and I’m still a novice, so I don’t know if I could handle the switch right now – my brain might go the way of Brian’s letters!
Most people I’ve talked to seem to feel that there comes a point when you say, enough’s enough, I can’t learn anymore tech. But I wonder if that’s true, or if it’s true for everyone. I have a hunch that the more code you learn, the easier it is to pick up new stuff. It’s finding the time to learn everything that’s the real problem. I’d be interested to know what others have experienced.
Without question, learning programming languages becomes much easier the more of them you already know, and this increases with the more contemporary languages (as opposed to older languages like LISP), in which the syntax is gravitating toward a standard protocol across them (such as using periods for referencing, i.e. this.letter, etc.)
In any case, I never would have made this much progress with Processing so quickly (it’s only been a month or so( if I hadn’t spent tons of time with Actionscript, Javascript, Lingo (the language for Director), C++ (which I never really learned), and, yes, BASIC back in the day.
It’s tough to know when to stop. There are lots of neat user-created libraries for Processing online that I’d love to get to use and learn, but I also want to have life.
While I haven’t yet learned Processing, it’s on my to-do list. Just to address Jason’s comment. I don’t think Processing will be going away any time soon. It has a huge user base for an open source platform, and it is used in a bunch of different contexts. It was originally developed to teach programming, and is still used widely for that purpose.
i’d really recommend to learn Processing. there are a couple of books on the market. i have Reas’ and Fry’s book not only because of the content but also because it’s a very beautiful book with lot’s of visual examples.
and yes, the more programming languages you know, the easier it is to learn a new one if it’s not something completely different like Prolog or Haskell. especially the switch from Actionscript to Processing and from there to Java should not be too hard.
Thanks Brian, learning Processing is now squarely on my to-do list too. Having a life is also on my to-do list… hmmm… which first?
I too think Brian’s letterBuilder is a positive incarnation in that whole Processing milieu, of which I was utterly oblivious until July 19th. ( Yup a whole week ago) so beware all autodidactic pontification in next four paragraphs below:
I just found that NextText (http://www.nexttext.net/) for Processing Library, which looked ‘do-able’, that brought me to processing – which I downloaded to play with, then Brian posted his stuff here. Not so much a circle of life as a kinda pentagon of processing programming. I’m working on a specific poetry project right now and I’m trying to find some components or code snippets that will, in addition to helping me make the thing/work overall, should / maybe/ hopefully allow me to automate / create macros, for a couple of repetitious tasks in creating/animating each section of the work. Particularly I/O.
Although my work & its presentation / visualization are a bit chicken and egg right now. it’s the joy of being completely bamboozled about where to take it and where it might take me – which is where my tools and programming ability interrupts – do I hack on and risk hitting some technical brick wall serving to expose the gapping hole in my knowledge of java/OOP– with the potential of killing any ‘flow’ stopping my making – dead in its code tracks – sending me off looking for more libraries or should I plough on through and get the code ‘doing something’ ? flow flow flow in funky, albeit proprietary, usually closed, Flash is easily achievable, errors surmountable, // comments outcommentable LOL
IMHO Flash is ‘a visual authoring environment’ and like Director before it, I (have) pick(ed) up it’s programming lingo actionscript on an ‘I need to know how to do’ basis – the rest of the time, its layers, visuals, timelines and buttons reinforce that higher level abstraction versus the ease of use debate. Processing is a programming environment – Already I’m scared although some of the most effective and prolific games programmers I know, hack away really low down (machine code levels), hacking often to break as much as they can, which is where Brian’s letterbuilder source code comes into play for me – I will thoroughly enjoy breaking it (-: in the hope that I can fix it again anew and see what potential each part holds for my own project .
Not necessarily the best creative strategy to employ in Flash (-: and sorta where a line can begin to present in digital writing –getting to the lower levels and the hexadecimal hells, inherent mathematical abstractions and all my lovely creative contingency buttons have gone, I’m trying trigonometry in my head – Pythagoras would be proud, even if I don’t get anything working again, I feel like a real digital writer, not that I can borrow from the best (-:.
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