I'm not sure what would make a video either dull or dated, but certainly the thought that goes into the making can anchor it, structure it; this happens in a lot of conceptual work and may well happen in what you describe below...
- Alan On Fri, 21 May 2010, James Morris wrote: > > naive implementation II > > i've been posting about it enough. i've been thinking it constantly over > the past month. free space. boxes of free space. boxes of used space. > unused space. placement algorithms. window-manager-like. boundary. grid. > free space grid. 128 x 128. > > block placement algorithm. bin-packing like algorithm. > > real-time context. > > bit manipulation, bit shifting, bit-masks, data types. > > speed. > > so i make a video for you all to see. i post it also to a non-arts related > list, but linux related. > > and then i decide after writing so much and posting it here, why do i not > just write it in my website's journal. > > so i do. > > i write it up and then watch the video trying to assess what people who > are not me might see. > > all this time i always think there's a chance people won't see anything > interesting here. but after writing the journal entry for my website i > watch the video again and suddenly i look at it and it's dull and quite > boring. like something they were doing in the sixties. like a screen saver > from the nineties. > > all the work i put into it evaporates. all the effort i put into it so it > would make efficient usage of memory while performing fast - meaning i had > to use bit-twiddling-hacks (a google search term for you if ever you > needed one). > > so why do i let it out into the world knowing it looks so dated? if they > could have done that in the sixties... put another way, if me being me, > could i have done it in the sixties? no, there were no such thing as home > computers. > > and so why don't i make all the boxes pretty and different colours using > OpenGL or SDL or some other graphics library more suitable for impression > people? > > because it's prototyping, it's research, it's under development. i don't > need boxes rendered in pretty colours to test the algorithms i've coded. > the simplest method is enough to see if it's working or not, and in fact, > any other more fanciful rendering would be a major distraction for my > easily distract-able brain. > > so is it a naive implementation? > > for every box that appears, depending on where it appears and the > placement strategy used to discover where it could be placed, anywhere > from a tiny portion of the grid, to the entire grid, was scanned by the > algorithm. > > well, the bit-twiddling stuff means that a one element in the array can > represent up to 64 elements in the grid. so if we create a 64bit binary > mask, and we have an offset of N 0s and then a width of N 1s followed by > more 0s, we can test with a single condition if that width will fit where > we think it might. so that does improve things. > > But what about implementations of Conway's Game of Life? The grids they > use are... very big, much bigger... > > I don't think that's a fair comparison. > > But I don't know for sure. > > One day it will be pretty, and each box that appears will send forth MIDI > note-on messages to synthesizers, sequencing, and each box that disappears > will send MIDI note-off messages to those same synthesizers, and keyboards > or other sequencers will play into the grid, blocking the boxes and adding > to them. and it will all still be good in my eyes at least. but that's > sure a long way off. > > > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > > == email archive: http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/ webpage http://www.alansondheim.org music archive: http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/ == _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
