Quartz Week: What’s Next?

As the speed and processing power of computers are increasing at a stellar rate, the thirst and hunger from live visualist to harness that speed is also growing. It wasn’t but a hand of years ago that I was enjoying the simplistic wireframe graphics of the now classic Pong video game. I remember around the same time seeing Disney’s Tron for the first time and being amazed as a child at the computer generated visual effects. Now as “grownup” artist I have a computer that fits in my hands that has exponential more computing power than any of the machines it took to render out the few short CG sequences in the original Tron. Now with software like Quartz Composer, Processing, VVVV, OpenFrameWorks, etc. some of the most visually stunning CG videos can now be created and modified on the fly.
In the past few blog post, I’ve mentioned how QC can be used to generate content. QC is not limited to just making jumpy little lines and circles, or sending synchronizing data over wifi, or acting as a translator from PlayStation controller to MIDI notes. QC also has the potential to effect a live video feed in the same way as it can manipulate a pre-rendered video clips in terms of color/ tint, blurring, distortion, speed, etc in real time. (maybe another Quartz Week?)








