leafcutterjohn.com

THANK YOU!

whoooooo!

Everyone who helped me reach my fund-raising target for the British Heart Foundation, you are very lovely people!

I should be in bed now getting some rest before rising at 6am (ouch) to cycle down to the start line in Clapham, however I’m really moved that you people have been so generous.

Also I just remembered I need to charge the batteries in my Sony recorder….

Take care all,

J x.

Tags: British Heart Foundation, leafcutter john, London to Brighton

Off to the depths of the Swedish Forest. Box Project 2.

On Monday I’m going away to Sweden to record an album in 3 days. I don’t know if it’s possible but it’s an irresistable challenge, especially for someone who has spent the last year struggling and for the most part failing to write his own album.

The Box Project is the brain child of an English writer now living in Denmark named Philip. His idea is simple. Get a group of musicians together and have them record and album in 2-3 days. No discussion on the music takes place before the recording. He organises the logistics and the musicians take care of the music.

The recording will take place 20th > 23rd April at Silence (pictured) which is the most wonderful recording studio I have ever been to. It’s set in the middle of a massive forest in Sweeden and feels quite isolated. I worked there with the Danish band Under Byen a few years ago and I fell in love with the place and it’s inspiring engineer Anders Lind. I can’t wait to return.

The musicians I’ll be working with are:

Ståle Storløkken – keyboards/ electronics

Ståle Storløkken is a member of Supersilent, Elephant9, and Humcrush. He’s worked in a host of improvised settings with Terje Rypdal, Audun Kleive, Terje Isungset, amongst others.

Morgan Ågren – drums

Morgan Ågren plays with Mats/Morgan band and over the years with Frank Zappa, Steve Vai, Glenn Hughes, Flesh Quartet, and Frederik Thordendal of Meshuggah.

Lucy Railton – Cello

Lucy has played with a wide rage of musicians and organises the very successful ‘Kammer Klang’ nights in London.

I’ll be using my Max/MSP patches and using any thing I can find as a sound source, I’ll let you know how it turns out….

Take care,

Leafcutter John.

Tags: Box Project

Flow Fields in Processing

I’m fast becoming obsessed with Processing much to the detriment of everything and everyone in my life. Actually my partner is very encouraging and she likes these images nearly as much as I do. I first became aware of flow fields through the work of flight404 who has made some beautiful things in Processing. He describes using Perlin Noise to create a flow field but he’s not very detailed in his description of how to do it or what a flow field actually is.  I spent yesterday trying to work it out and I think I came up with a solution which matches pretty closely the method I found about 10 mins ago HERE. 

In the following images Perlin Noise is used to create a array/grid of angles which affect any objects which are directly above them. The grid looks like this (the angles change every frame):

As you can see the area of the screen is split into rows and columns creating a grid. Each grid cell has a direction (derived from Perlin Noise). An object placed on the grid can read the direction directly below it and move in that direction. See my Real time Flow Field.

The images below are from my experiments with a more advanced version of the system where objects turn gradually according to their mass which diminishes out over time. The coloured examples map colour to size or angle (click to see them full size).

Tags: flow field, movement, Processing