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Branching LSystems in Max/MSP

I had a little more time to work on LSystems today and I’ve managed to get simple branching to work. I also discovered that Jitter has its own LSystem object – I’m going to continue to make my own system as I’m still trying to figure out a few things. Here are the first branching images.

More soon,

Leafcutter John x.

LSystems in Max/MSP

I recently came upon this page which talks about generative design and the demoscene which both try and create media dynamically by giving (fairly) simple rules for reproduction. There is an excellent video of Brian Eno and Will Wright talk about generative forms and the idea of creating complexity from simple rule-sets. I was very inspired by this idea as it could potentially be of a lot of use to computer musicians. 

I don’t have time right now to go into how LSystems work but they can produce a wide verity of outcomes which often look like they could be found in nature. The LSystem tree is a classic example of This. (the tree pictured is not my own but it is created by an L system).  

I managed to make a simple LSystem patch in Max/MSP and all the images above were made with it (click then click again for full size). I’ll go into more detail in future but all images are created from very simple rules such as: ‘F = F F + B’ which are iterated many times to produce the output. The images produced exhibit complexity far beyond what you might expect from such simple input. I’m hoping that soon I’ll be able to make trees and I’m curious to see if there is an interesting way of generating Music by mapping the branching and self-similar structures.

I’m interested in hearing from you if you know about this kind of thing!

All the best,

Leafcutter John