CCRMA Colloquium - Open-Endedness and Code Generation in Creative Software: Wesley Smith and Graham Wakefield, authors of Gen
Open-Endedness and Code Generation in Creative Software
Wesley Smith and Graham Wakefield, authors of Gen from Cycling 74
Traditional real-time media processing limits results according to a pre-defined program or palette of modules, in order to balance the trade-off of flexibility and performance. This trade-off can be significantly relaxed using run-time code generation and dynamic compilation, opening up a potentially vast space of evolving program structures. We outline how this can be used in studio and performance contexts to support immediacy in on-the-fly creative tasks, and also to amplify open-endedness in generative systems. The talk will include theoretical and technical expositions, along with demonstrations in Max/MSP/Jitter + Gen and LuaAV.
About Gen:
http://cycling74.com/products/gen
Visually develop efficient, platform-independent code that is compiled just when you want it. Watch and listen to the output as you build unique processes in the Gen patcher. Gen compiles the code instantly while you work. Refine your object by adding inputs and outputs, setting default values, and defining parameters. Gen objects rival built-in Max objects for power and performance, but there's one big difference: you can change them any time you want.
About LuaAV:
http://lua-av.mat.ucsb.edu/blog
Wesley Smith creates art and computational systems with an emphasis on open-endedness, dynamic structure, and creative flow. His research delves into the interrelationship between space, geometry and computation. Wesley is a PhD candidate at UC Santa Barbara's Media Arts and Technology program where he has co-developed a number of computational arts frameworks including AlloCore, LuaAV and Cosm. He is also an employee at Cycling '74 working an Max/MSP/Jitter and is a principle developer the new Gen extension. Wesley lives and works in San Francisco.
Graham Wakefield explores the creation of real-time music and art through as the computational embodiment of creative becoming. This work engages with enduring questions of creativity, emergence and experience by emphasizing continuation over closure and integrating bio-inspired systems and run-time code generation. He is currently employed as a researcher for the AlloSphere (a multi-user spherical immersive instrument in the California Nano-Systems Institute, Santa Barbara) producing interactive environments for art-science research and co-developing an open-source multimedia frameworks (AlloCore, LuaAV, Cosm). He is a software developer for Cycling '74 (Max/MSP/Jitter, Gen) and lecturer at the Southern California Institute for Architecture (SCI-Arc). His works and research have been performed, exhibited, presented and published at international events including SIGGRAPH, ICMC, ISEA, NIME and EvoMusArt.