Anthony Mattox Interaction Design + Digital Art

Intro EP: a collection of electronic musical experiments by Anthony Mattox.

As part of my thesis at MICA, in addition to Pulsus for the iPad and an installation piece, I created my first album of electronic music. You can listen to two of the tracks right here and download the full EP.

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Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The EP consists of 5 tracks created primarily from recorded samples and some synthesized audio. All the tracks were composed in Ableton Live. Adobe Soundbooth and Pure Data were also used to create and modify samples.

Working on these pieces has been a great break from programming, and, while I still have a long way to go, I’ve made a lot of progress and done a lot of learning. I’ll definitely be creating more, and better music in the future.

The cover was created using processing from some code snippets of other generative work of mine.

Click images to enlarge.
 
Three sets of thrown, stoneware cups and saucers.

In my last semester here at MICA I had one more studio elective and quickly decided to take a class in wheel thrown ceramics. Since I took a ceramics class in high school I’ve been eager to try it again.

Throwing was a wonderful break from all of the programming and soldering that has filled every other minute of my life for the past few months. Hopefully I’ll have more opportunities to work with clay in the future.

Here’s a bit of the work I did.

After a few long months of development, Pulsus is finally available for the iPad. From my original flash prototype, Pulsus has grown in every way possible. It’s found a new home on a wonderful device, has fully redrawn graphics, a new soundtrack, improved physics, a much improved interface, and a suite of new objects and levels on the way. The game has been completely rebuilt from the ground up in native Objective C and C++.

Visit the new Pulsus page for more information and pretty screenshots. View Pulsus in the app store. And play the old flash game.

The app is initially only available for the iPad but will be coming to the rest of the iOS family later this summer.

Of course, there is always more to improve, but Pulsus for the iPad has come very close to my original expectations for the game, creating a simple, but complex world and an enveloping series of meditative puzzles

Some Technical Notes

Pulsus is built using Objective C, C++, and C, it get’s a little hazy to be honest. All audio was created using Ableton Live and Adobe Soundbooth, graphics in Adobe Illustrator. Photoshop was always there to help out too. Original prototype created in Flash and AS3.

All type set in Apex Sans by Thirstype.

Special thanks for invaluable feedback and beta testing to Jason Corace, Jason Sloan, Andy Mangold, Dai Foldes, Dave Fong, and Josh Hepworth.

Moving Forward

Planned updates to Pulsus include an iPhone/iPod version, new objects and levels, and a good list of little improvements here and there.

If you enjoy Pulsus, any rating, reviewing, blogging, and retweeting is appreciated. The better Pulsus does, the better position I’ll be in to make more, and better games in the future. I may even be able to convince the rest of the Friends of The Web to work together on some awesome games.