Quartz Composer is a Mac Application for visual programming. The program allows anyone to create interactive scripts which can be exported as a Quicktime movie or used as a screen saver. It allows for just about any input–mouse, audio, keyboard–although some some of these won’t work when run in some contexts. To make my critique brief: Quartz Composer is quite fast and powerful and the interface is very usable. Anyone with or without any programming knowledge could create something that looks nice if they play around with it long enough. Ultimately, however, it is very limited. Even if it may seem at first like it could do anything, if you are a creative soul you will find you can only realize your visions if they happen to be doable with one of the prefabricated filters or effects.
If you have a Mac with OS 10.4 or higher you already have Quartz Composer. To install it you’ll need OS installation disc. After inserting the disk a window opens with an icon to install the operating system. There is also a folder to for optional installations which includes XCode tools. Quartz composer is part of this package. Opening the package begins the installation and it’s easy from there. The package also includes a few other useful tools I’ve never used, but to be fair they have nice icons.
With all it’s limitations I have trouble giving Quartz Composer more credit than a fun little toy. Still, I have to give it credit for helping me get into interactive design and new media and if you are an artist interested in exploring such fields QC can be an excellent starting point, and for some applications is still a useful tool. The fact that it does run so fast makes it a great option for screen savers and live performances where you need things to render live and quickly. I’ve used it to create a projected, sound sensitive backdrop for musical performances. It’s also great for this because while the composition is rendering in one window, or on a projector or another screen, you can edit it in another without a restart or any rendering hiccups.
After installing the program the basic idea is use the patch creator window to insert patches and plug them together until it looks cool. The patches come in three forms controllers, modifiers, and renderers. Each has a series of inputs and outputs and parameters which can be adjusted by clicking the gear icon in the menu. To connect patches click and output circle and drag to an input. The circles will then be filled and a nice little bezier cable will be drawn between them. More complex compositions can be created with macro patches which contain a number of other patches.
If you’re interested in exploring new media and use a mac it’s worth playing around with, but eventually you might tire of all the pretty effects and want to move on to something like Processing with a a little more control and flexibility. Or if you want to get more serious with QC there are some ways to extend it. A JavaScript patch will interpret a script and provide inputs and outputs which can be connected to other patches as usual and allows for a little more customization. It is also possible to create custom patches, but how to do so is beyond my understanding.
