Anthony Mattox Interaction Design + Digital Art

I began programming about a year ago, primarily working a language called Processing. Much of the programming I have been doing has be to create generative or algorithmic artwork. Such works involve writing a script to dynamically generate images based on a variety of systems and inputs. One of the thoughts behind this type of work is that a piece is not manifested as a single image, but in a method which creates an image. What is important is style, texture, motion, and the relationships between elements and colors. The particular composition is generated dynamically each time the piece is viewed. For the past year I’ve been documenting most of this work as still images in this site, a trail of my development, but not a full representation of the work.

www.anthonymattox.com/interactive is a little site I’ve made to display my interactive works in one place. Take some time to explore the projects. I’ll keep adding more work as I create it as well as a number of other projects that still need to be cleaned up and put into the site.

Enjoy!

Most of the projects in it are created with processing and your browser will have to have the java plugin installed to run them. To run the 3d applets you will have to click trust in the dialogue box that appears. There still might be some bugs in the site so let me know if you have any issues.

Despite all the work I’ve been doing with Processing I don’t have many of the functional applets on the web. This is partly due to issues with embedding applets into WordPress posts. WordPress, the content management system I use for this site, is a great tool, but it has an unfortunate habit of screwing up code posted within the page content.

There are, of course, plugins to get around such issues, but I have a better plan. I’m building a WordPress plugin expressly for embedding Processing sketches. I’ve built a very basic version without any admin options. Inserting a simple shortcode into a post adds the applet. The shortcode is contained in brackets and simply reads ‘processing file=”path/to/file.jar” width=”450″ height=”250″‘. The .jar file can be uploaded with the media uploader within the “edit post” page in the WordPress admin or through the media library. The plugin includes the core.jar, so only the specific (and fairly small) .jar file for the applet needs to be uplaoded.

My basic script suits my own needs, but I’m working on an expanded version with an admin panel to set default options, alt text, and styles. I’m also not sure how this will render in RSS readers (probably not well but it should work in the site).

If you have any questions or suggestions on how I should move forward with this or features I should include leave a comment. The plugin should be available within the next few weeks.

see how it looks »