idiolect.net

Thursday's Dorkbot presentation at HacDC went very well, I think. Jack Whitsitt introduced most of the core functionality of QC, and I spoke a bit about trying to overcome its limitations with third-party plugins and Arduino (to provide custom inputs.) I appreciate that the Dorkbot organizers gave me the chance to speak - I'm completely new to Dorkbot, and to the HacDC scene - and am grateful to Max Kazemzadeh for ceding his speaking time so that we could complete our talk. I hope Max gets a full evening to present very soon - his website showcases some of his extraordinary installations.

I won't recap my presentation, but have included it below for reference.

(For Leopard) Quartz Composer plugins (.plugin files) go into:
/Library/Graphics/Quartz Composer Patches
or
~/Library/Graphics/Quartz Composer Patches (I think)

You'll have to restart Quartz Composer to see any new plugins.

Third-party resources for Quartz Composer (including some things not discussed at HacDC):

Kineme.netKineme pluginsSerialIO plugin (must register to download)
File Tools (contains .plist reader plugin)
Kineme.net's third-party plugins list for Leopard include (reproduced from site):

• v002 --- vade's Plugins
• MachineCodex Mandelbrot plugin
• Google's QC Plugins
• Blinkenposer, the Blinkenlight's QC Plugin
• SPK-StringToImageStructure
• ORNL.gov's Webkit to Image
• Stackunderflow.com's LCD and Keyboard Backlight QC Plugin
• Dicom Open Source Medical Imaging QC Plugin
• Deadbeef.org TCP Socket Reader Plugin
• Hiroaki's QC Plugins - XPath, REST, Applescript
• Darknoon's Port of Yellowtail, an interactive gestural performance environment originally by Golan Levin
• BDF Pixel-Font Renderer by Anatol Ulrich
• ACProcessorSuite by Michael Markert
• Image PixelS by Matthias Oostrik
• Open Emu QC by Anton Marini and Dan Winckler
• CoGe WebKit Plugin
• LuaScript Plugin
• Video Peggy Plugin
• Månsteri Plugins (New OSC Sender, Animata OSC)
• Core Plot Graph Plotting Plugin

Other stuff:

Quartz Composer JavaScript Reference

Quartz Composer Private Patches (hidden functionality):
- In Terminal, enter: defaults write -g QCShowPrivatePatches 1
or
- Install KinemeCore plugin from Kineme.net. KinemeCore also enables some very helpful UI improvements to the QC environment.

More stuff:

• Vade - Amazing VJ/QC-related site. QC plugins are at: http://002.vade.info/.
• QuartzCompositions.com - Tons of examples, sorted by category, and forum discussion.
• Sam Kass' blog - Nifty examples.
• Sintixerr - Quartz Composer tutorial and examples from Jack Whitsitt (my copresenter)
• Fdiv.net - More QC-related blogging.
• Create Digital Motion Quartz Composer-tagged articles
• OpenEmu - OS X game emulation, with forthcoming plugin for executing and interacting with classic console game ROMs within QC (!)

Not really sure what these sites are about, but they may be useful:
- QC Brainwave Plugin (!)
- B-L-A-C-K-O-P
- Codec

On your Mac: Check /Developer/Examples/Quartz Composer for sample applications, compositions, plugins (must build first in Xcode), and some other helpful files.

Also, although a text editor would suffice, Apple has kindly provided a free property list editor in /Developer/Applications/Utilities/ (Property List Editor).

Dorkbot compositions:

Dorkbot_SerialIO_13Aug09.qtz - Demonstrates use of Arduino as input, reading values from OS X property lists (.plist files), and movie playback. You'll need to have the Serial IO and Kineme File Tools plugins installed for this to work - both are be available on the Kineme site. I don't think any other plugins are needed, but QC will complain if something's missing.

This won't do anything 'out of the box' as it assumes you have two Arduinos, an RFID reader, the movie clips in place, etc., but I've noted where you'll need to change things to get an effect. If you're totally new to QC, I'd suggest checking out Jack Whitsitt's blog (linked above), or downloading some of the examples at QuartzCompositions.com.

I'll post some more info and examples later as I think of it. Happy visualizing!