Category Archives: Uncategorized

Creating Musical Instruments in Godot

My first year students made musical instruments in Godot this semester. As research, we attended musical performances in the Concert Hall in East Quad and also trad sessions in The Cobblestone. Then the students created musical instruments with unique user interfaces, sounds and designs. Students did a live performance with their their instruments as the demo of the assignment.

Check out the assignment brief on github.

Berlin Artist Adam John Williams visits TU Dublin

Pictures from the visit of Berlin artist Adam John Williams to TU Dublin School of Computer Science in April as part of a TU Dublin Growthhub funded project. During Adams visit, he meet with composers and musicians, saw the work of computer science creative coding and game design students and had planning meetings for a planned music hacking workshop and algorave in TU Dublin in October 2024.

i.am.dani @MSXGOTO40 live VJ stream

This is a re-recording my VJ performance for MSX composer Tadahiro Nitta at MSXGOTO40 in Amsterdam in December 2023 Featuring:

– i.am.dani – The AI Chatbot from 1987 that comes to life in 2023 to make art and write poetry
– MIDI controlled, sound generated algorithmic art
– Creative coding projects made by TU Dublin Computer Science and Game Design students inspired by the story of MSX
– Gameplay of MSX games from which the music is taken

All music made and performed by Tadahiro Nitta on MSX computers

GAZZEL INTRO
GG TROIS
BACKFLOW WAVE – Raging Blitz
BOSS BGM – Raging Blitz
STAGE CLEAR– Raging Blitz
STAFF ROLL – Raging Blitz
CAR NO 52 IT SEQUENCE
XAK 2 INTROSCREEN
XAK 1 WATERDRAGON
FRAY Last Boss –
DARKMAZE ILLUSION CITY – theme A

Source code for i.am.dani https://github.com/skooter500/iamdani

VJ’ing with i.am.dani for Tadahiro Nitta @ MSXGOTO40

What an honour to VJ for Tadahiro Nitta, the composer for many well known games on my beloved MSX platform at MSXGOTO40 in Amsterdam on December 9, 2023.

This performance merged footage of the games with i.am.dani created algorithmic visuals, poetry and code. In additition students from BA Game Design first year created art work using Python and Processing inspired by the story of MSX. Full video coming soon.

Abstract Visual Story of a Song

This assignment challenges computer science students to apply the programming they are learning, to a creative project that they work on in a team, over the course of one semester. It is given to around 140 students in the second semester of their second year. The students form teams and submit their teams and proposals around week 5. Final submission and demos are around week 13. Students track and document their progress by making documented commits in a github repository that they submit at the end. There is a template for the readme.md file they submit, where they declare their individual contributions. They also submit a youtube video demonstration and do a live demo.

The assignment is designed to develop many important transferrable skills:

  • Teamwork
  • Design
  • Collaboration
  • Project Management
  • Self directed learning
  • Understanding of colour and sound
  • Use of version control system
  • Design of an object oriented system

Students use VS Code, GitHub, Java, the Processing Libraries. The assignment is fun, both for the students and me to grade! Many students report that it was the most enjoyable assignment they did in college.

Here is a link to the full brief that goes into more detail.

i.am.dani

i.am.dani is a creative coding project that celebrates the 40th Anniversary of the creation of the MSX Computer System in 1983. Inspired by DANI chatbot from 1986, i.am.dani celebrates the joy of learning programming, and features work by myself and teams of students from TU Dublin. Developed in Java, using the Processing libraries for creative coding, i.am.dani features MIDI controlled, sound responsive visuals for music. Processing’s origins are in graphical programming languages used to learn programming such as MSX Basic and LOGO as it contains instructions for drawing 2D and 3D shapes, manipulating colors, loading 3D models and making sounds.

VJ’ing with i.am.dani at Audio Garden Festival this year! Also DANI at INSIGHT2023: Rethinking Psychedelics:

Download the source code to i.am.dani on github.