I must confess that I am an addict. I have become addicted to creating computer-generated images. Having recently posted about Processing and Oxidizer, I have found another image generator called “Context Free.”

Context Free “is a program that generates images from written instructions called a grammar. The program follows the instructions in a few seconds to create images that can contain millions of shapes.”

Creating images with the software is a piece of cake. One can download from a gallery of “grammar” files or create your own scripts. Downloaded scripts can have their output modified by entering a three-character code into the Context Free application, leading to millions of permutations of the work.

It’s a fascinating program to play around with and some of the output is simply stunning.

Best of all — the software is free, open-source and is available for Windows, OS X and various flavours of Unix.

An Internet notification platform that works on both Windows and Mac (including support for Growl). “Using Stitcho, your website can send real-time notifcations directly to a user’s desktop, even when their web browser is closed.”

I am becoming increasingly impressed and intrigued by the multimedia produced with the Processing framework. There are some stunning artworks and videos emerging and it’s all serving to make me ever more curious about the capabilities of the system.

A lot of the work produced reminds me of the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST demo scene of the eighties and I find myself feeling terribly nostalgic.

But Processing isn’t just about art — the framework is also used for some very serious data visualisation too.

It’s all very impressive.

Further Reading:

The History of Visual Communication
Visualisations and Infographics
Information Aesthetics

An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux.