exploring algoraving
Exploring Hydra this week has been lots of fun. I’m even considering using it in tandem with p5 (via initScreen) for visuals at a show I’m doing with my band in May. My friend who is hosting the show plans to use touch designer for interactive visuals too.
Hydra is super beginner friendly, or at least I felt I was able to get cool results almost immediately just by experimenting; however, it is equally as easy to turn the whole screen into a dense, move cloud of colors that feels less intentional and interactive than I’d like.
I think a workflow that may work best if possible is to have video being fed into hydra that then modulates and effects that video. I know that there is midi compatibility in Hydra, which is definitely worth looking into. It would be cool to have visuals change with midi triggers in live performance, but I’m not sure what I’d want that to look like quite yet.
p5 for live coding is less immediately gratifying, but may end up being a nice way to go as interactivity seems a bit more approachable with it.
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Your images here look really nice! I agree that it is easy to quickly build a mess of colors. I think building up so you don’t make a mess of dense cloud of colors is a challenge and probably takes some practice. I’m trying to get better myself. Having some nice routines that you can return to and gradually morph between might be one way to deal with this. Naoto Hieda does a nice job of manipulating hydra in intentional ways that are sharp/precise. You could check out their videos and tutorials for some ideas.
There’s also nice ways to integrate hydra and p5 together! And Ted Davis has a nice interview with Processing on this. I also like this unique tutorial on text collage with p5 and hydra by nervous data.