On Friday I discovered Quartz Composer, and I’ve literally been glued to it ever since. It took me many years of hearing about it to really take the step to check it out, and I totally regret wasting so many years without it in my life. I don’t normally sing accolades on such a scale, but seriously. This thing is the shit. I was able to accomplish in ten minutes what took several hours to construct in Flash. I pride myself in not biasing myself towards any technology, and so I’m happy to abandon Flash for the performance art aspect of my life.

Here is a video I made last night, fusing Logic with Quartz Composer and my APC-40 control surface. The music was produced in Logic and has MIDI notes broadcasting out over IAC to Quartz Composer, which is listening in to both Logic and the APC-40.

I’m tweaking the cutoff frequency of the pads with a knob on the APC that is also tied to the shape of the stars in Quartz Composer, the idea being that I can modify music and graphics at the same time with the same knob. It’s pretty addictive stuff. I’m seeing stars every time I close my eyes now.