Lecture Notes by Mario Klingemann

2D or not 2D that is the Question

Flash on the Beach 2007 - Brighton, UK, November 6th 2007

Good vs. Evil, Mac vs Pc, Silverlight vs. Flash, 2D vs. 3D - it seems like some eternal battles will never end. In the world of Flash the forces of 3D have made some serious ground in the past years and given the 2D crowd a hard time. Anonymous support groups for 2D believers with inferiority complexes are booked up for months. But time has come to fight back! At its core Flash is 2D - it has still so much to give and one or the other surprise up its sleeve. Mario will show you some aspects of 2D Actionscript coding that you might have overlooked or underestimated in the past and which may awake new passion for some cosy 2D fondling with the old lady in you.

About the lecture notes: these are particulary tricky to navigate since they were not really made for anybody else but me. It will take quite some time to load the presentation in the first place and of course there is no progress bar. Don't expect to learn too much from them or to understand them without explanation. As a rule of thumb you should try clicking each page first with the mouse to check if there is some additional content. If there is then there might be further subpages to which you get by either clicking again or by pressing the space bar. To get to the next page press cursor right, to navigate back press cursor left. You can skip several pages by using the numbers 2-9. The magic wand example requires to rotate the mouse wheel once in order for the menu to appear. Sometimes the Flex Components hijack the cursor left/right keys. In that case you can get to the next page by pressing "1".

Lecture Notes

The Blind Sketchmaker - Exploring generative and evolutionary art with Flash

FITC 2007 - Toronto, Canada, April 26th 2007
flashconference 2007 - Stuttgart, Germany, May 4th 2007
multimania 2007 - Kortrijk, Belgium, May 25th 2007
Flashbelt 2007 - Minneapolis, USA, June 29th 2007
Flashforward 2007 - Boston, USA, September 20th 2007
Flashforum Konferenz 2007 - Cologne, Germany, September 26th 2007
Adobe MAX Barcelona 2007 - Spain, October 15th 2007

Can computers create Art? All by themselves? What actually makes a visual appealing in our eyes and how can a program distinguish art from noise? Is there accounting for taste? Mario will try to find some answers to these questions with the help of tools made in Flash and AIR. This is an inspirational session, prepared in Mario’s signature blend of hands-on solutions and surprising ideas, seasoned with a dash of science.

Lecture Notes Sketchmaker flickr set

Mashup Baby!

Flashforward 2006 - Austin, USA, September 13th 2006
FITC Hollywood 2006 - Los Angeles, USA, October 6th 2006
Adobe MAX Taipei 2006 - Taiwan, November 2nd 2006
Adobe MAX Seoul 2006 - Korea, November 14th 2006
Flash on the Beach 2006 - Brighton, UK, December 6th 2006

The internet is a goldmine of data. Almost every week, sites all over the web are offering new APIs that allow developers to retrieve their information in a convenient way. Other sites harbour interesting content but want to give it away only to humans, not to machines. But be it the easy or the hard way - data wants to be mined, processed, visualized or remixed and Flash® is the perfect tool for this job. Mario will show some of his experimental projects that mash up data coming from sources like Flickr, Amazon, YouTube, Lycos, or Yahoo. He will give an inside view into their making and offer hands-on solutions for typical Flash-related problems in this field.

There are three different versions available of this presentation which contain different gorgeous pinup illustrations by Jasmine T.

Lecture Notes (USA & Canada)
Lecture Notes (Asia)
Lecture Notes (Brighton)

Making a VJ Tool With Flash

FITC 2006 - Toronto, April 22nd 2006
flashconference 2006 - Stuttgart, May 6th 2006

The combination of graphics, animation and video with the ability to manipulate and script them in real-time makes Flash a perfect platform for a live performance tool. By using ExternalInterface it is even possible to extend the Flash 8 capabilites by interfacing to MIDI controls or allow for live sound frequency analysis. Mario Klingemann will demonstrate and deconstruct the VJ application he has built. He will talk about his initial considerations, the architecture of the program, the challenges in porting it to AS3 and give an outlook into the further development and extensibility.

Lecture Notes

Beyond the Blur - The Dawn of the Bitmap Age

Macromedia MAX 2005 - Singapore, November 11th 2005
Macromedia MAX 2005 - Korea, November 15th 2005
Spark Europe, Amsterdam, November 18th 2005

The ability to manipulate bitmaps in real time gives Flash 8 developers an unprecedented degree of freedom in their repertoire of visual expression. And whilst the novelty factor of prepackaged effects like blur or glow will keep the audience amazed for a while the true potential lies in the creative programming and abuse of the new tools. Klingemann deconstructs some of his experimental projects into their basic building blocks. In this session he demonstrates precompositing methods, masking, color matrix operations, displacementMaps, custom palettes, the mighty draw() command and shares useful tips and techniques he discovered along the way.

Lecture Notes | Source Files

Bitmaps in Sicht - Schöne neue Pixelwelt

Flashforum Tour 2005 - Düsseldorf, September 21st 2005

Mit Version 8 beginnt für Flash-Entwickler eine neue Zeitrechnung: endlich können Bitmaps nicht nur angezeigt, sondern gelesen, geschrieben und gefiltert werden. Eine Welt visueller Möglichkeiten noch ungeahnten Ausmaßes tut sich auf. Mario Klingemann betätigt sich als Forschungsreisender durch das noch unbekannte Land, stellt die neuen Klassen und Methoden vor und zeigt, wie man sie optimal nutzt.

Lecture Notes (in German)

Der Maler in der Maschine (The Painter in the Machine)

flashconference 2005 - Stuttgart, April 24th 2005

How do you turn the screen into a canvas? What formula is needed to transform pigments and brushstrokes into pixels? Is it possible to teach a machine how to paint?
These are some of the questions that Mario Klingemann researches with the support of Processing, a programming language and environment for digital art. In his session he will demonstrate how to handle complex processes by subdividing them into smaller components and how even simple models develop a surprisingly natural behaviour in their interplay.
A topic which is also interesting for Flash developers, as it was announced that Flash 8 (codename 8ball) will allow the direct manipulation of pixels.

Lecture Notes (in German)

Bitte umblättern - Eine Interface Metapher zum Anfassen

flashconference 2004 - Stuttgart, May 8th 2004

Flash Seiten, in denen man wie in einem Buch oder Magazin blättern kann, sieht man in letzter Zeit immer häufiger - kein Wunder, ist doch das Buch eine der verbreitetsten Benutzeroberflächen derWelt.

Mario Klingemann hat als einer der ersten ein rein actionscript-basiertes Page Turn Interface entwickelt, das im Gegensatz zu keyframeanimierten Lösungen sehr flexibel ist und dem natürlichen Umblätterns sehr nahe kommt.

In seinem Workshop wird er die mathematischem Grundlagen dieses Interfaces erklären und einen detaillierten Einblick in den Aufbau und die Funktionsweise des Blätter-Engines geben.

Lecture Notes (in German) + SourceCode (1.9 MB ZIP-File)

Kerzenziehen mit Flash (Candle-Dripping with Flash)

shockwards 2003 - Stuttgart, November 21st 2003

By the example of a candle Mario Klingemann takes you on an excursion through the world of physics, mathematics and philosophy. Under the slogan "Inspirational Coding by Nature" he will will demonstrate with practical examples how to create illusions with Actionscript by the interaction of form, color and motion.

Lecture Notes (in German)

A Content Management System for Flash Websites

flashconference 2002 - Stuttgart, April 19th 2002