Re: Boids and constraints of randomness!

["Yon Mercury" <swirlee@stickist.com>]

Rick wrote:

>What fascinates me more than pure randomization is the constraint of
>randomness.
...
>This is where Boid algorhythms come in (if I can be bold enough to even 
>talk 
...
>Birds flocking will stay a relative distance from every other bird in the
>flock.   The distances will vary
>within a certain tolerance (they probably will never hit each other, nor 
>will
>they get more than a certain distance away from each other because they 
>are a
>flock , for god's sake! 
... 
>Now that the flock has resumed flying in a relatively straight line (and 
>that
>itself has some tolerances and yet you can map with a straight line where
>they will end up weeks later),  their relative distances
>'tighten up' and go back to their original status quo.
...
>Why not apply these kinds of algorhythms to filter resonance, cutoff,  
>lfo's....................programmable
>contrained random deviations from each parameters beginning setting. 
 
!!!
When you originally posted on Boids, you sparked something in me, and I
waddled off to join the flock of listmembers checking those algorithms! I
ended up with xboids, a version with source code that I installed. When I 
saw
those flocking birds, your idea hit me! I saw a flock of loops... and why 
not
have the user control the general direction of the flock for parameters 
like
filters, amplitudes, etc-- instead of giving us minute control over each
parameter.

So I'm looking at integrating this algorithm into FreeWheeling, the looper 
I'm
working on. It's nearing its first public release as open source, so this 
is a
good time to integrate suggestions from people. Thanks for the inspiration!

Blessings,
-Mercury