Thank you to everyone that attended the Pure Data Play workshop on 2nd November as part of Flip Festival. In the space of two hours the participants went from knowing nothing about Pure Data to manipulating 3D objects on screen, playing videos and webcam streams and controlling their videos using user-defined keyboard shortcuts. Some images of the patches:

Patch by Alex Jolliffe

Patch by Eliza Marcu

Patch by Jamie Boulton

To those of us who know more about programming and using Pure Data these patches may seem simple, but hopefully from this tutorial the participants have gained an insight into what is possible using Pure Data.

What I like most about Pure Data is that it is very extensible. It can accept data from a wide range of sources – including Arduino boards, game controllers (including Wii remotes and Kinect controllers), microphones, lists of data and even raw binary data – manipulate it and give audio or visual feedback. Best of all it does it in a way that is very logical. Some people may prefer to write lines of data, but with Pure Data (and other dataflow languages) you can visually see how data flows and is manipulated.

If you’re interested in attending or booking me for a Pure Data tutorial get in touch!