[PD] how to understand pure data logic?

[Frank Barknecht]

Hallo,
andreithomaz hat gesagt: // andreithomaz wrote:

> I think that most of come come from musical background, and have
> already used some programs that make the learning of Pure Data
> easier. With GEM and Framesteing, Pure Data becomes very interesting
> for visual artists, but I don't know how to start the work about its
> logic with people with this background (visual artists).

At the Montevideo Pd workshop last month there were a lot of visual
artists, whereas two of the three teachers were more sound guys,
including me. 

So I had a chance to observe what differences there would be between
audio and visual artists and I must say, in the Pd world, the
differences aren't that big. That's because basically everything is
just numbers and names, even if you work with different things like
packages (video frames) in pdp or if you process samples in the
audio signal graph. 

The hardest thing to understand for beginners seems to be the
vocabulary. What object is there to solve which task simply requires a
certain amount of memorizing. The basic handling of Pd is rather easy
to understand, as it just involves a bit of mouse work and typing. 

Of course there are some programming concepts (execution order,
abstractions as "functions", $-variable,...) that are a bit more
difficult, but I'm confident they are just as difficult for sound as
they are for video/visual artists.

If you show PDP the visual guys will surely  feel at home very quick
when it comes to multipying pictures, blurring and the like, because
they know this from Photoshop or some video editors as the sound guys
will recognize low pass filters or oscillators.

Regarding the logic: you will have to find a way to explain these.
Start simple, go step by step, try to find "useful" examples, things
that are fun. Maybe don't do logic for its own sake, rather let your
friends run into problems that are easy to solve by applying logic and
programming concepts.

Ciao
-- 
 Frank Barknecht                               _ ______footils.org__