Field

Field looks like a really interesting piece of software. It is step on from Processing, providing a richer IDE with features like embedded editing widgets. I haven't used it in anger yet, and it is still beta, but it looks promising. There are apparently 6 years of work in there so there must be a lot more than meets the eye!

What I also like is the implementation philosophy that other libraries and technologies should be embraced and integrated, rather than rewrite everything. It appears that Field provides a wrapper around other technologies and allows time coordinated use of them. The screen shot about shows the canvas. Left to right is the timeline and the boxes represent things going on.

It will be interesting to use the editor and experiment with the embedded widgets. I've thought about a similar concept for my Guish project, where you'd have interactive GUI elements mixed with text that you enter, like in a terminal. Pure text terminals see really out of date now, and it's about time there was some suitable graphical enhancements.

Other pieces of work by the Open Ended Group that look interesting are Breath, which explores different graphical representations of music, and Musical Creatures, which explores digital creatures that can interact with their environment.