Filed under: Audio, Multimedia, Rumors, iTunes
Rumor: new visualizer in iTunes 8 to be Robert Hodgin's Magnetosphere
On the heels of our earlier post about new features in iTunes 8 comes this post from video producer and designer Allan White, speculating that the new visualizer in iTunes might be Processing artist Robert Hodgin's amazing Magnetosphere, which was available up until a few months ago from The Barbarian Group (aka Robert's design company) as an iTunes plugin.
As Allan points out, there are two very strong pieces of evidence for this: 1) Allan emailed Robert, who told him Magnetosphere had been sold to a "third party", and 2) a twitter from Digg founder (and amateur Apple rumor mill) Kevin Rose on Sept. 2nd describing the new visualizer as "planet like objects wrapping around each other w/stars/light streams". As you can see in the image above, this sounds like a pretty apt description of Magnetosphere, which visualizes sound as particle explosions like supernovas. The Barbarian Group website's page for Magnetosphere says that "We've had a ton of interest in it, and we've got some exciting plans, but it's gonna take us a couple months to make it all happen."
Of course, nothing is confirmed, but it all points in the right direction. Personally, I'd love to see Magnetosphere on every iTunes user's screen, and not just because Robert is an amazing artist and also always gracious and helpful when I email him because my Processing particle system animations don't look as cool as his. The world just needs stuff this cool-looking everywhere.
(Thanks to Poopie for noticing that I'd accidentally added an "s" to "Hodgin"!)
[via Create Digital Music]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Trent said 7:13AM on 9-05-2008
This is just great!
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DMcGrew said 9:31AM on 9-05-2008
gimmick
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JoshK said 9:37AM on 9-05-2008
I love that thing too, the only virtualizer I've ever enjoyed watching.
Bring it to AppleTV also! Please! I like the floating pictures and flipping artwork but I'd love to see magnetosphere on my HDTV. It can't be that hard, Apple!
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Jim said 10:07AM on 9-05-2008
Any way that this could be ported to the AppleTV? My parties would be a little more fun with some cool visualizations onscreen while playing music.
Or I could just buy more Schlitz.
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Just_a_guy said 10:55AM on 9-05-2008
ugh get rid of the plannet like objects....
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scot copeland said 11:29AM on 9-05-2008
Here's another impressive sampling of his visualizations: http://www.vimeo.com/658158
Yes folks, visualizations are a gimmick, but this is impressive none the less, and he's been jamming out high quality work for years.
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Rick Hamell said 11:32AM on 9-05-2008
Just in case you want to download the old version, I've got a copy up on my site: http://www.1nova.com/blog/?p=249
This is a great visualizer. I have it installed on my "media" machine in the living room so it's always going when we're listening to tunes.
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Simon Arch said 11:37AM on 9-05-2008
Impressive, but I never use visualisers so I'd be far more impressed if they did a complete overhaul of the application, re-writing it from the ground up to be leaner, faster and better able to handle moderately large libraries. There's no excuse for iTunes becoming sluggish and unresponsive once you top 10,000 tracks.
Apple: Stop tacking on feature after feature! Fix iTunes!
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Chris said 6:08PM on 9-08-2008
Not sure what you're talking about. The latest version of iTunes on my machine is incredibly snappy. I have ~17000 songs, and I'm running a 4 year old G5.
Glad to see Robert's hard work going into something like this. His art is absolutely gorgeous and a well needed display of what OpenGL can do. His video he did for Weird Fishes is absolutely phenomenal.
Allan White said 2:06PM on 9-05-2008
It may be gimmicky - and yes, it's not improvements we are all hoping for. I don't think it contributes to bloat, though - loading visualizers is pretty trivial for iTunes.
Most of the stock visualizers are pretty cheesy by now. This one is one of the first that really caught my eye. Hodgins is really breaking some ground by marrying code with... beauty. His work is incredibly creative.
Here's more on some of his other work and process. He entered a Radiohead video contest recently with this one.
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Allan White said 2:07PM on 9-05-2008
Argh, the link (more on his work and process):
http://allanwhite.net/index.php/blog/comments/more_music_viz/
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Chris Tucker said 8:19PM on 9-05-2008
So, I went looking for it and found Magnetosphere. Installed it.
Wow!
I REALLY hope this will be part of iTunes 8.
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David M. said 10:09PM on 9-05-2008
I have been using Magnetosphere for my visualizing needs. It is really responsive to the beat and tone of the music.
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fishface said 10:36PM on 9-05-2008
people it's just a visualizer
common!!
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Gobo said 8:19AM on 9-06-2008
Yes, and it's a very, very good visualizer.
I think you mean "come on", not "common".
Come on.
sm said 3:11AM on 9-06-2008
Magnetosphere has been confirmed to be the new visualiser by Kevin Rose - see his twitter page.
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Allan White said 5:38PM on 9-10-2008
I've updated the post with screenshots; it's clear that it's been greatly enhanced with new modes and style. Can't wait to try it!
http://allanwhite.net/index.php/blog/comments/more_music_viz/
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Tim said 11:44AM on 9-11-2008
Weird that I can not find it in iTunes 8 but the itunes webpage shows a screen shots of magnetosphere and the barbariangroup page says that it now lives inside of itunes. So where did it go?
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Ali said 12:51PM on 9-16-2008
Who thinks magnetosphere should be available on the App store for iPhones/iPod touch? How sick would that be!?
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Buckingham said 1:20PM on 9-30-2008
*ignore*
filler message so my email confirm gets pushed. tuaw fix this shit.
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