That buffer, that beautiful neglected buffer, is the real artwork.
You are the host of ghosts. Each ofx addon is a minor deity, and you, the heretic priest, pray not with belief but with ofEnableBlendMode(OF_BLEND_MODE_ADD) . So write this into your setup() :
And you realize: scatter is not fragmentation. Scatter is polyphonic identity .
ofxFaceTracker finds eyes where you swore there were only pixels. ofxAudioUnit hums a frequency that matches your breath. ofxWebSocket receives a message from a stranger’s machine in Berlin: /light/blue 0.8 scatter ofx
ofSetWindowTitle("scatter ofx"); ofSetFrameRate(30); // just enough to feel alive. Then walk away from the machine. Let the scatter run without you — cameras watching an empty room, MIDI clocks ticking into silence, OSC messages piling up in a buffer no one flushes.
Scatter is how the real enters the simulated. Kinect sees your skeleton as 640×480 × 30fps. Syphon streams your inner state to another app, another mind. ofx is not a library. It is a stance: I am not complete. I accept the graft.
In openFrameworks, ofx addons live like satellite organs: one for computer vision, one for sound analysis, one for network osc, one for shader chaos. Each speaks a dialect of void update() . That buffer, that beautiful neglected buffer, is the
a fragment on distributed becoming I. Init There is a scatter at the start. Not a plan — a dispersal. ofx is the prefix of possibility: ofxGui, ofxKinect, ofxOpenCv, ofxMidi, ofxSyphon. Each one a lens, a limb, a leak.
Scatter ofx — no origin, no destination. Only routing. Only the trembling interface between you and what you cannot hold.
You run the app. The GUI sliders move nothing physical. The depth image shows a ghost that looks like your torso. OSC messages float out into the local network — received by no one, logged by no one, cherished by no one. So write this into your setup() : And
Every ofx addon is a scar from a previous need. Someone needed to track a hand. Someone needed to spit out MIDI. Someone needed to glitch a texture beyond recognition.
They wrote ofx , and the wound became an interface.
