John Klima

GLASBEAD
www.glasbead.com
 

Glasbead is a multi-user persistant collaborative musical interface, allowing players to manipulate and exchange sound sample files and create a myriad of soundscapes and rhythmic musical sequences.

Sound files are added to Glasbead by selecting a file from the list on the right and right-clicking on a Glasbead stem.

Dragging hammers with a flinging action into the bells triggers the file. A bell is playing when it sparkles and its ring is red.

Rotating the rings turns the volume up and down.

Flinging Glasbead from the central core spins the entire structure and creates concentric rotations that add a great deal of complexity to the looping sequences.


BIO
Ca. 1980 Brooklyn-based artist John Klima (b. 1965) attempted to code a 3D maze on a TRS-80 with 4k RAM and failed miserably, but has been obsessed with 3D graphics ever since. Graduating from SUNY Purchase in 1987, he worked with photographic still life and furniture design until ca. 1990 when he became fascinated by the first primitive computer flight simulators and CAD programs. He began to build 3D graphics environments, and write source code. Contracting for companies such as Microsoft, Turner Broadcasting, and Dun & Bradstreet from 1993 to 1998, Klima honed his programming skills while continuing to make art within the flexible schedule that free-lance programming provided. In 1998, Klima discontinued activities as a commercial programmer to focus solely on the creation of art software. He has shown frequently in New York, mounting his first solo exhibition in February, 2001 at Postmasters Gallery. His work has been shown at European festivals, such as VIPER (Switzerland) and EMAF (Germany). His work glasbead was included in the "New Media New Face" exhibit at the ICC in Tokyo, Japan (1999) and received the Golden Lasso Award for Art in the Web3DRoundup at SIGGRAPH 2000 in New Orleans. His work ecosystm, commissioned by Zurich Capital Markets, was shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art as part of the exhibition "BitStreams" (2001). His latest work, EARTH, was previewed at the National Library of Medicine on May 21st, 2001, and at SIGGRAPH 2001 in Los Angeles.