I never got a chance to ask Robert how he got paid for doing this stuff, but i guess if we all knew that there wouldn’t be people left like him to impress us with the sheer complexity of his work. Essentially the subject of the presentation was examples of computer generated visuals using mathematical systems that included flocking, tendrils, attractors and so on. There are many online videos of the different systems that were showcased here, you can find them on his blog at http://www.flight404.com/
For jaw dropping visuals, the finale used the latest version of Robert’s Magnetosphere demo. This is a custom built particle effects system controlled by music. If your feeling like a wait you can download the full 193meg quicktime version at http://www.flight404.com/_videos/magnetosphere/, otherwise you can see a slightly smaller flash video version here (with different music). The visuals were created in an open source Java based graphics language called processing, on which you can find more info by going to http://processing.org/.
Rob