IKANDY.APP - WTF is it?
I would have had a difficult time answering this a few weeks ago. This started as a personal project to make visuals for Spotify using the original Ryan Geiss Milkdrop files. Then a very nice gentleman reached out who was a foobar user, and I thought "can I add foobar too?" A few weeks later I had a music visualizer that worked with all music related applications, including Firefox, and integrated API where I could to offer advanced features for certain applications.
Ok, but now what? I stumbled across three.js shaders on Shadertoy and thought these are really cool, can I use these? So I found a few examples and to my surprise it worked. So I started looking around on Reddit at examples of other art available and found WebGPU, and you guessed it, I wondered "can I add that too?" And it worked.
So here I have an app that syncs to any music device and has the capability to run Milkdrop, GLSL, and WebGPU visuals, but sadly I wasn't satisfied. How was I going to load a catalog complete enough to satisfy users? I don't even know how to make this art, I just know how to load it.
So working with my buddy Claude I asked, could I integrate AI to help anyone create GLSL or WebGPU? Well, Claude my bff who never says "no" told me sure... and it worked!
One of the more interesting things I experienced in this journey is "how the hell do I contact these artists?" Boy I've tried, and to the few of you I've personally reached out to, I'm sorry. I've done an awful job explaining, and as you can tell have a tendency to ramble. So here it is.
If I pay so much for Spotify to listen to music why can't artists make art that's easily accessible and usable by the community? I've hooked up AI to help create both GLSL and WebGPU visuals, or load .MILK files, so anyone can make them. When you use Suno the only thing you see is AI curated content, but I want to give artists the chance to compete against that and feature what they can do. The best man wins will be featured in IKANDY, and possibly sold as a pack through Steam's Workshop. (FYI - In all fairness, what artists make can be much better than what AI creates, but there's no game if I just say that..)
This will be released as a beta in approximately a month, and I've always stuck to privacy trumps all, so the beta access will be offered in a unique way that doesn't include your email address.
If you made it this far - thanks. I still don't know if 6 people will think this is cool, or more? We'll find out soon! Good luck and have fun.
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." - Ferris Bueller