Month: November 2016

This week I looked at Glenn Marshall’s work called Statue, which displays a dramatic look at the Statue of Liberty being crucified. I also looked at the Hyphae Zoetrope on Nervous System, which is an animation of a plant-like figure growing.

I find these both interesting because they each have a component of the animation that I aim to make. I admire the growing branch-like look to the hyphae zoetrope, and I admire the design and camera work of the Statue project. They are different in their content, but share the 3D aspect to their projects.The meaning behind the works also appear to differ as Statue appeared largely political, while the Hyphae Zoetrope was more intricate and appeared to be designed for aesthetic purposes.

Statue was created on November 9, 2016, while the Hyphae Zoetrope was created in 2014.

A link can be found here for the statue project, while a link can be found here for the Hyphae Zoetrope. The video of the Statue project can also be found below.

 

I chose two projects as reference for my final project.

Extinct is an educational game that allows players to plant either a wild plant or a farm crop by Joe Cutting. The goal of the game is to grow as many seeds as possible through deciding how much water, minerals and sunlight to distribute to growing different parts of the plant. The more seeds you get, the higher your survival rate. The game is interesting in that you have control over your plant and it makes use of scientific knowledge that gives the player something more to take away from the game. Something I wish Cutting did better is that the window is too small for the plant. When the plant gets really tall it goes out of view. The slider bars are also a bit too long.

121 Fake Flowers by W:Mute is a series of 121 computer generated flowers. The artist uses processing to make the flowers and they are all in black and white. What is interesting about the project is that all the flowers have a crystal like structure. Unlike the first project, this is only a simulator of flowers. I thought this project was worth investigating because it could help me generate the leaves and fruit in my game. Is seems that this project has differentiated the petals and the pistils. When I generate my plant I should generate stems and leaves individually. If this project could include more variability, it would be even more interesting.

Links:

About

Joe Cutting

Play Extinct

I chose two projects that make data accessible to the non-technical minded. One, the most interesting, is Nathan Yau’s ‘A day in the life of Americans‘. In it, he uses dots to simulate how each of 1000 Americans occupy themselves within a 24 hour period. The source data is based on 2014 American Time Use Survey, made accessible by ATUS Extract Builder. The project represents each person as a dot whose color is determined by the activity of the moment. Dots of the same color congregate to the same spot on a circular clock-like canvas with activities located around it. Each activity records the percentage of dots at the location. The dots are in constant motion; they become frantic in rush hour then settle into work or sleep depending on the time of day.

The second one is Ekene Ijeoma’s ‘The Refuge Project‘. It is an animated world map that shows the country of origin of refuges for each year from 1975 – 2015.  At the earliest, the project was done in 2015. The circular illustrations are scaled to represent the number of refugees. At a glance, one is able to tell where the largest number of refugees came from for a given year. When the mouse is positioned at the circle of origin, the destinations of the refugees are shown by arrows and numbers. A side screen narrates key events contributing to the largest refugee numbers for each year.

I admire the two projects because they turn numbers into intriguing representations that are easily apprehended. One of the challenges of our times is how to make meaningful use of the enormous quantities of data that is available. Making the data easily apprehended is an important step in analyzing and using the data.

As to the algorithms, Nathan’s work suggests that each circle is an object that stores properties and functions which change its color and drive its movement across the screen. Even though Ekene’s work is static for each year, it also probably relies on an array of objects with properties and functions. The map at the back is also interactive because it is linked to the circles.

For my project, I wish to make a platform that graphically presents a location’s climate data – one unlike the common weather apps. The two projects inspired this idea which I also hope to use in later work.

This week I will present two different projects that present famous media (movies and books) in an unexpected way that reveals new and fascinating aspects of the well know work.

TextArc / Bradford Paley

The project of TextArc takes famous books and analyzes their text and content, presenting them a new and interactive way:

All the sentences in the book are presented clockwise, and in the middle the words most frequently used are presented. Furthermore, each word is located in the area it is mentioned the most, for example “Queen is near the end of the book”. When the user hovers a specific word, they can see in what parts of the book this word is used:

Photographs of Films / Jason Shulman

In this project, the artist condensed whole well known classic films into a single frame. Shulman used an algorithm to create the mood and style of the film in a single frame:

In both projects, famous media are taken and presented in a new way that shows aspects that were hidden before, allowing others to look at a piece from a different point of view.

The projects differ in the medium they use – TextArc uses text, as opposed to visual compositions in the films project. Furthermore, TextArc is an interactive program that encourages the user to look into the text, explore, look what words are used and where, etc. The second project, although not interactive, has an advantage of creating a mood that represents a full length movie just by looking at a still image. This resembles more of a work of art, rather than interactive text presentation.

As my final project suggestion is looking at plays from different eras in a new way by visualizing structure aspects, I think both of these projects can inspire my work. I can look at what aspects of the work are presented and what are some ways in which they can be computed and visualized.