SectionD – Page 3 – [OLD FALL 2019] 15-104 • Introduction to Computing for Creative Practice

Raymond Pai – Looking Outwards – 12

Project Soli

DR. IVAN POUPYREV created a data visualization of movements of the hand. I admire that it uses a radar to sense how the hand is moving, then translates that into colors and strokes on a page. It also allows the user to use gestures to play games. I think it has the opportunity to allow users to create their own art.

Dissonant Imagery

http://www.daito.ws/en/work/dissonant-imaginary.html

In 2018, Daito Manabe + Kamitani Lab created a visualization of imagery in the mind using “brain decoding”. I admire that it focuses on the relationship of brain activity, visuals, and sound to predict the mental visuals that the user is thinking about. I think this has the opportunity to help people generate art covers for playlists of music, allowing them to identify the playlist by the image instead of a playlist name.

Lauren Park – Looking Outwards – 12

The artists both display abstract visuals for sounds and songs. For Julien Bayle’s “ALPHA”, I really appreciate the ragged line drawings that take on black and white visuals. Julien Bayle also seemed to have used algorithmic sequencing to construct not only the visual, but also the sounds. This artist seemed to successfully create very different, complex 2D and 3D shapes that match the beats of the sounds, but could have used these complex shapes to form a more interesting narrative that happens throughout the piece.

For Cody Courmier’s piece (“Abstract Visual Sound”), I appreciate the simple shapes and colors used for the song “Tangerines”. All these shapes and movements seem more animated and less randomized, compared to Julien Bayle’s work. There seems to be a clear beginning and finish to the piece, as if it was to visually act as an introduction to something, such as an ad, rather than to just provide visuals for the song. Overall, I think for this piece the theme could have been more specified to revolve around the mood of the song, but seemed to flow better in rhythm.

“ALPHA”(2014) by Julien Bayles

“Abstract Visual Sound”(2015) by Cody Courmier

Lauren Park – Project 12 – Proposal

For the final project, I wanted to find a way to somewhat visually create the mood or vibe of a moody love song I have been listening repeatedly recently. I plan to upload the sound file of this song and illustrate visuals such as abstract patterns/shapes that will move or change as this song plays throughout. There will also be a black heart that will beat according to the beat of the song by playing around with the amplifications of the sound. These objects will revolve around an illustration of a character, that represents me. Some of the objects like the lines in the background and the drips from the black heart will move as time passes. The overall visuals of this whole image is inspired by multiple different album covers of several songs that give off similar vibes. I wanted to incorporate similar shapes and forms I noticed from these albums into this project.

Stefanie Suk – Project – 12 – Proposal

For my final project, I’ll be making a game that is inspired by the games Pacman and Slither.io. The goal of this game will be to drag the character around the screen to ‘eat’ all the items that are spread throughout the maze. However, the maze consists of walls that the character shouldn’t touch, or else, the game will be over. The maze walls will have dead ends that will make it harder for the user to accomplish the game. The tricky part of this game is that the character will move where the mouse moves, which is hard to control to prevent the character from touching the complex walls. My overall idea is to code so that when the character moves over and through each item, the item will disappear and the scoreboard will increase by one. When the character touches the wall, the phrase “Game Over” will come out. Although I don’t know what the items around the maze will look like, as a person who loves sweets, I was thinking of creating colorful desserts like donuts for the character to eat.

Kristine Kim- Looking Outwards- 12

Boundary Functions, 1998, Scott Snibbe

As an artist, I love working with different materials and techniques in one project. Therefore, I am always very interested in interactive 3D artworks. One artist that caught my attention was Scott Snibbe, an interactive artist who produces art with diverse media including mobile devices, digital projections, and electromechanical sculpture. Scott strives to bring meaning and joy to people’s lives. In his interactive work, he often portrays the interdependence of beings with their environments and each other through bodily interactions. Although it is an older project, His interactive project Boundary Functions caught my attention because it is something that I want to reflect in my final project with Minji Kim Kim. Boundary Functions is a set of lines projected from overhead onto the floor, dividing people in the gallery from one another. It interacts with the amount of people present on the floor. Though my project will not be dependent on the amount of people but will be similar to this project in terms of the “person” or my icon interacting with the floor by walking.

Another artist that I was attracted to was David Bollinger, a generative artist who enjoys tinkering wither various procedural, generative, and algorithm. He creates bunch of different puzzle like images with different textures and execution. My partner and I was inspired by David’s maze/puzzle like games and his usage of color and perspective.

David Bollinger has an album called Crayon Maze and it is a skill building maze and tracing game for toddlers, preschool, kindergarten, and children of all ages. It is basically a learning game for toddlers where they trace an alphabet or a number in a game form. We wanted to do something similar by having a secret message in our maze / puzzle like the secret “Q” in the Crayon maze game.

Stefanie Suk – Looking Outwards – 12

The two projects that I looked closely into and was inspired to create an idea for my final project was Pacman and Slither.io. Pacman and Slither.io. They are both games that has a goal of ‘absorbing’ items on screen. Pacman is a game where the ‘Pacman’ walks around the maze to eat all the items given. However, there is an ‘enemy’ that the Pacman has to get away from and make sure not to touch. Slither.io is a game where the user starts off controlling a small worm and has to ‘absorb’ or ‘eat’ smaller worms from the head, which makes the user’s worm get bigger in size. If the user’s worm gets eaten by a bigger worm, the game ends. Pacman is a very traditional game that was created decades ago but is still famous today. I admire how long the game has been famous and played by users for years. I feel like the goal of this game is simple for people of all ages to understand and easily play, which I think is one of the main reasons why the Pacman is still famous today. Slither.io is also a famous game, which I saw my friends play many times before. I admire this work because of its simplicity of the game’s goal, but complex visuals that makes the users challenge every time they play the game. Slither.io and Pacman are very similar, however, Slither.io is comparably created more recently than the Pacman. The difference between Pacman and Slither.io is that Pacman is played in the setting of a maze, where Slither.io is not. Thus, another difference is that the character of Slither.io increases in size every time the character eats an item, which is not the case with Pacman.

Sarah Choi – Project 12 – Proposal

Gretchen Kupferschmid and I want to collaborate on an interactive 3D map of different areas of Pittsburgh including ambient noises showing different restaurants and coffee shops around. Similar to the photograph included below, we wanted to show contrasting places in Pittsburgh such as Lawrenceville, Squirrel Hill, Oakland, and Downtown Pittsburgh. Through an interactive map, we would allow our audience to click through these sections to find not only various places to eat and spend time but also include music that we feel is similar to the atmosphere of these various sectors all throughout Pittsburgh.

We both strongly believe it’s important to explore more areas around you especially since Pittsburgh has so much to offer, and a lot of students go through their time here without putting themselves outside the campus.

In order to evenly divide the work one of us would focus on actually building the 3D map of different areas of Pittsburgh while the other would work on making the map actually interactive and inputting these different areas across the city and towns as well as the music that follows along with them.

Sarah Choi – Looking Outwards – 12

One project, found online, was an interactive map by Sara B. It contained offices, a countryside, playground, house, and industries. This map was coded to be a 3D model coming out of a tablet. This was coded through a studio using images, shapes, and mouse functions. I admired this project because it gave the audience a better understanding of the layout of a certain area showing all different types of places.

https://codepen.io/aomyers/full/LWOwpR

Furthermore, another project I looked at was a hotel’s website in Lower Manhattan of New York City called, “Sister City”. This website used ideas of simplicity, purposefulness, and mindful design powered by Microsoft’s Custom Vision Service. This helped analyzed elements of the Sister City environment just from a camera on the roof. With artificial intelligence, the system recognized aspects of nature such as clouds and birds and triggered specific sounds to the installation. These sounds were then generated and installed in the lobby of the hotel creating a more natural environment to space in a very new setting. The ambient music formed an ambiance of the hotel, creating a more relaxed atmosphere overall. This was a very interesting take and immediately made me mesmerized.

https://sistercitynyc.com/

The two projects together are so different but creative at the same time, which are what drew me from the very beginning. Both ideas pertain to my final project in the sense that Gretchen Kupferschmid and I want to design a 3D interactive map of Pittsburgh with ambient sounds showing our favorite restaurants and little shops we love visiting when looking for reasons to get outside the Carnegie Mellon “bubble”.

Mari Kubota- Looking Outwards- 12

For my final project I am creating a climate change related game. One project I found that was relevant to this is Solar Tapestry by Chloe Uden. Solar tapestry is an artful way of arranging solar panels in order to create an aesthetic and ecological form of energy. Chloe Uden describes this as “the Art and Energy collective re-imagines solar technology as an art material for the future.”

Another project that related to my final project is Starlit Stratus. Starlit Stratus, by Sunggi Park, is the first place winner of LAGI 2019 Abu Dhabi competition. It is a large-scale public art capable of producing clean energy. The canopy is made with inspired by origami. Sections of the triangular geometry are made from conventional rigid photovoltaic material to produce clean electricity during the day, while other sections are made from fabric that can easily fold and unfold. At night the light passes through these fabric geometries to create star-like patterns.

Both of these artworks use solar panels in creative and artistic ways to produce clean energy that is good for the environment. This aesthetic arrangement of clean energy use encourages more people to become more ecological.

Monica Chang – Project 12 – Final Project Proposal

For this final project, I wanted to develop a game called “Capture Red”. In this game, the player or virtual “photographer” will be responsible for capturing birds with the virtual camera by pressing the spacebar. The problem is the birds fly by way too fast but the players have to capture as many as 100 “photos. Birds of different colors will also appear and if the player accidentally captures they will lose points.

In the default/beginning screen, there will include a frame that resembles what the player would see looking through the lens but in a more exaggerated way. I will also include field audio to incorporate the sounds of the environment. The lens will be looking towards the sky where the player will also see moving clouds(I am also thinking of changing the sky throughout the game with different weather patterns and different weather sounds like wind, rain, thunder, etc.). UPDATE: I have also incorporated rain as a weather element and default screen and rainSounds as the background noise. When the player clicks the screen, the weather will change from raining(gloomy) to blue skies(with clouds).

When the player/photographer takes captures the bird.

Whenever the player “captures” a bird, the screen will flash and a camera flash sound will also play. When the player “captures” the bird, in the top corner, they will see that they have gained a point.

Once the player has captured enough to have a “CAPTURED” count of 100 the game will end and the player must refresh to start again.