Sydney Salamy: Looking Outwards-01

The project I chose is called “Visualization” by Λ B H I N Λ V . K R on OpenProcessing. The project starts with a cute picture of a golden retriever puppy running on a beach. When you run your mouse over the picture it turns into four circles with the color of their background. If you keep going over the circles they get smaller and smaller, and this causes the details in the photo to come back out. The end result is the same picture, except with a more mosaic look to it.

I admire how the creator was able to take such a simple idea and make it interesting. Despite the fact that you are just running your mouse to make circles smaller, it is somehow entertaining. It is satisfying to watch as the picture comes back, and also satisfying to shrink the circles, almost like popping bubbles, except more interesting because you are rewarded with the cute face of a dog. The interactive element is especially great because it allows the user to influence how they want the piece to look. They could leave part of the piece un-popped, pick a certain color to pop, etc. This allows the user to add a personal touch to the end result. I admire these aspects of the project because they are not only entertaining, but also show that a person doesn’t have to code a whole complicated piece to make something interesting, they can have a very simple idea and still be successful.

• Only one person seemed to be involved in creating the project. I’m not exactly sure how long it took him to create his piece. I looked at the dates of the works before and after and it seems like he posts about three to four different pieces-one per day-and then there will be a gap, then another cluster of posts. I’m guessing he makes a bunch in advance and then posts them all at a time over the span of a couple days. The gaps between these clusters seem to be about three weeks to a month, so I think it took him about one to two weeks to create that single post (although this is just a guess).
• The software he used seemed to be “off-the-shelf”. OpenProcessing is a very public/easy-to-access site, and the code he wrote didn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary. His project doesn’t look like something he would need custom software for.
• I don’t know any specific works he might have been inspired by. However, many of his previous works included a variety of colors and shapes, and are user-interactive. Also, looking at his “Hearts” section you can see that the works he liked also fit into this category. “Visualization” also fits this description, so it seems he has a type of work he likes to create.
• Since the work is interactive, entertaining, and visually appealing, I could see the artist possibly working in the gaming industry since coding and creativity are demanded there. Not so much complicated games but more leaning towards ones you would find in the App store for your phone. Like maybe one level would be the dog-bubble piece and then the next would be something different but using the same concepts and ideas throughout. I could imagine a game where you would start out with the four big bubbles, and then would have to guess what the image was while trying to pop the least amount of bubbles. He could also create gifs and/or short and interactive animations for websites.
• Λ B H I N Λ V . K R.“Visualization.” OpenProcessing, 2015.

Video And Picture Below

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