60-212: Interactivity and Computation for Creative Practice
CMU School of Art / IDeATe, Fall 2020 • Prof. Golan Levin
2. Quadrilateral Zoo
3. Spiral
4. Transitioning Rectangles
5. Iteration with Functions
6. Random Splat
7. Stochastic Elements
8. Recoding Schotter
9. Billiard Ball
10. One-Person Pong
11. Hitomezashi Sashiko Stitching
12. Imaginary Islands
13. Drawn Line, Three Ways
14. Calligraphic Polyline
15. Longest Line Search
16. Eyes Following Cursor
17. Ripples in a Pond
18. Butt Generator
19. Angle between Three Points
20. Circle from Three Points (Circumcenter)
Day time:
16:42:48
12:43:57
Night time:
22:43:08
06:42:16
Process:
Coming up with an idea was definitely the hardest part of this project. Because I have never thought of depicting time in other formats other than digital or analog clocks, I spent a large portion of time pondering what would and could be an abstract clock. Pondering for a while made me conclude that any “clocks” could be laid in a line, where one end of the line being well-functioning useful (the clocks we can commonly find), while the other end being very abstruse (too abstract that some people might not consider it a clock). Because I do believe that all clocks do serve the function of representing time (as in how much of a day has past/left), I wanted to create a clock that could be read, yet still is an unconventional way of showing the time.
After going through numerous idea sketches, I settled with an abacus clock. Just like the timekeeping history, abacus has been around since the ancient period as a calculator. I remember learning how to use abacus when I was just beginning to learn simple math like addition and subtraction, and the impression I had of an abacus is that it looks funky yet organized. I had a hard time using abacus, but other people, especially those in the abacus competition, seem to easily take advantage of abacus. In fact, people who have been using abacus to calculate do the majority of the mental arithmetic by using the imaginary abacus inside their mind. I find that quite amusing, because to me, abacus was just an object that had little pebble-like pieces that I could fidget with and perhaps be a tiny little help in doing addition and subtraction.
Sketch:
I enjoyed creating this clock because I had an opportunity to create one that’s to my taste and preference. For example, I set the background color to be black if it’s not between 8AM and 5PM because I don’t like looking at a bright screen when it’s dark outside. Another instance would be the rotating color-changing cubes; I love watching things move around, especially in 3D, when I’m spacing out. Since those who would be looking at this clock on the LED screen (if it’s presented) would have already made a decision to spend some portion of their time looking at the clock, I wanted the clock to be more engaging and interesting to them(i.e. have some movements that people can stare at).
How to use:
Each pair of columns from left to right respectively represents hour, minute, and second. Anyone is invited to use this clock as a clock by reading the abacus, or just as a time passing object by looking at the cubes rotate and change colors.
One thing that struck me is that the temporal relations(i.e. time relations/time period) can be represented and analyzed by graphs by using interval logic and each relation has its inverse, which also can be represented by the same graph. However, analyzing temporal relations has to be made under the assumption that there exists only one straight linear timeline, without any parallel or branching out timelines (at least in the version James Allen and George Ferguson conducted).
I learned that the river “deletes” part of itself in favor of a shorter path and creates oxbow lake, and Hodgin took in consideration of such phenomenon in his project.
Another part I really liked/learned is that the mixture of curving(representing paths that naturally developed over time) and non-curving(representing artificially made roads) vectors result in a resemblance of intersecting roads.
I initially designed and planned something totally different to what I end up making as the living wallpaper. My initial plan heavily leans on 3D parametric equation, as the main object of the wallpaper is the 3D curve, a conical spiral. I think I spent almost half of the total time I spend on project to figure out how to create a 3D curve in p5.js. Although I ended up barely making a use of the new functions in my final moving wallpaper, this project was a great opportunity for me learned a lot about creating 3D space/objects using translate(), rotateX/Y/Z(), and sin/cos functions in p5.js. Regarding the initial plan, I could only get my curve to a helix, which definitely didn’t satisfied me; However, in the future, I’d like to figure out the code and bring my initial plan to life.
Initial design:
In exchange, I’ve decided to go with the alternative that describes my current lifestyle. Due to the time difference between school and home, my class schedule begins late evening and continues overnight to the following morning. I wanted to create a motion where day and night flips, yet things continue to function without a rest. Since I’m currently in a bustling city that never goes to sleep, I decided to have a car as my main object that continues to run. It’d pass the trees and the buildings at the different time of the day: The trees overnight to depict nature around the school campus, and the buildings throughout the day to describe the busy city where I live.
Here’s the sketch I made:
To give an impression that the car is moving constantly, I made the trees and buildings behind the car to move past the car, while the car itself would have a small motion of moving up and down as if it’s driving past those trees and buildings.
I used Double-Exponential Sigmoid easing function to give speed to the trees and the buildings passing by, and BoundInOut easing function to create the body of the car moving up and down as it drives. All the trees and the buildings are drawn in the position with respect to the first tree using translate().
I would locate myself as more of the first word art artist, at least as for now, because I’m still experimenting with different tools and ideas to see what I like & suits me the most. A year in college has already greatly expanded my understanding of the field art+tech; In specific, I now know that media art isn’t limited to filmmaking/3D animation/ games, and that there are thousands of machines, algorithms, and codes that we can implement to create art. Since I haven’t tried out the majority of the implementations in my practice, I’m currently located at the front of the spectrum, at least in my perspective of media art.
I find the development of industries be the main factor that shapes media art tools and practices. For example, media art and www based art were initialized when the devices began to generalize. Drawing on the canvas that cannot be physically seen or touched without a help of a device probably felt weird and hard to understand to people back in the 20th century. The new technologies shaped our culture in such way that visualization of an idea became easier and clearer to deliver to others, helping the artists to express themselves better with fewer hindrance.
At the same time, I find those development in culture and artistic practices to shape the technological developments; The more people begin to use the new technologies as their tool of expression, the more people find and realize the limitations of these technologies. Hence, it is the thirsty one that digs the well, i.e. these artists begin to develop their own customized softwares that can help them visualize their ideas.
This is an art piece made by Manolo Gamboa Naon, titled CUDA.
Among many of Manolo Gamboa Naon’s generative artworks, I found this piece mesmerizing in such way the geometric shapes and soft yet distinctive colors blend so well. There isn’t a specific pattern unlike many of other works he has done, yet this piece exerts its own unique character and mood that makes me feel comfortable looking at the work. I also like the co-existence of the bigger smooth circles & curves and the smaller/shorter crisp lines & angles.
About the Territory
People living and traveling across the outer space might not just a fictional story. If traveling to space becomes just as easy and fast as traveling to another country around the Earth now, what would the map of the universe look like? There would be more things to keep track of to locate oneself, potentially much more than our current 3 dimensional location and time.
Technical Process
From selecting colors, location, and shapes to selecting names for each planets, I used randomization to almost every element in this project. I had three different for loops generating planets of different sizes to create well-spread depth of 3 dimensional space, yet one thing I wish I could do was creating the planets closer to the window(i.e. bigger) to be 3D, not flat like in the current state of the project. Perhaps the mixture of 2D and 3D looking planets could have contribute more to creating an experience of looking at an unknown, abnormal map of an unfamiliar space. In terms of time dimension, I came up with a fake time counting system All Universe Time (AUT) and randomized a number, as well as the +/- symbol, to mimic our current time counting system(GMT+/-, UTF+/-,etc.).
Compton’s “10,000 Bowls of Oatmeal Problem” becomes important when it comes to the situation where multiples of individual items are rendered and used. As Compton explained in the article, every oatmeal piece in a bowl is unique and different from each other in terms of size, weight, location, orientation, etc. In other words, there cannot be two or more oatmeal pieces that are exactly identical when the oatmeal was poured into a bowl straight out of the package (randomness). Because there doesn’t exist two or more oatmeal pieces molded to be exactly the same intentionally(not random), every piece is independant and different, mathematically speaking.
This would be a problem, for example, when your intention of randomly generating mountains is to create a background of a game you’re developing and wanted to create a user experience of playing in a green mountain map. If the randomly generated mountains turn out to have different color, hue, saturation, shape that are too far away from the general image of mountains, then such intention wouldn’t be fulfilled by the random generation. This could potentially be solved by indicating certain features of the random generation before generating. To go back to the mountain example, we could limit the color spectrum to green and shape to more triangular looking. With such indication of certain features, we could then achieve what we intended to get out of the generator.
On the other hand, randomness and the uniqueness of the random generation would be beneficial when you intend to create a crowd of people, for instance. Often times a crowd of people in a film, animation, or game isn’t the main spotlight the developers want the users to focus on. The crowd of people are meant to create an impression that a lot of people/characters are there at the scene. Just like how it’s not common in real life to observe two or more people who look identical including the outfits, hairstyles, and body shapes at a crowded cafe, for example, it’d be funny if the scene you intend to create has a crowd made out of multiplication of a few the same exact looking characters.
