Author: sweetcorn

sweetcorn-mobiletelematic

sweetmail

Sweetmail is a messaging platform similar to email but more intimate. It runs on voice commands, as there is something special about speaking the words “I Love You” or any other expression of affection in comparison to typing the words. It is designed to be used asynchronously among however many people find this platform meaningful. This allows for you to express your affection whenever you feel it, to whomever you feel it towards.

I think the use of voice recognition is inconvenient and obtuse to many, but implementing typing on mobile websites was even more inconvenient and obtuse. I would also have been unable to use Lingdong’s p5.hershey.js. The inaccuracies of speech recognition are much like natural communication in relationships. Holding ourselves to perfect transmission of our ideas is unrealistic and can be overwhelming.

Letters are stored using lowdb and users are only shown the letters written to them. I’ve written a letter to everyone in this class using their course nicknames. If you have an odd spelling or the program isn’t recognizing your username, try spelling it letter by letter.

sweetcorn-SoliSandbox

Dog Lullaby

I have created a lullaby generator for children to feel loved and lulled as they fall quickly asleep. It features an animated dog, generated lullaby lyrics with rhymes, and a generated melody that children can alter using the special Soli sensor.

Above is a concise demo of the app in use. It normally runs for a random number of lyrics from 35 to 45 lyrics, but for the purposes of a short video, only a few lines are shown.

Swiping left will increase the pitch of the left note, swiping up for the center note, and right for the right. A tapping gesture will mute the song and another will un-mute. If you feel inclined to test the app on desktop, the swipes map to arrow keys (left key press is equivalent to left swipe, etc.).

The dog and border are animated using p5.js, the lyrics are generated using RiTa.js, and the song itself is generated using Tone.js. It was a pleasure becoming more familiar with the latter two. RiTa.js is an excellent tool for generative poetry, and I’ve only just begun to experiment with it. I had originally been using p5.Sound to generate the song, but found the quality terrible and switched to Tone.js. My life instantly became easier, and I look forward to experimenting more with it as well.

The song is composed of one enveloped oscillator that creates a bell-like melody, one modulated oscillator that plays a random harmony based on the melody, and a synthesizer that plays a random bass sequence based on the melody as well. It runs in 3/4 time at 90 bpm, as similar to a lullaby as I could get.

In the future I hope to animate the tail and eyes of the dog more specifically. I also hope to refine the sounds—adding more dimension and nuance to something that should sound simple and lovely. A lovely thing I feel obligated to note: I experimented with this app around my dog (his name is Scout) and he immediately ran toward it. I suppose my “whine” instrument was more accurate than I had expected ;~0. I have yet to test the app with cats and children, but I have high hopes!

Good night,

sleep tight!

Don’t let the bed bugs bite!

xoxoxo

~sweetcorn

sweetcorn-soli-checkin

Dog Lullaby

On desktop, use the arrow keys. Otherwise, use Soli swipe gestures to change the three notes used to generate the melody and a Soli tap gesture to mute and unmute the lullaby.

I’m using RiTa.js for lyric generation (markov-generated from a text file (lyrics.txt on glitch) I’ve filled with lullabies, love notes, children’s songs, bedtime prayers, and nursery rhymes). I hope to improve the rhyming, which currently simply replaces the last word of a line with a random word that rhymes with the last word of the line before. This results in nonsense that isn’t thematically consistent with the markov-generated nonsense. More complex rhyme schemes than AABB could draw attention away from this fact.

I’m using Tone.js for the song aspects. I was initially using p5.Sound but the quality was terrible in general but especially terrible on the device I am designing for, so last night I switched everything over to Tone.js. Due to that late change, I still have to refine the oscillators/synthesizers I’m using and explore other Tone.js functionalities. I’m very pleased with the Tone.js quality in comparison to p5.Sound and wish I had used it from the beginning.

I also have to refine the animation, as it was based around the previous drum pattern I was using, which ran on p5.Sound. I specifically mean the dog (Joe <3), as there are plenty of opportunities to animate him beyond what I currently have. I might ease the stars in and out beyond the simple fade introduced by having a background set to a low alpha value, but this would require creating and storing stars in an array of stars, drawn in draw() instead of in playBass(), where it currently is. This is a relatively straightforward change, the most complicated aspect being disposing of the elements in the array that do not need to be drawn. This will be based around a timer, which hopefully will be simpler to work with using Tone.js, possibly relating to ticks.value instead of counting the number of beats manually, as I am doing now.

I also have to implement functions for the beginning and end of the song. It runs for a random number of lyrics between 15 and 35 lines, but the program ends on a scope error from there.

~xoxo

sweetcorn

sweetcorn-soli-sketches

My first (and favorite ;-0) idea for my Soli project is a song generator for your loved ones. By reaching toward the Soli sensor at various angles and speeds, you create a melody that in turn generates a song, ideally with lyrics generated after analyzing the lyrics of lullabies and love songs. Complete with an animated dog who sings the songs and a few different modes (lullaby for children, party song for friends, romantic song for lovers, etc.), this app is sure to entertain.

My second idea is a visual party with friends. When you and your friends enter the same room in the party, you can collectively control the loveliest, most beautiful and intricate designs. Shared music and lights are enough to make you feel at ease with your friends.

My third, and admittedly least developed, idea is a group meal planner. When you enter the app you can select how long you have to cook in preparation for a lovely group meal with your friends. You can then select what you want to bring to the table, quite literally. The app then guides you through the cooking steps, offering instructions and timers.

sweetcorn-LookingOutwards03

Trans Plant, Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau

In this early interactive computer installation, the viewer generates and moves through a virtual world, populated by plants that change properties based on the viewers themselves and their movements. This is their world, generated only by them. Others may witness and their images may be seen in it, but they have no control over it.

Because of that personal aspect of it, I think this work places itself in an interesting position in terms of ecology. Under a capitalist system and as ego-driven as we are socialized to be, we view our world as this one. We view the ecosystem as our systems, which are to be manipulated for our own personal gain. Perhaps this work serves as an outlet for those desires in a way that is not harmful, as it is virtual.

sweetcorn-exercises

02 – Quadrilateral Zoo

04 – Transitioning Rectangles

05 – Iteration with Functions

06 – Random Splat

07 – Stochastic Elements

08 – Recoding Schotter

09 – Billiard Ball

10 – One-Person Pong

11 – Hitomezashi Sashiko Stitching

12 – Imaginary Islands

13 – Drawn Line, Three Ways

14 – Calligraphic Polyline

17 – Ripples in a Pond

18 – Butt Generator

19 – Angle Between 3 Points

20 – Circle from 3 Points

sweetcorn-clock

Lovely Clock for Food with Friends

I want to use all of my time to build lovely friendships with so many lovely people around me. I want to bring everyone together for lovely meals where we all share food and stories and joy and company and time with each other. I want to spend my time realizing that lovely vision instead of dwelling on the past. Below are some of my notes and sketches while I was thinking about this project :~) (please excuse the unrelated notes).

I hope to have captured a sort of Betty Crocker look (I looked back at the recipe books my mom had left behind in the dust of the pantry here, dog-eared and underlined), just as I hope to posture myself to be sweetcorn, in the fullest sense of the name. I hope this project’s affect sticks to those who happen upon it, like a lovely scent from a kitchen on your favorite sweater that reminds you of home <3

The majority of the difficulty I had was getting recipes in an easy-to-parse-through format. I ended up having to settle for this archive of XML recipe files that did not have any times as values. I then had to comb through the cooking directions looking for instances of “minute” and “hour,” then creating a substring from the numbers in front of those instances. I then summed up those values and compared it to the time until the next common meal time to determine how many friends you could feed. In the future I hope to comb through the ingredients as well and deal with the horrible mixed number formats in order to generate a shopping list proportional to the number of friends.

Feel free to view my code here!

xoxoxo

~sweetcorn

sweetcorn-Timekeeping

I was particularly drawn to the idea of time as sensation—as something we emotionally connect to rather than the typical conception of time which is very much focused on efficiency, labor, and productivity. I see an avenue of recuperating time and moving towards a time which reinforces community and rest and love <3