²

ARDUINO CHARLIE 3

2009-06-21T16:25:00.002-07:00

#include Charlieplex.h
#define NUMBER_OF_PINS 5

byte pins[] = {17,16,15,14,13};

Charlieplex charlieplex = Charlieplex(pins,NUMBER_OF_PINS);
charliePin leds[20] =
{
{1,0},{2,1},{3,2},{4,3},
{0,1},{1,2},{2,3},{3,4},
{2,0},{3,0},{4,1},{4,2},
{0,2},{0,3},{1,4},{2,4},
{0,4},{1,3},{3,1},{4,0},
};

void setup(){ /*nothing*/ }

void loop(){
for (int i=0;i<20;i++) {
charlieplex.clear();
charlieplex.charlieWrite(leds[i],HIGH);
delay(50);}
}

ARDUINO CHARLIE 2

2009-06-21T16:25:00.001-07:00

#include Charlieplex.h
#define NUMBER_OF_PINS 3

byte pins[] = {15,14,13}; //define pins in the order you want to adress them
Charlieplex charlieplex = Charlieplex(pins,NUMBER_OF_PINS); //initialize object

charliePin leds[6] ={{1,2},{2,1},{2,0},{0,2},{1,0},{0,1},}; //individual 'pins'

void setup(){ /*nothing*/ }

void loop()
{
for (int i=0;i<6;i++) {
charlieplex.clear();
charlieplex.charlieWrite(leds[i],HIGH);
//delay(100);}
}

ARDUINO CHARLIE1

2009-06-21T16:24:00.001-07:00

/*
*
* CHARLIEPLEXING PROOF OF CONCEPT
* 6 LEDS ON 3 PINS
*
*/

void setup() // run once, when the sketch starts
{/*nothing*/}

void loop() // run over and over again
{
pinMode(13, OUTPUT);
pinMode(14, OUTPUT);
pinMode(15, INPUT);

digitalWrite(13, HIGH);
digitalWrite(14, LOW); delay(100);

digitalWrite(14, HIGH);
digitalWrite(13, LOW); delay(100);

pinMode(13, INPUT);
pinMode(14, OUTPUT);
pinMode(15, OUTPUT);

digitalWrite(14, LOW);
digitalWrite(15, HIGH); delay(100);

digitalWrite(14, HIGH);
digitalWrite(15, LOW); delay(100);

pinMode(13, OUTPUT);
pinMode(14, INPUT);
pinMode(15, OUTPUT);

digitalWrite(13, LOW);
digitalWrite(15, HIGH); delay(100);

digitalWrite(13, HIGH);
digitalWrite(15, LOW); delay(100);
}

ARDUINO POV

2009-06-21T16:09:00.000-07:00

/*
*
* ARDUINO POV CODE
* USING 13 LEDS
*
*/

/*-----------------VARIABLES-----------------*/
int val = 0;
int potPin = 14;
int pin = 3;
int value = LOW;
long previousMillis = 0;
long interval = 1000;

/*-------------------SETUP-------------------*/

void setup()
{
for (int i=3 ; i<=13 ; i++){pinMode(i, OUTPUT);}
}

void loop()
{
//scanup(20); //scandown(20);
ls();
a();
ls();
b();
ls();
c();
ls();
d();
}

/*--------------LETTERS--------------*/
void ls() { flashoff(5); }

void a() { ON(3,0);ON(4,1); flashoff(0); ON(3,0);ON(5,0);ON(7,1); flashoff(0); ON(3,0);ON(5,0);ON(7,1); flashoff(0); ON(3,0);ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,0);(7,1); }

void b() { ON(3,0);ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,0);ON(7,0);ON(8,0);ON(9,1); flashoff(0); ON(3,0);ON(7,1); flashoff(0); ON(3,0);ON(7,1); flashoff(0); ON(4,1);ON(5,0);ON(6,1); }

void c() { ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,1); flashoff(0); ON(3,0);ON(7,1); flashoff(0); ON(3,0);ON(7,1); flashoff(0); ON(4,0);ON(6,1); }

void d() { ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,1); flashoff(0); ON(3,0);ON(7,1); flashoff(0); ON(3,0);ON(7,1); flashoff(0); ON(3,0);ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,0);ON(7,0);ON(8,0);ON(9,1); flashoff(0); }

void e() { ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,1); flashoff(0); ON(3,0);ON(5,0);ON(7,1); flashoff(0); ON(3,0);ON(5,0);ON(7,1); flashoff(0); ON(3,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,1); flashoff(0); }

void f() { ON(3,0);ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,0);ON(7,0);ON(8,0);ON(9,1); flashoff(0); }

void g() { ON(3,0);ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,0);ON(7,0);ON(8,0);ON(9,1); flashoff(0); }

void h() { ON(3,0);ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,0);ON(7,0);ON(8,0);ON(9,1); flashoff(0); }

void i() { ON(3,0);ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,0);ON(7,0);ON(8,0);ON(9,1); flashoff(0); }

void j() { ON(3,0);ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,0);ON(7,0);ON(8,0);ON(9,1); flashoff(0); }

void k() { ON(3,0);ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,0);ON(7,0);ON(8,0);ON(9,1); flashoff(0); }

void l() { ON(3,0);ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,0);ON(7,0);ON(8,0);ON(9,1); flashoff(0); }

void m() { ON(3,0);ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,0);ON(7,0);ON(8,0);ON(9,1); flashoff(0); }

void n() { ON(3,0);ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,0);ON(7,0);ON(8,0);ON(9,1); flashoff(0); }

void o() { ON(3,0);ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,0);ON(7,0);ON(8,0);ON(9,1); flashoff(0); }

void p() { ON(3,0);ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,0);ON(7,0);ON(8,0);ON(9,1); flashoff(0); }

void q() { ON(3,0);ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,0);ON(7,0);ON(8,0);ON(9,1); flashoff(0); }

void r() { ON(3,0);ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,0);ON(7,0);ON(8,0);ON(9,1); flashoff(0); }

void s() { ON(3,0);ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,0);ON(7,0);ON(8,0);ON(9,1); flashoff(0); }

void t() { ON(3,0);ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,0);ON(7,0);ON(8,0);ON(9,1); flashoff(0); }

void u() { ON(3,0);ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,0);ON(7,0);ON(8,0);ON(9,1); flashoff(0); }

void v() { ON(3,0);ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,0);ON(7,0);ON(8,0);ON(9,1); flashoff(0); }

void w() { ON(3,0);ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,0);ON(7,0);ON(8,0);ON(9,1); flashoff(0); }

void x() { ON(3,0);ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,0);ON(7,0);ON(8,0);ON(9,1); flashoff(0); }

void y() { ON(3,0);ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,0);ON(7,0);ON(8,0);ON(9,1); flashoff(0); }

void z() { ON(3,0);ON(4,0);ON(5,0);ON(6,0);ON(7,0);ON(8,0);ON(9,1); flashoff(0); }

/*--------------PLAY FUNCTIONS--------------*/
void scanup(int speed1) {for (int i=3 ; i<=12 ; i++){val = speed1/10;ON(i, val);OFF(i, 20);}}

void scandown(int speed1) {for (int i=12 ; i>=3 ; i--){val = speed1/10;ON(i, val);OFF(i, 20);}}

void flashon(int del1)
{for (int i=12 ; i>=3 ; i--){
for (int n=12 ; n>=3 ; n--){ON(n, 0);}
}
delay(del1);}

void flashoff(int del1)
{for (int i=12 ; i>=3 ; i--){
for (int f=12 ; f>=3 ; f--){OFF(f, 0);}
}
delay(del1);}

/*--------------BASIC2 FUNCTIONS--------------*/

void OFF(int pina1, int del)
{digitalWrite(pina1, HIGH); delay(del);}

void ON(int pina2, int del)
{digitalWrite(pina2, LOW); delay(del);}

void FI(int pina2, int del)
{for(value = 255; value >=0; value-=50)
{analogWrite(pina2, value);delay(del);}}

void FO(int pina1, int del)
{for(value = 0 ; value <= 255; value+=50)
{analogWrite(pina1, value); delay(del);}}

Reflective Statement

2009-06-19T17:39:00.001-07:00

Over the course of this semester Tash and I have pursued quite a long line of enquiry to arrive at the point we are at now.

Initially we intended to pursue a multi-touch system capable of tracking both multiple finger inputs and fiducal markers, using this system we intended to introduce physical input devices such as dials that could be recognised and calibrated by the fiducal software on the fly. on the software end of this design we explored concepts such as cloud computing, virtual scrapbooking and the desktop metaphor. However after doing some more in-depth research it became painfully apparent that we would need an expensive short range projector for the setup we wanted. On top of this we found that every idea we were coming up with was already being explored simultaneously in different parts of the world. Rather than compromise we decided to follow our line of questioning into more rewarding territory.

Augmented reality was our general area of interest so we decided to look at a low-end solution that could be easily demonstrated. We started by looking at the marker based toolkit in processing but quickly realised it wasnt effective for what we wanted to do. We decided to use Flash in conjunction with Papervision 3D and a FLAR library because they are relatively well documented and easy to use (apart from some japanese commenting in FLARtoolkit).

AR Music Player Reflective Statement

2009-06-19T17:24:00.000-07:00

Reflective Statement

Over the course of this semester Tash and I have pursued quite a long line of enquiry to arrive at the point we are at now.

Initially we intended to pursue a multi-touch system capable of tracking both multiple finger inputs and fiducal markers, using this system we intended to introduce physical input devices such as dials that could be recognised and calibrated by the fiducal software on the fly. on the software end of this design we explored concepts such as cloud computing, virtual scrapbooking and the desktop metaphor. However after doing some more in-depth research it became painfully apparent that we would need an expensive short range projector for the setup we wanted. On top of this we found that every idea we were coming up with was already being explored simultaneously in different parts of the world. Rather than compromise we decided to follow our line of questioning into more rewarding territory.

Augmented reality was our general area of interest so we decided to look at a low-end solution that could be easily demonstrated. We started by looking at the marker based toolkit in processing but quickly realised it wasnt effective for what we wanted to do. We decided to use Flash in conjunction with Papervision 3D and a FLAR library because they are relatively well documented and easy to use (apart from some japanese commenting in FLARtoolkit).The final result was functional but slow due to the use of flash and much feedback data, along with multiple marker tracking. The reasons for the overdose of feedback is the use of a different transformation matrix between the single and multiple marker trackers. To avoid these problems in the final design we decided to track a a single marker and use it to control music. To do this I learned to use the internal sound class to play and pause a song depending on whether the marker was being tracked or not. An interesting side effect of this is marker_added is triggered more than marker_removed, resulting in the song being played over itself. The final design used a collada file designed in 3d studio max with textures from photoshop. aliasing created the necessity to hold the marker quite close to the webcam to make the album list playable but apart from that it was quite a robust solution.

The final design is meant to be an example of a bigger system. In theory if you are standing outside a gig or in the album racks at JB hifi you should be able to take a card (or a pxt) with a logo on it and the name of the album/band. By holding the card infront of the webcam and visiting a website you can hear a sample of the music streamed remotely with additional information shown in an interesting way. This idea was more effective in our minds than cloud computing portfolios because it used the cards to present someone elses information in a creative and new way.

The final result was successful in that it applied a theoretical idea in an effective and robust way, obviously the idea could have been pursued further (ad infinitum) but the fact that it worked well enough to clearly demonstrate the idea we were trying to present makes me happy with the final product. I am also happy with the teamwork and the clear process we went through to get a final product, even if it was hard won in the end!

Project Documentation

2009-06-19T17:06:00.000-07:00

Part one; TUI & Metaphor In HCI

In the beginning of the semester, Joe and I identified our research cluster as tangible user interface. Our interest in this field was to look at new methods of interaction that bridge the gap between the digital and physical realms. We began with with researching tangible user interfaces, which are interfaces where users can manipulate digital information with physical objects, and because physical objects can have familiar properties, they are often metaphorical in nature. This method of interaction, and an element of personal interest, directed much of our initial line of research to the place of metaphor in interaction design.

We began by looking at the most common metaphor in interaction design, the desktop metaphor. The desktop metaphor has been a highly successful instrument in facilitating HCI, but in it’s ubiquitous state, it has become a burden on user interface design, prohibiting it from evolving into something more efficient by being inflexible to development. The desktop metaphor was created from the early 1970s work at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, and was not designed to address today's computing needs (Tristam, 2001).

Due to it’s limitations, there is obvious danger when using a metaphor for user interface design. Metaphors can often mislead the user and encourage false expectations (Mohnkern, 1997). Saffer (2005) admits the abstract object has more properties than the more concrete object does and, by using a metaphor, users may neglect the properties that aren’t reflected in the concrete object, therefore using it to comprehend one thing in terms of the other will obscure other merits of the concept. Given that computers are generally thought of as tools to assist work in the physical world, a focus on mimicking the physical world is appropriate, but to what degree determines the successfulness of the interaction.

Tristram (2001) argues that the desktop metaphor has become part of our cultural literacy, and that getting users to try new interface concepts is like trying to teach Esperanto, “a good idea in theory, but for most people not worth the trouble”. Because of this, we believe changing the medium allows us to surpass these techniques and therefore force us to explore something novel. As Tristram (2001) succinctly put it “the desktop metaphor is so tightly wedded in our minds to keyboard, mouse and monitor that unless the outside package changes, the on-screen presentation doesn't have much of a chance to evolve either.”

Part Two; Tabletop Computing

Originally we thought that the right medium for facilitating this exploration was tabletop computing, with less preconceived notions about the interface to impede it. Primarily, we looked to experiment with digital information that could benefit from enhanced tangibility and a novel interface. The technological basis for this design would have been to use a high quality webcam with its infra-red filter stripped off to track the reflection of infra-red light off of fiducals (markers that can be used to track position/rotation) and finger positioning on the touch surface. However, finding completely unexplored areas with tabletop design however proved to be a demanding, and furthermore, the cost of a wide angle projector required to build a touch table would have been prohibitive. Regardless of these barriers, the concepts we produced all had a considerable effect on our research and development.

Our initial concept was PuckUI, a basic heirachy navigation system, designed to break free from traditional methods of desktop interaction. We planned to use markers on the bottom of pucks that would be read by the computer and be used to control the interface in a novel way, using rotation and other movements to enhance tangibility. This was a satisfactory starting point, but it was too broad an application to execute. In addition to this, it also didn’t deviate enough from traditional desktop interfaces to truly explore any new methods of interaction.

Following this concept, we tried to create an application for a more specific purpose. The first was an Album Table, where albums would have markers on the bottom, and on being placed upon the surface, would be read and play the relevant album. Albums could then be physically manipulated to determine the order in which they are played, or moved to skip ahead or rewind tracks. We wanted to create a concept with music because of it’s large scale medium shift from physical to digital has meant a loss in tangibility, and perhaps even perceived value. However, we eventually concluded the concept itself lacked the ability to explore the intricacy of these ideas.

Our second concept was an email application that gave subtle hints as to it’s contents importance. The idea behind this concept was to visualize the intrinsic value of files which is lost in a digital medium. For example, an email with an attachment would be shown as a package, and a quick note as a small, thin, envelope. Other visual clues would include old emails becoming dusty and discolored if ignored for periods of time. We liked the premise of this application, however as it wasn’t something we could properly create, it would limit further development.

Our third concept was to create a personalized ID card, which when place on the table, allowed the user access to his or her most important sites or documents. This concept came from a desire to explore the idea that solid objects contain more data digitally than they do physically, and what it would mean if that could be accessed intuitively. This let us to an interesting research area, of ubiquitous computing and cloud computing.

Part three; Ubiquitous and Cloud computing

The concept of Ubiquitous computing was presented for the first time by Mark Weiser, in his text on Scientific American, September 1991. It describes a computer not as a self contained object, but as multiple objects that are everywhere. Ubiquitous computing represents a paradigm shift in the way we use technology. A move beyond desktop computing, where computing is embedded into everyday objects. It seamlessly integrates physical objects with virtual environment, and assists us from the most basic to most complex everyday tasks.

Cloud computing is essentially a forerunner of ubiquitous computing, which is already beginning to impact on technology today. Cloud computing doesn’t denote any new forms of technology, nor any substantial change in content. In many ways, cloud computing is simply a metaphor for the Internet, and the increasing movement of data into it. The fundamental difference is that cloud computing doesn’t represent the same paragdim shift as ubiquitous computing, it doesn’t suggest such a radical departure from traditional computing. Cloud Computing doesn’t put the computer everywhere but, instead, it gives access to it anywhere. As such, it served as both a more interesting and more pragmatic concept for our work.

This exploration gave a whole new set of depth to our ID card concept. If information, and the means to access it, were available everything, what does that mean for personal data and human computer interaction. One question we considered was what if it is you that becomes ubiquitous, as opposed to the computer. However, due to the aforementioned reasons, we chose not to explore this through tabletop computing. Furthermore, tabletop computing was not the right medium for exploring these ideas, as the technology employed needed to be more versatile and fluid.

Part four; Augmented Reality

This is where our research led us to augmented reality. Augmented reality technologies are by no means new, however they are not as pervasive as tabletop computing, and therefore provides more opportunities in creating new concepts. Augmented reality adds information and meaning to a real object or places. Unlike virtual reality, augmented reality does not create a simulated reality. Instead, it takes a real object or space and uses technology to add contextual data to deepen understanding of it.

One of the reasons we wanted to use AR is because it “bridges the real and virtual world and so objects in the real world can be used as AR interface elements, and their physical manipulation can provide a very intuitive way to interact with the virtual content” (Zhou et al, 2008) This seamless integration could benefit many domains, but for the most part, augmented reality has been largely limited to educational books and marketing. Another aspect of AR is that, being a fairly recently implemented technology, it encourages a renewed sense of enjoyment in it’s interaction.

Part five; Augmented Reality meets TUI/Ubicomp

Because of the nature of AR, it shares a relationship with tangible user interfaces. Tangible AR interfaces are those in which "1) each virtual object is registered to a physical object and 2) the user interacts with virtual objects by manipulating the corresponding physical objects" (Lee et al, 2004). Tangible interfaces are powerful because “the physical objects used have familiar properties, physical constraints, and affordances, making them easy to use” (Zhou et al, 2008). This TUI metaphor can be applied to AR interfaces “where the intuitiveness of the physical input devices can be combined with the enhanced display possibilities provided by virtual image overlays.”

Zhou et al (2008) provide a succinct explanation of the ubicomp and AR correlation, ubicomp "enables information processing capability to be present in everyday objects. Thus, it essentially extends augmented reality interfaces to daily objects. Augmented reality change the world itself into an interface, "taking advantage of natural physical affordances to achieve a heightened legibility and seamlessness interaction between users and information". The augmented reality technology we want to create aligns well with the concept of ubiquitous computing which looks to release the user from the computer and provide a rich ambient environment.

One concept we introduced with this medium, was augmented reality postcards, or AR Cards. The idea was you could give someone a marker which then accessed a flickr stream of photos from a specified location you were visiting, like an interactive postcard. However, apart from adding another layer of tangibility to photo viewing, the concept didn't provide much of an avenue for other interface methods. Furthermore, photo viewing was not a direction we wanted to look at in terms of cloud computing and it's implications.

Part five; Final Concepts

Consequently, we continued to explore the ID card concept within this medium, but the fundamental question we came down to was if this technology is best used for intuitively and interactively accessing information, why limit that to your personal information. This lead to the creation of the interactive business card, which was both more practical for the medium, and more interesting concept. The interactive business card is designed to show clients or friends the work you've done in a dynamic way. In some way's, the interactive business card could be argued as simply a portfolio website 2.0. However, the method of interaction is much different, instead of giving someone a link, you are giving them a tangible object which then turns into a device for navigation. This physical presence and purpose give more weight to the information it contains. We provide a visualization of this concept, but due to its personalized nature, it is not our working example.

Our final concept was the augmented reality music sampler, taking some past cues from our album table, but now in an appropriate medium with much larger social implications. This concept was a way to explore the use of cloud computing for allowing immediate and immersive access to digital information within a unique but intuitive interface. Band cards can be created with individual markers and then given to friends or music producers. The card then links to the 'cloud' to load the music to be played. Physical interaction with the card allows the user to play or pause the track, and the interface provides more information about the chosen band. Currently it's a concept which works mostly in isolation, meaning you need to load a webpage to first use he app. However, as augmented reality technologies become more pervasive, it could be accessed more naturally.

In continuing with the exploration of new interaction and tangible user interface, we wanted to enable the user to directly interact with the virtual interface elements using direct physical manipulation rather than indirectly through mouse and keyboard input. So in our presentation we removed these methods of interaction. Currently however, "various challenges in ubiquitous tracking make this interaction paradigm in its infancy" (Zhou et al, 2008) so although that is how we intend the technology to be implemented, the design allows it so that they can still be present for the interface to function.

The interaction elements of the AR music player currently include 3D tracking of the information and album art avatar, and occlusion dictating the song playing and pausing. One challenge of Tangible AR interfaces is to show users how to control the motions of the real objects to issue commands, and currently this is simply text direction. Future development would include making these hints more subtle, as well as creating band posters with the marker on them, which you could then use in conjunction with an iphone, or similar smart phone, to sample the music before deciding whether to attend the gig.

On technical side, we first intended to use processing with a library designed to track markers. However after a little research we found a flash based library known as FLARtoolkit took much of the heavy lifting out of the basic marker tracking class. Further development with the toolkit on various online blogs resulted in a class known as FLARmanager. Although this class is more powerful, handling multiple markers and various events easily it is also largely undocumented. However the final design is based on a combination of this toolkit and music handling/online data handling classes. Currently the marker with the software virtually links to an mp3 playlist stored online. Ideally this would be streamed straight from lastFM or Myspace to avoid any DRM issues, but simply hosting the mp3s on a secure server demonstrates the technologies potential.

During the course of the project we feel we succeeded in exploring emerging ideas of tangible user interface, augmented reality and cloud/ubiquitous computing. We believe we have created a basic interface which is able to address each of these components, and whilst the current implementation could definitely be developed further, it's an exciting amalgamation of technologies which has sufficiently demonstrated our theories. We have managed to overcome the technical limitations that arose due to current commercially available technology.

Puck UI 4

2009-06-19T16:45:00.000-07:00

PUCK UI 3

2009-04-23T03:08:00.003-07:00

PUCK UI 2

2009-04-23T03:08:00.002-07:00

Media and Literature Review
1.Brief
Its ultimate goal is to bring the reader up to date with current knowledge on a topic and to form a basis for informing subsequent research. The aim of your review is to provide the platform for studio based research within your research cluster.
A media and literature review is a body of text that aims to review current knowledge on a particular topic or area of practice.
Write a media and literature review of between 1500 and 2000 words.
Should include between 8 and 20 relevant sources.
Use appropriate academic language.
Double space lines.
Use APA referencing throughout.
Include a full Bibliography.
2.Review Synopsis
Usability and interface design in the context of multi-touch technology.

Overview
1.Introduction
i.Approach
ii.Essay Goals
2.The Research
i.Multi-Touch
ii.Tangible Interface Technologies
iii.Visual Psychology
3.The How
i.FTIR Touch Table
ii.Mixed-Reality
iii.Software
4.The Why
i.Parameters for Good Interface Design
ii.Exploring possible applications of multi-touch design
5.Conclusion
i.Identifying Flaws
ii.Future Developments
6.Bibliography
i.Literature Sources
ii.Web-based Sources

Review
9.
10.Introduction
This media and literature review intends to cover a number of related topics with a view to further research and finding solutions to problems relating to human-machine interfaces using multi-touch technology. Initially the review will cover the history behind multi-touch hardware, software and various related aspects within the field. Then I will cover the practical aspects of the multi-touch including related technologies and which approach is best suited to future research. Next I will look at the theory behind user interface design in terms of tangible user interfaces. Finally I intend to look at potential applications. If successful this review will inform the reader of the current state of multi-touch research as well as related technologies and the theory behind interface design.
11.The research
Multi-touch interfaces have actually been around for a while; in 1984 bell labs developed a touch screen that could change images with more than one hand. In 1991 Pierre Wilner published a paper about his “Digital Desk” that accepted multi-touch and pinching motions (Buxton, 2009). In the following 16 or so years not much happened to bring these technologies to the mainstream. There have been many reasons cited for this but they all faded into insignificance when Apple brought out the iPhone. Suddenly here was a phone that the average consumer could use, one that used multi-touch and could be developed (more or less) by an ordinary programmer. Also important in the field of multi touch is Jeff Han, whose development of a simple, inexpensive and scalable technique for multi-touch sensing has shown an international audience what touch interfaces are capable of. Until now these developments have only been available to researchers with big budgets. However the development of a touch interface that can be made using a projector, a webcam and some readily available hardware in conjunction with free software means that the DIY developer community as a whole has access to all the possibilities of a much more expensive commercial solution for potentially very little cost. It is important to remember that touch or even multi-touch solutions are essentially just another replacement for the common mouse pointer. The addition of such things as gestures, tangible interface elements and the larger form factor available to a touch table versus an LCD screen makes the strengths of this type of interface more apparent.
The software GUI interface has been around in many forms since its birth in 1973 with the Xerox Alto (Buxton, 2009). In that time many interface elements have been tried but surprisingly few have made the transition into mainstream computing. These include icon based file browsing, the alphabetical list, buttons, check boxes, scroll bars and drop-down boxes. Much of current GUI design theory is centred not on alternatives to these, but on when and where to use them within the interface’s individual information architecture.
The limitations and failures of touch technologies have been well documented over the past few years. In 1991 many computer companies appeared to have a touch screen computer in development. None of them were successfully released. More recently the iPhone has enjoyed success as a commercial multi-touch product, but criticism of its lack of tactile feedback is one that the technology has not yet been overcome. Tactile feedback is important because it helps with spatial memory; it is one of the reasons why touch typists do not need to look at their keyboards. Other related technologies include mixed reality or tangible user interfaces (TUI’s). These take the inherent flexibility of a screen based presentation format and include much needed tactile feedback solutions. Some of these solutions even feed back into the display to produce a virtual object whose position is extrapolated from printed markers. This is known as augmented reality.
Of course all these solutions are only part of a human-machine interaction. The design of a new interface should therefore be based on principles that combine the natural active vision and tactile processing systems of the human mind in conjunction with the most effective and intuitive TUI interface possible. In Colin Ware’s Visual Thinking Design (2008), various elements of design are linked with the cognitive processes that make them effective or otherwise. Without making too much of a leap from current solutions (applying the ‘principle of least astonishment’ (Hix, 1993)) a successful application of some of these myriad principles should result in an interface that is attractive, fun and efficient to use. The spatial cognition improvements demonstrated by using physical markers in a tangible user interface (Kim & Maher, 2007) provides a major step forward in multi-touch interface technology.
12.The How
For the purposes of this project, a Frustrated Total Internal Refraction (FTIR) solution (Han, 2005) appears to be the most practical solution so far. This requires a projector, and a semi transparent material for rear projection of the graphical interface. The multi-touch design requires a sheet of Perspex, some infra-red LEDs, and a high resolution webcam with some processing software. If successful this design can create a reasonably sized and flexible solution to begin TUI development.
The TUI hardware can be connected to the interface using a range of options, from a Bluetooth connection to a printed reactable barcode on the bottom of a static object and a number of simple yet effective solutions for tactile feedback are demonstrated at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h-RhyopUmc. The software which interfaces with the chosen technology will need to be quick to develop for and suited to the highly visual application at hand. In addition, the multi-touch software (Han, 2005) provides co-ordinates, but reactables, gestures and other features will also need to be easily added, preferably without running too much software simultaneously. Ideally, C++ would be the most powerful tool for this but Processing and Flash are almost as capable and have a much lower development time from concept to working example.
13.The Why
Current interface design has not changed significantly since the advent of Windows 95 over 10 years ago. Since then almost every user has become accustomed to such ubiquitous things as menus, scroll bars and the OK/cancel buttons. It would be fair to say that this lack of change is a direct result of refining an approach that works very well. However there are significant disadvantages to attempting to use a touch based solution over an interface designed for a keyboard and mouse. In a study by Otago University ()it was shown that a touch interface is not suitable for any target smaller than 4mm in size. However, given that a touch table has roughly 5-10 times the desktop real estate of a computer monitor it seems feasible that any given UI element can be designed several times larger without making the interface less efficient.
Another difference between a GUI for a monitor and that of a touch table is viewing angle. A table by its nature can be viewed from any angle above its surface, whereas a monitor sits in front of its user. For this reason, rotation is an important factor to consider. A clever solution by The University of Tokyo 2 NTT Communication Science Labs (Kakehi, Hosomi, Naemura & Matsushita, 2006) involved four different projectors and a Fresnel lense that made all viewing angles equally feasible. However a more flexible solution would be to make individual software UI’s dynamically easy to rotate using the TUI and using interface elements that are easy-to-read from the widest possible viewing angle.
For a long time the computer desktop has been seen as a metaphor (for a desk), (Saffer, 2005) yet there are a number of arguments that suggest that this is not the best way to look at interface design. However this has been the status quo because it makes it easier for the majority of people to understand what a desktop actually is for and how it can be used. In the case of a touch table it is obvious that a metaphor for a desk is implicit in its design. Nevertheless, by moving away from the limitations of a desk by using the inherent advantages of a software interface (easy selection, quickly viewing a selection in many different ways (Agrawala & Balakrishnan, 2006)) it becomes apparent that the chronologically ordered piling system of a real desk is not the only way to create a personal information management interface.
Every individual works differently: some remember where their information is visually, while others use a system of careful organisation (Ware, 2008). A good TUI should therefore allow for these different cognitive systems while at the same time being simple enough to encourage greater productivity over traditional systems. For those that like custom interfaces, interface elements should be customisable without simultaneously rendering it less useful (Saffer, 2005).
A very important consideration in using a large space in such a ‘hands on’ way is the ease of reach. A typical human has a maximum reach in any direction of approximately a metre (Toney & Thomas, 2006). Thus any interface elements outside that range is either permanent or useless. For this reason interface elements in this space should display information that is related to the system more than the user actions. Software that runs in the background can also use this space. Inside this region is an area which is possible to reach from a sitting or standing position but which is not necessarily comfortable to access repeatedly. In a study by the University of South Australia (Toney & Thomas, 2006) this area’s suggested use is storage space. Shortcuts and resources can reside in this area. Finally the area closest to the user is known as ‘personal space’. This space can be used for the currently running application(s) and enable the user to use the interface with minimal physical strain.
The human mind is a very capable pattern recognition device. By providing visual cues such as sharpness, colour, orientation, scale, etc. (Ware, 2008) the interface should bring attention to information when it is needed without being irritating or frustrating for the user. In experiments using virtual interfaces with ‘real’ objects in a TUI environment it became clear that spatial cognition is greatly aided by having a physical object to relate to mental processes. Compared to a purely virtual environment creative thinking is greatly improved by such a mixed reality system (Kim & Maher, 2007). For these reasons this interface will be more suited to spatially orientated people for creative applications although it may also help non-spatial people think in a different way.
14.Conclusion
Despite any real or perceived limitations, multi-touch is an attractive technology. This is why there is so much public interest every time a multi-touch technology (such as the iPhone or Microsoft surface) is announced (Atkinson, 2008). Multi-touch and TUI is a powerful solution but it only works at its best when used in the right way. For instance using a touch interface for writing a novel is definitely not going to be a successful exercise, whereas for a group of people to use the same interface to create a mind-map of a project overview is likely to take considerably less time than using email and other current solutions.
Because of the excitement and fast moving nature of current multi-touch developments, it is difficult to find a solution that has not already been discussed. However, by expanding our knowledge of current developments in all aspects of the field, and applying this to a unique task that develops from it could lead to a solution that is both innovative and successful.

Bibliography
Agrawala, A. & Balakrishnan, B. (2006), Keepin’ it real: Pushing the desktop metaphor with physics, piles and the pen. CHI 2006, April 22-27, Montréal, Québec, Canada.
Apted, T., Kay, J. & Quigley, A. (2006), Tabletop Sharing of digital photographs for the elderly. CHI 2006 Proceedings • Collecting and Editing Photos. Montréal, Québec, Canada
Atkinson, P. (2008), A bitter pill to swallow: The rise and fall of the tablet computer. Design Issues. 24:4 Autumn.
Bimber, O., & Raskar, R. (2005), Spatial augmented reality. Wellesley: A K Peters, Ltd.
Buxton, B., (2009). Multi-Touch Systems that I Have Known and Loved. Retrieved March 30, 2009, from http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html.
Ghinea, G., & Y., S. (2006), Digital multimedia perception and design. Hershey: Idea Group Publishing.
Han, J.Y. (2005), Low-cost multi-touch sensing through frustrated total internal reflection. In Proceedings of the 18th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology
Hix, D. & Hartson, H.R. (1993) Developing user interfaces: Ensuring usability through product and process. NY: Wiley. Chap. 2
Izadi, S., Agarwal, A., Criminisi, A., Winn, J., Balke, A. & Fitzgibbon, A. (2007), C-Slate: A multi-touch and object recognition system for remote collaboration using horizontal surfaces. Proceedings of the Second IEEE International Workshop on Horizontal Interactive Human-Computer Systems (TABLETOP ’07). IEEE Computer Society.
Kakehi, Y., Hosomi, T., Iida, M., Naemura, T. & Matsushita, M. Transparent tabletop interface for multiple users on lumisight table. Proceedings of the First IEEE International Workshop on Horizontal Interactive Human-Computer Systems (TABLETOP ’06).
Kim, M.J. and Maher, M.L. (2007), Collaborative design in a tabletop system employing tangible user interfaces. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design
Lee, J., Lee, J., Kim, H. & Kim, J-I. (2007), Believable interaction with a quasi-tangible tabletop interface. Comp. Anim. Virtual Worlds 07; 18: 121–132
Liarokapis, F. (2007) An augmented reality interface for visualizing and interacting with virtual content. Virtual Reality. 11:23–43 .
Patten, J., Ishii, H., Hines, J. & Pangaro, G. (2001), Sensetable: A wireless object tracking platform for tangible user interfaces. Proceedings of CHI 2001, March 31 - April 5, ACM Press.
Pattison, S., (2008), Seeing things. London: SCM Press.
Saffer, Dan. (2005), The role of metaphor in interaction design, Carnegie Mellon University Thesis.
Scott, S. D., Carpendale, M. S. T., & Habelski, S. (2005), Storage bins: mobile storage for collaborative tabletop displays. Applications of Large Displays. IEEE Computer Society. June/July.
Toney, A. & Thomas, B. H. (2006), Considering reach in tangible and table top design. Proceedings of the First IEEE International Workshop on Horizontal Interactive Human-Computer Systems (TABLETOP ’06). IEEE Computer Society.
Ware, C., (2008). Visual thinking for design. San Diego: Morgan Kaufmann.

PUCK UI 1

2009-04-23T03:08:00.001-07:00

--Multi touch table
- Augmented Reality
- Tangible Interface

While the hardware aspect of multitouch appears to be moving at an incredibly fast rate, I find it interesting that not many mindblowing software applications have yet been created for it. Asides from some intuitive 2D panning, rotating and zooming functions and some interesting musical applications it appears that most of the software is aimed at turning a thousand dollars worth of interface into an overblown toy.

However, while that is what I want to look at later when developing a tangible interface, first I would like to look at the hardware solutions readily available to us. While basing the system on an FTIR multi-touch interface seems like a good start, some really interesting physical interactions with tangible interfaces have been created. Augmented reality has also had some interesting results, although opengl solutions have been anything but realistic so far.

An interesting point I would like to raise is that the keyboard is infact a very good solution for entering text, the ease of use developed over the years would be hard to match and I'm not convinced that we should try, the advantage of a desk sized screen is that information can be spread out. I see no reason why a small wireless keyboard like the one below would take up too much space

Other tangible input devices are being developed that are integrated into the FTIR system using tags that move and are read by the webcam. These devices have alot of potential in that a simple switch or knob can be used in infinite contexts by the application in question, thus providing a physical feedback for an interface otherwise restricted to a two dimensional plane. I think this is incredibly important for enhancing usability as it makes remembering how an interface works that much easier when a physical objects interaction is included.

Mobile 1

2009-04-23T03:08:00.000-07:00

--Original idea/group,
- Mobile networking concept
- Wearable phone/media concept.

The original idea for our Mobile group was to create a social networking concept that would center around a website. The idea itself consisted of a few parts, all aimed at exploring the implications and questions inherent in social networking using a location aware device.

The first idea was essentially an enhancement of the facebook 'events' concept. Essentially creating mini-events that would alert people in your area of an intended activity. As an example if you wanted to carpool to work in the morning you could send a message out at 6am reading 'carpool at 8 beach haven to town' and people in your area could reject or accept and provide further details. This idea didn't come to fruition for two reasons, firstly iPhone does not have a very easy to use GPS function, and also we later found that someone else had already achieved something very similar using a paid application called 'Peek' that got around all the security and social issues we were concerned with.

A related idea we had was a 'rating' application for iPhone whereby a person could be rated by his/her peers based on social interactions. This interested me not because it would work, but rather because of why it (probably) wouldn't work. Why is it that people cannot be trusted to make unbiased reviews of their peers, and what ways would the system be misused, possibly even in constructive ways. In the end our group rejected this idea too because it seemed unfair to those who would be rated low.

Finally the mobile group decided to take a different direction and investigate wearable technology. To do this we decided to insert a mobile phone into an item of clothing in such a way that the clothes and the electronics were part of one whole. This is an interesting concept because of its limitations and its possibilities, such as how do you wash the hoodie, or what if you want to use the phone but wear a different jumper. Perhaps a better solution would be a vest that can be worn under other clothes and plugged into a selection of accessories like hats with microphones and headphones.

This is the point at which I switched groups, mainly because I felt wearable phones are a well explored concept and the limitations would be tedious to deal with rather than raising new and interesting questions. I decided to join Tash and her tangible interface project, thereby continuing to explore the ideas we were looking at in 2008.

Mobile - Ideas I

2009-03-16T13:48:00.000-07:00

--Email---------------------------------------------------------
Idea currently is a social networking concept. The central idea is a rating system whereby you can rate the people you meet (that are part of the experiment) and while the core implementation is a website that lets users login and view peoples ratings/profiles. We don't want to replace facebook in any way (except by having a basic profile) but we might look at a facebook app to integrate the two. Iphone apps to rate on the fly and then sync your ratings when plugged in etc are all options.
Other ideas include having an events system for carpooling/taxiing/organising events with people in your contact groups. Also finding new contacts in your area on the basis of interests/tastes in music etc.

Hanan we would like your take on the website, would it be hard to create a login system that would communicate with these various aspects of the concept? I am happy to design the front end using CSS/AJAX/Flash/JavaScript etc.

For tomorrow we would like to have a page containing your take on the idea including what you think the social impacts might be, how you think the rating system should work, etc, etc.
Also meeting with James Charlton tomorrow after the first years.
-Joe.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

The idea behind this social concept is the new forms of networking that have recently become available and practical. It allows people who live in a city to experience. normally these people would never meet each other and even if they did, they would not know that they had anything in common. this system is designed to reduce boundaries between people in a way that has not been tried before. The system is broken into sections. one of these sections lets you specify an event for people to plug into, such as carpooling. Another section introduces people with similar interests using activities such as concerts (that these people might otherwise attend alone) A third section is a rating system whereby users can rate others based on first impressions etc.

The opportunities afforded by this concept are exciting, it seems like a natural progression from previous social networking sites such as facebook only with a clearly defined and progressive purpose. Now the networking is doing the introducing, rather than solidifying relationships that began elsewhere. The ability to save money/time (CARPOOLING) is a good hook to encourage people to dabble in the concept (good for testing).

The carpooling concept is also a good starting point as it addresses other (environmental, traffic) issues that aren't directly aligned with the social networking aspect.

Potential side effects of this form of networking are a chance of crime etc, as I see it these are risks we take every day with trademe/public transport, etc. but it something that should be addressed if there is a chance that this concept would be viable.

Arduino - Brief

2009-03-16T13:30:00.000-07:00

So it would appear we have to buy our equipment for this project, fine. In that case I'm going to make something I want to keep.

Initially my idea for this brief was the typical 'give a remote control car a brain and eyes' but that is beyond over-done. Then I saw a video on youtube and I had a better idea.

For a little while now I have been interested in glowsticking, fire poi, orbiters and the like. However these are not exactly usable when you are not neck deep in ravers dancing your arse off to music you feel more than hear. Then I saw this and from that moment forth... I knew I should watch less monty python. NO. I knew I wanted to create something wrist mounted and awesome.

The idea is to have an SMD LED matrix, a tiny arduino board, an accelerometer, a battery and maybe another sensor or two mounted on a wrist band. From there I can use the inputs to dynamically light up the matrix in new and interesting ways. I see this being very fun and thanks to being easily amused, very distracting if (god forbid) I ever catch a bus again. Of course the matrix could be used to tell the time, and (if I can find a way to include bluetooth) alert of incoming txts et cetera.

Right now the build looks possible but relatively expensive, but depending on what people think of the result there might be a way to make more for less.

Mobile - Brief

2009-03-10T13:22:00.000-07:00

So we have three (sorry, four) groups at the start of this year. Mobile, Convolution, TUI and Open.

I have chosen mobile because I have an interest in the collaboration between mobile interactive media and the changing landscape of social networking. And NOT because of the IPhones. Honestly.

My initial idea was to use the positional sensors available on third generation phones to create games that involved finding another persons phone in real time over the space of a few city blocks. A kind of anonymous high tech hide an seek, if you will. In the end I abandoned this idea because it seems GPS and Bluetooth are not yet capable of directional positioning after you get within a few meters (although I dont see why it should be directional at that point) However I have a better idea that I will get to in a later post.

For now I think the limitations behind mobile (and locative and spatial) media are the small screens and that everyone in town is usually there because they have something to do. Also there are privacy issues regarding releasing your location to other people but I think they are easy to address.

Semester 1 - Year 2

2009-03-08T09:00:00.000-07:00

Well would you look at that, Year 2 already!
We appear to have a huge group of new students and a couple of briefs that I will discuss in later posts. For now, hi all!

//

2009-02-01T00:39:00.000-08:00

//Projects//

--Mobile
--Arduino
--Covolution

//General
--General aims and goals

//Arduino Concept
--What arduino is and what we are learning
--Using the arduino to control a wrist mounted LED matrix, possible watch, toy, bluetooth interface with phone, accelerometer, multicolours, different styles.
--Process, programming tests etc.

//Covolution
--Outline what it is and how we are involved

//Mobile
--Original idea/group, wearable phone/media concept.
--Multi touch table
-Augmented Reality
-Tangible Interface
--Media & Lit Review
--Process, designing building the table & Software

Website - Final II

2008-12-18T19:43:00.000-08:00

Well after quite alot of work on and off, it's just about done to my satisfaction.
Visit the website here.

Semester 2 - Proposal

2008-11-05T19:18:00.000-08:00

To start with, I would like to touch on the potential applications of this technology. It is my belief that we have only just begun to harness the potential afforded by such a naturally intuitive interface system. Gesture and handwriting recognition have come so far recently, along with other advanced body language reading (eye/face tracking etc.), that it is theoretically possible to control a computer without the use of a mouse or keyboard at all. This has so far been the most use to high input creative applications, especially ones that take place live, such as musicians (Beardy Man) and television studios (Campbell Live). The freedom of placing anything on the screen and having it instantly become a usable tool is an immense breakthrough in my opinion, it is like being able to have a hammer that can also be used to weld a car together.

I feel that the nature of this technology is such that it should be available on a mainstream level. There is no reason I can see that the keyboard and mouse should be held in favor of something with the potential for the immense freedom that this has. To this end I propose a project that looks into the current level of this technology and perhaps take it in a direction that the large corporations have not yet thought of.
The breakdown of where I would like this to go is as follows.

Research multi-touch technology, its past, present, and potential future.
Identify the areas we will focus on developing.
Conceptualise potential applications.
Develop a working prototype.
Develop those areas using that prototype.
Produce an advanced result.
Potentially market that result?

For me, the problem begins where AUT owns any idea we come up with, but I also believe in always having something up my sleeve!

As for the direction this project will take, I am thinking of a 1-person work station that combines screen and input device in an ergonomic fashion. Such a device may wrap around the user and run a kind of Shell OS that combines several different programs with the same style of intuitive gesture inputs. These pieces of software can vary, from virtual DJ/VJ equipment, to image editing software, to advanced web browsing and more. Ideally I would like to see a set of drivers that means that the device and its gestures can be used with any 3rd party software, something like recording a gesture as a keyboard shortcut and sending that to the application.

The potential for recruiting students in other years to work on software and applications is also high. For instance, if a student was interested in creating a piece of software that manipulated video using a touch interface, they would not need to go back to basics to create the touch interface in the first place.

Ideally I would like to continue to do other projects over the course of the next few years, but have them relate back to the development of this as much as possible (for instance having a robot that is controlled through the interface, or an exhibition in which a sculpture reacts dynamically to touch input, etc.). The idea being, to have a collection of valuable work that ties together by the end of my time in BCT.

Semester 2 - Review

2008-11-05T15:48:00.001-08:00

Over the course of this semester we have done a couple of large scale projects along with another smaller programming project.

Programming
To keep this logical I will talk about the programming first. The purpose of this section of the course was to visualise data in some way using processing. The brief was quite open so I decided to follow a previous line of interest (from my data project) and visualize music. I arrived at this idea from a couple of other directions as-well. One of these was from Semi-Permanent in which one of the speakers produced a large stage installation in which the lights reacted to the volume level of the band and the audience. Once the audience realized they were controlling the lights the effect was amazing. Thinking about this led me onto VJ'ing, an emerging practice where visual artists work along-side DJ's to produce a visual experience for the audience. I wanted to produce a piece of software that would combine these ideas into an entertaining visualisation that reacted to sound in realtime with a variety of effects.

The first iteration combined the webcam feed with the microphone, using FFT to affect the alpha of boxes whos Z axis and scale were representative of the pixels from the webcam feed. This produced an interesting visual effect but was neither difficult nor that entertaining to watch, what I was after was something that you could play with, not something you could watch. The next iteration was the result of playing with Minim for a night. The problem with this version was that it was not pulling sound in real-time, it required the loading of an mp3. I did like the way it reacted to sound and the way the shapes were combined into more than just primitives (the large number of boxes combined into something that resembled a circular haystack). However the lack of accuracy in beat detection and the lack of real-time mean't I was not satisfied.

The next version is my favorite, it is small, neat, and very fun to play with. When I first brought it to class it entertained a large number of people for quite some time. In retrospect I could have finished the project here as I achieved what I wanted to. However there was still some time left so I decided to see what I could do with the time available. The answer was learn.

The following examples were prettier, with advanced lighting and some rather nice colour changes at higher volumes, followed by one where I went back to basics and had boxes inside each other reacting to the music. The idea behind this was related back to the VJ idea where I wanted something that could occupy the screen while I loaded up another visualisation.

I created a final version of this where I pushed my programming skills quite alot (because apparently that's what the project was for, the result had a particle system with the gravity affected by the volume of music. The result looked like a particle generator stuck between two wormholes. The camera angle was controlled using object tracking in jMyron so waving a hand would rotate arc-ball style around the center of the scene. I am not particularly happy with the visual aesthetics of the result, but the amount I learned in programming compared to the simpler predecessors makes up for that in my opinion.

Data
This was the first project of the semester from which some of the results made it into the programming topic. The purpose of this project was to create a bold new way of visualising data over the course of a few weeks. My group consisted of Hanan, Tash and I. To be honest we were more or less stumped for ideas for weeks after the project started, visualising data was such an open brief that we were trawling the internet with no results that really grabbed our collective attention. Eventually we stumbled upon a website that presented quizzes in which the answers were not words but pictures. From the results of this the website claimed things about your personality. Cheesy, yes. Imaginative? Also yes. We decided that this was a good direction to develop our project in. We called our project WHATCANIDO.

The results of this exercise in web development were quite interesting, to us at least. We had on our hands a website that would ask a number of questions with a selection of pictures that made up the answers, and then took the results and conducted a websearch of sites like digg.com and amazon.com to come up with a few live recommendations based on that individual. The concept seemed entrepreneurial and effective. Each result was effectively an advert. To extrapolate this idea a new movie could be advertised through this website, for a small fee, benefiting cinemas and people who would potentially want to see it.

However for whatever reason we did not stop there. We wanted to take the derived data (the results) and produce an overall result from the users that provided another level of visualisation. The result from this was a small booklet printed on pretty average quality transparencies. I found the booklet quite attractive in its design, its inspiration was in part due to a number of speakers at semi-permanent that seemed to be exploring a new trend in printing on transparent sheets. However it was not really a logical conclusion to the project (art and logic?) and it seemed to be forcing a point that had already been made. Again in this project I think its conclusion was reached before we actually ran out of time, the rest was just an exercise in learning about a process (in this case print design).

In terms of personal development I think this project taught me alot about providing a driving force within a team and keeping it on track, because I was quite forceful in this (the team took quite contradicting views on certain things and progress was required) the result ended up looking more like something I would have done than the team combined. However I know for a fact we all contributed alot to the project so from my point of view this is not too much of an issue except that in later projects I will try to let other peoples aesthetics share the result.

Play
For this project I think the main development was that we finally worked cohesively as a team. We (Tash, Nico and I) found a balance whereby we all worked towards the same goal without too much overlap in what we ended up doing. We divided the project up into three areas, these being Programming, Construction and Documentation. We produced a couple of prototypes of the light-box so that we could do the project in cohesive stages while we each improved on our own areas. It felt like a very productive work-flow even when we came up against problems like the drivers crashing or lack of ideas for the software. While the final result was solid, it lacked a certain finished quality that I think I will try to improve upon next year. However I am proud that I finished a physical construction with a certain amount of style; I am usually very impatient when it comes to this kind of thing, often resulting in ragged edges and uneven paintwork. I also think that the final result of this project has alot of potential for a 'next stage', perhaps continuing through next year and maybe even to a high end commercial product with the right planning.

Conclusion
Overall I think I have improved alot on being a team player this semester, where my software skills have improved is mainly in java where I stopped looking up other examples when I wanted to write even quite large amounts of code. Asides from that I consider software to be secondary to the quality of ideas behind my work, and it is this area that I want to improve upon next year.

NB: I believe philosophy, theory of design, notable photographers, visual programmers and sculptors will feature largely in my research, execution of concepts, and reflection in future.

Semester 2 - To Do.

2008-11-05T14:33:00.000-08:00

Things I need to do before the end of year

Redirect from uni website X
End of year review X
Proposal X
Tags on blog X
Advanced blog links from website
Take a project one step further

Website - Concepts II

2008-11-02T13:29:00.002-08:00

Having found myself at the end of the year with a minimalist, if functional website, I decided to do a couple concepts for a visual update should I choose to do one in the next week.

This is my original concept.

But I want to try a full screen website,
all of my websites so far appear to have a small box for all the content.

Even closer,
I'm not totally happy with it yet partly because this style of website needs alot of content.

Whether I finish one of these in time for the end of uni i'm not sure, I think my current website is adequate and some of my other projects need more attention than this. But creating concepts is always fun.

Play - References

2008-10-29T17:12:00.000-07:00

Resource List

Multi-touch History
T-BETA Forums

Building a multi-touch box
Semi-Pro multi-touch table instructions

Inspiration: Multi-touch Table
Inspiration: Cocktail Bar Table
iBar Multi-touch Bar
Advanced Multi-touch system
Intuitive Multi-touch interface

Play - Prototype

2008-10-26T22:28:00.000-07:00

After two days of semi-hard work, here is the almost finished result!

The last photo above is of a test I did to use infra red LED's so the room could be in darkness, it did not work. Luckily the alternative I came up with looks better in some ways because it brings attention quite nicely to the device and doesnt look to shabby in the process.

Material list.
Old chest of draws
Hardboard (don't use this its pretty weak.)
Acrylic (Much nicer than perspex)
Some lovely paper, and Drafting Film
2X CCFL Tubes inverter etc.

To do.
Rig up mac mini and webcam
Finish software
Rig up projector
Install in exhibition
Write up documentation and theory

Play - Development

2008-10-20T03:30:00.001-07:00

Multitouch table

Multotouch pad and projector

Balloons!

Play - Brief Discussion

2008-10-10T20:51:00.000-07:00

The Brief

Play is often seen as the antithesis to work but play can be, and arguably always is, structures, with its own sets of rules and conventions. How then does the notion of structure during play affect the play-work relationship? These structures and conventions of play, implied or operative (or constituative), can, and in most cases, already have, been analysed formally. What value does play have in a wider context of development and understanding of semiotic domains? Asking someone to pick a random card out of a pack of six cards numbered Ace to 6 is mathematically the same as asking them to roll a dice but there are other forces at work here. What are they? What cultural influences shape play? What are the implications of the performative parameters of rolling a die as opposed to choosing a card? What is play?

Discussion
Okay, so the brief is brilliantly vague, but being the students we are we have got the general idea and the various ideas are promising even if time is running low. My group for this project consists of Tash, Nico and I, and it is clear we all have our own areas of expertise. Our initial discussions were based around how we should approach the brief. Perhaps the first and biggest hurdle was this one: Should we do the project about play, or should we do the project in a playful way, or even both?

Ideas
So far we have narrowed the purpose of the project somewhat. What we want to do is create an exhibition that appeals to the nature of childrens play. We have toyed with (excuse the pun) the idea of tactile sensation as part of play. This is interesting to me as I have never been sure why, for instance, switches (or bubblewrap) have such appeal. Essentially we want to make an exhibition that appeals to the child, even if it is the child within an adult. To this end we want something which includes audio, visual and tactile elements in such a way as to induce interaction (play). So far we have gone from filling a room with balloons (conceptually simple, yet an alluring idea) to a multitouch screen, to a more traditional projector reacting to something within the space.

Concept
At this point in time the idea is to make a multitouch device for very little expenditure. This device will take input from the people touching a mounted surface in the exhibition and produce a reaction that is both audible and visible on the screen infront of the people using the device. Due to the ease of construction it is always possible that more than one device could be built and 'competition' could be introduced into the play. At this point we are not over thinking the reaction that the software (max or processing) will produce because the possibilities are endless, we would rather start with getting something that works and then improve it as time allows.

Development
In order to visualise the exhibition I am creating a virtual environment that is of identicle dimensions to the room we are planning to exhibit in. This environment should save alot of time and allow me to present many different ideas in a clear way in a short space of time. Also it can be used to plan other exhibitions using the space.

Unfortunately the space itself is of quite a utilitarian standard and so I have used substantially nicer materials in my version (a polished wooden floor, for instance). I will come up with a lighting solution later, the idea is that this is an ideal version of the space and so looks as good as possible.

Semester 2 - Gallery Review

2008-10-10T01:21:00.000-07:00

Auckland Art Gallery

I have recently been questioning what I consider to be art. This is a hard one because so many things that many people consider to be awful are considered to be priceless by a few. And vice versa. After being convinced for a long time that art critics are rarely clued in on reality I have decided that art is in the eye of the artist. In my opinion where the artist was at when they produced the work has more to do with the 'worth' of the work than the outcome. If the artist is producing work with little thought to make money then for me that is the baseline, the lowest form of art (copying is not art). If the artist has spent a lot of energy getting to a state of mind where they can produce this work of art then I think of it as a higher 'tier' of art. I did not do art history and I have not read anything on this matter so this is purely my opinion at the moment.

ARTIST
EXHIBITION

The one that sticks in my mind most was one that I talked to the curator about, the format of the piece was a triptych sculpture of roughly 8ftX5ftX0.5ft X 3 mounted on the wall. The piece was made by throwing darts at a map of New Zealand and then selecting three darts and recreating the land that three of them marked. I was particularly impressed by the quality of the representation considering it must have been based on a plaster cast or something of that sort. I liked the conceptual idea of representing new zealand this way, but I was a little sceptical that all of the pins landed in such man made environments. After all, isn't this meant to be a country of pristine nature? The other pieces in this exhibition were more or less unrelated so I decided to take two of these pieces separately.

ARTIST
EXHIBITION

This next piece was aesthetically quite challenging for me. But as I think the content was interesting and I am meant to be challenging my personal aesthetics anyway I will try and consider this piece in a different way. The piece was a google earth demo showing an area of land that I personally think of as the 'cradle of civilisation'. It includes Israel, Palestine, Jerusalem and a number of other places with the names written in hebrew. Interestingly Palestine is not represented on the map. at certain points in time certain places on the map are surrounded by a pentagon of towers and CIA data about that place is read out using a text to speech program. From my point of view it is hard to tell whether this is art or simply stating facts. It is interesting to note that the curator was quite vehement about the political situation in these places. I also think that the text to speech was an act of deliberate removal of emotion. This creates a certain frustration as you hear the data about these operations involving the death of thousands of people being blithely read out as if it was of no consequence. I suppose we are all suffering from a propaganda overload as it is but it is interesting to note that a piece with emotion deliberately removed is capable of evoking strong emotion in people with preconceived ideas.

Lisa Reihana
Digital Marae

This exhibition is by a Maori artist that combines photoshop and Maori themes to create works of art that are reminiscent of lord of the rings posters. I found this piece interesting because it took Maori culture and presented it in an almost totally modern way. I found the artists website later and I'm interested that she got to this point not by growing up in the city but by coming to computers from a cultural background. I liked the works of art from an aesthetic point of view but there are limitations, probably caused by coming to computers and modern art works over a period of time.

John Renoylds
Cloud

To me this was one of those elegant ideas with no real soul. The concept is relatively simple, but in endeavoring to write every possible word it kind of lost authenticity, at least for me. Part of the reason for this is it felt forced, like the more is better concept was taken too far. Another reason is that some of the words weren't anything I would still classify as natural to the purpose of the exhibition. Aesthetically the exhibition is brilliant, I enjoy minimalism and this was a good example of taking a minimalist approach conceptually and scaling it up into something mildy awe inspiring. Each individual work would gain from being one of many in the sense that it is part of a larger collection. One could imagine another layer, for instance different colour canvases with words unique to the country represented that colour, each colour getting its own exhibition in a different gallery.

MIC Atmos

Tom Corby and Gavin Bailey
Cyclone

This exhibition was interesting to me because it was similar to some of the exhibitions we have seen and conceptualized. Unlike our java based projects it was written in C++, after talking to one of the artists for a while I learned that the project took 6 months to complete. I was amazed at this considering that there were various problems displaying the RSS feeds (some characters were unformatted and letters disappeared etc.) It looked like a much smaller project than it apparently was. I suppose a combination of a more complex coding language and greater depth of idea development could be what caused this. Personally I was under-whelmed, I think some of us could produce something that impressive without too much effort. I would have been impressed if the whole thing had been done in 3d, although that might just be what I would have done!

Lisa Benson
Fade

This piece of work was conceptually alot more than the product, this piece of work was essentially a collection of antique pieces of photographic paper left to absorb light in her photographic studio. The idea being as far as I can tell that photographers are so intent on capturing light and shadow that they forget to see the act of illumination by light as a beautiful thing in itself. This work on the surface is quite difficult to get into because it looks a like a bunch of exposed ancient photographic negatives, the only interest arising from the different colours attributed to the decay of chemicals in the different kinds of paper. On a different level of understanding the paper has been influenced by specific light in a specific place so it can be thought of as capturing the 'nature' of the sunlight in that particular studio. As a concept it is fine, and you could even say that this has happened. But for me it fails to capture the nature of the light in such a way as I can see it in the piece and as a result it comes across as more of a thought experiment than a successful work of art. This is unfortunate as I enjoy the idea, it is one of the reasons I find pin hole cameras so interesting in comparison to the ultra complex nature of humanities current efforts on the subject.

Programming - Discussion

2008-09-18T16:36:00.000-07:00

Last semester, I presented my final iteration of my processing project. The project essentially reacts directly to the computers microphone input and puts a 3 Dimensional object up on the screen. This is particularly impressive with the iMacs input as the microphone is very good. The way I got to this point in the project was not the simple way, I did not look at the multitude of (crap) audio visualisers out there and go 'ah, I want one!' although that was probably part of it. No, the train of thought was started at the Semi-Permanent exhibition.

One of the speakers involved in performance based design was talking about a light wall he did for Massive Attack. This wall basically changed the brightness of many lights in various patterns, but the way in which they did this was to use the input from the microphone. This meant that if the singer held the microphone out to the audience and they were REALLY loud, the lights would go nuts. The designer said the effect of this on the crowd was quite amazing.

This resonated with something I read about a billboard with a giant Db meter on it. The meter was originally making a statement about sound pollution (I think), however it found many different applications apart from its original intention. The nightclub underneath it used it to prove (to nearby house occupants) that they weren't actually that loud, school children shouted at it to make the meter move, etc. This kind of real-time interaction does not feature in classic 'itunes' visualizations (the criticism levelled at my project) and I believe it makes the project.

However, I would not be learning if I did not take this kind of thing on-board. Since then I have been thinking and trying things out in different directions. In terms of technical skill (something my tutor appears to think I should be proving, where in a previous project I was marked down for 'indulging' myself in technical detail) I have most recently experimented with offscreen buffers. This took a short while for me to get my head around, but the possibilities are actually really interesting.

In terms of my actual project I have been playing with the webcam and setting out to understand exactly how processing deals with webcam feeds and the possibilities of that. So far I have succeeded in taking the feed, putting it on an offscreen buffer and then setting that buffer as a texture. My current final goal for this is to make a 3D webcam feed where several frames are in 3d space all moving at the same time.

Thirdly, I have been thinking of this new club trend of VJing. Being in NZ this has not really made an impact yet, but I think some very clever set-ups could be achieved, and visual feedback when your dancing is a very engaging element (even the giant mirror in margies has some effect!). To this goal mixing video and various other feeds from dancers and the DJ's performance and processing them along with the music into a number of visual forms (with varying degrees of abstraction) would be my goal in terms of producing a VJ performance. As I understand it most current VJ's use stock footage and mix it up in time to the music. I have not seen one of these yet that didn't look like a psychedelic trip through 60's ville.

In terms of how this relates to my project I really want to make a form on the computer that reacts to visual and audio inputs with its own visual and audio output. For instance taking the webcam and producing sound from that, and then making the audio output change the shape of the object. For now my next goal is to mess with offscreen buffers and 3D form and see what happens!

I'm out.

Programming - Development

2008-09-01T01:21:00.000-07:00

Here are the iterations I went through for the first half of the data visualisation project.

Converting a webcam feed to 3d boxes with FFT affecting alpha

Extracting FFT from MP3 and visualising

Extracting FFT in 3D form from live microphone feed

Modifying 3D for effect

Further modification, better but slower

Even better but even slower

Back to basics, 3D Boxes moving in real-time

Data - Development

2008-08-20T04:17:00.000-07:00

Data Submission
To outline what we have been doing over the last few weeks, it has mostly been a case of bringing the quiz website to fruition, along with thinking up an attractive representative model and a way of storing the data.

Now with two days to go we realise we may have overcooked it, the reason for this is that there are simply too many separate parts to design and implement in the timeframe available. Perhaps I should break this down and explain exactly what has happened and what we will have to achieve in the next under 48 hours to finish in time.

The Quiz (Data Collection)
In the past two weeks we have come up with an idea, collected open copyright pictures, created code that collects links from Digg and other sources based on the users selections, created questions, tagged the images in an XML file, created the interface and created code that saves the data to a database. Our current problems are accessing the database from within AUT, and the mac screwed up the XML file. Once the site is up and running we plan to improve it outside AUT's jurisdiction if at all possible. If we can create a slick and viable service we can continue to improve it into a valid business model (possibly). The output from the quiz should with any luck be moderately accurate and can be a model in itself, albeit less abstract and interesting than the one we came up with.

The Model (Structure and Presentation)
The model was thought up with inspiration from the Semi-Permanent design conference last friday and saturday. A number of international artists and designers are exploring the possibilities of printing on a transparent format, and using various techniques to hide and reveal information in dynamic ways for various purposes. Along with this we saw the idea of laser tagging and using UV materials for light painting. Between the three of us we decided to create a rather unique little book. This book would compress the entirety of a song and a movie onto each individual page. The book would be formed from the 20 most recommended songs and movies from our Quiz. Today I started working on some code that would play a movie and overlay each frame at a very low opacity over the last one, theoretically I would like the final product to be a mash of the entire movie in a single image. There are a couple of problems with the code as it stands, first of all the movie played in openGL appears to have a limited colour palatte (256 or thereabouts), secondly the alpha generally creates a white smear which does not fade, although the original code made a promising attempt not using OpenGL GLfunc commands. Thirdly the code does not work with movies that do not open in quicktime on a mac. that would be almost all of them. The sound would be made in more or less the same way, but my current state of thinking is to work with the visualisation to make an average 'waveform' rather than trying to process the sound itself. The final image on each page should be the blurred movie image displayed inside the generated wave form. Ideally I would like to make a UV print on each page that took the link from the quiz results and overlayed the entire text over itself at low opacity to create a complex symbol, but this is at the bottom of my list right now due to costs and having to write the software to do it. The reason I like this concept so much is that the information is all there, technically each page contains a movie and a song if you had certain information and a piece of software to do it. At the same time it should appear almost completely intelligible and defying explanation to those that do not know what is going on (an introduction printed in UV ink that would explain this would be another interesting thought.)

The fact remains though that these grand plans have to be completed in the next two days in order to be ready, and given our rate of progress I severely doubt this is achievable. However in saying this I believe that the project has gone from rather a bland and uninteresting idea to something with actual substance, and I am actually quite proud of the progress we have made on an ambitious idea.

Next post: Either discussing the presentations or reviewing a few art galleries. Stay posted!

Data - Concept

2008-08-09T18:29:00.000-07:00

Okay so the proposal was last week: We have established a data collection model with a process, we just need to create a website and decide on an output now.

The model goes something like this
Data Collection - Data Storage - Data Processing - Output

Data Collection
The plan here is to create a website that collects the information anonymously from a group of people without us interfering. Our smart idea here is to create a website that will prove useful and therefore gain popularity (we hope) so that the website reaches as many people as possible. The websites purpose is to ask the user a series of questions in which the answers are selected from pictures, the website then takes those answers and recommends something to the user. At the moment the recommendations are along the lines of movies, websites, artists and the like. The reason for answering questions by selecting pictures is twofold (and is borrowed from youniverse.com). One, it is really much more interesting than selecting from a series of sentences, because as the adage goes: a picture is worth a thousand words. Two: The selected answers will be more subjective for this reason, there is more scope. The method of recommendation at this stage is (A secret). In this way we hope to provide the user with something they will enjoy but would not otherwise have tried or found by themselves.

Data Storage
At this stage storage will probably be in the form of a MySQL database that is acessed from the flash front end. The hope here is that we can create a database that we can pull useful information from towards the end of the project and use in a different way.

Data Processing
The data processing will either be written in Processing or Flash, and will sort through the (anonymous) collected data to see if we can derive some interesting results that we can present separately from the raw information.

Output
At the moment the main output is the one the website provides the user with: It takes the user inputed data from the quiz, and makes an intelligent (well, web 2.0) guess at what the user would enjoy. Some form of 'this was useful' feedback could be used to alter the image tags over time to something approaching a perfect description. A second layer of output is the entirety of the project, that is to say the data collected from thousands of users and what they clicked on/information about them. For instance we could list the answers to various questions by age/sex/country etc.

Data - Proposal

2008-08-04T01:52:00.000-07:00

So far: today out group agreed today that data collection via user selection of images would be a good way to go. My personal liking for this idea stems from 'a picture is worth a thousand words'. With a range of pictures the range of meaning is far more subtle than a simple true/false/left/right scenario. Now the next step is to decide WHAT information we are trying to collect, HOW we are going to collect it (website, for instance) and the process we will go through to give that information (DATA) structure. Also, I would like to make sure than the process is both asthetic and meaningful in some way. Hopefully we will answer all these questions tomorrow.

Data - Discussion

2008-07-30T03:11:00.000-07:00

Phase 2 Brief (And later discussion)

Phase 2 – GROUP PROJECTS
Tuesday 23 – Friday Aug 22
• In response to the models presented (not the data), and the issues arising
from them, form groups of 3 in order to generate a proposal for a new data
based project that requires gathering further sets of data. The resulting group
project will culminate in a new model and should combine at least 3 sets of data
(or equivalent), that may be related or divergent. Each group will have a lecturer
assigned to it to provide on-going input and support during the project. List of
group members to James by Tuesday 29 July.

PROPOSAL PRESENTATION
Monday 4 Aug. 10am
Each group is to make a 15-minute presentation about their intended project.
Lecturers will consider the proposals and either approve them or ask for further
work to be done before commencing.

The proposals should identify the source of the data, the methods of gathering it,
equipment needed, the role of team members and a timeline of key points.
Several approaches to modelling the data should be considered and discussed
without predetermining the final outcome of the project. In addition to this
presentation this proposal is to be written up to refer back to at the conclusion of
the project. Please supply hard copy to James following your presentation. This
may be in the form of PowerPoint slides and notes.

The proposals are developed simultaneously with workshops run during week two
so that your groups are ready to present their project proposals on Monday 4 Aug.

The techniques and methods for gathering the data is part of the project and
needs to be fully documented and supported by an on-going project log. The
gathering of data may necessitate the construction of equipment especially for
this purpose and should be included in the project proposal.

Phase 3 – REVIEWS, PRESENTATIONS AND ASSESSMENTS.

MID-PROJECT REVIEW.
Wednesday 13 Aug- as scheduled.

Formally present to lecturers your progress to date. This is intended to focus the team on
achieving the project outcomes by identifying significant breakthroughs and any problems that
are being encountered. Depending on the nature of individual projects data gathering,
modelling and analysis may be at different stages. It is expect that significant progress has been
made towards the project outcomes at this stage and evidence of this, and reflective analysis, is
available.

PRESENTATIONS
2pm Aug 21 -10am Aug 22 – as scheduled.
Finished project outcomes, data and documentation are presented to the class for peer
assessment. This presentation may take any form depending on the nature of the project. Work
should be presented in a professional manner relevant to the project.

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT
2pm Friday 22 Aug
Complete projects are presented for assessment. Lecturers assigned to each group will advise on
an appropriate form for this to take. Whenever possible actual outcomes should be presented as
well as documentation, project log and reflective analysis. Comprehensive documentation
should be available online through a project web page with links from individual team members’
pages. While the web pages will not be assessed as part of this project they are a requirement.

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Basically right now I am in a state of creative block. So what I have just done (with two days till the group proposal) is spend hours and hours looking at the best inspiration I could find on the net re: what I percieve to be the subject at hand. The result is a large number of amazing ideas but sadly no sparks of inspiration just yet. Rather than dispair though, I think I will sleep on it and show the rest of the group my findings tomorrow. With luck even if we have no amazing new flashes of inspiration we can cut and recombine the existing ideas in order to progressively move forward.

Here is the list of links I have covered today. I am not going to post a description just yet but I will soon as I feel they will be important for the next step in the process.

Inspiration: http://moodstream.gettyimages.com/; http://www.weboffate.com/visualization/; http://www.brendandawes.com/sketches/redux/; http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/06/urgently_infosculpture.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890; http://www.semiconductorfilms.com/root/Magnetic_Movie/Magnetic.htm; http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/diggrings/; http://www.bestiario.org/research/videosphere/; http://www.semiconductorfilms.com/BN_Exhibition.htm; http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/06/stop_motion_graphic_equal.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890; http://infosthetics.com/archives/2008/05/massive_digital_ceiling_clock.html; http://labs.live.com/photosynth/; http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/09/timetube-the-timeline-that-youtube-should-built/; http://www.designsupremo.com/index.cfm?action=product.detail&department=art&product=a-b-peace-terror-etc--d0; http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/steadycam/; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw; http://www.abigailreynolds.com/mntF/mntFmain.html; http://www.flare-facade.com/; http://creativity-online.com/; http://infosthetics.com/archives/2008/07/lasercut_sound_analysis_sculptures.html; http://www.spectrumatlas.org/spectrum/; http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/02/23/movies/20080223_REVENUE_GRAPHIC.html; http://www.avoision.com/experiments/pi10k/index.php; http://lastgraph3.aeracode.org/; http://iwantyoutowantme.org/; http://www.core77.com/competitions/GreenerGadgets/; http://www.yankodesign.com/index.php/2008/01/14/saver-clip-shames-your-electricity-usage/; http://marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/newsmap.cfm; http://social.cs.uiuc.edu/projects/conversationclock.html; http://infosthetics.com/archives/2007/10/the_impact_of_social_data_visualization_infovis_workshop.html#extended; http://www.digital.udk-berlin.de/en/projects/summer07/haupt/bodytech/googlering.html; http://www.urbaneye.net/; http://www.nickdlobo.com/wordpress/; http://www.christianmeinke.com/2007/04/10/wiimote-communication/; http://youniverse.com/personality/feedback/de9dbf85eb0ccc0a03e452175a5bef1a; imagini.net; oskope.com; http://infosthetics.com/archives/2007/02/browsegoods_visual_shopping.html; http://infosthetics.com/archives/2007/08/adobe_building_semaphore.html#more; http://content.stamen.com/som_transbay_tower; http://www.snibbe.com/scott/public/youarehere/video.html; feel fine

Ideas
Making something generally invisible visible
LED Shirts to display information/pictures
Creating a wearable device that transfers/converts data into something usable (weather reports change t shirt colour using W/Networks, for instance)
Visualising sound in 3D (even in physical form?)

Interaction (with 3D Space)
Using a wiimote with MAX/Processing to locate an object in 3d space/Head tracking
Motion sensors mapping movement to 3d space on a projector.

Taking data collected externally and visualising it in an interesting/comprehensive way
Taking social experiments (psychology) and visualising the results on video/3D sculpture 2D Artwork
Modelling mathematical abstractions in rapid prototyping (already done)

Peform a social experiment and then visualise the results
Observing people/events/phenomena, take a dataset using some method that deliberately provokes thought/discussion and then present that data in an unexpected way
Present data out of context (much like Borat or Michael Moore) in order to influence how people think about it, and THEN present that same data in context

Notes
Digital vs reality... or even mixed reality (video?)
A digital format would be more asthetic, but a real object would be more permanent. Combining both (circuitry with say, a sculpture and a video camera) would create a bigger impact on whoever interacts with the piece.
Art vs Design
Our instructors have been (deliberately?) ambiguous with this, but I would like to produce something interesting, although whether it is useful or not I think is not all that important at this stage.
Innovative approach
Not having much (if any) money to spend will surely have an impact on what we do here. But such emerging technology as camspace, combined with Processing (free) and about $40 of kit has the potential to create a fully functional VR space. If we are capable of this in the times we live in then if we can get access to a camera/arduino/rapid prototyping through AUT then I see no limit to what we can potentially create here.
Presentation Methods
In my research I have found many contemporary techniques of presenting data such as tag clouds, various kinds of graph, relating size to frequency/quantity, relating colour to mood etc etc. I would seek to question these rather than conform. I think that 2D presentation methods are approaching staleness while 3D methods are all looking very sharp in order to introduce that 'design' edge. Again, I would question that through discussion with my group.

Infact in a sense the lack of limits is the equivalent of being given a blank page and a pencil and a white room. This is perhaps the opposite sensation to the 1000 poly limit we had last semester! But I digress... =)

Data - Structures

2008-07-25T18:46:00.000-07:00

So it's the start of a new semester, and we have all been struggling to get our heads in gear after the month of rebelling that preceded it! Unfortunately for our rather optimistic mentors, our first ask was rather a tall order, and we all appear to be in trouble for dissapointing. Well, I have nothing to say about that other than it was quite obvious that that would be the result. =)

In any case, now that week one is over I have finally been able to stop floating above the clouds and get my ass in gear, so to speak. So i'm going to start with the brief.

The first project asks you to gather “data” to work with and to observe the structures inherent in that material. In this case data might be any recordable set of information. While the data might be from existing sources as with Aaron Koblin’s Flight Patterns, we encourage you to record information from your own observation. Then by identifying key relationships between your information and that collected by fellow students you are asked to formulate a dynamic model that explores concepts arising from the structures revealed by this process.

Phase 1 – INDIVIDUAL MODELS COLLECTION
Monday July 21 – Wednesday 23
Individually collect data through observation – birds flying over-head, bus frequency, people’s shoe size…anything that does not already exist in digital form. While there may be a temptation to collected quantitative data derived from number, duration, size, frequency… consider alternative qualitative methods as well as subjective/visual/ perceptual approaches. (The data collection may be ongoing through the week but the source and systems of collection must be decided on by Wednesday 23rd July. Otherwise you won’t have anything to work with!

MODELING
Wednesday 23 – Friday 25 July
Make a “model” that interperates the data you have collected. You can use any media/technology/software that you consider appropriate. Think about what the relationship is between the model and the information gathered? Is the model representing the data or the relationships between the data? How does the model affect the source of the data?

CRITIQUE –
Present this completed model along with the data recordings at 10 am Friday 25

Break down
To fully understand this brief I think I am going to have to look hard into the definitions of data and structure, particularly the kinds that I will be following up to produce my final result.
Qualitative vs quantative data, this seems like a good enough place to start.

Some methods provide data which are quantitative and some methods data which are qualitative. Quantitative methods are those which focus on numbers and frequencies rather than on meaning and experience. Quantitative methods (e.g. experiments, questionnaires and psychometric tests) provide information which is easy to analyse statistically and fairly reliable. Quantitative methods are associated with the scientific and experimental approach and are criticised for not providing an in depth description.

Qualitative methods are ways of collecting data which are concerned with describing meaning, rather than with drawing statistical inferences. What qualitative methods (e.g. case studies and interviews) lose on reliability they gain in terms of validity. They provide a more in depth and rich description.

Quantitative methods have come under considerable criticism. In modern research, most psychologists tend to adopt a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches, which allow statistically reliable information obtained from numerical measurement to be backed up by and enriched by information about the research participants' explanations.
http://www.holah.karoo.net/quantitativequalitative.htm

At the time I decided to record a quantative data set which could be analysed in a number of ways. This data set was a list of names recorded over a 24 hour period. Each day I listed the names of people I talked to, and the situations I talked to them in. I hoped that by doing this I would derive a set that I could then go through and find a method (or methods) of structuring and visualising that data.

This idea led onto others after a discussion with Charles, and eventually led me to an idea that I would like to explore. This idea is the concept that although technology is opening up whole new methods of communicating with people you don't know, humanity in general has not got to the point where they can do this face to face. I wanted to explore the connotations that this might have, by creating a video wherein a technology had been implemented whereby people could reveal information about themselves on a real world basis. I think that this could be an interesting video, but there are limitations, and also coming up with a final idea this early on could be detrimental to the thought process in the long run.

Another idea I had today based on different kinds of data is a new method of organising music collections, But although this would be an interesting experiment I would have a hard time finding a method that has not been thought up by various very ingenious websites in the last year or two.

As it is I will continue thinking up ideas to expand upon in Phase 2. The next post on this project will contain my model for visualising the name data set. The one after that will contain a more detailed thought process and idea generation for the social experiment project.

Data - Initial Research

2008-07-22T15:56:00.000-07:00

Processing
Idea Dump

The first project deals with structure and data, so I'm going to start by researching those two topics to gain ideas and understanding for where to go with this.
http://www.processingblogs.org/

Visual Representation of Data
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/02/data-visualization-modern-approaches/

 http://informationarchitects.jp/ia-trendmap-2007v2/
 http://www.marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/
 http://www.time.com/time/covers/20061030/where_we_live/ 
 http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html
 http://www.wefeelfine.org/movements.html
 http://well-formed-data.net/experiments/elastic_lists/
 http://www.leebyron.com/what/lastfm/
 http://www.turbulence.org/Works/song/gallery/gallery.html
 http://www.dimvision.com/musicmap/
 http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/
 http://pingmag.jp/2007/03/23/infosthetics-form-follows-data/
 http://www.gapminder.org/
More Idea-dump

Semester 2 - Introduction

2008-07-21T15:33:00.000-07:00

Semester 2 is to be split into two main projects with workshops, intro to creative technologies and a couple of small assignments to provide structure.

Semester 1 - Review

2008-06-08T15:37:00.001-07:00

Over the course of the last few months I have approached projects in a number of different ways, starting from pure self-indulgent enthusiasm, moving to pushing my creative knowledge aswell as that of the technology, and in the latest instance just trying to complete the brief in the most polished (ie. industry style) way possible.

The first brief was to create a website to store our university project documentation. As this was the first 'real' project I think I was quite eager to impress. Full of the motivation of not having much to do with my creative side for the last 12 months I leapt into action script 3 and tore open the shiny plastic wrapping on a few freely downloadable classes. The result was a website that I was happy with, but realised read as quite a complex system. This was fine as far as I was concerned at the time but I realise it isnt quite spot on to the briefs intentions. Since then I took to posting in this blog as it is more suited to constant updates and custom content (like videos).

The second brief was a film. This was very fun to make even if it did have quite a last minute element to it. One of the reasons for this was the lack of initial inspiration, so the final film was made in the last 4 days of working almost constantly based on inspiration from a short story Tashi read online. I was in charge of the camera (partly because I wouldn't let anyone else near it most of the time!) and a couple of friends of ours featured as the main actors. The final edit was done at 4am on the day of handing in, as all the very best assignments are(!). Apart from some of the compression taking away from the clarity of the original, I feel the result carried across the surreal creepyness I was aiming for. Although my lecturers critique that having a narrative AND background music creates a confused platform of observation is a fair point.

The third brief that this review deals with (M&A and the input device are not counted) is that of the avatar. Having just completed the input device which involved trying many new things, I kind of wanted to stick to what I know for this one, not that I could have done much with the 1000 poly limit in any case (except maybe fur?). In any case I ended up learning some interesting photoshop techniques (shading my character) and trying to look at the project from a semi-professional stand point. With this mentality I finished a couple of days early with a Tarot card that, while perhaps not the best, was visually effective and sat squarely within the briefs requirements in all respects.

I think that this semester has been the cause of some interesting effects. To begin with I started with roughly the same level of competence for each of the briefs. That of competence without knowing the ins and outs of each tech. In each brief I think I pushed myself hard enough to learn more than just the necessary information so that I have a good basis for later projects. I know that eventually we will focus in on a smaller area, but for now I wanted a good solid starting 'point' from which to learn more.

If I had critique with the last few months it would be that aside from the briefs there is not much here that I could not have done myself. Much of the teaching was giving us a starting point and then leaving us to it. This is not a problem really because the idea is that we can approach lecturers for additional information. Unfortunately this was not always the case, as Clive (for instance) insisted that we solve most of our problems using google. At one point having eventually convinced him that my problem was not as easily solvable or obvious as all that (google-search is second nature to just about my entire generation anyway) I eventually was shown how to use array lists properly. I know that other members of the class have had similar situations during the year and I am interested in finding a solution (because blame is a useless concept, second only to USB powered christmas trees and other related pointless oddities). I suspect an answer would be to have an in-house 'library' with teaching materials that we can look through when we are lost and the lecturers aren't available. I would also be interested in getting design magazines in the studio, as this would provide examples of the kind of things we could aspire to.

And that concludes my review. And now if you'll excuse me I have a warm bed to attend to =) Good night.

Avatar - Review

2008-06-07T15:43:00.000-07:00

The final avatar card was not exactly my most thought out work ever, but it sat comfortably within the briefs limitations as far as I can see. The result is something that is quite simple visually, yet I hope is ambiguous enough to read the same way an actual tarot card is meant to.

The colours for the final scheme were picked in quite a simple way, cyan was not picked by any other member of the class, and I figured that this was an acceptable colour as despite not being directly associated with creativity (like orange or bright green) the calm aspect of blue could create a more interesting interpretation of a sword and a book.

I think I should describe my thinking behind the sword and the book here, as it may not be as obvious as I hoped. by themselves they could be interpreted as something like 'defense of knowledge' or 'the sword of knowledge', i.e. the idea that knowledge is something that can be used to aid your cause, perhaps being used in conjunction with force. Adding the muse idea to this adds another dimension. It basically puts the above ideas in the context of creativity. To provide some imagery for this, Da Vinci applied his knowledge with some considerable force to advancing human knowledge, his muse probably had quite a big ass sword to go along with his tome.

Finally there is the quite obvious point, The lighting combined with the book squarely behind the sword would create a symbol not unlike a cross if viewed head on. I deliberately changed the view so that this was not obvious, but it is not totally lost on the final either. I do not wish for a religious context to this card, but the idea that it subversively infers religious connotations while not actually being such is not such a bad notion.

In conclusion while I do not feel that this project pushed me to go further than I have previously been, it was an opportunity to create something with a level of 'polish' that I have not previously achieved. Maybe the next project will be an opportunity to once more take large risks and end up with something surprising!

Avatar - Final Submission

2008-06-06T02:35:00.000-07:00

Here is my final submission for the Muse tarot card, as you can see I went a simple route (but hopefully effective) and just took his 'symbols of office' and used them as his card. This seems like an acceptable route to take as the final result is easy to read.

There are some final comments to make, but I will write that up tomorrow along with my review.

Avatar - Final Character

2008-05-29T16:10:00.000-07:00

Looking at the original muses, I discovered they are all related to music in some way. Given that my art is almost entirely visual, and that modern interpretations of the word muse differ somewhat from this idea, I have decided to somewhat broaden the scope that these 9 beings were given in Greek mythology. I'm also renaming them because I'm doing this with the aim of including a pseudo-mythological aspect to my avatar.

The 9 muses redux

Calliope == Callias
'beautiful of speech'
Chief of the muses and muse of epic or heroic poetry
My interpretation: the muse of epic or heroic themes

Clio == Clio
'the glorious one'
The muse of history
My interpretation: the muse of historical themes (war, depression etc.)

Erato == Eratos
'the amorous one'
Muse of love or erotic portry, lyrics, and marriage songs
My interpretation: the muse of romance

Euterpe == Euras
'Well pleasing'
Muse of music and lyric poetry
My interpretation: the muse of art for arts sake

Melopomene == Meloras
'chanting one'
Muse of tragedy
My interpretation: the muse of death and related themes

Polyhymina == Parios
'singer of many hymns'
Sacred song, oratory, singing and rhetoric
My interpretation: the muse of religion and taboo

Terpischore == Teras
'the blossoming one'
Comedy
My interpretation: basically the same

Urania == Uros
'celestial one'
Muse of astronomy
My interpretation: the muse of exploration

This redefining of muses means that I can take my ideas a bit further. My characters design has a symbol on his forehead. This means that he can belong to one of these muses as a kind of disciple from an 'order' following one of the above concepts. I like this idea because it combines the modern interpretation of the muse concept with the ancient one. It is this kind of detail that will give this idea life I hope.
Having talked to Ben today, I think I will just have the sword and the book as a kind of symbol of office, using the symbol on the book and the silhouette of the muse on the sword as references to the original design. Making the design 'pop' will be an interesting challenge I think, as neither a sword or a book are amazing subject matters in themselves. At least my final concept stage is something I can be happy about!

Avatar - Update

2008-05-27T22:27:00.000-07:00

Latest Card: anatomy help from my good friend james. I think the proportions are currently good, maybe the expression needs a little work. If anything he might need more decoration, either in the form of his clothes/colouration or trinkets perhaps.

Avatar - The Muse

2008-05-20T01:01:00.001-07:00

And here it is, the 'hand drawn' card, now for several years of life drawing so I don't hash it together so much next time.

Avatar - Photochop

2008-05-19T13:32:00.000-07:00

Just made a couple 10 minute mocks to show my original ideas, i'm currently cogitating the muse concept and have a couple of developments.

Definitions

Dictionary.com
Greek Mythology Any of the nine daughters of Mnemosyne and Zeus, each of whom presided over a different art or science.
muse
A guiding spirit.
A source of inspiration.

muse A poet.
[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin Mūsa, from Greek Mousa; see men-¹ in Indo-European roots.]

Word History: The Muse has inspired English poetry since Chaucer invoked her in 1374. Muse comes from Latin Mūsa, from Greek Mousa.mōsa and moisa, and all three come from an original *montya. As to the further origins of this form, a clue is provided by the name of Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory and mother of the Muses. Her name is the Greek noun mnēmosunē*mnā-, an extended form of the Greek and Indo-European root *men-, "to think." This is the root from which we derive amnesia (from Greek), mental (from Latin), and mind (from Germanic). The reconstructed form *montya that is the ancestor of Greek Mousa could then mean something like "having mental power.

As you can see from this definition, the Muse is a powerful concept, the work history suggests that it has roots in words that were used to describe the mind. Personally I am going to take the second definition of both a guiding spirit and a source of inspiration, although in a virtual environment this won't mean the same thing (I hope...). Because this is my avatar I won't actually make the character female, but the image in my head is definitely effeminate, or possibly androgenous. This character suits my online (creative) forum personae, because I almost always take a neutral standpoint on an artwork and then try to find ways in which to improve it for the better. This has almost nothing to do with my gaming or social networking personae except that perhaps I have a larger vocabulary than some.

The Muse
A tiny creature, The Muse has a faerie-like form with a slender stature, and though it's features might change to suit the occasion, you will never be mistaken as to his (it's?) identity.

The Muse carries two objects that resemble a book and a sword, although it has been said that the exact shape of the two is different for every person.

The Muse searches for people in need of inspiration, although (because it is directly related to the faeries) It might find it more amusing to watch it's struggles with the aid of only a word or two of tantalising promise, before flying off to find someone of more interest.

Avatar - Development

2008-05-18T15:02:00.000-07:00

Right now I am trying to find an idea for my avatar. My previous idea included the wolf, moon and raven symbology, but after thinking about it for a while I think I am going to take a bigger concept and put the symbology in that. The new idea is The Muse. I like the concept that that is how I work online, when critiquing other peoples work I generally try to help with constructive criticism and new ideas. ie, producing a fresh perspective for the person I am trying to help. I think I can go almost anywhere with this idea, but using a humanoid shape would fit in with the other tarot cards in progress.

M&A: Mini Project

2008-05-13T03:22:00.001-07:00

Brief

To undertake this project you require access to one or more digital cameras. You have 50 minutes to go out onto the streets and take several photographs which give a strong impression of the linear perspective depth cue.
Subsequently, you should identigy the location of the vanishing point in each photograph and explain your findings. Within this context you should determine other strong cues within the photographs which give an impression of depth.

Submission
Link

I Kept this one small because the project isn't meant to take that long and I didn't want it to be too texty (!), but I have included a quote, and will probably put my revision/notes up here, if only so my classmates will get lazy...

Note
Source

Linear perspective is a mathematical system for creating the illusion of space and distance on a flat surface. The system originated in Florence, Italy in the early 1400s. The artist and architect Brunelleschi demonstrated its principles, but another architect and writer, Leon Battista Alberti was first to write down rules of linear perspective for artists to follow. Leonardo da Vinci probably learned Alberti's system while serving as an apprentice to the artist Verrocchio in Florence.

Avatar - First Task

2008-05-13T00:23:00.000-07:00

Image

"Academicos do Salgueiro" samba school pays tribute to African Gods at the Sambadrome, during the second night of carnival celebrations in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 19 February 2007. Carnival is the biggest and most popular celebration in Brazil and will run throughout the country until the 20th of February

http://www.daylife.com/photo/0gAd12r5Gc25k

Quote

So while he knew that he was seeing a bird, mad-eyed, ragged-feathered, bigger than any eagle, taller than an ostrich, its beack the cruel tearing weapon of a raptor, its feathers the colour of a slate overlaid with an oilslick sheen making a dark rainbow of purples and greens, he really only knew that for an instant, somewhere in the very back of his mind. What he say with his eyes was a woman with raven-black hair, standing where the idea of a bird had been. She was neither young nor old, and she stared at him with a face that might have been carved from obsidian in ancient times, when the world was young. (Gaiman, 2005, p.206).

Book
Gaiman, N., Anansi Boys (and Gaiman, N., American Gods)

Other Media

In the stories, Anansi is a spider, but he is also a man. It is not hard to keep two things in your head at the same time. Even a child could do it. (Gaiman, 2005, p.213)

Gaiman, N., (2005) Anansi Boys. London: Headline Book Publishing

Avatar - Initial thoughts

2008-05-12T20:03:00.000-07:00

I have done some research since we got the brief yesterday, and that will come in the next couple of posts... This post is for my initial idea generation based on how I see the brief.

First of all, the limitations are crazy, 1 colour (+black and white) and 1000 polygons limits the result almost certainly to something that consists of more angles than a modern architecture convention.

My current ideas for ways around this include z maps and clever textures, for instance fur can consist mostly of a few complex alpha maps that make the model appear more complex than it really is. The question is will these (only slightly) advanced methods make my avatar look too different from the others that are going into the same deck?

The colour scheme limitation appears to be pointing towards a kind of sin-city-esque feel, where powerful colours push a strong message or theme, and excess detail or subtlety is discarded in favor of a clearer albeit louder visual language.

For this reason I am going to probably take a leaf out of Team Fortress 2's book, and aim for a model with a very clear purpose that is expressed almost soley out of its form, But with a view to including the other scene elements that make a tarot card so full of meaning.

As for working in a group, I am going to wait and see. I think my current level of planning is pretty flexible, but I am mostly just curious to see how this part of the brief is dealt with as part of the course. I understand the fofo principle (fuck off and find out aka constructivist learning), but as much as I appreciate the idea of working dynamically with a team of people; without a good constructive framework to encourage interaction and hierarchical team planning for this section I don't see this panning out very easily. Also for a consistent feel to the cards in terms of style the team should probably have individuals taking care of different aspects of the overall design, rather than everyone trying to take care of their own design in its entirety.

The initial task is to find a book, an image, a quote and 'one other media' to show the class (?) what we think 'avatar' means to us. To this effect I think I am going to take a subversive line and show that the concept of an 'avatar' is inherent to other cultures without having to be spelled out, although multiple avatars are more rare.

Then i'm going to research the first couple of steps in the direction I want to take, thus far I want to push in the direction of The Moon card, with an emphasis on the Wolf symbology. I will explain in detail my reasoning and why I feel this is a suitable avatar for me in this project later.

Avatar - Discussion

2008-05-12T18:21:00.000-07:00

Another monday, another project. This one taking place roughly in the realms of 3D Modelling!

The Brief
Technically this brief is fluid, so these details may change during the next few weeks, i'm just putting it here to reference my ongoing concept so as not to stray too far.

Time
This project will be split up into the following, ontop of the usual studio access and personal time the students can use.

One week (9 hours) of theory and concept exploration
One week (9 hours) of workshops
Two weeks of 'supported' studio time

At the end of this we are expected to present our finished 3D avatar.

Limitations

The avatar has a limit of 1000 tri's
The avatar must be one flat colour plus black and white
The final model must be accompanied by a printed 'tarot' card using their avatar
This tarot card means the students are asked to consider their 'role' in a group dynamic
The tarot card must (?) be hand drawn
The card itself may use colours, as long as they take into account the other cards

Method
The workshops will be teaching Alias Maya 2008 and to a lesser extent the ideas (archetypes, myth, etc.) behind the avatar concept.

Submission
The following components will be graded for this submission

Avatar Design
Avatar Tarot card (Deck)
3D Avatar model
Still/animated rendering on website

Input Device - Review

2008-05-08T16:20:00.001-07:00

Input Device Reflective Analysis
by Joe Swann, 0822826
09/05/08

The input device in question is similar to a trackball, It uses an inverted mouse to track movement of a sphere sitting in a circular hole in a metal box. The software to go with this is an artificial simulation using boids.

The hardware and software side of things were made with two different intentions in mind. The only connecting factor in my mind was that they both had to be obviously designed for 3D space. With this in mind the hardware includes a giant sphere that directly affects the camera view in the software.

Just changing the camera view would be too cliche however, and given that I had only included the left and right click buttons on the device, and they included some basic functionality, I decided to use the mouse X and Y positions to dynamically affect the boids. With this in mind I changed the speed to be affected by the Y position and the force by the X position. This has an interesting result because I made the X position reset whenever the mouse went beyond the limits of the screen. I got away with this because the camera control only jumps by a couple of degrees when this happens. This jump effect is why I didn't do the same for mouseY.

The hardware device Is designed with an industrial aspect, it is made of 1.5mm galvanized steel, with the mouse electronics glued in place. The wiring is relatively simple as I only swapped the switches with a toggle switch. The gluing may prove to be a limitation as I am not sure how well connected it is. Screwing the wooden base in place would have been a better idea, but after drilling the 12 holes for riveting I was getting a bit tired of the process, with each hole taking approximately 1-2 minutes for the bit to get through the steel. Cutting out the whole was also an arduous process, taking three saw blades and several electric file bands with it.

The result is a boids simulation that takes place in a 3d space, with mouse X and Y controlling the camera rotation and two of the boids main properties aswell. at mouse 0,0 the simulation is quite relaxed, with maxforce and maxspeed at its lowest, while at the other extreme of the screen the simulation becomes more frenetic. The left click selects a random new boid while the right click generates new planets at random positions The input device, while not smooth, is definitely sturdy and as 'prototypes' go I feel it is more than good enough to demonstrate a concept. However it is lacking in elegance, but I think the industrial design gives it a certain charm.

To continue with this project would be easy, the concept behind it is so open that the hardware at least would probably constitute a viable input device. While the boid simulation would look quite good as a screen saver. If I was going to continue for another couple of weeks, I would try to implement the following changes:
Input Device
-Introduce a Scroll wheel
-Include a third button/switch
-Create a more 'elegant' concept
-Find a way to hold the ball
-Find a way to make the ball movement smooth

Software
-Introduce smoother and more intuitive camera control
-Make the boids react to the mouse buttons (Scatter/move target)
- Introduce multiple camera modes
-Introduce a 3D environment
-Introduce avoidance/collision detection
-Replace the boxes with objects(?)
(Note: I actually like inanimate objects behaving in a way that suggests life)

I think that I learned alot from this project. I managed to continue in the directions I was interested in (ie. boids and 3D interaction) while conforming to the brief and its time frame. I also successfully used a project log for perhaps the first time ever, I think using a blog is an easy way to keep everything together, especially as I can write directly into the blog rather than use a book for ideas, and then access the information wherever I need it. While as far as the project brief is concerned the boid code is not of actual importance, I feel I pushed myself in doing it far more than if I had simply stuck to what I could previously do. I also like having made something that will be of some use after the project is over, either as a toy (screen saver) or to improve on the idea later (make a 3d interaction device). While it may not be as slick as I would have liked, this is partially the result of me trying something new as opposed to improving on tried and true methods for something cliche. Another effect from this is I was out of my depth for much of the time, frantically trying to understand both code and technology in the limited time available. This made the final result seem like far more of an achievement as far as I was concerned.

If I did this project again, I would do all the things I promise myself every time, start earlier, be more organized, come up with more complete ideas before starting. But in conclusion, I think this has been a successful, if not entirely intuitive process from start to finish.

Input Device - Final

2008-05-08T13:04:00.000-07:00

Here it is, my finished mouse!!
It is actually remarkably usable, the only issue is that it is quite sensitive... but that is quite easily fixed by changing the mouse sensitivity settings on the computer in question... All in all i'm quite proud, I made the whole thing in a day, and being made of galvanised steel it will probably last quite alot longer than that! Except for the rest of it, but considering the issues involved it went almost without a hitch...
It only has left and right click, but they are both operated from a single 2-way mom toggle switch, which kind of keeps the industrial theme going I think.

The software side was less successful last night. Everything I tried either broke the program or had no effect whatsoever. The end result is some quite messy code that I will probably eskquew(?) for yesterdays better syntaxed and commented version that does much the same thing.

This subject has one more post in it, and that is the post-assessment one, the next subject I am told is 3D modelling, I say, bring it on!

Input Device - Fine Tuning

2008-05-07T03:38:00.000-07:00

Progress today was mostly on the programming side of things, there is one mouse click function (select a random boid) and a mouse rotate function using mouse X and Y, only one or two more functions are available, and I suspect they are not really necessary. All that's needed at this point is to make the mouse!

In the next day or so I will try to complete the mouse and fine tune the software to use it with the device. The mouse design is more or less to place a sphere over the laser sensor and rotate it with the users palm. My current worry is making the movement smooth so it doesn't catch on anything. There will also be two switches and possibly a scroll wheel (if i can mount it/ think of a good use for it).

And that's todays progress! I would post the source code for this point but I don't want any confused plaguerism cases re: my assessment. AUT can be quite picky about that =p

Input Device - Boids III

2008-05-07T00:18:00.001-07:00

Finally, after several days of not really succeeding, some progress has been made. the result is not entirely pretty as a static image, but the sight of 300 cuboids flying in real time is hard to deny!

In the next post I will write what my plans are for the next two days, when funnily enough this project is due!

Input Device - Boids II

2008-05-06T04:19:00.000-07:00

The code I have so far is doing my head in.... So I think I will take this and add a third dimension and some effects instead. This should hopefully free some time for the other functions I want to add!

http://www.shiffman.net/itp/classes/nature/week05_s07/flocking/Boid.pde

Input Device - Boids I

2008-05-05T18:54:00.000-07:00

With the help of my good friend Wade, I have started converting the Boid Pseudocode to work in Java. This is nothing like as easy as it sounds though.

Currently the program uses two classes, one to generate the individual boids and the other to calculate vectors based on the global rules.

BOID MAIN CODE

/*
RGB Cube Mod
Here are some edits to get a framework
for understanding RGB Cube and starting
on the next step.
*/

import toxi.geom.*;
import processing.opengl.*;
import javax.media.opengl.*;

float xmag, ymag = 0; //starting variables to define X and Y rotation
float newXmag, newYmag = 0; //Same but used to define new variables as the mouse moves
float i = 1;

Vec3D startPos;
Vec3D vel;
Vec3D pos;

BoidArray bA;

PGraphicsOpenGL pgl;
GL gl;

void setup() {
size(800, 400, OPENGL );
hint( ENABLE_OPENGL_4X_SMOOTH );
colorMode(RGB, 1);
pgl = (PGraphicsOpenGL) g;
gl = pgl.gl;
gl.setSwapInterval(1);
stroke(1, 1, 1);
bA = new BoidArray(2)

}

void draw() {
background(0.5, 0.5, 0.45);
directionalLight(204, 204, 204, 0, 0, -1);
noStroke();
translate(width/2, height/2, -30);
s.drawBoid();
moveBoid();
// for () {
// boid[i].drawBoid();
// s.moveBoid();
}

BOID ARRAY CLASS

Class BoidArray {

Boid[] Arr;

BoidArray(int size1) {
Arr = new Boid[size1];
populate(Arr);

}

populate(Boid[] R) {
Boid s = new Boid(0,0,0);
Bois v = new Boid(1,1,1);

R(0) = s;
R(1) = v;
}

moveBoids() {
// declare v1 etc
Vec3d v1;
Vec3d v2;
Vec3d v3;
for (int j=0,j-lessthan-Arr.size;j++) {
v1 = rule1(j);
v2 = rule2(j);
v3 = rule3(j);
Arr[j].moveBoid(v1,v2,v3);
}
}

// Arr[i].pos is b.position
// Arr[j].pos is bj.position
// total = pcj

rule1(j) {
Vec3D total = new Vec3d(0,0,0)
// Each Boid
for (int i=0;i-lessthan-Arr.size;i++) {
// This is the if != part
if (i != j) {
total = total.add(Arr[i].pos);
}
}

float x = total.x;
float y = total.y;
float z = total.z;

x = x / (Arr.size - 1)
y = y / (Arr.size - 1)
z = z / (Arr.size - 1)
x = ( x - Arr[j].x ) / 100
y = ( y - Arr[j].y ) / 100
z = ( z - Arr[j].z ) / 100

return new Vec3d(x,y,z)
}

// Arr[i].pos is b.position
// Arr[j].pos is bj.position
// c = c

rule2(j) {
Vec3D c = new Vec3d(0,0,0)
// Each Boid
for (int i=0;i-lessthan-Arr.size;i++) {
// This is the if != part
if (i != j) {

if ( (Arr[i].pos - Arr[j].pos) -lessthan- 100 ) {
c = c.sub(Arr[i].pos.sub(Arr[j].pos));

}
}
return c;
}

// pvjTotal = pvj
// Arr[j].vel = b.velocity
// And the returned value is calculated from the x,y,z values individually
// N = Arr.size
rule3(j) {
Vec3D pvjTotal = new Vec3d(0,0,0)
// Each Boid
for (int i=0;i-lessthan-Arr.size;i++) {
// This is the if != part
// This ONLY calculates the pvj, it does not do the +b.velocity
if (i != j) {

pvjTotal = pvjTotal.add(Arr[i].vel);
}
}

// This is where you do first pvj + b.velocity ( Remember b.velocity != bj.velocity)
// Then you do the pvj = pvj/N-1
// and finally pvj - bjvelocity / 8 return
float x = total.x;
float y = total.y;
float z = total.z;

x = x / (Arr.size - 1)
y = y / (Arr.size - 1)
z = z / (Arr.size - 1)
x = ( x - Arr[j].x ) / 100
y = ( y - Arr[j].y ) / 100
z = ( z - Arr[j].z ) / 100
return c;
}

}

BOID INDIVIDUAL CLASS

//the Boid class is intended to hold and change
class Boid{
Vec3D pos;
Vec3D vel;

Boid(float xpos,float xvel,ypos, yvel,z) {
pos = new Vec3D(xpos, 0, 0);
vel = new Vec3D(xvel, 0, 0);
}

drawBoid() {
sphere(2);
}

moveBoid(v1,v2,v3) {
vel = vel.add(v1.add(v2.add(v3))));
pos = pos.add(vel);
}

toString() {
println(pos.x + " This is pos.x - " + pos.y)
}

}

Input Device - Boids Pseudocode

2008-05-04T23:27:00.000-07:00

Here is the first implementation, unfortunately it does not look as if it includes direction, but that it not necessary for fireflies! nevertheless I will look into it later.

/*
Boid coding
Joe Swann 2008
Reference:
Conrad Parker
http://www.vergenet.net/~conrad/boids/pseudocode.html
*/

1void setup(){
init_boid_pos(); //initial boid positions
}

void draw(){
draw_target(); // I want the boids to be targetting a moving object
draw_boids(); //draw the boids in this frame
move_boids(); //calculate the boid position for next frame
}

void move_boids(){
Vector [v1, v2, v3];
boid (b);

for (each boid){
v1 = rule1(b); //flock to center
v2 = rule2(b); //individual avoidance
v3 = rule3(b); //match velocity with near boids
v4 = rule4(b); //tendency to target

b.velocity = b.velocity + v1 + v2 + v3 +v4;
b.position = b.position + b.velocity;
}
}

void rule1(boid bx){ //attraction to center rule
vector pcx;
for each boid;
if (b! = bx) {
pcx = pcx + b.position;
}
}

pcx = pcx / (n-1);
return (pcx - bx.position / 100);
}

void rule2 (boid bx){ //avoidance rule
for each boid b
if (b! = bx) {
if |b.position - bx position| < c =" c" pvx =" pvx" pvx =" pvx/n-1">

Input Device - Bilbliography

2008-05-04T13:39:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of the sites whose material I have incorporated into this project so far:

Processing.org
Flight 404
The Vec3D Library by Karsten Schmidt
Kristian Damkjer’s OCD library
Boids pseudocode

Input Device - Reference II

2008-05-02T16:19:00.000-07:00

Here's the reference file for OCD (Obsessive camera direction). Hopefully this little library will make my life easier when it comes to manipulating the camera with the mouse! This one at least is straight forward =)

Construction
Camera
Camera Switching
feed()
//Multiple feeds could be cool with one of the mouse switches to change them?
Perspective Changes
zoom()
Linear Movements
truck()
boom()
dolly() //moving forward and backward... Scroll wheel?
Instantaneous Changes
aim()
jump()
Rotations
tilt()
pan()
roll()
Arc Movements
arc() //These would be the main movements from the mouseX and Y
circle()
Combinations
tumble()
look() //This could be another effect for the mouse buttons
track()
Infomative
position()
attitude()
target()
up()
fov()

Here is the vec3D library documentation...

public class Vec3D
extends java.lang.Object

Comprehensive 3D vector class with additional basic intersection and collision detection features.

Author:
Karsten Schmidt

Field Summary
static int ON_PLANE
Classifier constant for classifyPoint(Vec3D, Vec3D)
static int PLANE_BACK
Classifier constant for classifyPoint(Vec3D, Vec3D)
static int PLANE_FRONT
Classifier constant for classifyPoint(Vec3D, Vec3D)
float x
X coordinate
static Vec3D X_AXIS
Defines positive X axis
float y
Y coordinate
static Vec3D Y_AXIS
Defines positive Y axis
float z
Z coordinate
static Vec3D Z_AXIS
Defines positive Z axis

Constructor Summary
Vec3D()
Creates a new zero vect `or
Vec3D(float x, float y, float z)
Creates a new vector with the given coordinates
Vec3D(Vec3D v)
Creates a new vector with the coordinates of the given vector

Method Summary
Vec3D add(float a, float b, float c)
Adds vector {a,b,c} and returns result as new vector.
Vec3D add(Vec3D v)
Add vector v and returns result as new vector.
Vec3D addSelf(float a, float b, float c)
Adds vector {a,b,c} and overrides coordinates with result.
Vec3D addSelf(Vec3D v)
Adds vector v and overrides coordinates with result.
float angleBetween(Vec3D v)
Computes the angle between this vector and vector V.
float angleBetween(Vec3D v, boolean forceNormalize)
Computes the angle between this vector and vector V
int classifyPoint(Vec3D pO, Vec3D pN)
Checks and classifies the relative position of the point to the given plane.
Vec3D clear()
Sets all vector components to 0.
Vec3D closestPointOnLine(Vec3D a, Vec3D b)
Helper function for closestPointOnTriangle(Vec3D, Vec3D, Vec3D)
Vec3D closestPointOnTriangle(Vec3D a, Vec3D b, Vec3D c)
Finds and returns the closest point on any of the edges of the given triangle.
Vec3D closestPointTriangle(Vec3D a, Vec3D b, Vec3D c)
Computes the the point closest to the current vector on the surface of triangle abc.
Vec3D constrain(AABB box)
Forcefully fits the vector in the given AABB.
Vec3D copy()

Vec3D cross(Vec3D v)
Calculates cross-product with vector v.
Vec3D crossInto(Vec3D v, Vec3D result)
Calculates cross-product with vector v.
Vec3D crossSelf(Vec3D v)
Calculates cross-product with vector v.
float distanceTo(Vec3D v)
Calculates distance to another vector
float distanceToSquared(Vec3D v)
Calculates the squared distance to another vector
float dot(Vec3D v)
Computes the scalar product (dot product) with the given vector.
static Vec3D fromXYTheta(float theta)

static Vec3D fromXZTheta(float theta)

static Vec3D fromYZTheta(float theta)

Vec3D getConstrained(AABB box)
Creates a copy of the vector which forcefully fits in the given AABB.
Vec3D getInverted()
Scales vector uniformly by factor -1 ( v = -v )
Vec3D getLimited(float lim)
Creates a copy of the vector with its magnitude limited to the length given
Vec3D getNormalized()
Produces the normalized version as a new vector
float headingXY()
Computes the vector's direction in the XY plane (for example for 2D points).
float headingXZ()
Computes the vector's direction in the XZ plane.
float headingYZ()
Computes the vector's direction in the YZ plane.
Vec3D interpolateTo(Vec3D v, float f)
Interpolates the vector towards the given target vector, using linear interpolation
Vec3D interpolateTo(Vec3D v, float f, InterpolateStrategy s)
Interpolates the vector towards the given target vector, using the given InterpolateStrategy
Vec3D interpolateToSelf(Vec3D v, float f)
Interpolates the vector towards the given target vector, using linear interpolation
Vec3D interpolateToSelf(Vec3D v, float f, InterpolateStrategy s)
Interpolates the vector towards the given target vector, using the given InterpolateStrategy
float intersectRayPlane(Vec3D rayDir, Vec3D planeOrigin, Vec3D planeNormal)
Calculates the distance of the vector to the given plane in the specified direction.
float intersectRaySphere(Vec3D rayDir, Vec3D sphereOrigin, float sphereRadius)
Calculates the distance of the vector to the given sphere in the specified direction.
boolean intersectSphereTriangle(float r, Vec3D a, Vec3D b, Vec3D c, Vec3D result)
Considers the current vector as centre of a collision sphere with radius r and checks if the triangle abc intersects with this sphere.
Vec3D invert()
Scales vector uniformly by factor -1 ( v = -v ), overrides coordinates with result
boolean isInAABB(AABB box)
Checks if the point is inside the given AABB.
boolean isInAABB(Vec3D bO, Vec3D bDim)
Checks if the point is inside the given axis-aligned bounding box.
boolean isInSphere(Sphere s)
Checks if the point is inside the given sphere.
boolean isInSphere(Vec3D sO, float sR)
Checks if the point is inside the given sphere.
boolean isInTriangle(Vec3D a, Vec3D b, Vec3D c)
Checks if point vector is inside the triangle created by the points a, b and c.
boolean isZeroVector()
Checks if vector has a magnitude of 0
Vec3D limit(float lim)
Limits the vector's magnitude to the length given
float magnitude()
Calculates the magnitude/eucledian length of the vector
float magSquared()
Calculates only the squared magnitude/length of the vector.
Vec3D normalize()
Normalizes the vector so that its magnitude = 1
static Vec3D randomVector()
Factory method.
Vec3D rotateAroundAxis(Vec3D axis, float theta)
Rotates the vector around the giving axis
Vec3D scale(float s)
Scales vector uniformly and returns result as new vector.
Vec3D scale(float a, float b, float c)
Scales vector non-uniformly and returns result as new vector.
Vec3D scale(Vec3D s)
Scales vector non-uniformly by vector v and returns result as new vector
Vec3D scaleSelf(float s)
Scales vector uniformly and overrides coordinates with result
Vec3D scaleSelf(float a, float b, float c)
Scales vector non-uniformly by vector {a,b,c} and overrides coordinates with result
Vec3D scaleSelf(Vec3D s)
Scales vector non-uniformly by vector v and overrides coordinates with result
Vec3D set(float x, float y, float z)
Overrides coordinates with the given values
Vec3D set(Vec3D v)
Overrides coordinates with the ones of the given vector
Vec3D sub(float a, float b, float c)
Subtracts vector {a,b,c} and returns result as new vector.
Vec3D sub(Vec3D v)
Subtracts vector v and returns result as new vector.
Vec3D subSelf(float a, float b, float c)
Subtracts vector {a,b,c} and overrides coordinates with result.
Vec3D subSelf(Vec3D v)
Subtracts vector v and overrides coordinates with result.
Vec3D tangentPlaneNormalOfEllipsoid(Vec3D eO, Vec3D eR)
Calculates the normal vector on the given ellipsoid in the direction of the current point.
java.lang.String toString()

Yeah....
From what little I understand of that this should be very useful for boids since the functions it returns are basically the very ones that I need to implement the boids pseudo code, ie. returning and changing such things as vector position and vector heading. See, exploring large chunks of code can save time AND be creative! blatant plaguerism therefore is for the unimaginative!

Input Device - Reference

2008-05-02T01:32:00.000-07:00

Next step...
http://www.flight404.com/blog/?p=115

Having found these, I think that camera manipulation and vector movement should be a tad easier =)
Flight404 is an amazing website/person, unfortunately making my project different from his stuff might be difficult, hopefully my design process will take it away from that.

The thing about this project is it has multiple .pde files to call up, making the final result a bit easier to composite, but a bit harder to understand. I think if I place boids as their own file I could keep the composition simple! My next step will be to analyze the reference for the libraries and the flight 404 example and attempt to gain an understanding of how it works. This will hopefully open up avenues for new possibilities and make programming quicker later on!

Here is the composition code for the emitter:

// Source Code release 1
// Particle Emitter
//
// February 11th 2008
//
// Built with Processing v.135 which you can download at http://www.processing.org/download
//
// Robert Hodgin
// flight404.com
// barbariangroup.com

// features:
// Toxi's magnificent Vec3D library
// perlin noise flow fields
// ribbon trails
// OpenGL additive blending
// OpenGL display lists
//
//
// Uses the very useful Vec3D library by Karsten Schmidt (toxi)
// You can download it at http://code.google.com/p/toxiclibs/downloads/list
//
// Please post suggestions and improvements at the flight404 blog. When nicer/faster/better
// practices are suggested, I will incorporate them into the source and repost. I think that
// will be a reasonable system for now.
//
// Future additions will include:
// Rudimentary camera movement
// Magnetic repulsion
// More textures means more iron
//
// UPDATES
//
// February 11th 2008
// Reorganized some of the OpenGL calls as per Simon Gelfius' suggestion.
// http://www.kinesis.be/
//
// ---------------------------------
// February 12th 2008
// Added a simple camera using Kristian Damkjer's OCD library.
// http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~kdamkjer/processing/libraries/ocd/
// Added basic smoke effects.
// Added fake-lighting textures on the floor plane.
// Particles can now split if they hit the floor with enough force.
// Loaded images are now in the Images class. Organizational change more than a functional one.
// Saves out image sequences when the 's' key is pressed. Hit 's' again to turn of feature.

import damkjer.ocd.*;
import toxi.geom.*;
import processing.opengl.*;
import javax.media.opengl.*;

PGraphicsOpenGL pgl;
GL gl;

POV pov;
Images images;
Emitter emitter;
Cursor mouse;

Vec3D gravity;
float floorLevel;

int counter;
int saveCount;
int xSize, ySize;
int xMid, yMid;

boolean SAVING;

boolean ALLOWNEBULA;
boolean ALLOWGRAVITY = true;
boolean ALLOWPERLIN;
boolean ALLOWTRAILS;
boolean ALLOWFLOOR = true;

void setup(){
size( 750, 750, OPENGL );
hint( ENABLE_OPENGL_4X_SMOOTH );
colorMode( RGB, 1.0 );

pgl = (PGraphicsOpenGL) g;
gl = pgl.gl;
gl.setSwapInterval(1);

initGL();

xSize = width;
ySize = height;
xMid = xSize/2;
yMid = ySize/2;

pov = new POV( this );
images = new Images();
emitter = new Emitter();
mouse = new Cursor();
gravity = new Vec3D( 0, .5, 0 );
floorLevel = 0;
}

void draw(){
background( 0.0 );
pov.exist();
mouse.exist();

gl.glClear( GL.GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT ) ;
gl.glEnable( GL.GL_DEPTH_TEST );
gl.glDepthMask(true);
if( ALLOWFLOOR )
drawFloor();

gl.glDepthMask(false);
gl.glEnable( GL.GL_BLEND );
gl.glBlendFunc(GL.GL_SRC_ALPHA,GL.GL_ONE);

pgl.beginGL();
emitter.exist();
pgl.endGL();

if( mousePressed && mouseButton == LEFT )
emitter.addParticles( 10 );

gl.glDepthMask(true);
counter ++;

if( SAVING ){
saveFrame( "images/image_" + saveCount + ".png" );
saveCount ++;
}
}

void drawFloor(){
pgl.beginGL();
gl.glBegin(GL.GL_POLYGON);
gl.glColor3f(0,0,0);
gl.glTexCoord2f(0,0); gl.glVertex3f(-xSize * 2.0, floorLevel + .5, -xSize * 2.0);
gl.glTexCoord2f(1,0); gl.glVertex3f( xSize * 2.0, floorLevel + .5, -xSize * 2.0);
gl.glTexCoord2f(1,1); gl.glVertex3f( xSize * 2.0, floorLevel + .5, xSize * 2.0);
gl.glTexCoord2f(0,1); gl.glVertex3f(-xSize * 2.0, floorLevel + .5, xSize * 2.0);
gl.glEnd();
pgl.endGL();
}

void keyPressed(){
if( key == 'g' || key == 'G' )
ALLOWGRAVITY = !ALLOWGRAVITY;

if( key == 'p' || key == 'P' )
ALLOWPERLIN = !ALLOWPERLIN;

if( key == 't' || key == 'T' )
ALLOWTRAILS = !ALLOWTRAILS;

if( key == 'f' || key == 'F' )
ALLOWFLOOR = !ALLOWFLOOR;

if( key == 'n' || key == 'N' )
ALLOWNEBULA = !ALLOWNEBULA;

if( key == 's' || key == 'S' )
SAVING = !SAVING;
}

void mousePressed(){
if( mouseButton == RIGHT ){
pov.ISDRAGGING = true;
}
}

void mouseReleased(){
if( mouseButton == RIGHT ){
pov.ISDRAGGING = false;
}
}

float minNoise = 0.499;
float maxNoise = 0.501;
float getRads(float val1, float val2, float mult, float div){
float rads = noise(val1/div, val2/div, counter/div);

if (rads < minnoise =" rads;"> maxNoise) maxNoise = rads;

rads -= minNoise;
rads *= 1.0/(maxNoise - minNoise);

return rads * mult;
}

Input Device - Cube II

2008-05-01T22:54:00.000-07:00

Now to see if I have the right idea here I played with the code a bit, this now has some interesting results.

/*
RGB Cube Mod
Here are some edits to get a framework
for understanding RGB Cube and starting
on the next step.
*/

float xmag, ymag = 0; //starting variables to define X and Y rotation
float newXmag, newYmag = 0; //Same but used to define new variables as the mouse moves

float i = 1;

void setup() {
//Setting up the 'field' at 800X400 with OpenGL (P3D)
size(800, 400, P3D);
// Setting colour values to simplify RGB, 0=0, 1=255
colorMode(RGB, 1);
stroke(1, 1, 1);}

void draw() {
i = i+0.01;
//sets grey value for background
background(0.5, 0.5, 0.45);
//From what I can tell this is a procedure call in a matrix
pushMatrix();
//Moving the draw function to the center of the form
translate(width/2, height/2, -30);
//This bit converts the mouse movement into 3d Rotation.
//Later I plan to freeze and hide the mouse for infinite free movement

//Converting mouse x and y into a value between 0 and PI
newXmag = mouseX/float(width) * TWO_PI;
newYmag = mouseY/float(height) * TWO_PI;

//making x/y mag = the new mouse x and y with a small amount of easing
float diff = xmag-newXmag;
if (abs(diff) > 0.01) {
xmag -= diff/4.0;
}
diff = ymag-newYmag;
if (abs(diff) > 0.01) {
ymag -= diff/4.0;
}

//the actual rotate functions
rotateX(-ymag);
rotateY(-xmag);
rotateZ(i);

//making the vertex (1,1,0) actually = (50,50,0) using scale
scale(50);

//Finally, drawing the shape!
//Note how easy it is to use 1 instead of 50 or 255 here.
noStroke();

beginShape(QUADS);
fill(0, 1, 1);
vertex(-1, 1, 0);
fill(1, 1, 1);
vertex( 1, 1, 0);
fill(1, 0, 1);
vertex( 1, -1, 0);
fill(0, 0, 0);
vertex(-1, -1, 0);
endShape();

fill(1, 1, 0);
sphere(0.5);
stroke(1, 1, 1);

sphere(20);

//Close procedure
popMatrix();
}

This produces a the entire image inside a sphere with the wires visible. The whole edifice is rotating around the center of the screen slowly. The next step here is to either start on the music synthesis code or start with the boids code. I think since the boids react to sound I should start there. IF all else fails the vector position will simply derive straight from the music. That would still look interesting even if boids prove too complex for me to understand =)

Heres the stripped code for me to start playing with boids.

/*
Boids!
*/

float xmag, ymag = 0;
float newXmag, newYmag = 0;

void setup() {
size(800, 400, P3D);
colorMode(RGB, 1);
stroke(1, 1, 1);
}

void draw() {
background(0.5, 0.5, 0.45);
pushMatrix();
translate(width/2, height/2, -30);
newXmag = mouseX/float(width) * TWO_PI;
newYmag = mouseY/float(height) * TWO_PI;
float diff = xmag-newXmag;
if (abs(diff) > 0.01) {
xmag -= diff/4.0;}
diff = ymag-newYmag;
if (abs(diff) > 0.01) {
ymag -= diff/4.0; }
rotateX(-ymag);
rotateY(-xmag);
popMatrix();
}

Input Device - RGB Cube Extended

2008-05-01T22:38:00.001-07:00

Here I have simplified and commented the code to make it easy for me to understand what each bit does.

/*
RGB Cube Mod
Here are some edits to get a framework
for understanding RGB Cube and starting
on the next step.
*/

float xmag, ymag = 0; //starting variables to define X and Y rotation
float newXmag, newYmag = 0; //Same but used to define new variables as the mouse moves

void setup() {
//Setting up the 'field' at 800X400 with OpenGL (P3D)
size(800, 400, P3D);
// Setting colour values to simplify RGB, 0=0, 1=255
colorMode(RGB, 1); }

void draw()
{ //sets grey value for background
background(0.5, 0.5, 0.45);
//From what I can tell this is a procedure call in a matrix
pushMatrix();
//Moving the draw function to the center of the form
translate(width/2, height/2, -30);
//This bit converts the mouse movement into 3d Rotation.
//Later I plan to freeze and hide the mouse for infinite free movement

//Converting mouse x and y into a value between 0 and PI
newXmag = mouseX/float(width) * TWO_PI;
newYmag = mouseY/float(height) * TWO_PI;

//making x/y mag = the new mouse x and y with a small amount of easing
float diff = xmag-newXmag;
if (abs(diff) > 0.01) {
xmag -= diff/4.0;
}
diff = ymag-newYmag;
if (abs(diff) > 0.01) {
ymag -= diff/4.0;
}

//the actual rotate functions
rotateX(-ymag);
rotateY(-xmag);
rotateZ(50);

//making the vertex (1,1,0) actually = (50,50,0) using scale
scale(50);

//Finally, drawing the shape!
//Note how easy it is to use 1 instead of 50 or 255 here.
beginShape(QUADS);
fill(0, 1, 1);
vertex(-1, 1, 0);
fill(1, 1, 1);
vertex( 1, 1, 0);
fill(1, 0, 1);
vertex( 1, -1, 0);
fill(0, 0, 0);
vertex(-1, -1, 0);
endShape();

//Close procedure
popMatrix();
}

Input Device - Ideas

2008-05-01T21:32:00.000-07:00

Our uni Project at the moment is to take a mouse and create an innovative input device and a piece of software to demonstrate it with.

Device
So far my idea is to have a device akin to a large trackball that uses the whole hand, along with a couple of switches wired where the buttons would otherwise be. The device will be used to manipulate a 3D space. The reason I want to do this is because I am fed up with 3d manipulation using mice, even with high end 3d software it is a hassle, I think with a device like this a much better result is possible without too much effort.

Breakdown:
X&Y:Rotate space around X and Y axis
Scroll wheel: dolly forward and backward through 3D space
Switches: Change modes

As for the software, I would like to continue exploring reactive imagery. That is, imagery that reacts dynamically to external input. To this effect I would like to include music synthesizing to some extent, perhaps changing colour when it peaks or similar.

My current plan is to draw off some inspiration and have vectored boids. This will require importing certain libraries into processing I think. The boids will be rendered in 3D using OpenGL and use a sound processing library to determine direction, colour, etc.

The 'boids' could also be moved using perlin noise or predator/prey algorithms.

Next I'll start looking at the code for setting up the 3D space.

Film - Analysis

2008-04-29T14:54:00.000-07:00

When we submitted our final films, they were all quite similar in terms of content, but with quite different choices in terms of editing and sound track. The marks we got back described our shots as 'visually articulate' but questioned our use of both music and a voice as this creates the impression of being both inside and outside the characters mind at the same time. I think my final submission had some techniques that worked quite well, such as subtly reversing the music when the movie took a turn for the surreal. On the other hand some of the shots could have been better, and the sound could have been more subtle in the hands of someone with the head for it.

Film - Poison

2008-04-28T16:51:00.000-07:00

This is one of three films made with the same footage. It's all a bit wierd but I think this is actually very degraded by the lack of sound quality. It may be time to move to vimeo!

Film - 'The Chase'

2008-04-26T16:48:00.000-07:00

Just to show my course isn't all mind bending numbers. Of course I am eventually going to have to organise the dates and documentation and everything. But for now enjoy the wierdness that is this movie!

Film - Development

2008-04-25T14:54:00.000-07:00

Script

Death By Scrabble
or
Tile M For Murder

It's a hot day and I hate my wife.

We're playing Scrabble. That's how bad it is. I'm 42 years old, it's a
blistering hot Sunday afternoon and all I can think of to do with my life is to
play Scrabble.

I should be out, doing exercise, spending money, meeting people. I don't think
I've spoken to anyone except my wife since Thursday morning. On Thursday
morning I spoke to the milkman.

My letters are crap.

I play, appropriately, BEGIN. With the N on the little pink star. Twenty-two
points.

I watch my wife's smug expression as she rearranges her letters. Clack, clack,
clack. I hate her. If she wasn't around, I'd be doing something interesting
right now. I'd be climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. I'd be starring in the latest
Hollywood blockbuster. I'd be sailing the Vendee Globe on a 60-foot clipper
called the New Horizons - I don't know, but I'd be doing something.

She plays JINXED, with the J on a double-letter score. 30 points. She's beating
me already. Maybe I should kill her.

If only I had a D, then I could play MURDER. That would be a sign. That would be
permission.

I start chewing on my U. It's a bad habit, I know. All the letters are frayed. I
play WARMER for 22 points, mainly so I can keep chewing on my U.

As I'm picking new letters from the bag, I find myself thinking - the letters
will tell me what to do. If they spell out KILL, or STAB, or her name, or
anything, I'll do it right now. I'll finish her off.

My rack spells MIHZPA. Plus the U in my mouth. Damn.

The heat of the sun is pushing at me through the window. I can hear buzzing
insects outside. I hope they're not bees. My cousin Harold swallowed a bee when
he was nine, his throat swelled up and he died. I hope that if they are bees,
they fly into my wife's throat.

She plays SWEATIER, using all her letters. 24 points plus a 50 point bonus. If
it wasn't too hot to move I would strangle her right now.

I am getting sweatier. It needs to rain, to clear the air. As soon as that
thought crosses my mind, I find a good word. HUMID on a double-word score,
using the D of JINXED. The U makes a little splash of saliva when I put it
down. Another 22 points. I hope she has lousy letters.

<>
She tells me she has lousy letters. For some reason, I hate her more.

She plays FAN, with the F on a double-letter, and gets up to fill the kettle and
turn on the air conditioning.

It's the hottest day for ten years and my wife is turning on the kettle. This is
why I hate my wife. I play ZAPS, with the Z doubled, and she gets a static shock
off the air conditioning unit. I find this remarkably satisfying.

She sits back down with a heavy sigh and starts fiddling with her letters again.
Clack clack. Clack clack. I feel a terrible rage build up inside me. Some inner
poison slowly spreading through my limbs, and when it gets to my fingertips I
am going to jump out of my chair, spilling the Scrabble tiles over the floor,
and I am going to start hitting her again and again and again.

The rage gets to my fingertips and passes. My heart is beating. I'm sweating. I
think my face actually twitches. Then I sigh, deeply, and sit back into my
chair. The kettle starts whistling. As the whistle builds it makes me feel
hotter.

She plays READY on a double-word for 18 points, then goes to pour herself a cup
of tea. No I do not want one.

I steal a blank tile from the letter bag when she's not looking, and throw back
a V from my rack. She gives me a suspicious look. She sits back down with her
cup of tea, making a cup-ring on the table, as I play an 8-letter word:
CHEATING, using the A of READY. 64 points, including the 50-point bonus, which
means I'm beating her now.

She asks me if I cheated.

I really, really hate her.

She plays IGNORE on the triple-word for 21 points. The score is 153 to her, 155
to me.

The steam rising from her cup of tea makes me feel hotter. I try to make
murderous words with the letters on my rack, but the best I can do is SLEEP.

My wife sleeps all the time. She slept through an argument our next-door
neighbours had that resulted in a broken door, a smashed TV and a Teletubby
Lala doll with all the stuffing coming out. And then she bitched at me for
being moody the next day from lack of sleep.

<>
If only there was some way for me to get rid of her.

I spot a chance to use all my letters. EXPLODES, using the X of JINXED. 72
points. That'll show her.

As I put the last letter down, there is a deafening bang and the air
conditioning unit fails.

My heart is racing, but not from the shock of the bang. I don't believe it - but
it can't be a coincidence. The letters made it happen. I played the word
EXPLODES, and it happened - the air conditioning unit exploded. And before, I
played the word CHEATING when I cheated. And ZAP when my wife got the electric
shock. The words are coming true. The letters are choosing their future. The
whole game is - JINXED.

My wife plays SIGN, with the N on a triple-letter, for 10 points.

I have to test this.

I have to play something and see if it happens. Something unlikely, to prove
that the letters are making it happen. My rack is ABQYFWE. That doesn't leave
me with a lot of options. I start frantically chewing on the B.

I play FLY, using the L of EXPLODES. I sit back in my chair and close my eyes,
waiting for the sensation of rising up from my chair. Waiting to fly.

Stupid. I open my eyes, and there's a fly. An insect, buzzing around above the
Scrabble board, surfing the thermals from the tepid cup of tea. That proves
nothing. The fly could have been there anyway.

I need to play something unambiguous. Something that cannot be misinterpreted.
Something absolute and final. Something terminal. Something murderous.

My wife plays CAUTION, using a blank tile for the N. 18 points.

My rack is AQWEUK, plus the B in my mouth. I am awed by the power of the
letters, and frustrated that I cannot wield it. Maybe I should cheat again, and
pick out the letters I need to spell SLASH or SLAY.

Then it hits me. The perfect word. A powerful, dangerous, terrible word.

I play QUAKE for 19 points.

I wonder if the strength of the quake will be proportionate to how many points
it scored. I can feel the trembling energy of potential in my veins. I am
commanding fate. I am manipulating destiny.

My wife plays DEATH for 34 points, just as the room starts to shake.

I gasp with surprise and vindication - and the B that I was chewing on gets
lodged in my throat. I try to cough. My face goes red, then blue. My throat
swells. I draw blood clawing at my neck. The earthquake builds to a climax.

I fall to the floor. My wife just sits there, watching.

Film - Ideas

2008-04-24T14:51:00.000-07:00

Themes from brief
-Sound
-Time
-Space

Themes for Story-line
-Ambiguous ending, more questions than answers
-Dark humor
-3-7 minutes long
-Thriller techniques
-Start or ends with extreme situation (or maybe seems serene but isn't), then story explains how that was reached.

My initial theme ideas

Opening/ending scene
-The movie opens in a open landscape just before dawn, with grass and trees reminiscent of the west coast, The camera pans on a landscape devoid of people, but continues panning to reveal a figure standing on a pier. The camera goes through a series of slow cuts before coming to a stop next to the protagonist; who is facing out to sea and watching the sunrise with one of those thousand mile stares that renders the character unreadable.

-As the sun rises the character blinks and turns to walk away from the view.

-At the end of the movie the same event occurs but is cross cut with a similar scene on the top of a building. The difference is this time the scene continues... The character slowly walks about 5 meters from the edge in both scenes and then suddenly turns and starts running towards the edge. In one scene this is relatively harmless (he is going to dive into the water) but in the other it's certain death. at this point the scene ends. Slow motion with a soundtrack for this section would be powerful

-Another idea that can tie into this is to take the concept that under-lays the short story 'the door' by hg wells, in this story the protagonist finds a door in a wall that leads to an unspecified 'garden of eden'. I would like to take this idea and mix it with something I saw in a film, by having a non de-script derelict building that represents something altogether out-of-this-world. As the protagonist walks into this building he is in-fact walking into a concept embodied by the movie (e.g. freedom).

Ideas
-Arriving at a bad situation by trying to be good - Down to earth vices VS up themselves virtues - Morality - Beliefs
-Journey vs destination
-Life/Society/Human Nature <<>
-Cause & effect, what if this didn't work?
-Death & the afterlife
-Black button short film, very simple concept, very powerful themes
-Movie trailer style?
-Dialogue >> Disconnected, Narrated, Played over a visual track as a remembered conversation
-"I have seen the enemy, and they are us!"
-"A hunter of shadows, is himself a shade"
-HG Wells 'The Door'
-Sci-fi >> A seemingly ordinary device/ a new drug has unusual powers
-A non-descript building houses something life changing, cant find the building twice, heaven/hell?
-Mystery? Thriller?
-Mansion of many apartments
-theme from a psychological precept (e.g. ego, mansion of many apartments, etc)
-"you think you are killing me, I think you are committing suicide"
-Take a theme or story from a poem, quote, short story, game or comic
-Triptych, During a scene in the movie when multiple story-lines come together have the frame separate into three separate movies with different soundtracks in each (events in sync)

Website - Analysis

2008-04-20T15:02:00.000-07:00

The website was my hardest project (as of the 11th of June) so far, but not perhaps because it needed to be. During its creation I was determined to create something that felt more like the kind of software you wish windows had than an actual website. The result was visually quite pleasing and very 'slick' (general consensus) but it had a few flaws.

The main one of these was its ease of updating, I originally planned to dynamically load html into flash, but since flash and html get along together like tigers and rabbits, I was forced to write a kind of crippled version to force feed flash through txt files. This meant that all the txt files had to be hand coded, remembering what each css tag did months later, and manually uploading and entering the website address for each image individually.

When submitted I was basically accused of making the menus confusing, and later of just making the whole project into a kind of self indulgent tech-fest to keep myself interested. I to some extent disagree, as it took alot of work to learn and put into practice all that AS3. But on the other hand yes, it was perhaps far more complicated than necessary.

The final result paid off for me though, and it is quite fun to use, at least for the audience I had in mind, ie. other designer types who have no fear of slidey menus and other useless, yet fun, aesthetics.

Website - Final

2008-04-19T15:03:00.000-07:00

Well, here is my final website submission. While very slick it had the slight problem that every flash project gets, that of updating. While I did make it so that I could update by just writing into a txt file, this still lacks the ease of use and finess (sp?) that writing to a blog site has. Also html in flash is a dog turd and tonic to say the least. All that aside, I think the site turned out well as a piece of self indulgent eye candy plus also learned some AS3 in the process. Now forgotten but that is beside the point!

Website - Ideas and Development

2008-04-18T15:03:00.000-07:00

10.3.8
Today we were given the brief for the project, the brief outlines some requirements for the website itself such as the requirement to use it to document progress on our various projects during the year. I have so far decided to take a menu element I was developing for my personal website and use it in this case.

So far the main thing I want is a dynamic website. This means that the menu structure etc, should be loaded from an XML file and the entire websites images and pictures etc can be loaded externally. This has the dual advantages of making the main website pretty small, and making the website easy to update.

So far I am just changing the names of the pages in the current site, sketching and thinking out the structure for the new site, and looking up ways of externally loading information.

The structure for the site will be easy to navigate, and for this reason I want to use tree style menu's with about three tiers. The reason for this is that the interface can appear clean, yet still contain alot of options. Also most operating systems use tree style menus so the system should be natural for most users.

I want to use a blog style for most of the areas of this website, this means that I will have to update several different areas of the website on a regular basis. This is another reason for wanting to use externally loaded html+xml. Having a database would further ease the workflow, especially if I create a website where I can load into more than one blog simultaneously.

11.3.8
Today I focused mostly on the menu system. I found a skin for the v2 style tree component that worked well, I then created the menu nodes in XML using the map I sketched out and wrote down.

This evening I discovered that actionscript2 and actionscript3 were creating some major conflicts with the project (I had things I wanted that included both) Sadly Adobe stopped supporting the tree component when they created Cs3, which is a major hindrance for my project. Despite this I updated the coding for my slide menu to as3 and included a custom tweener component that requires far less code and has some advanced effects. The code also looks much cleaner now.

Among the tutorials I found online were some nice toys including using the filter tools on frames in a movie. What this means is that I can introduce animated effects using the filter tools within flash. In this case the blur tool. How it works is to take a print screen of each frame, apply the filter to it and then redraw it on the existing frame. This creates a nice liquid fire type of effect. My current idea is to make the title image more dynamic by having a streaming version of this away from wherever the cursor is on the screen.

The style of the website is becoming an interesting problem. I have already decided that I want the image gallery to full screen before showing the image, so the image can be displayed at a better resolution. But I want the format to be quite small to appear neat. I also have quite a simple style at the moment but have created it in a way that means I can add style elements later on. Also v3 elements are easier to skin than v2 (pity about the tree component!).

12.3.8
My main concerns today are getting the content in place, So I intend to use a simple XML menu and CSS/html methods I developed last year on my portfolio website to start uploading the content while making use of the new tags available in cs3. Once the main website content is in place I will start looking for ways to improve it such as a dynamic blogging page, passworded section, mp3 players, dynamic colour schemes etc.

13.3.8
After wrestling with actionscript 3 for a couple of daysI decided to take a different approach to loading content, to get around the null error I placed the text loading script in the images_mc movieclip (inappropriately named, it is infact the entire website content_mc). I then created a separate sliding menu for each of the three main sections. the main issue right now is having submenu items using the current menu system. But now I have a handle on as3, dynamic content is the next main step.

14.3.8
Today I am starting to deal with the website content, including loading external .html and css into a movie clip, so far everything is fine except that the website content only loads after the button has been clicked twice. This seems like one of those problems that is going to make the whole thing much harder to do. Hopefully just loading the URL information from an external source will make the problem go away!

18.3.8

Having worked on the website problem for the last few days I am now at the point where I can load external CSS and HTML formatted text dynamically into a text frame. I have also learned enough code to dynamically create text fields and other elements at runtime. This could prove useful if i choose to load content purely dynamically as opposed to into set frames on the stage. My new problem is that the scroll bar refuses to work. So today I am writing up content so I have less to do when i've figured out how to solve the other problems. The next steps in-so-far as I have though of them are mainly creating sub menus, coding an image gallery and cleaning up the interface slightly.

26.3.8
Finally and with a great lack of documentation my website is finished. Most of the last few days has been tweaking xml files and resizing images on photoshop so that's not too important. Apart from that I fixed numerous minor issues on the website, but there are still a couple still to go!

Semester 1 - Introduction

2008-03-10T15:16:00.000-07:00

Project 1: Identity

Introduction project: Map Cube
We were given 16 hours to create an object that concealed part of our identity, either physical or non physical. The material limitations were a 4:3 sheet of paper with a longest length of no more than half our height.

My solution was a map of the world projected onto a cube. I created the cube with tracing paper and reinforcing plastic for strength. Unfortunately due to time limitations the end result didn't look too great, but at least I think the concept was solid even if it wasn't elegant!

Concealed Identity
In this project we were allowed to expand on our original concept of concealing our identity while being allowed to use a large variety of materials. This produced some interesting results, my project resolved into 21 10cm high trees made of solder wire. The concept was to let 20 people play with the tree and do whatever they wanted, while I made my tree and explained the underlying theory of using a tree to express identitity.

The concept here was twofold, on the one hand just by creating a tree that the person thought 'looks right', inevitably that would be a reflection of that persons personality on that object, either consciously or subconsciously. The other concept was thought through over the period of a few days. I was researching and expanding on the idea of a persons identity is both an external and internal 'process'. My initial consideration was that philosophers and psychologists have two concepts of identity, the first being that a persons identity can be considered as a snapshot of that person at a moment in time, while the other is that an identity is essentially a process that changes from moment to moment over the course of someones life. I also though how an identity is layered along with ego and human instinct to create the mind as various psychologists have tried to visualise it. My result was a layered spherical object that moved down a timeline. because this is a 4 dimensional shape I then tried to see how I could metaphorically represent it and came up with a tree. The tree metaphor also allows for 'roots' a person tries to make with the past, different types of tree, and the concept that a persons life inevitably branches out and becomes unique as time goes on.