I’ve long wanted to record the 3-dimensional shape of a tree–both the high frequency movements caused by the wind as well as the slower growth. I’d be interested to see what parts of the tree move when. Does it swell uniformly, or does the top explode out while the base remains relatively static, or does the entire structure extrude out of the ground? Do the boughs mostly shoot outward, or do they writhe and warp over time? Also, applying that movement data to other 3D models could be interesting–imagine a teapot that flutters in the wind.

There are many apartment buildings around here. Each is a grid of windows, and in each cell, a domestic cycle plays out, indicated by the light turning on and off–a single bit of information. It might be interesting to point a camera at the façade and record the activity overnight. Each “Fourth Floor, Dawn, Up All Night Writing Letters” becomes a datapoint.

But I think that what I actually want to do is graph the color palette of a movie over its duration. I’m working on sampling pixels from a DVD rip and doing cluster analysis to construct a palette for each frame. Each frame’s palette is rendered as a stacked column of pixels. Columns are arranged horizontally to create an oscillating rainbow of color over time. Depending on how recognizable the palettes are, I could then make an interactive game of “match the movie to the palette”.