<pre lang=”java”>

void setup(){

size(310, 560);

noFill();

noLoop();

}

// rows/columns

void draw(){

rectMode(CENTER);

int n = 0;

for (int y=0; y<24; y++){

for (int x=0; x<12; x++) {

// square transformations (n gets progressively higher by row)

pushMatrix();

translate(20*x + random(n++)/70+30, 20*y + random(n)/70+30);

rotate(PI*random(-n, n)/1000);

rect(15, 15, 20, 20);

popMatrix();

}

}

}

</pre lang=”java”>

Natalie Jeremijenko’s “Dangling String” is a bit old-school at this point but I have to mention it if we are talking about favorite infrographics. While this isn’t drawing circles or drawing flow lines on a map like some data-heavy graphics recently emerging, the string is directly responding to bandwidth being used on the local network. As the traffic increases the string begins to spin more out of control. It occupied the corner of an office and much like a busy person in their own cubicle, the string had a space and an activity that was based on the collective action of the amount of internet use. Each byte flying through the ethernet cable moved a motor slightly. The output was a highly dynamic physical infogrpahic that had some embedded ambiguity. People were at first not entirely certain hows its movements were controlled. In my opinion some of the most successful physical computing projects use this as a tactic.

Find out more about the project here.

———————–

The Annual Feltron Report is an amazing collection of data visualizations from the private life of a data obsessed man name Nicholas Felton. Each day he collects data as he goes along ranging from the things he eats and drinks, to the destinations of travel, emails, parties, and even what his dog eats. He then turns this into an annual report that he publishes and has turned into quite a read. While his graphics aren’t jaw-dropping the amount of rigor it takes to extract this much data and consistently record it is inspiring. Simply put, you do not need an amazing data set to make an inspiring story behind your information visualization. Felton has some of the dullest data, but collectively it is someones life and everyone can relate to that and that is why it is truly awesome.

Find out more about Felton’s work here.

I am very interested in the potential for real time (or as close as possible) data collection. I beleive that there are a few online services such as Pachube that may make it possible to use this for the data viz assignment. The following are possible data sources for the upcoming project…

1. Pattern recognition via ofx or java. Specifically I would be interested in counting the number of times words and/or gestures are used. That data would then be used to produce an infographic live behind the person(s). In order to do this I would need to record test data in order to directly tweak the code for a person. This could be done with computer and microphone and open-source sound recording. For post processing and later live processing libraries like ofxPatterns may be the best option.

Another Idea with pattern recognition is one where the input is video. Certain elements within the screen are analyzed for movement and similar objects that share this movement within a given threshold are then linked visually on the screen. Something like a visual network of movement. Many of the visuals I imagine are of trees in wind or things blowing or people walking.

2. Websites like Pachube offer the ability to stream live data from sensors that are networked. These sensors could be anywhere in the world or on the same local network. This becomes interesting when working with custom made arduino based sensors. This sensor setup may allow for cross referencing geogrphical location with the data collected.

3. The World Bank has recently made a very comprehensive data set that is aimed at research for finical and technical aid to countries around the world. Say what you will about the World Bank but they have out together an amazing data set. I believe that there is quite a bit of data here that when cross referenced in a thoughtful, critical, and provocative way could offer some very unique perspectives as to the dynamic of goods, money, and services distributed in our world. Find out more about the data set here.

1.) http://www.whiteglovetracking.com/

A ridiculously large group of people helped isolate the position of Michael Jackson’s white glove in all 10,060 frames Billy Jean. 125,000 gloves were located. Use data to visualize its movement through space/time

2.)Flight vs. Fall. Track the number of people who choose to jump each year, and what they jump from. Probably will need to aggregate from several sources.

http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10_sy.html

gives fatality rates/ information for falls (or any type of suicide, including falls,) for any specific year, gender, age group, or region

http://infochimps.com/datasets/accidental-falls-mortality-rate

Deaths from accidental falls, classified by underlying cause of death. Age-specific death rates per 100,000 population

http://infochimps.com/datasets/years-of-life-lost-yll-due-to-accidental-falls-mortality-rate

Classified by cause of fall.

http://www.dropzone.com/fatalities/

fatal skydiving accidents since 2004

http://www.dropzone.com/dropzone

skydiving dropzone locations.

3.) Use the We feel fine API,  http://datamob.org/datasets/show/we-feel-fine-api, to track the collective mood of the internet

and display as a dynamic visualization.

Ableton Live Checkers Step Sequencer by Josh Silverman

This uses computer vision to break up the checkers grid into step sequence notes that are then routed to Ableton Live. Uses OF for the vision. What I like about this project is the physical interaction with digital music, even more so than a monome or other physical controller. Combining gaming (although video uses it more like a midi controller), physical, digital, and sound. I would be interested in sounds coming out of an actual game of checkers. Game theory.

Historical refernce:
Ryuichi Sakamoto – (chess) (Live ’97)

Digital: A Love Story is a text-based adventure that focuses on the early days of computing; it gives contemporary users a taste of the Amiga Workbench and early BBS boards, wrapped in a crunchy fiction shell.

The game brings over much of the joys and frustrations of 1980s computing; it allows for a taste of real anonymity, but also forces you to constantly switch connections, sometimes committing telephone fraud in the process.

I have played the game, and I think it almost goes too far into realism; I didn’t finish the game because I got frustrated with the amount of number-searching you have to do to get to the board you need to be on. The game needs to walk the line between frustrating and captivating; and a little too often, it teeters over the edge.

Check out this badass project, Geometric Death Frequency-141, by Prague-based artist Federico Díaz.

He uses an industrial robot to stack and glue together over 420,000 black ping-pong balls into a 50 foot by 20 foot sculpture. The form is defined by a fluid simulation run in a computer. The fabricated “wave,” simultaneously static and dynamic, takes over the gallery courtyard.

This is how it was made:

Federico Diaz: Geometric Death Frequency-141 from federico diaz on Vimeo.

[MASS MoCA]

LED Eyelash (official project website)

Why do women want larger and bigger eyes? Asian women tend to have stronger needs for bigger eyes as a standard of beauty, but relatively few of them are born with naturally big eyes. Those without big eyes can only look for alternative ways to make their eyes look prettier… the desires for bigger eyes can become almost obsessive, and many women opt for plastic surgery in order to make their dream come true.

I’ve seen people putting LEDs in their mouth, in their nose, but never thought of eyelashes. I find fascinating the implementation of this project as it really focuses on the goal of highlighting the eyes, without obstruction from electronics. I wonder what fashion trends will be coming up in the next few years…

Growing, Raining Tree (official project website)

This is an interactive installation of a Tree. As you approach the Tree, its limbs slowly come to greet you. Once they reach your location, the branches pull back and begin to drip rhythmically in response to your presence. When the Tree has no visitors, it takes a resting posture that many have described as “willow-like.”

Usually, robots take traditional forms, and trees are not one of them. It is interesting to see the potential of electronics to bring alive such a magical creature that reminds us that we are not the only living habitants of the world.

The installation is set up in a museum, where the tree is surrounded by white walls. I would like to have set up the scene in a more elaborated space. Where the tree is not the unusual thing, but rather part of a more natural context.

Processing.js:

Processing Applet:

Source Code:

void setup() {
 // define the window size & enable anti-aliasing
 size(550, 800);
 background(255);
 smooth();
 noFill(); // not solid squares
 noLoop(); // only draw() once
}
 
void draw() {
 // allow for some padding around the edge
 translate(30,10);
 
 int x = 0, y = 0, side = 30;
 int i = 0;    // increment just like the original
 float j1, j2; // random numbers for translation and rotation
 
 for (int k = 0; k < 24; k++ ) { // iterate through y-axis
   for (int j = 0; j < 16; j++ ) { // iterate through x-axis
     i++;
     translate(x, y); // re-define coordinate axis to square
 
     // pick increasingly variable random numbers for
     j1 = random(-15*i/244,15*i/244); // translation
     j2 = random(-15*i/244,15*i/244); // & rotation
 
     // rotation should only affect one square at a time,
     //   so push and then pop that alteration to the coordinate axis
     pushMatrix();
     rotate(radians(j2));  // rotate the axis
     rect(j1, j1, 30, 30); // plot the square
     popMatrix(); // return the axis to its original state
 
     x=30; // x-position advances for each square drawn in row
     y=0;  // y-position shouldn't change in the middle of a row
   }
   x=-450; // return x to beginning of row position
   y=30;   // adjust y to next row
 }
}

OpenFrameworks:

TALKING DOORS (official project website)

This is a set of five interactive doors that were installed in well-known public buildings in Lithuania’s capital. The doors became a portal to Lithuania’s Democracy Index, a musical instrument, a kinetic sculpture and even the source of an earthquake. Talking Doors ultimately proved to be not only the materialization of symbolic concepts but also a peculiar experiment that evoked a whole series of curious events.

The door shown above is the Democratic Door, the door that is open to democracy. The degree to which the door of the municipality’s building was open was controlled by a custom-made electronic door-closer reading the current value of the so-called “democracy index”. The latter was being formed in real time by processing the data obtained through the special online poll that asked web surfers to rate the level of Lithuania’s democratic development on a ten-point scale. The door’s position visualised the poll results and thus became a peculiar indicator of democratic development itself.

I believe find this project interesting (and in particular the Democratic Door) because is questions who has the power to set up the rules in a country. The creator proposes that if the Democratic Door was installed in all state institutions, then politicians would be physically pressed to respect democratic values and pursue democratic ideals. Otherwise they would be unable to leave their workplaces.

This idea is fascinating because it makes authority kind-of a physical concept. I wonder what would happen with this project in countries where the type of regimen is changing from democracy to something else. Could windows also take part of the game?

Schotter, processing.js

Schotter, processing

Schotter, openFrameworks

Schotter, code

//Samia Ahmed, samiaa@andrew.cmu.edu
//A reproduction of Schotter by Georg Nees
//Carnegie Mellon University: 51-482
//January 2011
 
  int rows = 23;
  int cols = 12;
  int side;
 
void setup(){
  size(392, 700);
  side = width/(cols+2);
  background(248, 244, 236);
  noLoop();
}
 
void draw(){
  for (int row = 0; row < rows; row++){
    for (int col = 0; col < cols; col++){
      pushMatrix();
      translate((side*col)+side/2+side, (side*row)+side/2+side); //resets the origin
      rotate(setRotation(row, col));
      noFill();
      rect(-(side/2)+setShift(row, col), -(side/2)+setShift(row, col), side, side);
      popMatrix();
    }
  }
 
}
 
float setRotation(int row, int col){
  float count = (row*cols+col);
  float rand = random(count);
  if (count > (rows*cols)/4 || random(rows*cols) < count)
    if (int(random(3)) == 1)
      return radians(90*(rand/(rows*cols)));
    else
     return -radians(90*(rand/(rows*cols)));
  return 0;
}
 
float setShift(int row, int col){
  float count = (row*cols+col);
  float rand = random(count);
  if(count > (rows*cols)/4 || random(row*col) < count)
     if (int(random(3)) == 1)
       return (side/2*(rand/(rows*cols)));
     else
       return -(side/2*(count/(rows*cols)));
  return 0;
}

An attempt in Flash / ActionScript 3.0
On second thought, I should have take a stab at it in Processing… It was hard to find directly applicable code. Alternatively, I also may just to be better at getting into the coding mindset.

The textrain is *supposed to* get caught on the whitest thresholds (worked better for the mediocre video quality and harsh desk lamp lighting).

In brighter news: The text is inspired by one of my favorite quotes:
“You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” -Dr. Seuss

Text Rain coded in processing. References background subtraction at Processing.org.

Jared Tarbell makes work that is evocative of Jessica Rosenkrantz and Jesse Louis-Rosenberg, but with another few levels of abstraction; they all use algorithms inspired by nature to achieve artistic forms, but Jared’s end results often look just as structured as the technology they were born out of.

What I find most interesting that while he co-founded Etsy, the handmade haven, his work is mostly about the code state. He considers code dead unless it’s being executed, and will not sell work.

While I appreciate the abstraction he is taking his forms to, I wish it would continue to abstract until it doesn’t look like the original inspiration at all anymore. While I love Jessia’s work, if everyone does picture-perfect representations of life, things will get boring.

https://www.creativeapplications.net/flash/jared-tarbell-profile-events/

Sketch Chair is a project by Greg Saul, who created a Processing application that allows users to design and rapid prototype their own furniture; in the case of the software, a chair.

While the project seems a little mundane on the outside, that’s what I really enjoy about it; it’s one more step towards bringing this sort of technology into wider use. There is nothing more everyday than a chair; the project is for those who would not necessarily usually turn to computing.

The project also makes the DIY scene that much easier to get into (which may be a good or a bad thing; on one hand, less mass production and more power to the people; on the other hand, the world already has a great deal of uncomfortable chairs; judging by the photo of Sketch Chairs, I would say this project will increase that number drastically.

https://www.creativeapplications.net/processing/sketch-chair-processing-objects/

How Different Groups Spend Their Day – The New York Times

This is one of my favorite information visualization pieces.  It’s created from data compiled by the American Time Use Survey and plots graphs to show the proportion of Americans engaging in specific activities for every hour of the day.  Using the tool, one can get a very precise picture of what an average person is doing at any moment of any day.  More fascinating is the ability to slice this data demographically to see the difference between how teenages and senoirs spend their days, or how men and women differ in their daily schedules.  It enables the viewer to get a much larger sense of the data than just what is presented on the screen.  With any data visualization task this large, the greatest challenge remains how to display information in ways that make sense and convey meaning.  I think that this graph accomplishes this well.

Silk by Yuri Vishnevsky

Silk is a web-based piece of interactive computational art that allows users to draw curves and have those curves animate into more colorful and complex forms.  The project creates hauntingly beautiful abstracts based on simple input with predictable, but complex behavior.  The program could benefit from a wider variety of behaviors as well as the introduction of audio feedback to create a more varied and dynamic experience.