Nir Rachmel | InfoVis
Location based, time based, dynamic mood board
Inspired by instagram photo stream of several friends, I thought it would be interesting to display an aggregation of photos from users that can be associated to the same time and place. This can provide an alternative to the official, polished photographs we get on a daily basis from endless sources. While many people share their instagram photos, they are actually pretty private moments, many of the times. The fact that people share their photos triggered my idea that it would be cool if people could search this database in a way they couldn’t until now (Instragram doesn’t offer such an interface).
Instagram photos for example:
In order to obtain the data, I had to hack into Instagram’s API and understand how to make queries using authentication. Also, they limit the amount of photogrphs you receive per query (around 40), so that required for me to break down queries in the code to several smaller ones in order to get the maximum amount of pictures I can.
Last, in an attempt to put some order in the chaos the photos create as they appear and re-appear, I used openCV to try and analyze the photos. What interested me was to differentiate photos that have people’s faces in them from photos of scenery. As can be seen in the example below, openCV does a fair job in these situations, but remote from being perfect. In general, photos on the left hand-side of the screen would be “without photos” and the week after wards, they did.
Currently, the search for queries is done via a separate python script whose output is fed to the processing application that does all the magical graphics. In order to make this application more engaging, I would add some controls to allow the user to perform search in an easy and intuitive way, rather than have to run a separate script.
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Nir Rachmel: Location based, time based, dynamic mood board
I’d choose a better title for your vimeo video “IaCD project 2″ is not so hot :P
define what a mood board is to you in your description/intro
Really nice and polished piece. Not sure what a mood board is
Perfect soundtrack choice for an Instagram album. +1
This would be such a cool animated desktop/phone background/screensaver! that too!
turned out beautiful. Reminds me of the itunes screensaver. Maybe you could present the time/location info to the viewer some way, so that we’re not blind to that information
how is this different from a regular mood board, at least to someone who dosent understand the process behind it? (aka to a new viewer)
Q:”Who uses them and where?” A: Nobody outside the HCII, apparently? …… uhhh Designers?
Used a mood board to do some fashion design Myth Busted!
High school girls on their bedroom walls.
Nir – Make an N’Sync Mood Board Generator.If you want that to be commercially successful, you’ll also need a time machine ;)
Nir: Edward vs Jacob Mood Board Generator.So good.
looks really cool. i like it. ^_^>
I like this as a screensaver more than just a visualization: i’d like to be able to add a screensaver/desktop background for a place I want to visit or I lived in. And more than just a place, maybe a mood or tags/categories. I wonder if flickr + filters (color filters) would be a better fata set. But instagram is a beautiful set of pictures to get data from. Also instagram is tied to nostalgia and I wonder if there was a way to look at images from the same data/time/location as your picture and aggregate them to give a complete view of an event .
I think you need to label your “moodboards” with the label of where/when/what. The moodboard is a GREAT use-case — really good — ; please make sure to emphasize this in your writing about the project.
cool! I am not sure if the L/R sorting of non-faces/faces adds much
Instagram is a unique source of images, most of the photos are nice to look at, if not great photography. I think this is contrast to a site like Flickr or Picasa where there are a lot of random images. The quality and similar processing of images works well in the photoboard layout. Agree with below though: Instagram filters give all the images a simialr mood.
In a way it’s nice to look at, the instagram effects makes it hard to really differentiate or derive a certain mood and atmosphere of each user. Not to say it isn’t successful, but perhaps it could have been displayed in a different manner. A collage is too overwhelming, what if you overlayed the images? Or treated them in a different way? Filter by effects?
It’s a cool collection of images. I’m curious: is it interactive? Can you tune the parameters through a UI? If not, I feel like I want to know what the parameters are so that I can interpret the images somehow.
Nice, instagram leads for a very attractive dataset by its nature.
**yeah, i like the idea of comparing photo data with and without faces.
Nice music! Fits for the assignment.
I like your idea for the interactive mood board.
** your definition of mood board ties in nicely
i think it might be neat if the photos slid up, or the transitions between them were more dynamic somehow
I think that it works particularly well for certain queries. The new years eve wast the most successful. The instagram gives all photos a similar feel, so the mood may be a bit restricted.