UVA vs Massive Attack: “United Snakes” using openFrameworks
My only reaction to this project was How?
There was a level of complexity to this piece beyond what I thought possible. And it was all done with openFrameworks. Apparently the animations were created by taking basic shapes and “pulling” the pixels apart.
Puppet Parade – Interactive Kinect Puppets by Design I/O
This is a nice interactive project bring finger puppets to life. A large part of its appeal are the smiles on the child participants. A number of people can interact and work together which makes the bird feeding fun to watch. This was also a nice use of kinect as there is a strong mapping between hand motions and actions. This keeps the interface intuitive.
The sound of water by Bjørn Gunnar Staal
This project is a small hack using the Touche project (capacitive sensing). Bjørn maps the sensor readings to sound. In the video it take a minute for him to get used to this instrument but he manages to create a small composition. This project demonstrates some ease of use with openFrameworks as Bjørn got this little demo up and running one evening.
This is a simple wrapper for box2d using Openframeworks.
I could use the box2d library for a video game. I have seen the classic use with the now build-in ofxKinect where you use your body to play with boxes. I would stray from this idea and I think I could create a interesting game using this library.
A wrapper for the Leap SDK ( 0.8.1 and up ) – compatible with Leap 1.0 Release
My mom purchased a LeapMotion right when they came out and used it a bit then gave it to me since she does the standard set of tasks on the computer and there wasn’t a compelling reason for her to use it. So I have had this LeapMotion for the past 6 months without any idea of how to use, so seems like a perfect chance to actually use it! Could be used as an interface to a video game.
Implementation of Spine’s runtime to load and play 2D skeleton animations with openFrameworks
I set up Spine in C# XNA, but then I never ended up making the game I had set it all up for but I loved the engine’s animation capabilities. Since I have had some experience with it, could go mega add-on and try making a video game that uses a LeapMotion as input, uses box2d for physics and uses Spine for animations.
“A handcrafted game about fishing with guns, chainsaws & toasters”
What more could you want from a finishing game? Well maybe a hook, but this game is about destroying fish not catching them. This beautiful game made by two-person Dutch indie developer Vlambeer was made is OpenFrameworks using Xcode. It is based on a flash game Vlambeer made to raise capital to start official development. The game was nominated at the Independent Games Festival for Best Mobile Game.
I am not huge about most mobile games, but Ridiculous Fishing wass quirky and goofy enough to catch my eyes and then it kept me around with amusing and fun gameplay.
Created by Anthony Scavarelli when he was asked to fill in as a “VJ/video jockey” for a local club. Since he had experience with OpenFrameworks, he decided to create an interactive experience. From this piece it appears Scavarelli created Luminartists, who specialize in creating “innovative interactive installations used to visualize a message in a public space” and whose tool of choice is OpenFrameworks.
I have been fascinated with music visualization for a while in both the form of music videos and photoshopped imagery. I am always trying to figure out new and better techniques to accomplish the task. I found Scavarelli’s work inspiring and it is cool to see that this one piece he made for fun allowed him to start his own company. Here is a cool piece Luminartists made with Cinder:
Töt. Visual Drums.
Töt is a project about using an electronic drum set as a physical interface to control visuals on a screen. The main principle of the project is to allow a drummer to perform the same way they would as if they were playing drums on stage, but transforming the rhythm into graphics.
This is an interesting use of OpenFrameworks for data visualization that differs from the video jockey visualizer from above in that it uses the drum as the data source instead of using a finished mp3 as the source, which I found interesting and allows for more organic live experiences.
The project was made by Aer Studios who work with Bestiario who focus “on the design and development of their interactive applications which focus on making large data sets more comprehensible.” They have a few nice data visualization works.
Eye Writer
[vimeo=https://vimeo.com/6376466]
This project was a very important contribution to the field because it took graffiti, which is generally considered destructive, and used openFrameworks to create a digital representation of it using projection mapping. The best part of this project was that they engineered an eye-tracking interface to bring the joy of writing back to an ailing graffiti artist, effectively enabling him to project his thoughts and ideas on to huge walls.
Nike Run+ 2 [vimeo=https://vimeo.com/26399542]
The Nike Run+ visualization seems to be a relatively simple, but well executed experiment using a large dataset of aggregated anonymized GPS running data. It’s a beautiful way of showing customers how others use Nike’s gear. Although they only highlight one runner at a time, smaller paths can be seen growing and moving around him, further reinforcing the feeling of community.
Inkscape [vimeo=https://vimeo.com/63057579]
Inkscape is a project that displays the power of openFrameworks is all of its glory. This project stitches together several massive screens and allows for artist to paint across the screen using wireless tablets. The displays all run seamlessly and a high frame rate and resolution. There is something magical about using digital augmentation to amplify human abilities beyond what would be possible in the physical world. In this piece, the artist are able to paint at a super-sized scale, and have it transition back and forward through time to tell a story.
ofxKinect
Adding a Kinect to a project would allow me to accept people as input, opening the doors for all kinds of interactions. In last semester’s game design class, several people developed games using non-traditional input methods. Maybe I could use the Kinect to explore additional options? Or maybe a Leap?
ofxBeatTracking
All of the links in this project’s readme are down, so I’m a little skeptical of this addon. However, I think it would be fun to make some sort of music visualizer. Maybe I’ll try this for project 2’s ofx component, and make something simple.
ofxMSAInterpolator
If this addon can parse through data like it promises, it could be super helpful for future projects with big datasets.
So the servers were a mess and the game was just okay, but the data visualization capabilities of the latest installment of SimCity were impressive. The game’s GlassBox engine manages huge amounts of data about Resources, Units, Maps, and Agents and then simulates how they affect each other. This video gives some insight into the remarkable GlassBox engine.
SimCity is one of the best examples of a video game which is heavily reliant on data visualization. The game must effectively communicate information to player for the player to make informed decisions, which means having to not only simulate city and all the data it produces, but also visualizing it in meaningful ways. As someone interested in game development and data visualization, it is inspiring to see the two combined.
One of my two brothers and my girlfriend are both Type 1 Diabetics so diabetes has a fairly large effect on my life and the life of those that I care about. The work that Doug Kanter has done visualizing data relating to his diabetes is fascinating. Kanter meticulously trackedevery diabetic detail of his life for a whole year to see how diabetes affected his training for a marathon and life in general.
Kanter covers the main points in his research; checking how restaurant vs. home-cooked meals, level of exercise, and life events affect his insulin usage and blood sugar levels.
Invader
Real Name: UNKOWN
Country of Origin: France
Medium: Mosaic Tiles
Years Active: Mid 1990s to Present
Website: space-invaders.com
Invader is a French street artist who puts up small colorful mosaic tile works that draw influence from classic video games. He puts me up in cities across the world and documents his “Invasion” with books and maps of where to find each invader. Invaders work on his books and maps turns out to be an interesting twist of data visualization, self documentation and art. In Paris alone Invader has placed 1000+ mosaics. The task of documenting every single works location is a daunting task in itself, but Invader takes it the next step and turns the documentation into art. I own every book he has released and I can attest that they are all beautifully crafted. Below I have included a few shots of his documentation, if you want to see all of his maps: space-invaders.com/gmap.html
Map made from his invasion of Perth, click on image to see the incredible detail
Part of his Paris book, he has put up 1000+ pieces in Paris alone
After much more research, I am amazed by the boundaries openFrameworks enabled people to push.
Significant Contribution
EyeWriter is a project that I really admire. With the incorporation of openFrameworks, Graffiti Research lab created this eye tracking device that empowers artists and graffiti writers who are suffering from ALS to draw using their eyes. Just as the software of the openFrameworks is empowering, this development help to realize the dreams of others.
Humorous and Provocative
All Eyes on You is a very playful installation by Britzpetermann for a shop. I imagine myself walking by and took a glimpse of it and then start pacing back and forth to see what these eyes will do. It is a very relaxing and humorous interactive experience and makes me wonder about the personal attention we have in this digital era.
Most people are probably aware of the combination of openFrameworks and Raspberry Pi. It is another empowering toolkit for creative thinkers to tinker with and create amazing work. An easy to follow installation tutorial is available here.
A time-lapse video created by David Hunt using Rasperry Pi and openFrameworks. He built a interface that allows to position the dolly on the rail via the motor control buttons; change the motor pulse duration between shots; change the delay between shots; change the number of shots; see what time is left for the current sequence; and start and stop the time-lapse.
Forms is an audio-visual installation that maps the movement of professional athletes’ bodies and generates geometrical shapes. The artist isolates something very abstract, a continuous movement, from the athletes body and form. By doing so, he allows users to view it with greater clarity and see the mathematical beauty in it.
Van Gogh’s Starry Night is one of my favorite paintings. It was interesting to see it come to life. I like that the animation did not distort the original artwork too much, rather adding to it and staying true to the painting., The algorithm emphasized the beauty of the brush strokes in the original painting. I was however kind of disappointed to see that the velocity field had to be set manually. Had it been computationally derived, the algorithm could have been applied to other paintings. Deriving the flow velocity in Van Gogh’s paintings seems like a very interesting problem to work on.
In this application, openFrameworks was used to create the collision test between the projection of the car and the printed maze, as well as take input from the game controller. It’s interesting to see how the developers used a static medium (such as receipt paper) to create a dynamic game. The project is really funny, but it wastes so much paper!
I found this work interesting because it involves several interesting aspects to look at these billionaires, not only how much they earn or classify them by gender or age, there is also data about number of children, wealth source. What’s more, it leverages multi visualization modes like explore, rank, plot and map, which makes the visualization gain the richness of dimensions.
This is a data visualization that shows the breakdown of songs on each of 20 mix tapes the author made between 1982 and 1996, looking at the repetition of those songs and some notable call outs. I must say, at first glance, I love the picture. The color, the shape and the arrangement is so elegance (I felt a sort of Japanese style in it). However, I can’t any sense of the data before zoom in the image(the name of songs and years are so small ), and after I zooming in, I cannot get the sense of connection between years or same songs on different tape. I zoom in and zoom out repeatedly, feel frustrated and still cannot get the information the author try to show. I suggest to make it a interactive visualization, data and words zoom in when mouse approaches. Then reader can check the specific data and also know they are.
This project is fun. It recall me memory of childhood. Since I learned more mathematic operations and physics equations, there is several years I never touch “handmade calculation”. The topic is unique and cute. What’s more, changing the way to see numbers through color and shapes will bring different perspectives. I can recognize some patterns form the work, which may not easy to find when shown in numbers. This should be printed on the cover of maths textbook!
Interesting Dataset Across the Wall by Visualizing Palestine
One of the things that I love most about infographics created by the Visualizing Palestine team is that the data used is not always readily available. Data regarding Palestine is actually fairly difficult to find, and clean data even harder. At a workshop in Beirut, I enjoyed their ingenuity at finding and extracting public data. For this visualization, the data had to be scraped from Israel’s Public Transportation website (http://is.gd/SG1v3g). The website is a dynamic route finder so the routes in and out of Palestine had to be put manually, then the routes had to be compiled and cleaned for display. I think along with visualization, acquiring and providing clean data play very big roles in making data accessible.
This dataset and its accompanying visualisation was shared on Hacker News during the Edward Snowden information privacy leaks. Malte Spitz’s phone metadata is correlated with his blog posts, twitter and social media data. We can see that we can track him and his activities throughout his life. If we had metadata of his friends circles, we can also paint a more complete picture. Amidst the claims that metadata data collection is not surveillance, this visualisation shows the opposite.
Fragmented memory creates tapestries with woven encodings that are translations of a computer’s physical memory during a core dump. A core dump is the state of the computer’s memory when a program crashes. What caught my attention is the juxtaposition of raw binary data, something digital at its core, with textiles and knitting, a process that is very traditional and human.
