Commons was a project by web-based artist/avatar LaTurbo Avedon, shown at Transmediale 2015. It consists of a virtual environment, in which all the material is sourced from users who contributed documentation of home environments and neighbors to the project. Clips that ranged from 20 to 40 seconds in duration were mapped onto 3D models then piled on top of each other to create what looks like a mountain of debris. During the exhibition, one could download the 3D models, as well as high resolution images of the project. Most pages of the project site are offline, so it’s difficult to know exactly what the experience of it was like, although there are images on Flickr that show people viewing the work on a screen. Since the lack of documentation seems like an intentional aspect of the work (along with the theme of transmediale this year, “Capture All”), it is hard to criticize it on this point.

emoji.ink is a site by artist Vince McKelvie that allows users to draw with emoji. When you go to the site, you see a fullscreen grid of emoji, and are prompted to select one. Doing so redirects you to a blank page on which you can draw using the emoji. There is a button to save your work as a .png, and a slider to control the size of the emoji. Pressing any key brings up a semi-transparent overlay of the emoji to choose from. I appreciate the simplicity of this site. The code is all client-side, and the main JavaScript is visible in the source of the website. Already, artists like Yung Jake have used emoji.ink to make elaborate drawings (Yung Jake posts celebrity portraits made with emoji.ink on Instagram). I think the strength of this project lies in its accessibility and the overall popularity of emoji. Drawing with symbols that typically appear in grids and rows is very relaxing.

Cloud Piano by David Bowen

In this work, the designer combined Max/Msp, video capture device and robotic device to generate piano piece using realtime motions of cloud. This is an interesting idea, and it’s also my passion —  generate and analyze music automatically.

In the video above, the performance of real-time piano piece is not as good as normal piano piece is, however. Several reasons can be found: first, piano piece in this project is mono pitched, which to a large extent decreases the content a piece could express; second, the very low part is frequently shown, so we can guess the designer doesn’t do a good job in optimizing the performance based on real world piece; third, there are noises generated by the pressing of robotic fingers which should be decreased.

Overall, this project has an interesting idea and did a fairly good job, however, there are still many points the designer should consider.

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Flexible Muscle-Based Locomotion for Bipedal Creatures

This is a project kind of out of the boundary of interactive art and computational design. But it’s  still a wonderful finding to share. It uses muscle model on bipedal creatures to mimic their motions and activities, driven by 3D control. The synthesized controllers can locomote in real time at a range of speeds, and can traverse variable terrains.