Category Archives: Uncategorized

Thomas Langerak-LookingOutwards-2

Data visualization is more than “just” about posters and images. I believe that the best data visualizations are interactive and you can manipulate the layout. I believe that Microsoft just took this a step further, though arguably VR in generally does. We are now not limited to a screen anymore, we can show data when it is appropriate. Remember that it is more than just about collection of images, are ratio between ethnicity. Weather forecast is data, traffic is data. We now can show them when and where they are appropriate. We have to be careful though, data can be overwhelming. It is up to designer to make careful decisions about how appropriate certain data at certain moments is.

Capture

The infinite jukebox  is something a bit different from the ordinary data visualization. One can choice a song (either from a database, or upload one). The software searches for similarities in this song and makes being doing so transitions between different parts of the song in such a manner that the song will be played endlessly. I like this piece of software because of several reasons. First of all the idea is simple, the execution is probably not. Yet it is done quite well. Next to this I like the layout, you can follow the song and the jumps it makes and where the jumps can be made. I still think they left something in the layout I just cannot put my finger on it.

http://labs.echonest.com/Uploader/index.html

dantasse

14 Jan 2015

I’m kind of sad this is for new things only, so I can’t post about re-finding Black MIDI.

But here’s something close. Specimen Box, by the Office for Creative Research, is a visualization/sonification for botnets. Data comes from Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit.

Specimen Box – Sonification from The OCR on Vimeo.

It has 3 views: 1. see all botnets animated as messages come in, 2. see one or two botnets alone as “retina plots” and listen to their activity (video above), 3. plot botnets along 3 axes. It’s oddly soothing to listen to them. I think the unlikely but awesome outcome of this would be that people can listen to it and hear patterns in the botnets that help them fight them. Less awesome but more likely: makes botnets more approachable, both raising awareness of an issue while lessening fear. It’s kind of hard to be scared of one of these things playing a soothing noise.

I’d like to know, well, if it works. If it’s useful; if it helps people to find out more things about botnets, or if it’s just pretty. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Fatberg (warning: kind of gross), on the other hand, is somewhat more organic. It’s a giant mountain of fat. They aim to build it in the ocean and get it to the size of an oil rig. I think it’s cool to take something so common and unseen, and make it definitely seen. I know it’s not really their goal, but I’d think that it would be pretty effective in preventing future sewer clogs, if enough people saw it. Plus, it could be a neat piece against the factory farming system and crazy quality of meat we eat, if they wanted. But it’s not.

 

They insist it’s “not a speculative design project”, but rather “inspirational data” to stimulate the imagination. I don’t know, that sounds like a speculative design project to me. It’s almost too flippant, like a stunt more than something to actually make you think about anything in particular. Still, I appreciate the scale, and the willing to deal with the squeamish.

mmontenegro

14 Jan 2015

I was doing some research for my ETC semester project which involves a motion capture when i came across the two projects I am going to discus.

Map Visibility Estimation For Marge-Scale Dynamic 3D Reconstruction:

This project is tracking movement and then generating the movement path of the objects dynamically. Markers are attached to the objects that what to be tracked so the motion capture cameras can see them and human joints are tracked automatically similar to how the Microsoft Kinect does it. It is a research project here at CMU with its main focus on creating more accurate motion detection by optimal camera detection. In other words, selecting the right cameras for each point (in a very small nutshell).  It was done byHanbyul Joo, Hyun Soo Park, and Yaser Sheikh. I founded this project very inspiring because all the raw data of movement creates beautiful color patterns and shapes and because it solved almost all the issues the Kinect has to encounter when tracking humans. I feel that a very cool installation could be created with this type of technology because the entire human body is being tracked in a 3D cube/space. this would allow for a completely immersive tracking experience!

After finding this project, i decided to try to see what else similar to this is out there and I found this:

NuFormer – Virtual Reality-Video Projection:

This project is trying to combine virtual reality with motion capture to fully engage the user in the experience. apart from this, it generates a projection of the user in the virtual space to show to the audience what he/she is seeing and experiencing. This type of experiences are being explored to look for more possibilities of how far we can push VR and full our brain. This one was made by NuFormer. I really liked the concept of combining virtual reality with motion capture, this is probably what we are going to end up doing in my ETC project, but I feel this project was just a proof of concept. I didn’t find the experience that engaging, yes the art is nice, but with so that power, something more creative would have been better. Something that would really make the user be in the edge!

mileshiroo

14 Jan 2015

 

Hi, great to meet you! My name is Miles.

I’m Miles, a student and artist. Please find me on Twitter here, on GitHub here, and IRL over here.

I use a bottom-up approach to a top-down one, meaning I like to make things through experimentation rather than specification. Some topics that interest me are: deletion, sound, interface aesthetics, the end of the world.

Project: Website

buttons are stretched tight

the buttons SNAP into place if you probe them with your mouse

For some time I’ve wanted a personal website to post my work on. Past sites of mine felt template-impersonal and template-cold. I sought a format that made practical sense for the work I planned to showcase, and also conveyed aspects of my personality through the design.

The site is composed entirely of HTML buttons, stretched and animated using the CSS3 transform property. Each button corresponds to a project, and renders a video or image to the canvas when pressed. The initial layout of the button is more or less random. The projects are defined in an XML file that P5.js can parse.

This approach traded usability for playfulness, which may be irritating for site visitors who simply want my contact information. I plan to iterate on this design, focusing more on functionality next time.

I made the site using GitHub Pages for hosting (for free), and P5.js for interactivity.

Please view the site here: mileshiroo.info.

mmontenegro

14 Jan 2015

Last semester I was the technical lead for a project called Marioneta! This project was made with one experience designer, one sound designer, one artist and two programmers (me being one of them).

Marioneta was a project for the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum to create a puppet gesture recognition and mirroring effect with the use of Microsoft Kinect v2. The projects main focus is to create an endless experience in which everything in the world will react to the users actions as they become and impersonate a puppet.

This installation is currently installed in the museum, you can go check it out! Other work I have done can be found in my homepage.