My data visualization project is a necessary reference for my capstone proposal. Originally, I was investigating the possibility of an interactive system that allowed the analysis of building footprints. This analysis would be the base to take the buildings out of their context and propose a remapping. In order to focus on visualization, I amplified my data set and produced static remapping of different cities based on a ranking of different shape metrics related to dispersion or regularity.

The capstone proposal will try to go back to the origins of this investigation and will reformulate  the idea of remapping.

[here should be the new sketch, but the blog is not loading….]

Based on the visualization of the osm file in the processing environment, the user would be able to analyse and reformulate the organization of the buildings. The buildings will be stored in specific classes containing not only its own geometrical elements but also the characteristics of their shapes. Well, this is the basic idea, but there are still many branches to choose. Once these branches will demand different algorithms and approaches to the problem, I decided to use this post as a place to make this intersection explicit.

These are some 2 divergent general approaches to the problem:

a Interactivity: there will be many event-based functions to allow the user to choose specific buildings and specific shape metrics to organize a new map in parallel.

b “Generativity”: a more complex algorithm will be used to generate automatically a new map based on multi-dimensional shape metrics. Probably all the map will be analysed as a whole.

c Some place between? This would be the ideal, but probably the least feasible.

There are some possible types of map:

1 1d and 2d ranking: creates a precise position for each building in the new space based on its properties.

2 Pack, puzzle or collage: the agglomeration of the building based on the boundary and the neighbours.

3 Graph + attraction + repulsion: a general data-structure to cluster and organize the buildings in the new map. Probably this is the best data-structure + algorithm to balance interaction and generativity.

4 Self-Organizing feature map / Kohonen map: a artificial neural network able to convert high-dimensional data to low dimensional space (such as the modular maps) with weight vectors. It generates a complete new territory.

140 > character title: Skype with your robot friends.

I’m interested in merging digital and physical content. I began my capstone research by looking into alternative interfaces for human computer interaction. I’m tired of interacting with computers through buttons and screens. I found a lot of interesting hardware devices for interacting with computers. A lot of them were gesture controlled such as, Kinect, Leap motion, MYO band etc. I then moved in a different direction. I came across some interesting projects that dealt with extending physical content into the digital world. (without QR codes)

Elektrobiblioteka / Electrolibrary from printscreen on Vimeo.

Difflect from Stefan Wagner on Vimeo.

This got me thinking about what else you could bring across the physical/digital boundary. I saw this project involving projection mapping onto mannequins.

and I had the idea to create a more realistic version of skype by projection mapping someone’s face onto a mannequin head. This head would turn to follow you and be equipped with a mic and camera to pick up your image and voice to send to the other party. this felt a little uncanny valley, so Golan had the suggestion of abstracting the face into a simplified form using animatronics. Essentially the other person’s face is translated into an animatronic face that you speak to. Their image is picked up by facetracking software that analyzes for facial expression and translates that to servo motion in the animatronics.

An encrypter and decrypter installation. Key is based on a chess game. One needs to replay the chess game to decipher the message.

Project:

The start of the project was me thinking, well I like cryptography and trying to think of concepts around this. When this did not really succeeded I thought: well I like chess as well. After a few minutes I concluded that I could combine both to create something fun and not necessarily functional.

I am going to make a chess game out of Perspex in which the black squares are see through and the white squares have a laser-engraved/sandblasted kind of look. I will illuminate the white tiles by using a beamer from underneath. This beamer will also be used to visualize the message and the process of encrypting and decrypting.

The movement of the pieces will be tracked by an RasberryPi camera detecting IR. The bottom of each piece will be IR reflective. Since one does not need to know which is piece is which (since they always start out at the same position), one can just track moves and by doing so know the position on the board of each individual piece.

As said above I will use the white/opaque squares to beam something on. This something is the message that will be encrypted/decrypted. I want to visualize the stage of this encryption/decryption by making the message more/less clear. I still have to figure out the details and aesthetics of this.

Process

1. Get OFX on raspberry pi working
2. Create chessboard (projector and hardware)
3. Program computer vision to track chess pieces
4. Store location of pieces
5. Check location with stored
   1. If Yes make message bit more clear
   2. If No BANG! Start over
6. I also should work on the visualization sometime

Questions with regard to project:

What to encrypt/decrypt?
A random written message

How to input what should be encrypted?
Marker on chessboard -> Picture -> Erase it?

Will the encryption and decryption happen at the same location?
For this assignment yes.

How to output the message?
User the projector to display it on the chessboard?

How to visualize the process?
How to encrypt it?
I don’t really need it do I?

Should I automate the opponent?

Lot of work, not necessary, but better… Only when I have time
How to “end” the encryption process and start the decryption process?

Hardware:

Adafruit:

Raspberry Pi 2 – Model B – ARMv7 with 1G RAM PID: 2358
Raspberry Pi NoIR Camera Board – Infrared-sensitive Camera PID: 1567
SD/MicroSD Memory Card (4 GB SDHC) PID: 102 bigger
Super-bright 5mm IR LED (25 pack) – 940nm PID: 388
Miniature WiFi (802.11b/g/n) Module: For Raspberry Pi and more PID: 814

$102.75

Chessboard:

Laser engraved acrylic
Sides
Chess pieces

$30

Golan:

Screen
Keyboard
Projector + IR filter?
HDMI cable
Money??

Receive: $150

Software:

See Research.

Rasbian Wheezy (Linux)
OpenFrameworks
Cross-compiling
Hell

Research:

OpenFrameworks on Raspberry PI:
home :                  http://openframeworks.cc/setup/raspberrypi/
setup:                   http://www.openframeworks.cc/setup/raspberrypi/Raspberry-Pi-Getting-Started.html
workflow:           http://openframeworks.cc/setup/raspberrypi/Raspberry-Pi-Workflow-Overview.html
cross-compiler: http://www.openframeworks.cc/setup/raspberrypi/Raspberry-Pi-Cross-compiling-guide.html
distcc:                   http://www.openframeworks.cc/setup/raspberrypi/Raspberry-Pi-DISTCC-guide.html
samba:                 http://www.openframeworks.cc/setup/raspberrypi/Raspberry-Pi-SMB.html
Setup:                   https://www.creativeapplications.net/tutorials/how-to-use-openframeworks-on-the-raspberrypi-tutorial/
cross-compiler:                 http://visualgdb.com/tutorials/raspberry/crosscompiler/

Cryptography:
History:                http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cryptography
Scytale:                http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scytale
Vigenere:            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigen%C3%A8re_cipher
Chess:                   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grille_%28cryptography%29