15104 & 60212 • COMPUTATION for CREATIVE PRACTICES
Professors Roger Dannenberg & Golan Levin • Fall 2015
This is a group project.
For project 10, we created a game that can be interacted with mouse and keyboard. The creature, being a ladybug, grows when comes in contact with food that trickles down from the top of the canvas when the F-key is pressed. When comes the ladybug touches a water droplet it bounces off and returns to its starting size.
For looking outwards 10, I researched works of an Austrian artist Lia. Her works take many forms such as performance, software, installations, sculpture, digital applications and video. Lia has been working with software and net art since 1995. She uses codes to generate interactive multi-media outputs. Lia successfully merges algorithms with traditional drawing and painting techniques.
The project I looked at in more detail is called “B&W Forever!”. The video which is self-explanatory through the title illustrates the balance between black, representing evil and white, good. The colours also represent form versus void. The equilibrium between the two colours and shapes can be achieved but it may change to favor one colour over the other. Rather than just symbolising light and darkness, Lia conveys architectural themes of form and void which I am excited to see. I admire the creation of different forms and voids that are created throughout the video and the geometric theme that has been applied with two simple colours.
This is a group project: Sophie and Vanessa.
We created a turtle that is constantly spiraling to create a dynamic shape. Wherever the user clicks on the screen the dynamic shape changes color. Through this project, we wanted to convey the themes of dynamic vs static and regular vs irregular. We searched for an image that consisted of irregular geometric shapes with multiple colours to contrast the regularity of the dynamic hexagonal shapes that we created. Overall, through the dynamic turtle and the found image, we wanted to produce an illustration that depicts contrasting themes.
Before starting, we first brainstormed themes together and looked over the given examples for the project. We decided on which effects we wanted our turtle to have and then looked at different functions to apply into the code. We tried to use new codes we recently learnt. I typed and wrote the code whilst Vanessa sketched and searched for different references for the code and the image. The making of the code was done together.
Group project 8
For Project 8, we produced a project that creates a computational portrait that has been pixelated by pointillism. Unlike other projects, we embedded an image that shows our side profiles. We tried to illustrate the language barrier through the white interactive mouseX function and the combination of Korean and English characters scattered in the centre of the canvas. The two figures facing each other are speaking different languages to each other and we tried to to convey the theme of cultural difference through this image.
When starting the project, we first started off with trying to capture an image that shows both of our faces then brainstormed ideas on how to convey bilingualism and language/culture issues. Then, we referenced pointillism codes to abstract the photograph we took and made it interactive in a restricted rectangle where the characters have been scattered.
For Looking Outwards 5, Kelly Li presented Stamen Design which is a studio in California who produced the “A Blueprint for Global Water Security: Visualizing Urban Watersheds for The Nature Conservancy” project. Stamen Design studio dealt with illustrating mass information for a global audience in a visually appealing way that was also able to be easily read and understood. This particular project presented information about the rising sea levels and the changing environment globally.
Kelly was particularly intrigued by the topic of the project as she is interested in sustainability and design solutions. I also, was interested in this as I am also studying architecture and have been exposed to the topic of sustainable design. She also mentions the software and graphic elements that convey the information well and effectively. I agree with her as I admired the project’s ability to illustrate a lot of information clearly and effectively through maps, charts and graphics.
This is a group project: Sophie Lee and Vanessa Kim
For project 3, we created a night view cityscape. We first looked at different landscapes and decided that we wanted to incorporate a view out the window but then decided to show the cityscape fully, therefore, just drew it out on a big canvas.
The camera is looking at a veiw of an exterior environment which involves cars, buildings and trees. To make our view more dynamic, we applied flashing colours on the cars in order to emphasise the night skyline. Majority of the colours used in this project are flurorescent colours to reinforce the night view again. Buildings also vary in colour to represent depth and diversity in the landscape.
We divided the work efficiently. Vanessa worked on the codes whilst I referenced from different sites and we tried to incorporate the codes we recently learnt in class and review them whilst creating a new design and a new landscape to illustrate them in.
https://vimeo.com/channels/instint2014
Kate Hollenbach leads the designing computation team at Oblong. The company consists of designers and programmers working towards interfaces that connect people with computers. The interactive between the two is researched and developed in their company. Oblong is known for gestural interfaces but they strive to build the “next human computer interaction” system.
The speaker Hollenbach has a computing background and went on to graduate school to study graphic design as well. She was inspired by the company to join the team to build the next big thing in computing.
Tamper which is a gestural design for cinematic design. It allows you to make video collages and you can mix and match different elements from different videos. I admire this project as it is very responsive and also effective. The gesture are not hard and the interaction between the user and the interface is clear and efficient.
Hollenbach presents clearly and concisely using different videos of their projects and their process when working with a project.
This project is by Sophie Lee and Vanessa Kim.
To make the curve project, we had to go through many iterations and had difficulty choosing between different types of spirals from the given site. We created an interactive Archimedes’ spiral which winds up to a spiral creating complex geometric shapes and unwraps into a simple spiral. By applying a gradient of colour for the curve as it moves towards the centre, we wanted to create a maze-like effect that draws the audience into the centre of the canvas. Our project is interactive by using the mouseX function but allows the audience to come away with an unique manipulative visual experience.
We brainstormed many ideas starting from creating ‘daisy’ and the ‘mice problem’. We looked at different functions to apply into our code and experimented with different overlapping shapes. Then, we reached to a conclusion of the usage of rotation to create many types of curves. Like the last project, I typed whilst vanessa researched different references to put into our code. However, the making of the code was done together.
This project creates epidemic information visualisation. It was researched and carried out by Cody Dunne and other participants from the IBM Watson Cognitive Visualization Lab. It illustrates the spread and the trend of epidemic with multiple colours and shapes that depict different factors that affect patterns of epidemic spreads such as population and movement. The project uses zoomable circles that can be seen in both local and global scales. Also, the tessellation that has been coded to create this image provides enough information for epidemiologists to see contagion patterns. The tessellation circles are all linked with each other with clear different coloured lines to help epidemiologists.
Group Project – Vanessa Kim and Chaeyun (Sophie) Lee
For project 4, abstract clock, we decided to make a rainbow clock. We wanted to create a clock where the different parts of the clock accumulates to create one image. The rainbow has been divided into three different parts: second, minute and hour. Red and orange represents second, yellow and green minute and finally, blue, indigo and purple hour. When it is 11:59:59, a full rainbow is illustrated.
Vanessa and I tried to divide the workload equally but we mainly worked on the project together. We started this project off by brainstorming lots of different ideas, varying from using images of bottles getting filled up or flipping pages on a book to abstractly represent a clock. Then, we made our decision to create a rainbow clock. We started off by structuring our codes so that we get variables that uses the hour, minute and second commands. We then, further developed the assignment 04-B by adding an arc and manipulating its width as time passes. We worked on all the codes together and the work was equally separated. When writing the code, I typed the codes and checked it through with Vanessa whilst she researched different commands and found references for the code.
