Research

The problem with doing too much work is it means less time to update the blog. The last week I've been working out the technical issues with the project. The project has been renamed WebEcho also as hear the web does not accurately reflect the project as it now stands. For this some posters had to be done up:

One of the first tests was to make sure the files were working correctly in conjunction with the projector. Even though the files worked locally they were reading the old cookie for the information to display rather than the current. After much scratching of my hair I discovered a solution, if I put the code in a separate file and called that from the main page it worked with the current cookie. Another issue was an added little extra I had developed which was a myspace page search, this would search myspace for songs with he search term, this would not work in the college as a certain port was blocked, however I replaced it with a soundcloud but after some testing it was deemed unnecessary as it just confused matters further so I left this out.

Some more testing was done on the GUI, some simple things like the cursors changing, disabling links and other usability issues were brought up and sorted. The issue of stopping the user using the computer as a computer was sorted by putting the menu on the window with the projector, making the window fullscreen and disabling keyboard shortcuts. It also meant moving to chrome from Safari as Safari has no standard full screen. How does this look? I had not put time aside to videotape the projection in operation yet but this should give you an idea:

This is the result for 'Mario'. Most the issues that came up early in the day were sorted out by the last tests.

This picture shows how the interface will work, except in the space the computer will face the projection so both are bombarding the user at the same time. Tomorrow is moving day! Time to install it in the space and pray the network in the gallery lives up to the task!

Developing it further...

One of the complaints was that the aesthetics of the visuals were too confusing. With this in mind I remodeled it to look more like something so the user would apply a context to the piece. The look of it is based on a traditional paper but with an online edition feel. The title is taken from Google, the images are taken from Flickr. One of the critiques on the first iteration was that the montage was too confusing, that a way to go through the different images would be better.

I did this using a jQuery function, so now the user clicks on the image and it hides that and shows the next until there are no images, then a user can click 'show images'. As well as this another complaint was about the sounds, that they repeated sometimes, I edited the code to resolve this problem and think it's working.

As an extra feature I added a myspace search. I tried implementing this in the main page but it crowded the interface and since it's using a lot of code it works better in a pop up. To pass the search term from one window to the next I used some php to set a cookie. This is also the method for the image search to get the info.

As it stands, the user enters a term, this term is passed to external sites via php or APIs, this information is then structured using css and jQuery, it also returns sounds related to the terms, if the user wishes they can check to see are there any songs related to the terms and click on a pop up, at the same time the image search results are returned.

The idea is the user is bombarded with the different impressions and meaning to the words, this is sourced from the internet dynamically so the experience is created by the user and all medias are returned. The user gets a cross or multi-media bombardment of the results, in what they see, what they read and what they hear.

Research

One of the perhaps neglected areas in the development of my Project is research. AS my Project went through fairly radical changes (from making music from tweets to a studio of semiotics sourcing content from the internet) I always felt I needed just a bit more work done to move ahead to the testing and review stage. In someways this development process was a bit hectic but I can't say I didn't learn from it, I've had to use Flash, OSC, Twitter API, PHP, Javascript and jQuery to get to where I am.

Finally happy at getting good results from my piece I did some testing. The feedback was invaluable to say the least. Although I had explained the concept about the piece, that the meanings are not always the meanings you apply the users commented the Layout was too confusing. They suggested making it look more like a news site, so that's what I've been working on. They also suggested putting in suggestions as they were not sure exactly what sort of results to go searching for to yield interesting results.

I worked on implementing these changes. One of the tasks I had to do was research what terms yielded interesting results. As the data is being pulled dynamically these results might vary but after a few days even though some change they still yield the best results. The terms searched and there results are thus:

Monkey, lol, DJ, Hurling, Jam, Dance, GAA, Sing, Robot, Recession, Opera, Dalek, Balincollig, Rock, Tony, CIT, War, NFL, Happy, Guitar, Baseball, Surprise, Cute, Russia, Germany, Guitar solo, Bluegrass, Folk, Arab, Osama, Cool, RockNRoll, Fun, Kids, Coda, Libya, Bailout, Taoiseach, Crash, Whisper, Hanut, Style, Chocolate.

As well as this it was suggested that the image results be spruced up, to make them more visually appealing, the idea is that this would be projected while the comp would display the mainly text, along with an image, this image was originally a collage of the results but testing showed this as confusing. Instead the images are shown on top of each other and when a user clicks, they see the next in the results. The image search can be seen here, it might not suit all screen sizes as it is being developed for use on only one screen.

A name?!

Well this is the Exhibit piece as it stands:

As I've mentioned it's an installation featuring an Audio piece, the Audio is representing the rate that people emigrated from the country from in the period mentioned (ie one every 8mins 4seconds). After some brainstorming I settled on using a visual metaphor as well to house the speakers. So I settled on an open packed suitcase, this would also be a suitable way to display the title and Information. My Biggest problem as it stands is this - I don't have a name! All suggestions are welcome, please comment below!

HUMAN+

Hope someone else hasn't done a post on this, my google reader has 1000+ posts in it! One of the most literally relevant Avant Garde related Exhibitions that I've come across is called HUMAN+ (or humanplus). It is a study of Human kinds increasing reliance on technology. It also comments on the trend that our interaction with technology is becoming more direct as technology advances. There are many very interesting exhibits on the site but a number stand out. One of these would be the prosthetic head by Stelarc.

Stelarc is Chair in Performance Art, Brunel University West London and Senior Research Fellow at MARCS Auditory Labs, University of Western Sydney. Stellarc was well ahead of the trend with probing his own body and how it will interact with technology in the future. His exoskeleton Exhibit is quite freaky. Annoyingly , and after the fact, I discovered he gave a talk in our local Gallery in Cork City, something that would have been great to attend. The Head is an AI of sorts, it is somewhat creepy and reminds me a bit of the Wizard from The Wizard of Oz. The user can interact with the head as if it were a person. Also check out http://stelarc.org/_.swf - here you can see the texture used for the face, it uses flash but if you click on the top right hand corner you can 'turn the page' a bit annoying but interesting. Judge for yourself.


Another stand out Exhibit for me is AREA V5.

Be Your Own Souvenir

Another interesting project I came Across was Be Your Own Souvenir from blablabLAB. THis project takes advantage of perhaps two of the most exciting technologies becoming available to students,artists and hackers in recent times. Notably the Microsoft Kinect, and 3D printers. 3D Printers really have the potential to change how our world works, at the moment the price is the issue keeping it out of most people's hands but in the future it might be possible that if you break a Hoover nozzle you could download and print a replacement! Anyway, I digress, check out the video.

Be Your Own Souvenir! from blablabLAB on Vimeo.

I really like the description 'This proposal aims to connect street users, arts and science, linking them to under-laying spaces and their own realities.' The fact that the brilliant Golan Levin approves in the comments is also a big feather in their caps. It is also worth checking out their other projects, such as HABERLANDT. All their projects have an academic basis so are very relevant to the study of Avant Garde.

LEDs etc

One of the most interesting Blogs I've come across about LEDS and other electronic projects is Limpkin. He is a DJ and is very capable technically, creating his own displays and projects. The detail in his Blog is very interesting too, there is a clear step by step order that is lacking in others. One of the more intriguing projects he has done is involving an LED display and a webcam. The full post is available here, it does get quite technical as it's a fairly in depth walk through. Very cool though:

Leaving

As part of my research into emigration I studied the RTE documentary Departure Day. This documentary follows the lives of people forced to emigrate and how it affects them and their families. There is strong imagery and visuals in this piece. One area they miss out on is waiting on the plane to take off. I have decided that my audio piece will run just over 8mins long, as the CSO figures are 65'300 in 12 months and 525600 minutes divided by that is 8.04 or one person leaving every 8 minutes. The first audio piece based on this is below:

LeavingJet by blueswannabe

This might seem slow building and a bit boring but I think the gradual volume increase and the monotony of it helps build tension in the final climax as the Jet Roars into life, leaving behind the passengers old one. I intend on doing user testing to see how the audience reacts to this piece.

Daytum

One of the artists I came across in reading literature was Nicholas Feltron. He is known for his interesting info vis, or social vis, depending on what you see his work as. His well known for his annual reports on his everyday life. This obviously got a lot of attention as it's cited quite a bit and a group made his theory into a website / app called Daytum. Daytum lets users make visualisations of their actions and interactions.

This project is interesting from a psychological and sociological sense also, we all know that twitter exposed that sometimes people like to tweet about the most mundane, boring things but that usually isn't their sole purpose for being on twitter. So what if your sole purpose of being on a site is to make visualisations out of only boring mundane things? It's even interesting how they describe this service

"Whether you would like to tally an afternoon or a year, Daytum can help you collect and communicate the most important statistics in your life."

Most important? I find it interesting that people would consider what food they eat the most important statistic in their life...

On the other hand there is a positive side to tracking your 'statistics' like this, you could keep an eye on your diet or on your training. These kind of projects take info vis a step further, by telling you something personal you already know subconsciously. I must admit I find it amazing that people pay a monthly fee for this service, but they do. And they like it.

"Daytum is a web application that lets you set up any number of various displays tracking virtually anything you want, and presents it in a beautiful way."

It also shows just how important aesthetics are to users.

HTML5 And The Times We Live In

As part of my college course we do HTML 5. We also do a subject called Avant Garde as I may have mentioned. I am new to HTML5 but as with everything practice makes perfect. The Canvas element in HTML5 surprised me as in a lot of ways it is more similar to flash than HTML 4 in my opinion. We were given a simple lab on how to animate some images, making them appear on the Canvas using a simple for loop.

For my Avant Garde assignment I’m going to be concentrating on Emigration figures. We were advised to start ‘making things’ as soon as possible so I married both concepts. After some quick googling I grabbed a simple timer code from Neil Broderick. I also grabbed some pictures of passports and passport holders (to add some colour). I married these with a modified version of the lab code.



The Result can be seen Here

Explanation: The timer starts a function that places 5 passports a half-second/10 a second randomly on the page, so 600 a minute 65’300 / 600 is 108.833, so 109 minutes roughly. The opacity is set so the patterns gradually build up. I find sometimes these demonstrations can get reality across a lot better than simple facts. 65’300 doesn’t seem like a lot but when you see it portrayed graphically and consider every one of these is an individual, most forced to leave the country due to the economic situation it hits home harder. If I get the chance I might add the code to let you save the canvas as an image.

If you do for some Bizarre reason leave it running for the duration it won’t stop, this is as although we have a new Government in Ireland, we haven’t yet sorted the Emigration problem, as a matter of fact 100’000 are estimated to Emigrate in the next two years.

Hence the title, HTML5 And The Times We Live In.

More Cowbell...

The unforseen issues you can come across with this project are quite numerous. Mainly technical of course and hard to figure out if the problem with Pd or Flash. Either way I digress, a poor workman blames his tools. The tidying is complete, I turned that god awful mess into THIS:

Although this is tidier it is still as complex as the previous posts screen grab, but organised better. One of the Issues that was brought up by my supervisors were that if the keywords that I had set up parameters for weren't in the tweet what would happen. There were a number of different ways to approach this and I got bogged down using the post time date and other Metadata. However the best solution was suggested by one of my lecturers, to use the letters in a persons name. I incorporated a sequencer into this and tested it out.

Obviously if a user name has the exact same amount of the same letters this system will produce the same result, however unlikely this is the solution is to include postdate or other metadata as a parameter as well. This system works quite well and though a tad repetitive suitable for the project. Here are 4 different Authors and their signatures.

AuthorKey by blueswannabe

The next big step is to get User Testing done, then take the GUI further and 'flesh out' the keywords.

Progress

Right, I probably haven't been posting here as often as I should, not to say I haven't been doing work. One of my most recent obsessions has been Pd or Pure Data, Pure Data was developed by the same man behind MaxMSP. It is a visual programming language designed for audio creation and modification. It takes a while to get into but once you do you can do a lot with very little and modify free to use patches easily. However if like me you are new you can get a working solution but a very messy one:

I had a meeting with my lecturers and on advice have decided to work towards the aim of a working prototype, I got to caught up with the Technical side of things so did some work on the GUI for the Flash file.

The next step is to figure out what exact system to use for analysing the tweets and deciding on an acceptable level of correlation. And work on the audio and do user testing, a lot more work to do!

Health and Other Obsessions

Being a bit of a health nerd I have come across numerous Health info vis in the past. Some of these are quite literally food for thought (sorry, couldn't resist the punderful joke). Mashable has brilliant examples of info Vis also. They have an interesting link here: http://mashable.com/2010/03/19/amazing-health-infographics/ At the end of the day it is hard to advise people on their Health as too much of anything is bad for you and people differ, however using scientific evidence as a good way to get around this:

Some of the not so effective supplements here are rather surprising. I think this is where Info Vis outdoes normal textual Data, at a glance you can see that vitamin A and vitamin E, though popular are surprisingly unbeneficial. The original pice is way more interesting as it is interactive, check it out here. It is also done using Flash, something I am considering using for my assignment.

As I mentioned at the start I'm a bit of a health nerd, I'm also an economics nerd. Another interesting Info Vis I came across was American shame. This is a fascinating piece for many reasons, one it shows that the if we leave the banks go line we've been fed isn't as black as certain parties have been making it out to be, Iceland did just that and currently rank higher than us in this, based on IMF data. Although represented in a fairly traditional manner, the colour holds signifigance here. It's called American Shame as America performs so poorly, this should also finally put the Boston V Berlin debate firmly to rest, look at Germany and look at USA, it's clear which model we should aspire to. Sorry if this paragraph is overtly political!

Info Vis

One of the interesting artists I came across when researching Info Vis was WardShelley.com. On his Bio it defines him, by not defining him,
"Ward Shelley works as an artist in Brooklyn, New York. He specializes in large projects that freely mix sculpture and performance. Utilizing eclectic influences and a variety of media, Shelley’s installations defy classification. Over the last five years, Shelley has concentrated on bizarre functioning architectural pieces in which he lives and works during the exhibition monitored with live surveillance video equipment.
Shelley also works on a series of diagramatic paintings, timelines of art-related subjects such as the careers of artists working in de-materialized media and the history of art scenes. "

Ward does a huge range of different projects, he has won the New Yorker and New York Times awards and has been referenced in numerous Art and culture Books. AS evident from these awards, he is based primarily in New York, some of his pieces concentrate on Solely on the Avant Garde in New York, one such would be Downtown Body.

Interestingly Shelley also does Info Vis, and he did a series of Oil Paintings, purely coincidentally one of them called "Who Invented the Avant Garde"
exhibition at Pierogi, April 2009.

This is an interesting piece, in ways it almost looks like a Mind map or a brain storm but it is actually a portrayal of accurate Data in a visualised Timeline.

enlarge here

I find his pieces interesting because they are so Old School they are bordering on Steam Punk, and they show there is a true heritage of Information Visualisation and Design Visualisation through portraying this data in an old fashion.

MM4 Semester 2

Back in College February. As part of one of my modules (Avant Garde in Digital Media) I need to set up a separate Blog. Since I have too many blogs already and my project has to do with Data I will be putting these posts here but they'll be labeled Avant Garde. This is the first such post.

Data can be used in many interesting ways and many boring ways. These range from Tescos barcode scanner app to a library database. One of the most interesting Graphical representation of Data I have seen is on Nuclear testing. It is interesting the impact sudden information has on you.

I had previously read plenty of articles and books on Nuclear Weapons development and the cold war but when you see this portrayed Graphically (as it is done in this video titled "1945-1998") in animation it is simply staggering.



Unsurprisingly it is a Japanese man, Isao Hashimoto that came up with this video. He describes it as "... a bird's eye view of the history by scaling down a month length of time into one second. No letter is used for equal messaging to all viewers without language barrier. The blinking light, sound and the numbers on the world map show when, where and how many experiments each country have conducted. I created this work for the means of an interface to the people who are yet to know of the extremely grave, but present problem of the world."

It shows that although text offers in depth analysis it sometimes fails to get across the actual reality of the subject, the scale, the horror, the enormity. I think this video succeeds at all this very well. It also breaks down barriers of accessability, your average 10 year old would not read an academic paper on Nuclear Proliferation but after seeing this he would have a lot of info an insight that otherwise would require hours of reading.