Expanding the design (following)

Its been a while since ive posted but i was court up in research but here are the results of that research. Now i wanted to create something more then just the particle system to give each of the users something unique to play with while out on the town. so i did some exploring into other types of simulations i could include.... (majority of these examples are from open processing but some are from different data bases)

Follow example 1

Here was some code i found for a simple following, I like the erratic path of the code but i was not so much a fan of the returning particles from the side. I tired to tweak the code to stay onto the one point but was unsuccessful.

Follow example 2

When mouse moves 'worm' follows

After the mouse is stationary for long enough the worm searches for the mouse in almost random elliptical search patterns

Follow example 3

Cool example of a following line but once you click the line produces irregular movements

example formation fine but can engulf screen

engulfed....

Follow Example 4

Like before cool example of line following. (note: this line connects with the surrounding line to create new path ways)

One cool trait of this code is that you can write into the code words, drawings or symbols. Which for a social gimmick would be quite interesting.

Research into other gravity fields

This is a fantastic example of how gravity can be demonstrated in processing. I have wanted to create the underlining gravity field that changes to the movement of the planets court in the differing strength fields but the code seems a little above me. I was thinking then perhaps i could create a rotating spring system that reacts to the music instead to give that inter planetary scifi guidance theme.

Progression of idea

As from my previous blog entry you could see the particle system i created. I used a very basic set of values in the particle classes to include just the direction and velocity which updates its self at a normal frame rate. This worked well but what i whated was the interaction between other placeholders. In this sketch i havent yet created movable placeholders but there is one static point while the mouse can move to interact with it.

As you can see in the other placeholder(blue) is a very mechanical movement as the placeholder didnt move to give the desired effect of the (green)

Here we have the two placeholders interacting quite well. This was done in the code as a simple if statement continually checking the distance of the closet placeholder to each particle. For example if a green particle gains a high 'orbit' around the green placeholder but comes into contact of the others field or (400px) the velocity changes and the new direction it takes is towards the blue placeholder. While this is not a conventional gravity system it effectively gives it illusion.

Here is the after math of such an encounter with another of the placeholders in the system. This was the desired effect i wished to obtain in the program. This is what the social input aspect of the design is based around to give evidence of which placeholder or 'glass' has been in contact with each other as a fun social gimmick.

Research into other bar matt technology

This was just some of the research i was doing into bar matt technology...

This is a bar in Germany that generates new flowers with each touch. I like the theme of this bar that coincides the bars style of hawi n tropically settings.

This bar is in vas vegas that has one very long multi touch screen attached to the bar. This was a quite good example of what i was aiming at but still had much left to be desired. The Code seems to be responding to any form of movement or contact on the bar. This does work effectively for the bar but still is very basic. I was more thinking that just the glass effects the touch screen. This could be achieved through a LED placeholder on each of the glasses. This does differ to the bars started before but i believe that as an effect interactive design, while limiting inputs can create a new experience for the user, one which can not be achieved through through multi contact touch screens.

This is an example of the multiple touch functionality.

other research into touch screeens

Touch screens are definitely not an original idea now a days but most of them are just like the science plasma balls you can buy at any $2 shop. These while attractive do not satisfy the project requirements. the effects of such displays are useful but i want to step away from the one touch one result concept and move more into each interaction to give a different out puts. So that a group of people can use this system and have fun and experiment with the code and create something new.

other examples of bars have done these sorts of systems (plasma balls), i wanted to use on the glass has an interactive feature. (so the use of hands on the bar does not effect the systems) I also wanted the song to be able to create an input (eg. color changes, creation of particles, etc)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaKehq6qsdY


This is a good example of how i would like to implement this system, but is not what i want the final project to resemble.

Proposal of Idea

I was working behind the bar at the college pub after our last lab session were i found my self thinking of ideas for my project. After playing with a glass i remembered viewing blprnt 'just landed' (simulations of the spread of a virus) (see below), i noticed that the simulation used long strings that curved away from the planet, much like satellites in the earths gravitational field. With an interest in astromomy i was curious how i could intergrate a natural system into a gravitation field. I then looked into unique inputs into code, such as facebook or twitter inputs. Many of which have been done from taking a social networking site then use vaiables from there. but no code i found accually used the code its self as a social experiment. So hence forth spawned the idea of how i code use the code as a social experiment using a natural system? This is what i came up with:

a particle system that uses inputs from a social hub (eg a bar...... i.e. proximaty, who do u talk to etc) that alters over time to your actions in the bar. These will also be effected by the music played and the activity of the individual. enough of talk here is a basic sketch i constructed to get the intial look of what might hopefully be a strong idea

Insperation-Becks Festival Bar at Sydfest

Becks Festival Bar at Sydfest


This was a peice create for the 'Becks Festival Bar at Sydfest'. This video projection, doesn't have standard interaction in the way of a human interface, rather it reacts to the enviroment around it, playing the surrounding architecture. The exectution is rather simple. The designer imputs the restrictions of the building, i.e. limits of building, then dark spaces (windows etc) then uses an altering gravitational engine to form a picture with small objects then releases them into the effect of the G. field. This produces a quite interesting effect.

Ibielive i could use this concept to incorporate the surrounding environment but possibly use another input that would allow a responder to maybe put there face or body image into the design (shadow puppets?) then have the image piece apart.
http://vimeo.com/8648529

Insperation: Time Bomb - Interactive Graffiti (StupidKrap & Holler)

Time Bomb - Interactive Graffiti (StupidKrap & Holler)

This is an example of combining traditional art forms into multi media designs.

This was achieved by having 9 street artists paint new works over the same large canvas, while being recorded on camera. The final artwork was displayed next to a LCD screen of the same size and a video camera was positioned below it. This allowed an input for the responder to create motion and alter the fluid motion of the artwork to reveal all of the sub levels in the artwork.
I could use this sort of interaction so that the more inquisitive responders and find more in an art work.

http://vimeo.com/4741945

Insperation- BLPRNT "ecosystems"

This is another interactive multimedia design created by the designer Blprnt.

This design uses a program called Edlab, developed to track the increase in uses of certain blogs and posts. After inputting this information into processing Blprnt created a mini ecosystem of postes,starting with 20 blogs of similar nature then as the popularity of the blogs in creased so did the ecosystem until unique blogs and posts started to appear which created new seperations.
http://vimeo.com/13470772
Once again this is another way of looking for unconventional inputs into code to create interesting designs and creations.

Insperation- BLPRNT 'Just Landed....'

while looking at the different information inputs available on processing i stumbled across a slightly more unique one. This designer apparently having chat to a student friend studying a PHD in Bio-informatics was curious about the spend of a flu virus over different continents and new models to represent spread. While after a long chat he wondered about the the imformation virrus known as twitter.



The idea simple: use Twitter to search the sentence 'Just landed...' Calculate the position of the initial profile then the new location and then code appropriately.

http://vimeo.com/4587178


The Result: A interactive multimedia engaging design which responds to world wide movements of twitters traveling the world.



To quite interesting effect this design opens up the limited interaction of sound or simple movement to allow for firstly internet gossip then to show international movement which could lead to predictions and probabilities of human movement through countries.

This was a very interesting project shown inclass to get us thinking about possible ideas for interactive media using code.


Challenge
'The Victoria & Albert Museum commissioned us to create the Madejski Garden Winter Light Installation for 2008-9, to mark the start of their new digital programme of exhibitions. Besides being an engaging artwork, it had to be weatherproof, and have a presence beyond the Museum.'
Delivery
'A 4 metre high LED videowall and speaker system was placed above the water, connected to a Mac Pro generating the realtime audio and visual content. The software generates a daily video podcast of the artwork, forever. A series of 20,000 unique generative postcards were printed to promote the event.'
Results
'The installation had 100,000+ visitors throughout its 3 month stay, the video podcast spread worldwide reaching #2 in the iTunes Arts podcast chart.It has since been exhibited as 6 simultaneous window projections and 800 wall mounted postcards in the SIAD Gallery, Sheffield.'


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I found this art work to be very interesting demonstration of digital software code and medium to create riveting artwork. What first comes to mind when viewing this artwork, it is said that every interpretation of an art work is different for each individual. This artwork generates a constant changing experience of both visual and audio truly offering a unique experience to every responder to be evaluated in kind.



This artwork is a very good example of using magnetic field line libraries to produce a new visual component. I could also use this artwork to consider possibly combining resulting mediums. For example i shouldn't be bound by only producing one avenue of response. I could mix the experience by offering alternation of audio, visual, touch etc responses to different interactions with the media.

First Post!

This is my first post on my new blog!

This blog will display any relevant information concerning my new projects at university. This will include Research, Inspiration, concepts and the processes i used to create them.