Here Be Dragons

Just a quick pointer to Todd Furmanski's USC Interactive Media thesis project, Here Be Dragons.



I can definitely recommend reading back over the development of this foggy, atmospheric, generative landscape and l-system creature marvellousness at Todd's blog.

(via WMMNA & Hi-res)

Color Code

Color Code by Martin Wattenberg combines 33,000 words from the english language, with the colours found in images returned from searching those words, to make an interactive map. Simular in aesthetic to his work on the stock market maps from a few years ago, this is an interesting example of using one technique to drive another. Something which public tagging and rss are making more accessible.

physical computing II

So far I can upload simple programs that display looping patterns. Interesting though is that I can send, to the board, realtime serial signals if I have a processing program running on the PC.

I want to thank to Tom for informing me about wiring. Thank you (teaser :) )

to be continued........

Physical computing

Hi there, I post some stuff from my project. I work in the field of physical computing and I have just managed to build my first working prototype.
I am using the wiring software which is actually a sister project of processing. Users can create their programs in the wiring environment editor. The user's programs are compiled and then could be downloaded to the Wiring electronics I/O board. Once the program is downloaded to the board, it is executed on it.

The concept of my project is about taking "simple" everyday objects and upload to them some sort of "intelligence". My prototype is actually a table lamp from habitat that consists of an array of LEDs, I just rebuild it and interfere the wiring board. The microcontroller of the board enables me to control every LED individually.

A couple of new contributors...

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed a couple of new contributors have started posting recently. Welcome to Matt Wade and Karen Martin, both joining me as MSc VE alumni-bloggers.

I'll introduce the other contributors to this blog as and when I tease them out of hiding.

Unreal Art

UnrealArt by Alison Mealy uses software written in Processing to generate postscript drawings (and fantastic canvas prints) from the movements of AI bots in custom levels of Unreal Tournament. It's all rather lovely.



There's more at Alison's blog, and the work will be part of The Centre of Excellence in Digital Design exhibition which looks well worth a visit if you're in the Huddersfield area.

(via Chris O'Shea at PixelSumo)

UVA Mirror

Very Interesting project at Kemistry on Charlotte Rd, EC2, from UVA.

'A stereo camera pair creates a moving three-dimensional image of the viewer, projected in real time into the space.'

Sequences of images from the camera are uploaded to an online gallery. Also, an intersting use of sound to accompany the camera movements.

Oh, and its free!

Paradoxymoronic

Writing on John Thackara's In the Bubble, William Blaze identifies that essence of humanity - the ability to maintain a contradiction - as a fundamental aspect of the design world:

A designer navigating a complex world inevitably needs to pick their focus, pick where their hypocrisy lies. Environmental architects rely on high speed computers filled with toxins to build zero emission buildings. Solar engineers suck massive power off the grid in an effort to build technology that ends it.

And so it is with emergent systems - the endless designer-driven modulation and refinement of an ostensibly automated process, the carefully hand-constrained parameters of a so-called open-ended search and optimisation problem. With simulation of embodied agents too, we are presented with a contradiction in terms by agents which are given life by a coherent reality whilst never escaping the virtual.

Food for thought, and an interesting article (via Matt Jones).

Computational Origami

Quinn over at Ambiguous has notes from a talk about Computational Origami at OSCon. Fascinating stuff.

Shapeshifter

Shapeshifter from Jesper Bentzen and Jonas Mouritsen looks fun. From the website:

Interactiv installation designed for busy streets. People interact by standing in front of the large screen. A camera records the user one slice at a time enabling the user to make strange bodies. The recorded slices are stored for other people to play with.

(via processing.org/exhibition)