water veins

natural motion with a haunting similarity to a vascular system. thanks to Paul Kahn and NEW Magazine.

links to self portrait pdf's

here are pdf files showing 8 self portraits drawn with my eyes closed from an exercise in class compared with self portraits I have drawn from as far back as when I was a teenager.

self portrait 1
self portrait 2
self portrait 3
the above 3 are just portraits drawn from memory with my eyes closed

self portrait bad 1
self portrait bad 2
these next 2 were drawn when I was thinking about a time when I was being told I was bad

self portrait child 1
self portrait child 2
these 2 above were drawn while thinking of myself as a child

self portrait overjoyed
this final one was drawn while I thought about a time when I was overjoyed.

link to as3 class notes

I started posting my class notes from Brian's class in a separate blog. this way they will all be in one place without other junk inbetween. go to my main blog at viacamp.blogspot.com and look in the column on the right under good links if you want to see them.

boston ballet

Wii night at dmi

work hard. play hard. and drive like a bat out of hell! wii night at dmi is a serious study all about passing information through the wiimote. ok and a little bit of friendly competition. tennis anyone?

chaos, mojo, talisman, hoodoo, randomness and brownian motion

"Chaos = order without surface predictability." -Bala

"Talisman or amulet, a small object intended to bring good luck and/or protection to its owner



Mojo (pronounced /ˈmoʊdʒoʊ/) is a term commonly encountered in the African-American folk belief called hoodoo. A mojo is a type of magic charm, often of red flannel cloth and tied with a drawstring, containing botanical, zoological, and/or mineral curios, petition papers, and the like. It is typically worn under clothing.

"Spider's Nest Blues" by Hattie Hart and the Memphis Jug Band, Hart wants to go to New Orleans to get her toby (mojo) "fixed" because she is "having so much trouble" -- the mojo is protective and its power is wearing off, as witnessed by the "bad luck" she is having.



An amulet ( [Pliny], meaning "an object that protects a person from trouble"), a close cousin of the talisman (from Arabic طلاسم tilasm, ultimately from Greek telesma or from the Greek word "talein" which means "to initiate into the mysteries").

"Brownian motion (named in honor of the botanist Robert Brown) is the random movement of particles suspended in a liquid or gas or the mathematical model used to describe such random movements

Consider a large balloon of 10 meters in diameter. Imagine this large balloon in a football stadium. The balloon is so large that it lies on top of many members of the crowd. Because they are excited, these fans hit the balloon at different times and in different directions with the motions being completely random. In the end, the balloon is pushed in random directions, so it should not move on average. Consider now the force exerted at a certain time. We might have 20 supporters pushing right, and 21 other supporters pushing left, where each supporter is exerting equivalent amounts of force. In this case, the forces exerted from the left side and the right side are imbalanced in favor of the left side; the balloon will move slightly to the left. This type of imbalance exists at all times, and it causes random motion of the balloon. If we look at this situation from far above, so that we cannot see the supporters, we see the large balloon as a small object animated by erratic movement."

Einstein's Explanation of Brownian Motion; click here, this is a link. this is an animation showing a bunch of small balls making a bigger ball move around by randomly hitting it over and over again.


Below: Lucretius's scientific poem On the Nature of Things (c. 60 BC) has a remarkable description of Brownian motion of dust particles

"Observe what happens when sunbeams are admitted into a building and shed light on its shadowy places. You will see a multitude of tiny particles mingling in a multitude of ways... their dancing is an actual indication of underlying movements of matter that are hidden from our sight... It originates with the atoms which move of themselves [i.e. spontaneously]. Then those small compound bodies that are least removed from the impetus of the atoms are set in motion by the impact of their invisible blows and in turn cannon against slightly larger bodies. So the movement mounts up from the atoms and gradually emerges to the level of our senses, so that those bodies are in motion that we see in sunbeams, moved by blows that remain invisible."




all quotes except for Bala's taken from Wikipedia, September 30 and October 4, 2008.

Microsoft releases Photosynth for public use

I haven't checked this out yet but hope to once I get a little caught up with the rest of my work. Microsoft has released an online version of its software that collect groups of images and builds a kind of 3D model of a place out of them. it's available here

terminology considerations for a catalog of movement

I'm considering words to describe my catalog of movement.

lexography
The pursuit of lexicography is divided into two related disciplines:

* Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries.

* Theoretical lexicography is the scholarly discipline of analyzing and describing the semantic, syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationships within the lexicon (vocabulary) of a language, developing theories of dictionary components and structures linking the data in dictionaries, the needs for information by users in specific types of situation, and how users may best access the data incorporated in printed and electronic dictionaries. This is sometimes referred to as metalexicography.

General lexicography focuses on the design, compilation, use and evaluation of general dictionaries, i.e. dictionaries that provide a description of the language in general use. Such a dictionary is usually called a general dictionary or LGP dictionary. Specialized lexicography focuses on the design, compilation, use and evaluation of specialized dictionaries, i.e. dictionaries that are devoted to a (relatively restricted) set of linguistic and factual elements of one or more specialist subject fields, e.g. legal lexicography. Such a dictionary is usually called a specialized dictionary or LSP dictionary.



taxonomy
Originally the term taxonomy referred to the classifying of living organisms (now known as alpha taxonomy); however, the term is now applied in a wider, more general sense and now may refer to a classification of things, as well as to the principles underlying such a classification.

Almost anything — animate objects, inanimate objects, places, concepts, events, properties, and relationships — may be classified according to some taxonomic scheme.

The term taxonomy may also apply to relationship schemes other than parent-child hierarchies, such as network structures with other types of relationships. Taxonomies may include single children with multi-parents, for example, "Car" might appear with both parents "Vehicle" and "Steel Mechanisms"; to some however, this merely means that 'car' is a part of several different taxonomies.[1]

A taxonomy might also be a simple organization of kinds of things into groups, or even an alphabetical list. However, the term vocabulary is more appropriate for such a list. In current usage within "Knowledge Management", taxonomies are seen as less broad than ontologies as ontologies apply a larger variety of relation types.


ontology
In both computer science and information science, an ontology is a formal representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts. It is used to reason about the properties of that domain, and may be used to define the domain.

Ontologies are used in artificial intelligence, the Semantic Web, software engineering, biomedical informatics, library science, and information architecture as a form of knowledge representation about the world or some part of it. Common components of ontologies include:

* Individuals: instances or objects (the basic or "ground level" objects)
* Classes: sets, collections, concepts, types of objects, or kinds of things.[1]
* Attributes: aspects, properties, features, characteristics, or parameters that objects (and classes) can have
* Relations: ways in which classes and individuals can be related to one another



lexicon
In linguistics, the lexicon (from Greek Λεξικόν) of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes.

The lexicon includes the lexemes used to actualize words. Lexemes are formed according to morpho-syntactic rules and express sememes. In this sense, a lexicon organizes the mental vocabulary in a speaker's mind: First, it organizes the vocabulary of a language according to certain principles (for instance, all verbs of motion may be linked in a lexical network) and second, it contains a generative device producing (new) simple and complex words according to certain lexical rules. For example, the suffix '-able' can be added to transitive verbs only, so that we get 'read-able' but not 'cry-able'.

Usually a lexicon is a container for words belonging to the same language. Some exceptions may be encountered for languages that are variants, like for instance Brazilian Portuguese compared to the Portuguese language, where a lot of words are common and where the differences may be marked word by word.

When linguists study the lexicon, they study such things as what words are, how the vocabulary in a language is structured, how people use and store words, how they learn words, the history and evolution of words (i.e. etymology), types of relationships between words as well as how words were created.

An individual's lexicon, lexical knowledge, or lexical concept is that person's knowledge of vocabulary.



vocabulary
The vocabulary of a person is defined either as the set of all words that are understood by that person or the set of all words likely to be used by that person when constructing new sentences.


all definitions taken from wikipedia. links to the articles are placed on the terms. I will post some thoughts on the terms considered and why I am considering them soon.

notes and suggestions on research agenda

I've been pooling notes for the exhaustive and exhausting self-study that I need to submit by October 1 in order to keep my job. one of the items I am asked to supply is my research interest and agenda. I do not know what a research agenda is, so I did some searching and found the following links.

Professor Barbara Ryder of Rutgers University has a simple, very understandable list of ideas on how ad why to do research.
this link goes to a pdf with her questions and answers. I am going to use this one in writing the paragraph on my research goals and agenda for my self-study.

Luis Villa made a blog posting of a series of notes from a seminar on establishing a research agends. First Movers focuses on legal research but it seems to have good general tips on what belongs in a research agenda and how to think about doing research long-term.

Getting A Teaching Job: The Research Agenda again, is written by a law professor. this article describes what a research agenda is and goes on to discuss why schools look for research agenda in prospective professors. I think the approach fits a variety of fields.

Brad Neuberg's "Coding in Paradise" is one programmer's musings about his own personal approach to research and why he finds it important. there is a list of research questions down on the page that I found helpful when I start thinking about my own research questions, particularly now that I need to explain them in writing to an academic, liberal arts audience that will most likely not understand any technical information but will very likely be evaluating my writing against an unknown and undefined criteria.


You and Your Research is a transcript of a seminar talk given by Richard W. Hamming of Bell communications research on March 7, 1986. the talk is about his relationship to his research peppered with some stories of others around him and where they succeeded or failed in their life's research. it's interesting.

links to my processing sketches

pointLight5 is my sketch for moving light around following the mouse. I got it to read mouseX and mouseY.

(speaking of mice, I cleaned a lot of droppings in the studio this morning. pretty yucky.)

useMyClass10 is a space with the point light and another kind of light from the pointLight sketch with some spheres created with a class and some composite cubes with a stationary cube in the same place as a non stationary cube that rotates according to the mouse. it looks pretty cool.

moveClass4 is a sketch that I started with the hope of making the elements of useMyClass float around on the screen. it didn't work out that way but what happened is really interesting. I have no control over this one and I don't know how it does what it does but it does move.


I posted moveClass5 here also but the only difference from moveClass4 is the background color. today I couldn't see the darker one on my screen, probably because I was facing the rising sun so I made it lighter.

Jason, exporting processing sketches to html is easy. so I did some for all of you to see.

the turing test web page

this is a web site that has a collection of information about the Turing Test including some links to online bots that you can interact with.

Jason Salavon revisited

last week I posted a link to Jason Salavon's web site after looking at only a few pieces. today I took some more time to look at his work and found The Grand Unification Theory (Part Four: Every Second of Deep Throat). he took one frame from each second of the film and arranged them from light to dark radiating from the center of the page. he did one for "Star Wars," "Snow White" and "It's a Wonderful Life," too.

notes aug 21

I put my notes in my sketchbook for this class. if you want to see them you will have to find me and ask to borrow the book for a minute.

notes August 20

Make an array

Fruit[] fruits = 
{orange,pear,apple,pomegranate}

Fruits[1] = orange
Fruits[4] = pomegranate

for (int =0; i < fruits.length; i++)

Or try an if statement

if(count < array.length-1) {
 do something;
count++;    //this at the very end and the only use of count for the 
  //array.

}


println(array.length);   //to find errors in the array counter  


force += attraction*(target-value);

Cygwin – Unix(BSD)
Virtual box open source virtual linux for pc.
Curl is easy means of transferring files to web. url + file name needed to post music data.

Need unix prompt from pc to do music stuff.

JMyron libraries Dan worked with. Processing constructs – look under video capture/frame differencing.

A frame full of pixels is a really big array. Create multidimensional array with rows and columns. Will make one massive array


Good to use camera with fixed focus and fixed direction.

numPixels = video.width * video.height,;

Video with windows will need: api fall into 2 categories,

native video and
each platform
capture talks to camera and
avi mov are containers. Car how codec that are inside those containers.
H.264,MJPEG, DivX
NTSC, PAL
Interlaced
Codecs
Hardware
And making things work natively on different platforms.
Either make your own library or use things that can talk to all of them

Check out real world video compression book from peachpit to learn how to encode video.


Windows : directShow, quickTime for windows
Mcos: quickTime (Cocoa; OTKit)


For capture, (important part)

MacOS quickTime cocoa has capture support
Windows directShow, no capture for quickTime. Worse, QT Cocoa is C++ mac only software, DS C++ for windows. Java doesn’t support any of that.

OT Java = processing.video
Mac: playback, capture ,terrible
Windows: playback even more terrible
Future: unspeakably awful
Deprecated

Don’t install update install new quicktime because it will break this stuff. No support at apple to check if QT java works. Capture works ok. Playback not. Should support DV camera and maybe HD camera. Windows doesn’t work at all.


WidVDIG video digitizer doesn’t talk to windows at all.

Bottom line - basic playback ok maybe on mac windows, advanced playback is trouble. Basic sketch working with video. Ask Peter to help, join the army trying to figure out how to do it.

ffmpge – java very fast and works in real time. No library now but maybe soon.

Mac capture ok
Windows look at JMyron for directShow support.
Future ffmpeg-java for playback. Java media components for playback
Use native libraries for capture.

Should be able to fix this with libraries outside of java. Flash capture works well because somewhere there is a set of libraries adobe supports that works on all platforms and they keep fixing them when they break.


If things break its not your fault. Capture applications won’t work on windows unless you use library that supports native video capture or

Mac QT for java.
Nothing on Linux.


cross platform libraries




OTHER KINDS OF INTERACTION


Watercolor

MouseX mouseY, pmouseX, pmouseY are reserved variables in processing. Pmouse I think means previous mouse position.

Remember, you always get a periodic rate. Never get continuous data, you get a set of samples and if the difference is great enough you get gaps, stepping, aliasing. You may need to interpolate to make things seem smooth.



Hold shift press play and you get whole screen mode. Can also hide menu bar and other thing.
Can also hide cursor noCursor();

Most pixels ever mostpixelsever.com has tutorials and how to use big screens. Also an explanation for how to use presentation mode without menu bar.

And can look at flickr for some other examples.



Try iterating some drawing sketches over and over again and see if you can get something to work.

Dist function: dist();

lets you measure distances without resorting to heavy math Pythagorean theorem.


Today apple store put out app that takes data values from iPhone.

Collisions with text is easy, its a rectangle. If something collides with a rectangle look for min x left edge, max x right edge, min y etc.

When in doubt, google trig and see what math has to say about the problem. Look on the processing site for some stuff. There may be answers there, too.


Toxic libraries has example vector interactions for complex shapes. Also has sin/cos lookup tables. Makes transitions gradual in movements. Think of roller coaster. Has wavy shape. At top & bottom going side to side, on sides going more vertically as a transition between the top and bottom. Slow down and speed up between states.


Shiffman book:
Look at chapter 5, fake physics and specifically 5.8 and try example 5.9.
Look at chapters 8 and 9.
Look at example 13.8, oscilation. chapter 13 is math stuff.

Location += location + “speed”
(location = location + some amount)

Then

force += attraction * (target- value);
acceleration = force/mass;
vel = (vel + acceleration) * damping;

Look on Ben Fry’s web site, http://benfry.com for examples from the data visualization book. Peter recommends it as the second processing book to buy.

Look for integrator class.

Basic interpolation in watercolor 1a sketch.


Build interaction into objects by building it into their class.

two digital artists experimenting with media

Jason Slavon has been experimenting with making art from data for a long time. he seems to have used every kind of code there is. "Top 25 Grossing films of All Time, 2 x 2," "Every Playboy Centerfold " and "Homes for Sale" are my favorites but I haven't looked at everything yet. ok, maybe he maybe hasn't used processing at all but his work precedes processing and explores the interaction of data and visual in really cool ways.

30 September: today I took a few minutes and looked at the "Late Night Trio," which has 64 nights of video and audio of Leno, Conan and Letterman composited into single frames. now that's my favorite.


Boris Muller is a graphic designer interested in translating text into visual expression in programmed ways. he also has some map experiments on his web site. I don't seem to be able to see the maps due to plugin incompatibilities. need to explore a little more.

font conference at college humor

Watch this video casting a group of fonts as characters. the fonts are characterized by their names, not any understanding of the concept of their design or the reasons behind their design or their historical significance, making it great for the general public but not for any serious insight into typography. still its really funny.

Joe's 5 tips for better writing

Joe's 5 tips for better writing - the nasty version. I think its time for this to be easily available.

March 20, 2008. Joe gave 5 tips for better writing during our class discussion. He said he would make a better version for us, but for those of us who appreciate the spontaneous nature of what he said in class, here is the unedited version taken from my notes:

1. Use active voice
2. Be detailed
3. Vary sentence structure
4. Write as though you are talking to someone
5. Use examples


and the free, bonus tips:

1. Put the main point at the beginning of the sentence
2. Don't use big words you don't understand
3. Be assertive, unequivocal in your writing


but wait, one cool quote
Sartre about Giacometti: "It was like he was trying to cut fat out of space." Meaning, I think, edit your writing, rinse and repeat until squeaky clean.

august 14 notes

August 14 notes

Minim libraries for using sound
Tritonin libraires will be future for sound in processing

toxi.code or toxilibs (look at google code).


Object oriented programming

An extension of the way to work. If you use functions you are starting to use object oriented programming.

Attributes and then stept.

Instantiate object – choose instance variables. Push matrix and pop matrix inside the class so you can draw lots of them. Variable in object-speak is an attribute. Can change attributes over time like a variable and find owh what they bcome.


Underscore is to separate variable that has already been defined. So it’s an instance of the variable and easier to figure out what you used because it’s similar without being the same, which you can’t use the same variable for 2 different thing.

To be really good you would encapsulate those values. Below is good code form for programming with many classes. Not usual for processing sketches which should be fast and simple.

void setX(_x) {
 x = _x; 
}

void get() {
 y = _y; 
}

Private variables are not available outside of something.


Peter showed an example of using laptop microphone to read into the cube tower and change the stacking order so it pops. Then he did a spectral analysis.

Objects makes it easier to use more than one object. Showed array of cube towers that react to his voice in different ways. Efficient and fast. Frequency spectrum. Has same basic idea.

Making arrays of objects. Go to people example.

CubeTower[] towers;

Class name[] array instance name. use plural for name of array so you remember what it is when you see it again.

When you create an object variable you make a space in memory for it. Like an empty box. First you create a name for it.

For an array, you make more of them. So name array and make a variable for it. Then you fill each empty box with some stuff.

Person[] people;
people = new Person[4];

pushMatrix and popMatrix is within the object class to draw but not within draw in this case.


For next week read dan shifmann’s class chapter 8 about object oriented programming and chapter 9 and do the examples.




Ben Fry book Visualizing Data uses processing for all the examples so if you want to do lots of rollover types of things get that book and look at how he does the examples. The book is not about processing but still makes a good reference work.

augusst 13 notes

August 13 notes


Think of loading data as columns (with headers) into objects. Put those object names into classes. function has set of inputs with set of outputs. Object describes a broad range of attributes and then function inside the class (called a method) that uses the attributes to do something.

sometimes first row has names for the columns. You can start at row 2 to use the data without the column heads. Attributes would be the column heads. Jason could have called his class Player because it is the thing that draws the players.

splitToken takes a string chops up into pieces based on a character. Jason’s table has both tab separated and tab separated columns. How did he solve that? splitToken can separate by more than one data type. WHITESPACE in his code made any number of spacebar spaces as space.

His object “Player” creates a lot of variables. His array fills the objects with data. The dot in the

Class Dog }
int length;
int color;
String breed;
}

Dog fido = new Dog(13, 0x00ff00, “terrier”);
int myLenght = fido.length     //the dot is important because it pulls up the attributes. 

records[totalRebounds].TR ...
 

Jason used variable int startingEntry = 0;
It increments each time you press the mouse. Use variable instead of number because it’s hard to understand without a name or because it has to …

Jason’s code is literal. Doesn’t look at minimum and maximum. Can not iterate through a set of data and adjust through …

With delicate variables audio signal or particle need to calibrate the data can use library from noisepages.com that has onscreen sliders for calibrating data ranges to calibrate the ranges to get number feed back and use those numbers in the code.

Look for prototyping article on Peter’s site. There is article for prototyping application to work out what to do with lighting based on the sound. Crosses and numbers in video are only used in the calibration but turned off for the performance.

For centering the text need to find the length of the string and then center that.
Processinghacks.com for good cheats and tricks for processing




Fonts are lame in processing and everybody knows it. There are workarounds but none of them really work very well.

Vertext by Michael Chang was a library for creating type as shapes in processing but it is now gone from the link on the processing site.

Now use NextText library

Geomerative also does font importing. Look at examples. They interpreted the geometry data embedded in the font file. Has its own set of classes dealing with shapes


Scott mapped his itunes library into 3d space with dots.

ProXML undocumented but he used it to import his data. Now he can design the space and can creates all disks and each time it draws it moves them toward the x y coordinates that they are going to. Used easing to get it to move naturally.

x += (destx - x) * easing;
y += (destx - y) * easing;
z += (destx - z) * easing;
 

to make sphere use photoshop sprite and use pointSprite in openGL (extention maybe 2.0) image command in processing creates a rectangle and pasts an image on that rectangle. Point spirtes make the rectangle a point and positions the sprite to that. Only works with high end processors.

Could brute force figure where the camera is and always face the disk toward the camera.

Can use a spacing algorithm for layout to position things on the screen.



Array out of bounds error will always be [] index number. To troubleshoot look for the place where the problem is and work backward to find the broken part.

For array with 4 elements. Programming counts from 0. if you do length array.lenght
Object.attribute

Array has 4 items in it but it counts them.

To turn into index number need to do something.
In this case it is array.length-1

Set of classes exist
Arrays in processing work because of how they work in java. Packages called java.util in java has set of utility classes including data structures. It changes. Processing can use up to / including java 5. java numbers don’t go sequentially. Java 1, 1.1 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 (same as 2), 5, 6, 7se, openTDK. Is backwards compatible language. Processing targeted 1.3 and 1.4 as targer language. Any mac guaranteed to have 1.4. good compatible version.

.0143 supports jave 5 but not after those. Not stable yet. But can use 1.4 and 5 syntax and most libraries are built on version 1.4, which is java 2.1.4 does most of the things that people need. Almost nothing you need in 5, 6, or 7.
Code from java books should easily drop into processing and work. Processing compiles the language.

Java compiles code for the processor for the virtual machine that can run anywhere. Has to be compiled but processing does it.

Processing goes through an interpreter then compiler. It interprets all the drawing commands into java code then compiles.

How to get xml files online

proXML
simpleML

swivel.com is good for data

check the.echonest.com for music visualization api’s.

here is a video made by a mad hacker that is 4k in size.

How to do:
Peter showed particle animation using gradient fills. Not designed to always face front. How to do it?

Need open gl import to do this thing. Need to be able to talk to openGL so make a n obkect PGraphicsOpenGL


Here are the things you need to get to make openGL work for

import javax.media.opengl.*
import processing.opengl.*;

PGraphicsOpenGL pg1;
GL gl;

void setup() {
  size (1024,768,OPENGL);
}

void draw() 
{
 pgl = (PGraphicsOpenGL) g; 
 gl = pgl.begin();
 

 //makes blending based on alpha values
 gl.glDisable(GL.GL_DEPTH_TEST);  // don't know why works - disables depth test fixes glitch
 gl.glEnable(GL.GL_BLEND);   //makes the blend
 gl.glBlendFunc(GL.GL_SRC_ALPHA,GL.GL_ONE);   //chooses blend mode 
}

Look for this book
openGL red book and orange book – massive. Some are documented on openGL.org. look for openGL and not directX ot HLSL do this on the 3d card for efficiency in processing.

Navigating knowledge – pick out what is important and let people do those. Otherwise it is overwhelming.



Chap 17 is brush up of what we already did

Read chap 18 – data input with examples and rss, yahoo libraries. Has rollover function.

Look in chapter 19 for syncing ML, client server stuff, and stuff like that.

July 31 notes

Put data folder into sketch folder. Put font into data folder.

Tools > create font
Do not check all characters box or all the funky characters will be embedded in the file.
Processing fonts are all bitmaps, created in processing

textFont(myCentury, 100);

= (font name, size);

2 arguments for text

text("Whoo. Fonts.", 50, 150);

numbers are x and y coordinates.


P3D runs without any extra stuff in a browser
OPENGL will run after asking for use of the graphics card that the user has to authorize.



Create text file
CSV coma separated values
TSC tab separated values
Rows are separated by carriage returns.

unn


June 13 39%
July 16 19%
August 29 1%



Strint[] value = to call for a text file and name the file

Split cuts the rows up into columns. It goes into an array command.




Find datasources at manyeyes.
Or cencus buread, Ben Fry’s site, visualizing data,



FIND DATA
USE YOUR OWN DATA
TRY TO VISUALIZE IT.