Travel Application

Before I take off to England, I wanted to say that if anyone has any questions about my project feel free to comment to this post and I'll reply to your questions. I should have Internet access as soon as I get there. If for some reason, the presentation doesn't work tomorrow, I'll be happy to post some of my work up here for everyone to see. Good luck to everyone on their presentations.

Casual posting and a little economics

I just realized that last week I have inverted my postings so I posted here what should have been posted in the visualization blog. Well that might say how stressed and tired I am at the end of the semester. And I am still finishing up the long list of presentations I have for next week!

I came across a site that helps visualize economics but particularly a web site dedicated to data visualization of government data.
http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/

Travel Application

I just realized that I forgot to post an update on my project last week. I tried contact the Swedish destination marketing organization, but they never got back to me about getting authorization to use images. I ended up using images mainly from their Web site. If or when I put my application on Facebook I'll probably have to remove this content unfortunately. The images on Flickr for Sweden that were classified as creative commons tended to be not be very informative or visually interesting. I'm currently putting the final touches on my project and preparing my presentation. The thing about projects like this is there is always something that can be added or improved. I really am happy that I have been able to maintain the clean design while adding large amounts of content. I'm just trying to get everything to the point to where I'm highly satisfied.

Avant dernier poste du semestre

I have been putting together 2 more movies for my presentation, that makes 3 in all. I am wondering how long will everyone have to present? (in terms of maximum and minimum) - I also invited Dr. Miriam Zech, professor of music from the Music Department here at UF.

I really liked the presentation of Scot McCloud on Understanding Comics. I put the link to it on top by the title. What I liked the most about his ideas is the one where the cartoonist has the reader (viewer) see the panels, within the panels, and then imagine in between the panels. So between the panels there is nothing to see but there is a space to imagine. I like very much this idea. Music rests (in French "silences = 1 beat - pause = 2 beats) corresponds to this idea visually, because it is in the silent moments between sounds that you can most hear (by guessing, sensing) what's coming next.

Best wishes to Arturo and Anton in the Conference, we've been missing you guys today. I hope someone gets to record you and we can get to see the presentation too...

eComm in San Francisco

I hope all of you are doing great and your projects are in the final stretch without too much stress (a little is OK:-)
The conference is great, lots of good speakers and ideas. We are ready for ours tomorrow...
But for all of you here is a premiere peek:

Board game

Here is the final board game. I am in the process of finalizing the rules and touching up my presentation.

Updated site

Hi everyone!

My project site is updated. I have added in the "artsourcing" projects that others have made. Check it out and see what people have been working on.

SHARE

http://share.media.mit.edu/


Share is an experiment in designing a networked programming tool for distributed communities of practice.
It is an IDE that automatically shares all the code you write with everyone else that is using Share, and keeps track of how that code is used. Thus allowing you to see the network that grows around code you contribute to, borrow from, or just happen to be interested in.
Share is built upon processing!

powerpoint hell

I think that we have all sat through presentations like this. I thought with our final project date looming we could all use some levity.
HERE

Quck Project Update

I wanted to post what my homepage for my application looks like. If anyone wants to give me feedback on the layout, I'd appreciate it. Also, last class Arturo showed me Google Gadgets. I'm going to use some of these within my application. I'm planning on having most of the page layouts done by the end of this week.

Freedom of speech and Freedom of press

The idea of social networking is powerfully summarized by Linton C. Freeman’s article in how Cartoons have been visualizing, or focused visualization on social networking ideas such as “rumors”, “diffusion”, “connections”, “word of mouth”, etc. Caricatures and Cartoon figures, besides the comic humoristic side, have their own powerful visual speech and that’s what makes them so attractive to be read. In few words, a whole philosophical concept is summarized, visualized, radicalized, and in some extent, widely spread. I believe this joins Tufte’s idea of “confections”. Freeman’s article: See you in the Funny Papers: Cartoons and the Social Networks shows very well the relationship between a concept as such, and its visualization. The visualization of a concept makes this concept familiar and popular at the same time. In a way, this is, as I understand it, the root and the fruit of any culture. If a culture does not stand the test of visualization through media, humor, cartoons, etc. it is not worth being called a culture. Laughter is healthy in cartoons not because it ridicules the matter that it’s treating, but because it’s bringing it to light. And light purifies, and clarifies. The laughter that cartoons stimulate in us is one of sharing and caring. It is not the negative mocking part that it is about, but rather the positive learning healthy part. To say my thought plainly, countries who do not allow freedom of speech, freedom of press, do not allow cartoons or illustrations; and their only cultural concern is to censure, to restrict, to forbid, and to silent their artists and authors.

Parcipatory culture

Thursday during the game class, we had the visit of Dr Liza Potts that is specialized in parcipatory culture. She is working on the use of social software during times of disaster. She had us do an exercise that I think should be call visualizing the usability because not only it can help see the target audience but can allow one to see the relationship between the participants and the dynamics between a core concept and the participants. It appears to be a simple exercise but it can be difficult if the scope of one's project is big or there are many targeted audiences. If you want to learn more about her work you can check this site out: http://odu.academia.edu/LizaPotts or click on the title of my post

remixed

Hi.

Another quick update. In this class I have really thought a lot about the nature of artistic visualization. My theory is that it is almost viral. Movements spread and catch on as fast as people can see them. What better way to track something like this than by using code?

I have been reaching out to the processing community and sharing code with them. My idea is to mutate the sketches I generate by letting these become more of a collaboration. 

Tomorrow I will post the first of these experiments.

Website Online

I just put my solar position calculator online: http://corbettschoenfelt.com/solar/solar_position.html

Before you view it make sure you have the Unity web player plugin installed from: http://unity3d.com/webplayer/

Also, to walk around the house in first person view, press "1" then use the "wasd" keys and mouse to move - like in a video game :)

Continuing quest

It's late and I'm tired. Here is most recent shots of progress on radio TX and Arduino RX . This is more for my game project for the locating device but the things i have learned working on it apply to the mood broadcaster that I am working on as well. I modified another example I read in which the person used a 555 timer and potentiometer to blink an LED w/o an MCU or any other device. It was my hope that instead of the output timer of the 555 timer leading to an anode of an LED i would instead hook it to the data pin of the TX. I could than theoretically use the potentiometer to input values to the 555 and continually "blink" or broadcast that specific value out. The arduino with the FM receiver hooked to the RX or 0 pin of the microcontoller could than be told to listen for and return only that value or above that is being broadcast from the independent TX circuit.When the value was detected it could turn on the LED (and later scroll text in an LCD), hooked to pin 13 and ground of the MCU. This is my theory or method thus far. SO far i am not sure if its responding correctly or not. RIght now my hunch is that something is still amiss. I believe i need to test it with a 100k ohm Potentiometer as right now I am only using a 10kohm pot.

UGC/Citizen Journalism and Quick Project Update

National Geographic is asking it's readers to share their "stories of close encounters with volcanic power." I really find it interesting the idea of citizen journalists. Also, the pictures of Iceland's erupting volcano are truly spectacular.

Also, I wanted to include a quick project update. For my project, I have worked on several page layouts as well as researching the data necessary to fill these layouts for full mock ups. I may just have mock ups for the final project with a description of how I would proceed if I were to make this a running Facebook Application.

The Emerging Brain

The reading of Comment Flow, the visualization tool created by Dietmar Offenhuber and Judith Donath established, in my own synapses, a neural connection with memories that as a result are now closer, perhaps fixated in a longer term, or simply transported along a Network Path to a more focused state where I can observe it in more detail. Does any of this make sense to you?

The topology of a distance 3 network p.11

As early as in the 1930's, Jacob Moreno laid down the foundation of the discipline of social network analysis, which is I believe, the basis for Dietmar and Judith study of huge social networks, perhaps never envisioned by Moreno.

Social network diagram

One phrase in the study really called my attention:... it is the differences among the people (nodes) and their relationships (links) that create the specific structure of each network and that determine the strength and significance of the ties (p.2). Of course it is common to compare the internet with the human brain, and I do that all the time. The similarities are obvious to me. The strength of a neural connection happens pretty much (albeit chemically) in the same way as the above phrase implies.

Visualization of neuronal connections in the brain

Perhaps the internet, the social networks as neural clusters and other yet unknown developments that we cannot even imagine are still in a larvae stage, but the speed at which it grows and the way it interconnects with our own brains, which reinforce the connections, suggest to me that the Singularity proposed by Ray Kurzweil is indeed in track. I hope I get to see the emergence of our evolved brain.

Lovely Place

I think the article Visualizing Email Content: Portraying Relationships from Conversational Histories is very interesting.
The point I like the most is the one made about the keywords used to allow visualization of email archives.
Of course Chapeau! The project is worth admiration, though it needs further development.
I believe one of the best things at MIT and Harvard are the social components, and the spirit of group or team work. I went to Cambridge, Boston, last summer to accompany my daughter in her first week summer internship at Harvard, and I was impressed by this social dimension over there. You feel the same kind of human warmth in Paris. There are musicians playing and singing in the streets... and you can sense the close relationship between artists and civilization or urbanization. You can listen to an interesting TV interview with Judith Donath here

Congratulations to Irvika for her website. See you tomorrow.

Project update

Here is the original configuration I chose for the kaleidoscope- a composition of six triangles. The triangles are going to be made out colored plexi and encased with mirrors.

As you can see, the mirrors do not intersect to allow light to permeate from the sides only.


These are two colored plexi of the triangular prisms I have made so far:



And here are some of its effects when they were placed in the mirror case:

My website

I finally got the site running properly meaning that even my link on the first page is working. It might be not a big deal for a professional but when you are new to web designing, things never seem to work as you want.

When you click on the second page just click on the button then click "ok" for all the warnings. I need to add the markers for this page now and I will be done (for now)

Here is the link http://plaza.ufl.edu/irvikafrancois/ or you can simply click on the title of this post and you will go to the website.

other types of tools for artists/designers

Hi everyone. As you all know, my work in class is all done in Processing. I thought it would be good to also mention other tools designers can use in somewhat similar ways to Processing. Maybe these are tools you would want to check out for the future? This will also be on my processing blog in greater detail - I thought that people interested in Processing would also want to know what else is out there. I haven't found a good source that lists them all together in a clear way. 

openFrameworks (oF) - I have  not yet made anything with openFrameworks but it seems like the openFrameworks library and the Processing library have many similarities. Just as Processing is built upon Java, openFrameworks is built upon C++.  Unlike Processing, openFrameworks does not have an IDE built in.

pure data (pd) - Pure data was introduced to me by Pat Pagano. He's worked with it forever and uses it to create immersive visuals, control lighting, and create interactive art. I have done a little work in pure data. Pure data is a graphical programming language - the programs you create look like flow charts rather than lines of text.

Zwinky follow up

Finally, this took more than 24 hours.

Funny the adventures we go through until something digital can be finally visualized.

Comment Flow: Visualizing communication along a network path

The article gets to the heart of the major weakness of social networking sites to actually replicate a real life social circle in that as the article states social networking sites treat "All friend links are equal, and usually equally visible to public. The information is not very reliable - extra information
is required to acknowledge the highly differentiated nature of human relationships."
The article than goes on to propose plausible solutions to this problem. Through examination of major social networking platforms the author concludes that to apply algorithims to more accurately and organically represent people you are truly friends with is through comment analysis. That a system could crawl the people you converse with and comment with the most could represent those people as closer friends.

Get Your Walk Score

Enter your address at http://www.walkscore.com/ and you can view the 'walkability' of your house based on nearby amenities. You get a score, a map of amenities, and a percentage of residents with a higher walk score than yours - mine is 62.

Defeating the Dark Side of Social Media

I came across this article in Business Week, which I found interesting about social media and companies. Even though, social media has been around for many years now, companies are still struggling with the expanded reach of users-generating content. It seems that companies are always slower to catch up then consumers. While I was looking for inspiration for my project on user-generated content and tourism, I was really surprised how far behind some companies are. The companies seem to either do it poorly or just pretend it doesn't exist. Although, I think as social media increases more companies will be unable to ignore it.

Customizable Cartoon

This customizable cartoon is from Zwinky. You can create cartoon characters, cloth them with all kinds of accessories, give them whatever skin color you wish, chose their hair type, their gender, etc.

I don't why the picture does not show. Perhaps the security settings of the computer.

I'll show you tomorrow in class.

Visualizing the newspaper of the future...

After listening to Arielle Emmett's presentation yesterday I started wondering what role, if any newspapers will play in the future. I don't think they will exist. It seems like so many times I hear journalists talk about the future of media they seem like a bunch of suits running scared of an obvious regime change.

Emmett mentioned that losing newspapers could be a threat to our very democracy. I highly doubt it. Isn't blogging the most democratic form of news? I think the news media has to resign themeselves with the fact that they can't compete with some kid with a camera phone.  Plus, they need to recognize that good writing can come from anywhere and not all of these staff writers are publishing anything worth reading.

The second performance by Kseniya Simonova:
here

Fibonacci Spiral

Arturo I know you're a fan of the golden ratio, thought you might like this iteration of it for your collection:

See You in the Funny Papers: Cartoons and Social Networks

This reading resonates in me. Social networks have completely change my life. Before hi5 and facebook I was simply a shy person thriving to make new friends. Well, I had my colleagues from my years at the university but most of the time we had different interests. Figure 3 shows a cartoons that made me smile: Because of networking sites I needed a new address book. One interesting thing is when you meet someone in the street and you both stare at each other until you remember that this is one of these "new" friends.

At the same time, I think that these relationships created by networking on the web can create a toll on "real" relationship. For instance, the more people I meet that are more like me the more I lean towards them instead of getting closer to my non-virtual friends. If it was food, I would say that networking satisfies soul's craving. And I think that the cartoons on p 6 portray that perfectly! And the sky (sorry), the world wide web is the limit!

One other great thing that i like about networks is that it offers the opportunity to truly know the other person. Don't need years to figure out who that person is truly; the history of a wall on Facebook tells all.

Besides networking is great when one is working on a project. I usually simply update my status and ask for help. I have FB friends that have more than five thousands friends thus I will ask them to borrow their status for 2 hours when I need feedback; and people are usually eager to help. Figure 18 totally shows how circular network connections are.

Project Update

As I do not have a whole lot new to show at this point I'll just give a brief update. I'm using Unity for my solar visualizer as it is capable of creating a 3d environment that is interactive allowing me to link actions to objects such as a sun, which is linked to a position calculator that updates continuously... and it's free. Also, I am using a book from my solar engineering course I had last semester to help me calculate things like solar flux on an inclined surface which leads to power output, collector area, ext.

Visualization paper

Hi everyone. As the resident painter in the class, my Visualization paper is about contemporary art and the use of Photoshop. I am writing a longer paper because I hope to submit it to a few journals. So I don't think I will have it completely done by tomorrow, though it is getting quite long. The artists I am focusing on mainly are Cory Arcangel and Julie Mehretu.  David Hockney and Kevin Appel's work will also be mentioned to a lesser degree. I was wondering if the class had any insight on other artists that could be mentioned to compare or contrast? They do not have to necessarily present their work digitally but they do have to maybe illustrate or demonstate something to do with Photoshop. For example, I'm using an article about Leonardo's presentation drawings to support some of my research. I know our class thinks very out of the box so I hope someone can give me insight for a new angle!

Good example of strong Visual Design

Check out this site http://www.stanick.com/. I found it accidentally, It's by an artist named Peter Stanick. The site is an artwork in itself. Try clicking through it I could never get it to repeat. The sites strength as an artwork lies in its cohesion in its design as well as its depth of execution.

Geo-positionning across the years

In order to revise my visualization paper, I have been reading about geo-positionning. I found and interesting article quite old but that I think is a good summary. It is when reading such articles and comparing to what is feasible today (remember the video on bing's maps) that we can see how technology is evolving very fast. Many expectations have been realized such as the 3D visualization, the improvement on the quality of the pixels etc.

The references sections also list some helpful websites.
Read it Here

processing progress

For this class I am working on presenting all of my Processing sketches in one place. The most user-friendly way to do this was to create a blog that also functions as an interactive portfolio. Plus, I plan to continue working in Processing and updating the blog portion with information as well as great resources.  Blogger seemed like an obvious choice and something I could upgrade as much or as little as I would like - wordpress was another option but seems to reject a lot of simple html editing as well as not displaying the java applets correctly.* I'm still working on how everything looks but please check out http://processingprogress.blogspot.com/ . These sketches will also be on http://www.openprocessing.org/ because I hope to work collaboratively in the future with other artists.

*It seems like a lot of people have had similar problems with wordpress from what I have looked at online. Will blog more on that later.