day 2 - the droning crowd

today i messed around with writing a program in Processing that reads all the new tweets that people are saying out loud.

I was initially trying to get it so that tweets would just read over each-other in different voices to sound like a droning crowd, but on one computer it was just too complicated to understand anything. Maybe with a lot of computers in one space it would work.

I ended up finding a voice synthesizer that I liked that sounded really somber. I guess I was thinking about this initially as a way to feel like you're not alone when you are alone, but the somber voice makes me feel like maybe it should be coming out of a megaphone. It has a tone more like someone droning orders in a sterile environment, turning the listeners into zombies. I think that getting zombified by these web2.0 services is something that actually happens, so I feel like this fits. By zombified I mean getting so involved that you start living an extra life on the web 2.0, and that life is totally separate from your real life, but it sucks you in. I don't really know where this piece is going, but I feel like it does a good job representing the pull and danger of these networks, at first it just is weird and annoying, but then you can end up getting really into it and leaving it on while you do other work.

That was pretty rambling, heres an audio file of the sound

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-zach

Style Frame Experiment for Screen

Those are style frames I created in Photoshop, to try and give a different look for how I'm going to present my footage on screen.
Each style frame has some sort of a meaning.

The first one: I wanted to have few frames that one will represent the "unedited" version of how one of them trying to make the tape, will be "dirty" looking, out of focus, bad framing...
The second frame will be the "edited" tape that will run on the side, and with sound I will jump from one to another...
The other screens will resembles issues from dancing, drugs, the image factor, everything that surround the demanding scene of the circuit.

Second one: I tried to show how it might look when there's a scene with few of my characters at the same time. At this specific scene it's when Josh meets Shane for the first time and they click, while Ben eavesdropping and doesn't like what he hears...So you will see all three of them at the same time, might edit at some points to a montage of images and animation at each screen to resemble how they feel inside....

Third one: I tried to empower the importance of knowing how to move, and understand the music, so you see three different acts that Shane shows how he loves to dance and the feel of drugs that help him "feel" the music...I also added some sort of a volume bar which I can animate to show how the music actually "helps" the circuit attendees to "feel" what they think they are, and how it can raise your feelings or drop them....
That bar can be permanent through out the film...

Forth one: is another way ( a more standard) to show four different views on one character. I think I can use it to push the buttons and show how our mind can play tricks on us, especially when on the influence of drugs.

Fifth one: I was thinking of it as a strip of clips that move and only when in the middle you get to hear what's in that scene, one frame will be the "happy" on drugs moments and the one next to him will be the back to reality moments, trying to fulfil that happiness that they crave so much.
The screens on top and bottom made of a screen shot of ecstasy pills, which I think is cool and I can play with different elements like that through out the film.

After creating these fifth different styles I think that I can incorporate some of each through out the film and change it around, the purpose behind it would be to give the audience the feeling of being in a circuit party and show how one night seems like a whole cycle of life, everything changes, your feelings go up and down, you think you moving around, but really you staying in one place, meeting many different people, the anxiety feeling...It will give my audience an inside look to the scene and make them feel as if they're part of it, and also show them how ridiculous the scene really is and might help some understand that happiness is not where the circuit is.

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Let's try that again...

This is a short flash video of clips I compiled from the Dreamworlds II : Desire, Power and Sex in Music Video documentary. I edited it to remove all the women from it to suggest what little is left when male gaze centric imagery is removed from pop-culture.


rupa

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Day 1 - Boca Local - Mobile Interface

The first step I will take it to work on the Mobile Interface for the Vendors to post their products. The original interface was a simple text input but after several variations, I decided that the taxonomy (structure) of products should be clear. The latest iteration of the interface has a two drop downs; one for the "Product" and one for "Type". The third field is a text field which allows for input of the "Variety". The taxonomy makes for easy sorting and identification.

Aside from the interface, I've started to refresh myself with some mySQL and PHP. I've setup a database and began testing.

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Day 1.5: Concept Sketches (Photoshop)

The device on the arm is a continuous glucose meter, which Kerri wears. I would like to come up with a solution for that as well, but I haven't thought of what that could be yet. She also wears the Medtronic Minimed pump (see this img) which is basically like a little pager that connects to the body with a tube and circular site (about the size of a sand-dollar). I think a small internal pocket would be a good addition, perhaps?

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day 1 clarification / part 2

I figured a website would be sufficient because I wasn't just organizing data, but also creating new work in the form of the short write-ups about the pieces I added.
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That's cool though. For part 2 of day 1 I finally after all these years got Self-Portrait Bot on AIM as an actual chatbot, so try it out! It's screenname is: selfPortraitBot

-zach

Wireframes, Mockup, assorted updates

So I'm still not exactly sure what I want my thesis to be or what the purpose of it is :/ I really just want to create a beautiful data vis of a baseball game that shows the symmetry and rhythm of a game while providing an easy to understand view of the games outcome. In order to do that I need to provide a way for users to get to the exact game they'd like to view. This process could be as simple as compact menu or several screens of options. While considering this I also realized that there is a large amount of season based data available that may be interesting to users, possibly moreso than individual games. Today I did some simple stuff I needed to do like update my data for the 2009 season in MySQL, but I really dived into some actual layout stuff as well, something I've been avoiding mostly due to the fact that I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing. I feel like this has been encouraged by the thesis process, talking about things until you hate them and never really doing anything, and I also feel like thats not the way that I work. I'm really excited to just make stuff even if I'm not sure where exactly its going, because I tend to have my best ideas while working on ones I'm not crazy about.
Below are wireframes for a basic interface for my application, as well as a simple design of what this might actually look like once it is styled. The wireframes are an important step that I tend to skip sometimes, and they help me to concentrate on the layout and interaction of the data vs the actual design. This saves time because I can see obvious issues before I waste time designing them for real and realizing they're not working. I'm not crazy about these so far, I need to dig into them further, but it is a nice feeling to actually have touched the pen to the page (metaphorically speaking) and got something started.

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