Thursday, January 26, 2006

Visual abstraction

A bit more focused on design and to express things with symbolism, icons, semiotics, gravity, rhythm and contrast (old flagship from Asker Design College :))













This is meant to be "dynamic". I thought of rhythm, music, circulation (kretslopp) and equalizers..





















This is "harmony and anarchy", could happen I thought more of harmony and chaos. It is a simple grid made out of two for-loops with quad's, where all the coordinates grow and shrink in position, randomly, as the value in the x & y axes increases. Quite nice, it generates a new chaos every time it is played, either in a loop or as a still image.














"Irony" is an animation that shifts when you move the mouse over to the bright side. Discussions around if the glass is half full or half empty is the inspiration, as well as the traditional tragedy/comedy theatre masks that is the symbol of lifes complexity. The animation works out from that the grass always is greaner on the other side, wich for me is sort of an ironic view..





















"Fear" has a sharklike expression. So many teeth that you cannot count them, at least not when in motion. There's also an effect of bloodsplash when mousearrow moves too close to the mechanical chewing.





















This is "nature", it is an animation that grows out like a feather, a wing, to some sort of flower, while the background ripens. I like the little seed in the middle as a symbol for beginning of life, in nature and for mankind too..

Sunday, November 27, 2005

geometrical shapes & color




Just getting started with processing, learning the basics. Well, I manage to write a line between two coordinates but that's about it. The lessons with Marius Watz was both inspiring and confusing, and I found the mathematics and "logics" kind of hard to understand. The shots are from the last task for the week; where we should simplify some basic objects in 5 different levels of detail and draw the most abstract ones in Processing. This is bird, sky and tree. I was fascinated by that the complexity in nature goes well with the rules you can set in code, and create unique things where you sort of make the dna yourself. I got help programming the tree code, but it was still my idea and my set of rules. I realized afterwards that this piece of code was a more abstract way of thinking than I really understood, or managed to come up with then and maybe still today.







Friday, August 19, 2005

Introduction - the first week

4 definitions of interaction design

Physics - a mutual or reciprocal (bilateral, two-sided) action or influence

Transfer of energy between elementery particles/fields

A way of exchanging information and tell your wishes (to the thing you as a user are interacting with)

inter - prefix meaning among or between
action - something done, beeing active, a natural process, series of events that form a plot or a story

A dailogue; outspoken or partly subconcious (taking place in the real world but consequences of the dialogue may exist i your mind)

3 favourite/influential interactive things

20q - an experience of artificial intelligens, a simple program with complex behaviour. Uses neural network to choose next question and what to guess in the end (or before the end if it think it knows the answer). The human brain has one hundred trillion synaptic connections - 20q et version has 10 million, while handheld version only 250 000 synapses. And this really seem to make a difference, I don't find the handy 20q as intelligent - maybe because it operates with comments that you can feel are predefined - except for when it once in a while comment in a way that reveals that it is really interacting with you.. The net-version plays 12 000 games a day and is still learning through analyzing results and building vocabulary. It's kowledge is highly culture-based, when thinking of snus (swedish tobacco) it suggests videogame!

Amnesty campaign on sms - I just think it is a really good idea, cause lazy members that really would like to involve themselves a bit more and sign those campaigns, but don't find the right time for it in their everyday life; like me, can actually feel like they make a difference. I recieve an sms once or twice a month - and can answer straight away to make Amnesty sign my name on a campaign. I also like the way it affects my daily life to recieve the sms - makes me feel happy, moved or just makes me reflect. I think it could be interresting to look at this type of activity in a bigger scale; how many people are involved, all the actions or the "dialogue" in a case and what are actually the results.

Card machine at work at Parkteatret - not at all favourite, but influential. Bad human factor example. Without going into sad details - it is interresting to study how two people have to interact (new form of language) to make one of them interact correctly with the machine.

Skype - brilliant when net connection is stable. "Skype me" instead of call me.

Good interaction is more like a dialogue - the more input the better result - more interactivity. This differ interaction from reaction. How to use more senses than just your eyes - information that's tangible, physical, or social interaction through technology.