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Over the course of this semester we have done a couple of large scale projects along with another smaller programming project.

Programming
To keep this logical I will talk about the programming first. The purpose of this section of the course was to visualise data in some way using processing. The brief was quite open so I decided to follow a previous line of interest (from my data project) and visualize music. I arrived at this idea from a couple of other directions as-well. One of these was from Semi-Permanent in which one of the speakers produced a large stage installation in which the lights reacted to the volume level of the band and the audience. Once the audience realized they were controlling the lights the effect was amazing. Thinking about this led me onto VJ'ing, an emerging practice where visual artists work along-side DJ's to produce a visual experience for the audience. I wanted to produce a piece of software that would combine these ideas into an entertaining visualisation that reacted to sound in realtime with a variety of effects.

The first iteration combined the webcam feed with the microphone, using FFT to affect the alpha of boxes whos Z axis and scale were representative of the pixels from the webcam feed. This produced an interesting visual effect but was neither difficult nor that entertaining to watch, what I was after was something that you could play with, not something you could watch. The next iteration was the result of playing with Minim for a night. The problem with this version was that it was not pulling sound in real-time, it required the loading of an mp3. I did like the way it reacted to sound and the way the shapes were combined into more than just primitives (the large number of boxes combined into something that resembled a circular haystack). However the lack of accuracy in beat detection and the lack of real-time mean't I was not satisfied.

The next version is my favorite, it is small, neat, and very fun to play with. When I first brought it to class it entertained a large number of people for quite some time. In retrospect I could have finished the project here as I achieved what I wanted to. However there was still some time left so I decided to see what I could do with the time available. The answer was learn.

The following examples were prettier, with advanced lighting and some rather nice colour changes at higher volumes, followed by one where I went back to basics and had boxes inside each other reacting to the music. The idea behind this was related back to the VJ idea where I wanted something that could occupy the screen while I loaded up another visualisation.

I created a final version of this where I pushed my programming skills quite alot (because apparently that's what the project was for, the result had a particle system with the gravity affected by the volume of music. The result looked like a particle generator stuck between two wormholes. The camera angle was controlled using object tracking in jMyron so waving a hand would rotate arc-ball style around the center of the scene. I am not particularly happy with the visual aesthetics of the result, but the amount I learned in programming compared to the simpler predecessors makes up for that in my opinion.

Data
This was the first project of the semester from which some of the results made it into the programming topic. The purpose of this project was to create a bold new way of visualising data over the course of a few weeks. My group consisted of Hanan, Tash and I. To be honest we were more or less stumped for ideas for weeks after the project started, visualising data was such an open brief that we were trawling the internet with no results that really grabbed our collective attention. Eventually we stumbled upon a website that presented quizzes in which the answers were not words but pictures. From the results of this the website claimed things about your personality. Cheesy, yes. Imaginative? Also yes. We decided that this was a good direction to develop our project in. We called our project WHATCANIDO.

The results of this exercise in web development were quite interesting, to us at least. We had on our hands a website that would ask a number of questions with a selection of pictures that made up the answers, and then took the results and conducted a websearch of sites like digg.com and amazon.com to come up with a few live recommendations based on that individual. The concept seemed entrepreneurial and effective. Each result was effectively an advert. To extrapolate this idea a new movie could be advertised through this website, for a small fee, benefiting cinemas and people who would potentially want to see it.

However for whatever reason we did not stop there. We wanted to take the derived data (the results) and produce an overall result from the users that provided another level of visualisation. The result from this was a small booklet printed on pretty average quality transparencies. I found the booklet quite attractive in its design, its inspiration was in part due to a number of speakers at semi-permanent that seemed to be exploring a new trend in printing on transparent sheets. However it was not really a logical conclusion to the project (art and logic?) and it seemed to be forcing a point that had already been made. Again in this project I think its conclusion was reached before we actually ran out of time, the rest was just an exercise in learning about a process (in this case print design).

In terms of personal development I think this project taught me alot about providing a driving force within a team and keeping it on track, because I was quite forceful in this (the team took quite contradicting views on certain things and progress was required) the result ended up looking more like something I would have done than the team combined. However I know for a fact we all contributed alot to the project so from my point of view this is not too much of an issue except that in later projects I will try to let other peoples aesthetics share the result.

Play
For this project I think the main development was that we finally worked cohesively as a team. We (Tash, Nico and I) found a balance whereby we all worked towards the same goal without too much overlap in what we ended up doing. We divided the project up into three areas, these being Programming, Construction and Documentation. We produced a couple of prototypes of the light-box so that we could do the project in cohesive stages while we each improved on our own areas. It felt like a very productive work-flow even when we came up against problems like the drivers crashing or lack of ideas for the software. While the final result was solid, it lacked a certain finished quality that I think I will try to improve upon next year. However I am proud that I finished a physical construction with a certain amount of style; I am usually very impatient when it comes to this kind of thing, often resulting in ragged edges and uneven paintwork. I also think that the final result of this project has alot of potential for a 'next stage', perhaps continuing through next year and maybe even to a high end commercial product with the right planning.

Conclusion
Overall I think I have improved alot on being a team player this semester, where my software skills have improved is mainly in java where I stopped looking up other examples when I wanted to write even quite large amounts of code. Asides from that I consider software to be secondary to the quality of ideas behind my work, and it is this area that I want to improve upon next year.

NB: I believe philosophy, theory of design, notable photographers, visual programmers and sculptors will feature largely in my research, execution of concepts, and reflection in future.