Blog - DIGITAL ART & TECHNOLOGY

Theory & Context

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” - Arthur C Clarke

I guess our project starts with the above quote from Arthur C Clarke. There are fewer variations of the quote but they all essentially mean the same thing in different ways. Even now if we took some of our advanced technology back 500 years, without any understanding of how it works they would think it was magic. We were wondering if Project today could bring a little bit of mystery and magic from technology.

The advanced technology we would like to explore is AI and big data. There have been many predictions made about AI and about its potential. Interestingly yeah maybe the closest thing we get to otherworldly, ethereal, immaterial entity to your average person. We believe that in the future, AI will seem like magic.

Hydromancy is yet another early type of divination that goes back centuries and entails the utilization of water to convey messages. Water is a metaphor of creation associated with the movement of the mutual unconsciousness, also referred to as the matrix of experience, Grid Harmonics, Akashic Records, Hall of Records, etc. within realism. We observed this as a method of linking with outer entity. We think there might be a way of bringing together hydromancy and AI for connecting to a AI, is if it was a divine entity. (Occultopedia, 2011)

AI is of course capable of obtaining patterns from large amounts of data and this is able to draw conclusions from those patterns that a human could never do. Seers and diviners do not exist in the real world but given the future of AI this may be the closest way we will ever get to having a divine entity instructing us. To some people AI may be the most trustworthy thing we communicate with.

“Artificial intelligence may be last invention we ever make”

Once we reached the point where it can improve itself It will likely out stripper own intellect very quickly. Artificial intelligence will become more involved in its own improvements than we will be.

Concept

We wanted to build a device that blurred the lines between contemporary technology and magic. To create a system that offered “divine knowledge” to the user, for the aim of improving conversation. Ritualised meetings and conversations.

The Art of Conversation

Conversation is the most essential talent in everyday life. You devote many years discovering how to read and write, and years finding out how to talk. People do not receive any explicit training on listening to another person genuinely, so that we can actually comprehend another individual. One of our projects primary focuses is on improving conversation.

Most individuals, seek initially to be comprehended; you wish to secure your own point across. And in doing this, you might pay no attention to the other individual entirely. You might act like you're paying attention, selectively listen to only particular elements of the discussion or even carefully concentrate on just the words and phrases being said, yet miss the meaning completely. Since many people listen with the intention to respond, not to comprehend. You pay attention to yourself when you prepare in your head what you will be going to say, the queries you could ask, etc. You filter everything you listen to via your lifetime experiences, your own frame of reference. You examine the things you listen to against your autobiography and refer to how it measures up. And consequently, you determine prematurely what the other individual means before he/she finishes talking. (Celeste Headlee, 2015)

Another focus on this project was to remove the echo chamber effect from conversation full stop the echo chamber effect is when a group of people with no new information will sometimes believe things that are not true or have been exaggerated. If Republicans and Democrats were placed in different groups and each group was asked to talk about a derogatory rumor regarding the other party. The conversation during these debates would polarised expected directions. While the conversation groups were blended, this would not occur. This is to say that when we have views from both sides of the argument, the conversation leans towards the truth. A part of this project is to bring this other side of the argument to the table. (NPR, 2016)

Among like-minded individuals, it’s difficult to produce disagreements and arguments that challenge the group consensus, meaning group participants continue listening to arguments solely in a single direction. Additionally, the majority get “evidence” to authenticate speculations from friends or sources of data which they trust. The fact is, people across the political spectrum are likely to trust the news media (and "facts" provided by the media) less than their social group. So in the liberal blogosphere, it’s false rumors about Sarah Palin that enjoy wide circulation. (NPR, 2016)

Concept

In this project we are going to be collecting a lot of conversations and meetings. There is an ethical concern with doing this, We decided that it was ok to do this as the system is easy to opt in and opt out by simply walking away, people record meetings all the time and the only saying reading these conversations will be our highly advanced artificial intelligence.

In the course of this project we hope to build a database resource of every conversation. the idea of this project is to have a huge repository of conversations that our AI can analyse interpret and give contextual information back to the user. There is a potential for Artificial Intelligence analysis of this vast resource. It will discover hidden relationships and patterns and make results of analysis available for users, improving their conversations.

So in this project we are going to have a device listening to our conversation analysing it through IBM. A projector to project onto a bowl of water (Or some other non clear liquid), this will be used to show the results of the analysis from IBM. Such as contextually relevant information about the topic and also how well your conversation is going (there will be some light to indicate this).

“Economy of Data”

Design & prototyping

We went through many designs for how to build the font We did some sketches to visualise what we were talking about we also envisaged standing around it and discussing something over it. Through this we quickly realised that having any kind of fur supporting stand would be in the way of two people talking to each other. so we decided to suspend the projector and PI from the ceiling. We wanted a very understated contemporary look, kind of something that would be in place in a contemporary church. We also wanted to hide as much of the electronics as we possibly could. I had some trouble getting some of the materials back to Plymouth as you can see from the photo that it's kind of sticking into the back of my car (but no accidents so all good).

Achieved

I'm very happy with what we achieved in this project. We managed to hide as much as the component as we possibly could. We used a foam block that had been hollowed out to hold a raspberry pie in the base of the project (this was to control the lights). We have a Raspberry Pi in the lampshade on the Ceiling that is listening to your conversation and is projecting onto the inch thick mist in the bowl. The reason we use the mist in the bowl was partly to make a more magical experience and partly due to the fact that we're trying to improve conversations. If you have a very loud and heated angry conversation you will wash away the mist on top and not be able to gain more information, this is a subtle way of calming a conversation down.

Also the device is always listening to your conversation. It is analysing your conversation for its topic contexts on effectiveness. it lets you know when your conversation is no longer effective using the Big Five personality traits. It notifies you (using the lights around the base) when you've gone off Topic. And Finally it provides additional information to your conversation from a database and from the wider Internet.

Technology breakdown

• IBM Developer Cloud.
• Alchemy
• Personality Insights
• Speech To Text
• Browser - Front EndI
• Record audio
• Node Server - Heroku
• Font - Hardware
• J5 Robotics
• Display Lights
• Azure
• Bing News API
• Database - MongoDB
• Stores
• Queries

Issues

Some of the IBM Services are either rubbish or very expensive. We attempted to use the alchemy news API but our tokens just kept running out immediately upon using them so we had to switch to Bing’s news API which worked much better. IBM's voice tax service is only designed for American accents which which makes it very frustrating when we tried to talk to it it's completely messed up you're trying to talk about the when we played as an American news station it got it perfectly. We also had trouble with corrupting the pies as we could not turned off properly for some reason so we're just forced to pull the plug which lead to problems in the SD cards. Also the Misters in the bowl with also get very hot and occasionally overheat. And lastly the media lab told us that the mini projector that we borrowed overheat if you leave it on for an hour. Despite these problems we managed to pull together a very clean Project.

Future Potential

The future potential of this project is in the big data. I feel it provides a certain value to the project that's I'm sure big companies and people would be very interested in. Also further integration of the data analysis to provide more useful and contextually relevant information would certainly improve our project in the future. if we are going to release something like this as a product (with a design change) The higher the adoption rate means that the more effective the analysis and therefore the more useful it is (kind of like a bank). we could also add more interactivity with gesture controls to clear the current topic or such like. we could also add music to influence conversation by calming people down or as a form of notification to help aid in your conversation.

References

Occultopedia, O. (2011) Hydromancy. [Online] Available from: http://www.occultopedia.com/h/hydromancy.htm [accessed 10 January 2017]

Celeste Headlee, C. (2015) 10 ways to have a better conversation. [Online] Available from: https://www.ted.com/talks/celeste_headlee_10_ways_to_have_a_better_conversation [accessed 10 January 2017]

NPR, N.P. (2016) The Reason Your Feed Became An Echo Chamber — And What To Do About It. [Online] Available from: http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/07/24/486941582/the-reason-your-feed-became-an-echo-chamber-and-what-to-do-about-it [accessed 10 January 2017]

Final solution

So in the end after much work we could not get Ableton to do anything with the data. In the end we went from the Proton or anything on the broker via mqtt to node red to split up the data into 6 channels. Then using a websocket to send the data to processing to trigger or influence various sounds.

Sonification of Heartbeat

This is a specific source all data and we designed are sounds to be for a more general interpretation of the Internet of things as a whole. If I was to continue this project I try and work in some sort of algorithm to analyse the content coming in two processing and adapt these sounds correspondingly. Of course to achieve complete immersion I think this sounds would have to be tailor-made depending on the type of data.

Sonification of the Internet of things

This was our target for this project and I am very happy with the results. I believe this actually represents the iot as a sound landscape. With the sounds being more atmospheric mixed in with specific melodies that are triggered on specific pieces of data you can get a sense of the almost manic fast paced stream of data coming in.

Future developments and conclusion

These types of sonification are already being used in research and should continue be used for rapid devaluation and pattern recognition of data. We also feel like there is a possibility of creating a piece of music of your current environment for everyone. I imagine this as an app that uses the current IOT sonified environment to create a sound landscape. This would reflect the current Behaviour and practices of people. I would also work on the visuals for our project making it easy to see the stream of data affecting the music. This would I add to the greater connection and influence of this data to the user.

Problem with OSC into Ableton

We are having real trouble with getting are data into Ableton Live over OSC. We can see that it is receiving but can't seem to reliably get Ableton to do anything with it. This is a serious problem as without any sound solution I'll project won't work at all. Elliot going to keep working on Ableton Live and I will search for other solutions.

Problem with concept changing to be more general

After thinking about our concept a bit more we think we feel that it will be improved by Not having a specific target set of devices and people. Our project is really about the general Internet of things communication and interpretation of this data. This frees us to examine the Project as a sonification of human behaviour because Internet of things data is produced by human practices. We also want to examine a possibility of producing a soundscape or real life IOT devices. And then we come to the problem of making a true web off iot devices for our project to achieve maximum effect we would need a existing mesh of devices. Then I realised that everyone else on our module is making some sort of IOT device maybe we could use their data in our project to extend understanding of IOT communication. We could listen to everything on the broker during the presentations and create a composition of live Internet of things devices for our presentation.

I like this idea much better as it truly is a way of understanding the interactions of iot Communications.

The invisible Internet of things

Invisibility in regards to IOT means eliminating the a user interface. Successful IoT solutions are going to be those which remove complexity from our lives as opposed to increase it with another UI that requires our focus. Two technologies will be key to providing the invisibility of the IoT: voice recognition and process automation. Significant advances in science and technology are going to facilitate the immediate inclusion in the communications realm of things heretofore totally foreign to it. Walls, desks, garments, footwear, pipelines, vehicles, and infrastructure components among other things will have the possibility to become in and of themselves the borders of a huge communications network generating a gargantuan amount of data. Today, this is achievable through add-on proxies, i.e., sensors and actuators inserted “after the fact”, sometimes, almost as an afterthought. In the future, everyday materials will be their unique sensor, actuator or even power harvester. Beyond the immediate security and privacy concerns these new opportunities are going to generate, they should redefine industries, generate brand new ones, transform business models and functions while demanding new education and training.

The psychology of a task becoming unconscious

The Internet of things presents a danger of everything becoming increasingly complicated. We can only hope that any specific Internet of things device which are designed poorly, in that we be aware of we are using it, it will not be greatly adopted. Iot needs to have practices that are subconscious to the user.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgMG7zRrcPk

I found this talk on iot computing fascinating. He does a really good job of explaining how fast the industry is moving and how important other technologies will be, such as artificial intelligence. He also explains how accessible it is for anyone to start making an iot device, of course I already knew this being on DAT. It really makes me feel that these Technologies are almost developing so fast that it's going to be become harder and harder to keep up with them. I think this means that we will come to expect higher quality when it comes to any service or product, we will expect things to happen before we ask.

Specific computers and general IOT computers

I believe there will probably continually be a place for specific personal computers for working at the leading edge of any industry. I do think it’s still essential to recognize that particular industries will never dispenser of the specific computer for example: digital photography which requires powerful processors to edit in photographs. Nevertheless, for vast majority of people the general iot computers should be able to deal with virtually any task or assist in any practice in their lives.

Computers understanding contextually relevant information

The next stage of iot devices will need to have an understanding of their location and other contextually relevant information in this situation. This will give so much power to an Internet of things network without any artificial intelligence. This data from each iot device will be more powerful.

I think this article is primarily about the potential of the Internet of things revolution in the future. I think it's important to recognise though that's the true power of the Internet of things will be Unleashed when another new and interesting technology is connected to it. Technology of course is increasing at an exponential rate. Internet of things presents a huge amount of data for insights and analysis, This is very difficult for humans to utilise efficiently and quickly. However this is not a problem for an AI.  I think the emergence of AI computing and the use cases we most want the Internet of things for  will create a world more automatic, fluids and time effective for everyone.

Hardware experiments

Using a proton quite easy on the whole when I wasn't using the university network. I managed to connect my phone to the Proton we were using and use the online IDE to transmit a variety of sensor data via MQTT.  For some reason our temperature data was way out of sync but this does not matter too much for the Project.

Software experiments node-red

The next step was to get the data into node red, fortunately node-red has module specifically for mqtt so we were very quickly printing out the sensor data from a proton from the Internet over mqtt to node red. Now we have to decide what the best way is to send the data to some sort of Sound software. I think we'll probably use OSC into Ableton Live.

I have also been working on splitting up the data so that Elliot gets defined channels for triggering sounds in processing.

I found this article very difficult to understand but I've written down some points that I think the article is talking about. I will attempt to go through each of these points with my own thoughts.

Digital Technology in art

The consequence of digital Technological innovation in art is already transforming human expression. In an broadened perception, “digital art” is an expression employed on modern art that utilizes the digital technologies in addition to the digital media, furthermore to disseminate and share the artworks with the community. This art is usually more interactive which I suggest is what Roy Ascott means when he discusses how our world is all process which is translating over to art.

How art is a process

What does he mean by process? I think digital art is an expression of data or a direct live visualisation and sonification (or something) of a behaviour (usually human).

Arts and social inquisitiveness

A lot of this art will examine our social interactions because it is so interesting to us. It brings a powerful meaning for the artist. This is what I think he means by “social modelling”. This world is full of social data which I think is irresistible for the behaviorist artist.

Behavioural artists

The behaviorist artist uses live data or collected data to produce a social interaction with his artwork.

The cybernetic age in relation to art and music

Here Roy Ascott talks about how a technology has come of age when it becomes invisible such as when computers are no longer noticeable (either consciously or unconsciously). This relates to the Internet of things where we no longer notice the amazing number of computers around us but practices become more fluid and efficient. Then he poses the question that this will happen to art and as well. I'm not sure this will happened. Maybe some forms of arts will become unconscious pieces of work but they will always be Art and Music that focuses our attention.

Behaviorist art - Biological and social

Behavioral art with the biological and social. He doesn't seem to really explain what how the biological influences the behaviorist art.

The cybernetic Arts Matrix

I think this is a speculative investigation of the future with an understanding of a present and past. He says that generating alternative Futures is a fundamental internal process of art full stop I'm not quite sure what he means by this, I feel as though heart is more of a reflection of our present culture and social interactions than a projection of the future.

Instant communication with no Media

I think this means that when our communication systems become truly invisible or subconscious then we are in a new age of instant communication. This is an interesting idea for digital artists to deal with.

Conclusion

Again I'll stay but I found this article very difficult to decipher but I think I've got the important points of what he was trying to say. I think such as with all technology digital arts will become more fluid and open certainly more interactive and a truer expression of current social and cultural influences.

Sonification

Sonification is the translation of data into sound for the purpose of facilitating communication and understanding or interpretation. This is similar to a visualisation Of data that uses colour line and shape to illustrate it's meaning. A Sonification will rely on Tone, pitch and volume to represent its data. Sonification are useful because the human ear is extremely capable of detecting changes of pitch and tone with time, this makes it easy to understand patterns in complex data sets. Sonifications are already being used In many areas of research such as cancer research, epilepsy research and physics research. Particularly important in physics as it is so important to discerns patterns.

Internet of things

The Internet of things is the idea that there will be a vast web of interconnected devices that is all sharing data among each other. This data lets us better understand how things work and work together.

Disabilities

We envision that in the future there will be internet connected devices used to replace senses that people have lost. We want to make a orchestra of these devices where each player is a unique disability contributing to a composition sonification. Each specific use case what has its own specific sound. We could see that this data would also be useful for research purposes into life practices of disabled people. This would be a sonification of many Internet of things devices To create music but also could be used for interpretation and understanding of people's behaviours and practices.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-33571412

This is a story about a man who is testing one of the first bionic eyes. He is able to see even with his eyes shut. Is an incredible advance in technology and is only going to improve. I could see one day devices like this would be connected to the Internet in order to facilitate better patient care through research. Research requires data, the understanding of that data is what our project is about. We hope to use examples like this to create an orchestra of devices.

It is hardly any secret that technology is evolving the way people are integrated into their social and work lives, and since we're more at home with technology, we're permitting technology to become more involved our private lives as well. A New reports carried out by the Pew Internet and American Life Project identified that the quantity of adults who own phones, laptops, or tablets is growing. Around 40% of the world's population possesses a device linked to the Internet, with 3.4 billion people connected to the Internet, and that number will only be expected to increase exponentially over the following 20 decades.

This indicates there will be increasingly more devices linked to the Internet than at any other time in history. These types of appliances won't simply be smartphones, tablets and laptops  but a whole assortment of objects or “things”. Internet of things is beginning to change a great deal about how we live our daily lives from the manner we drive our cars to how we purchase goods and services or even how we obtain power for our homes. Sensors and chips will be embedded into the physical things that surround us. The Internet of things is the platform used to describe how are these objects will communicate with each other. This will produce a vast sea of data. This data leads to information. Information is the answer to “who” , “what” , “where” and “when”. Once we have information we can then get knowledge, which is the “How”. After knowledge we get precipitation of “why” which is understanding. At the end of all this data we can then glean some wisdom which is the evaluative understanding of this data.

In an article called Designing The Connected Everyday, Elisa Giaccardi Discusses just how this technological innovation is leading to a social experience discrepancy between our digital lives and the lifestyles we actually want to live . She talks about the difficulty of this continual communication, with notifications . And presents the question: “How can we make our digital lives fit neatly into our current lives ?”. To be distinct this is not an issue of restraining the technology back, more of a matter of designing and developing better experiences and interactions that we want. Therefore we have to recognize an issue with the present state of devices and interactions in a social environment. Discuss the three pillars of commensurability and how this process to designing for the Internet of things can improve are experience. Then how these practices can be implemented.

In the article Elisa Giaccardi Talks about how in Silicon Valley and also across the world people regularly practice setting down their smartphones while eating at the dinner table , she calls “social norming”. This speaks to the present difficulty of being so connected to everyone in our social groups of friends. I believe this arises from an experience of being out of control with our existing experience with these types of digital social communications . With a continuing stream of Tweets, Facebook messages Emails and much more, which are all intended to maintain our interest. I think there is yet another side of the argument for this . In that increasingly in younger generations the new forms of communication will be coming extremely important social interactions. In older generations gathering at the dinner table is often the only place in which people would talk and discuss the day. In which is in a younger generation there is an ability to have a meaningful social interactions at any time of day. Is however does lead to a slippery slope where we ignore or neglect the people closest to us.

Elisa Giaccardi says that in order to solve this problem you must design for commensurability. Which is to allow individuals to talk over various theories for design practices. Assess and determine which is the optimum solution. This enables for a more organic and natural method to designing for the connected everyday, It is the comprehension that are currants interactions with this new technology needs to be more fluid and adaptive. Utilising textures to accommodate more potential when it comes to feel. She continues to stipulate that the fundamental understandings of this will be material, practices and constellations.

Material

Her example for material is a older stairway that has been slowly eroded overtime. In this way our design practices need to understand that an object material has it's own stories and associated meanings. An example of this stairway by walking up it's you immediately feel a connection to every person who walked up those stairs. You have become a part of the the materials story and are contributing to the stairways presence of age. The best implementation of this theoretical understanding is to extend our current designing principles to utilise better presents of feeling. Such as with the old stairway we understand the passage of time we need to design experiences that almost subconsciously give meaning to our interactions.

Practice

The second pillar is practices. The example here it is the difference between her kitchen and a friend's kitchen.  In the way that they both cooking different ways, utilising different practices as it were. Those two kitchens will reflect those practices, that only the owner could understand. I think this is the understanding that People's practices are reflected in their environments, in the same way that no two people's cooking is exactly the same no to people's kitchens will be exactly the same. Practices need to be implemented in such a way that they are fluid enough to allow for open ended interactions.

Constellations

Constellations is how and objects practices come together to form a complex dynamic web of uses. In this example she uses a bike. A bike is not merely a device for getting from point a to point b but has a myriad of other practices associated with it. The constellations of practices around many objects is what contributes to our understanding of these objects. This pillar relates to are project. Our project is about measuring and understanding a constellation of devices and practices. It is a sonification of these constellations and how they interact with our practices.

Source

http://www.pewinternet.org/

The task for this project is to create an Aaugmented Reality sketch/prototype that translates one of the previous blog posts (i.e. Phsycogeography, Music concrete, GPS drawing, …) into an AR application. For this project I decided to use Unity as a allows for far greater control than Layer. Unity is a fantastic engine, with wide platform support. It's rapid development and portability are ideal for indie game developers.

To make an augmented reality sketch in Unity you first need to download and install the Vuforia extension. Vuforia allows you to build augmented reality applications in the Unity game engine.

This allows the use of an image target and AR camera: to starts the augmented reality application.

Explanation of idea.

In Plymouth there are apparently just under 200 CCTV official cameras. The UK has more CCTV cameras than any other country on earth. So if you've ever wondered if you're being watched; you can be sure that you are. CCTV cameras prevent crime right? Well apart from car parks that's not true. there is in fact very little benefit for CCTV cameras. It seems that having so many cameras is reminding people of potential threats and that their world is unsafe. My idea is to utilise the Google maps static API and the position of street cameras to make an augmented reality sketch of Plymouth. This sketch which show how many cameras around the person's location. With the closest ones being more prominent. This idea links with both the blog post I did on the Google maps API and the psychogeography. Which is to accentuate how you feel and a place knowing that you're being watched.

- Augmented Reality Sketch.

• Make an image target with Vuforia.

• Download selected targets code.
• Attached code to image target in unity.
• Bring in the AR camera into the scene.

• Make gameobject for map. I use the plane gameobject.

• Make gameobject cube for your current location.

Problem of image map

Google maps static API is just an image on a map; therefore it is very difficult to map an object (Cube) in real time onto the image. Also to make centre on the user's current location a bit of maths is required to work out the range Lat/Lon of the map. The solution is to find the range of the latitude and longitudinal of the map, then converts it to the range of pixels in unity for X and Y coordinates.

• Find devices current location using script:

• Attached image from Google maps API onto plane, so that the centre is on the user's location.

• Input formula for converting one range of numbers to another.

• Find top left latitude and longitudinal and bottom right latitude and longitudinal.
• Find a range of both latitude and longitudinal for the size of the map.

• Use centre of the map and half range to find the range of map that is needed for the user's current location.

• Use formula (for converting one range numbers to another) to convert the users current location lon/lat to X/Y coordinates.

• Uses coordinates to move cube gameobject to current location.

• Now there is a cube at my current location.
• Download XML data of street camera locations and inserts into string.

• Now I have to convert the string of the locations into numbers.
• For each set of "coordinates" tags in the XML file I extracted inner text so I have a string of latitude and longitude e.g. "-0.111226,51.522142"

• Then I split the strain into an array at the ",".

• Next by pass the data into a double number and into two separate variables, one for the latitude and one for longitudinal.

• The last thing to do is to check that the data will actually be on the map.
• If it is, then it gets passed into an array.

• The next thing to do is to convert the latitude and longitudinal to X, Y coordinates.

• Lastly to place them on the map with the tallest cubes nearer the user's current location and smallest ones furthest away.

Final Result

The final result shows my current location as the pink cube, with all the other cubes being the cameras. Not surprisingly there are quite a few cameras in Plymouth. What's good about the sketch is that it's contextual to where you are in Plymouth. This project was a tricky coding project for me as I have never used C sharp before. I had serious problems with making sure that the cameras were in the correct location on the map. That being said I found it quite engaging solving all the little problems, it became more of a logical problem than a coding one. The psychology of the camera locations became of interest to me. As I expected a lot of the cameras were positioned in the most densely populated public locations. However, there was a greater density of them nearer the poorer end of Plymouth. The app could also tell you something about the neighbourhood during just by showing you how many cameras are around you.

Source

http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/

Augmented reality (AR) is a modern technology that superimposes graphical information on to your view of reality. As a result AR allows the user to see a partly artificial environment thus enhancing his experience of reality. AR is usually done live to allow for a more immersive experience, sometimes with intuitive controls or feedback.

There are many uses for AR to enrich your experience such as full life-size 3-D models, cameras that usually feed contextual graphics and also games. It can feel like a magic window if done correctly, allowing the digital world and real world to seamlessly interact.

The most use for AR is advertising and promotion. Pepsi's use of AR in the video below is a hilarious example of how effective it can be in the right circumstances. The reactions of the people waiting at the bus stops show that the effect is very convincing.

For my project by was to use a small application called layer. Layer is a easy-to-use app that allows you to create your own augmented reality. Layer a variety of technologies in the smart phone such as the accelerator, gyroscope, built-in camera, compass and GPS.

I found the process of creating a Layer project very easy. The first thing to do was to star a New Capaign and name it.

The next step was to choose an image target so that the Layer app can scan it. It was important that the image had a very defined outline for recognition. This elephant is the image I chose.

Then it was a simple matter of adding content to display.

So if you now use your Layer app and scan the elephant you should see a simple carousel of some of my photography. I like Layer for its simplicity, but its functionality is a bit limited.

Source

http://www.bioworkz.com/

The majority consider Google Maps in terms of searching a place or business, or finding directions from one point to an additional. Others use the satellite images and terrain mapping capabilities. However there are a variety of other uses out there for Google maps.

From mapping the weather and news to mapping things that aren't maps at all, similar to paintings or magazines, Google Maps has plenty to provide. And there are free tools available out there for those who want to use the Google Maps API without doing a bunch of coding.

Over last summer I had to create a store locator with directions. The basic scenario would be; a customer types in their address and the website would bring back the top five closest stores to the customer. Then when a customer clicks on the store they are brought to that stores page and has the option of getting directions to that store.

I won't go into too many details about how exactly I made the store locator but I will give a rough outline. The first job was to hook up the Google maps API to the website, to do this you need to enter identification key for your Google account. After this is done you can create as many Google maps on your site is like (within reason). The next thing to do was to write the front-end code for the form inputs for the user's location, at this point we have the user's location so we need to get the appropriate stores.

So on this particular website all the data for the location of the stores was held in a MySQL database. Now this is where Ajax comes in, I made an Ajax call to a MySQL request that was given to me by a nice back-end developer. This gave me back a nice Json array with the five closer stores. Now all I need to do is to remove the markers that were already on the market, zoom in to the appropriate area on the map and position the new markers.

To start with I found it using Google maps API quite hard, but once I got to grips with it I actually found it quite easy to do. Overall I feel that it's a very powerful platform, with the simplicity of doing certain tasks that would probably have taken ages to do in the old days of the web. I had to make something very functional for this website with a very small dataset (20 stores), but I would be very interested in using it with a large amount of data to create some interesting visualisation.

Source

http://www.nctilesandbathrooms.com/

Public art is an interesting form of art, its size might be huge or tiny. It can be any work of art which is accessible to the general public. Public art used to consists of various types of stonework such as monuments, statues. Today however, public art also includes range of works from the decorative to fine arts.

My favorite Public artist

- Banksy
The reason Banksy is my favorite public artist is twofold. Firstly he always tries to make a point to his work, whether it is cultural or political he tends to try and make it amusing as well. For me some art is too conjectural or spiritual that I just don't understand the points to the artist is trying to make this is not so with Banksy. So I find that refreshing.

Secondly Banksy has always been happier to keep his real identity a secret even after he became so famous.

Monument to the Conquerors of Space

The Monument to the Conquerors of Space was made in Moscow in 1964. It was made to celebrate the achievements of the Soviet people in space exploration. The Monument to the Conquerors of Space is an iconic symbol of Moscow, an symbol of the cultural heritage of the space program. The monument was made of titanium and stands 110 m tall.

I remember when all this was trees

The Packard Plant in Detroit, is where the work was originally, until The 555 Gallery dismantle the piece and then move it to the gallery in southwest Detroit. The piece is Banksy take on Detroit's financial deprivation. Which is exacerbated by the placement of the work. I think the piece is referring to the homeless people living within the Packard Plant.

For the comparison I chose these works because of the contrast between them. They both however, engage the public. The Monument is more about the Soviet Union's people hope for technology and the future in the space race. Banksy piece is about drawing the public's attention to the the terrible conditions that people are living in.

Banksy deliberate placement of the work relate the work to the environment perfectly, illustrating the financial deprivation. Where as the Monument location in the near the museum of Cosmonautics, celebrate's the achievements of the Soviet Union's people.

The Monument to the Conquerors of Space is definitely ment to be a permanent edition to the city, so as to be a constant reminder. Banksy piece is less so, which is shown be the gallery moving it.

Certainly Banksy piece is not authorised, although he doesn't need to be. Where as the Monument is the compelet opposites.

Source

http://www.madisonsquarepark.org/

GPS is a system of satellites combined with receivers on the Earth that determines the latitude and longitude of any particular receiver through triangulation. The distance of the receiver to three of the satellites is ascertained by measuring the time-delay of a predetermined radio signal. The system is used for navigation, surveying, and many other applications.

The aim of the experiment is to draw by walking, each walk will be tracked via a GPS tracking system. The first thing to do was make a plan of the route I wanted to take.

I found it quite difficult to create this plan at first. I didn't know whether I wanted to try and make a recognisable shape or go to something more abstract. As you can see I went with something abstract that contains some my favourite parts of the city.

This is my actual track for the walk I did. I quite enjoyed exploring the city like this. This is not a route will normally taken through the city and having a plan of where wants to go was very helpful. I think I must have lost GPS connection at the roundabout because my track becomes more erratic. I think this could bring in some more abstract drawings by somehow making the GPS not work properly, just an idea. Maybe at some point all try again but this time block some of the connection to my phone somehow so that my track becomes more wild and artistic.

Below is my track of me just siting in babbage. As you can see the GPS signal is very erratic, which is what I was going for. I see this as more of artistic interperation of GPS drawing. I like is due to the uncertainty of the result, I didn't know what I was going to get, which I like.

This project was the first introduction in to the world of Psychogeography. Psychogeography is defined as:

"The practice of exploring the urban environment while being led by curiosity and a paused sense of time and place. A sense of wander/wonder is essential to find the simplicity in urban living."

There are many forms of psychogeography and our first task is to try Field Recording. Which is to explore a new environments using what we hear as the medium for how we feel in a particular place.

The first task was to make a recording of interesting sounds we found in the city. At first I was very frustrated by this project where I felt that I was wandering around aimlessly, just listening to the general chaotic sounds of the city. I ended up taking many recordings of this e.g. the rumble of the traffic, background chatter and wind rustling trees. I intend to the more of a visual person, which is why I've always liked photography in the past. However, I thought that maybe someone recordings would be interesting after a bit of editing.

Once i'd found my recordings I was to upload them to Audacity for editing. I very much preferred as part of the project. It allowed me to be more creative. During the development of my audio track I may have gone a bit to far (hard to know when to stop), but I like the result.

Listening to this back I feel like I've got to something more interesting, that capture the ambiance the environments. It sounds very sinister or maybe like some sort of sci-fi space ship.

Susan Philipsz - SURROUND ME

In London, is a sound installations in different spaces within the Square Mile. Her voice singing Elizabethan songs reverberate through empty streets around the Bank of England, across the walkways and medieval alleyways and along the banks of the River Thames. This show another demonstration of how sound can influence an area.

Source

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/