January 31, 2004
emergent puzzle, world platform
platform for the emergent puzzle. the player-character has been replaced by the mouse in this example, but I will re-integrate it later. this is basically just a test -- I repeat -- just a test. you can use the mouse to move blocks around -- the blocks won't move past each other, and the environment is affected by gravity. next step: working out the rule set, and applying it. coming up with the rules and applying them to blocks will be easy. the hard part will be coming up with some kind of interesting puzzle from all this. (note: there are one or two bugs...small ones, though)
applet + source
another photoblog
this time for the Democratic South Carolina Primary
Link via Smart Mobs
January 27, 2004
i walk around w/ speakers on my back
so low tech perhaps is an ok way to go for this project.
the ability to perform space would be nice. it would make a good final project for 542/44.
the proposal would go something as follows:
step one: compose sounds
step two: embed sounds to locations around campus (maybe the zml instead). By embed, I mean give each sound 2 pieces of metadata -- an x-coordinate and a y-coordinate. When I enter within a radius of those zones, play one of the sounds.
step three - allow for more complex manipulation of the sounds. Can the sounds interact? Can I manipulate the sounds with gesture? Can running be a gesture? Rate of Speed? Lack of speed? If I just sit there, can the sound fade slowly out?
How can I let other people upload sounds & still access them easily, without too much of a wait. Probably streaming media. But this is not a great solution. Perhaps some type of software that recognizes the x,y metadata so that people can post a file on the internet, I can put the tagged sound in my system, and it will become an instrument. So that way, when you are interfacing with the system, it's more interesting to you as a performer, more interesting and unpredicatble to the audience, allows for a larger scale of interaction (from both parties, composer and audience), and allows the computer/performer to more wholly 'play' the space. So here's what people do: contribute info / sound files to a database. Anyone who wants to (who has the system I build) can download a series of "sound-location sets" which would be grouped somehow, like -- USC campus, or Robert Zemekis Center, or Soho, or Antartica. Etc. They can then insert those files into the system, and be on their merry way, creating sound with their own movement through the environment.
Note: it would be cool to do a performance where you were wearing big speakers, so everyone could hear you. It would be the mobile-geek answer to the ghetto-blaster.
January 26, 2004
outlines / diagrams /timelines
aye.
this is a brief outline of the type of simple agent-interactions I'd like to achieve. I want to get these down in the next 2-3 weeks, and then debug. After than, I'd like to try and up the complexity ante a little bit, try and evolve the gameplay a little bit.
also see: a quick demo of these possibilities.
January 25, 2004
Emergent Puzzle, v.000001
hmm. efforts of first day of trying to build some sort of emergent puzzle. not real emergent behavior right now, but here's the idea: goal is an exit --> you build stuff up, learn the rules of the game to achieve each goal. When you are not moving, the building blocks you might use move and interact with each ohter, hopefully in an emergent way. Right now, the transparencies are awful. In terms of game play, you can float by using the 'w' key, move using 'a' or 's,' and create a new block by using the 'm' key. As it stands right now, you can't really build anything. Hitting a block will simply teleport you to another spot on the board -- when you make a block, it will immediately touch you, and therefore teleport you. Again, I emphasize...this is basically just a little development test, by no means anywhere near what I want to do with this.
January 24, 2004
more virtual characters - Caroline Online
interesting discussion threads related to the fictional protagonist of a narrative created by Tim Wright and Rob Bevan, for the siteonline caroline. So here we have a virtual character online who is fooling thousands of people. Is this ok? Check the following:
I Got Played by Caroline Online
January 21, 2004
enviro-embedded album
early stages of the location-embedded album concept. using the W,A,S,D keys (use space or any non-W,A,S,D key to stop player movement), you can move to specific zones within the (test) environment, activating different zones and the resulting album tracks associated w/ that zone (in this case, the album is Chutus Too Narrow by The Shins). Unfortunately, unless you have the jSyn plugin, the audio won't work, so I disabled it for this web version (to limit download time). Up next: crossfade songs as you move throughout zones, so you can tell when you are "exiting" a song. This would be handy if you wanted to keep listening to a certain song -- you would hear a bit of something else creep in, and you would backtrack a little bit. So this album by the band ::tintin:: on my label (Sao Bento Music) is being released soon and I want to try and actually embed it in the environment, hopefully getting some people around campus to test it (and as a result, buy it).
source [.PDE]
January 20, 2004
step one - mobile performance
here's an mp3 of a improvisatory ambient piece I made using a more flushed-out version of the piece of software I detailed here, and described the further possible outcomes of here.
Basically, you load up a series of sound files (which would eventually be stored on a database, accessed via JDBC), and attach them to location-specific entities (which in this case, are virtual objects, but would / could be in the future physical locations). You (in this case your avatar) move around the space, and when you come into contact with an object, it spits out it's specific sound. It's actually quite fun improvising in this setting, as you begin mapping the (virtual) environment both spatially and sonically simultaneously.
improvisation #1 - Download [.MP3]
new spread
did some minor improvements (?) on my blog today. clearly, there was not much going on...a) messed with the stylesheets to allow room for some more content. b) designed a new banner (please, at least mouseover it). c) fed in an rss feed of my other hauntedcastle blog (using a leonard recommended reader. ok then...
January 19, 2004
clicks
some more nice 'interactive' animation was posted at BoingBoing today for web zen. the link to said piece is here. in the tradition of fly guy, this is a series of simple animations that are stepped through, or interfaced, by simple mouse clicks. brings up questions about content in interactive works -- the content is great, the animation is great, but the interactions are resolutely minimal...yet I still felt in control, and found the simple interaction satisfying. just goes to show that interactive design is often about finding the most appropriate level of interaction for your content / piece.
other works by this guy (no idea of his name, unfortunately) can be found and dug through here.
January 17, 2004
mapping the environment
nice project documenting the california coastline. Link
webcams save life
a woman gets kicked by a horse, and people watching via webcams call emergency response. a benefit of breaching privary.Link via Smart Mobs/
new banner | stylesheet
my new banner and stylesheet combo look like the cover of a : NEU album.
January 14, 2004
projects in the works
linked below are the 3+ projects I'm currently thinking of persuing for 542/44. thank you.
Continue reading "projects in the works"naimark notes
uber-media guru michael naimark:
place representation. how do we best accomplish this?
photorealism vs. abstraction -- do we need full-resolution VR?
golden gate -- hyperreal -- not realistic, but succesful (still installed in SF).
the ability to navigate the same place throughout different times is very compelling.
can we overestimate our own reality -- can the resolution of a representation be too high? we only see a small slice of the world in total focus, we only hear certain frequencies...how can we use these flaws in our own reality to forge appealing representations...
links
tholos-systems.com
arts lab
naimark
thesis directions
toys + sounds + mobile platforms + social interaction + embedded media
this is the direction I'm heading for my thesis project. looking at that string above, it's perhaps not so clear as one direction. [side note: I hate the way I write on blogs']. But the goal is to make it one direction. So in order to achieve the equation above, I guess I'm going for a game [toy] that relies heavily on sounds and game elements embedded in the physical world, is used on a mobile platform, and is collaborative (in some sort of socially beneficial way). (side note: read this cnn article about geeks and the social characteristics of). Tangible stuff is also tempting...but a large wrench. Fusing these elements may prove difficult, but important to show the similarities/cohesiveness of not only of game/mobile/social/audio technologies, but also of game/mobile/social/audio applications, or content. All this stuff can be weaved together in a really nice way, I think, that goes beyond the singular strengths of each individual format--into something new and engaging.
Listed below is a set of links pointing to some projects / ideas I find relevant to this general area. I will try and consistently update and expand this section.
embedded media (location based)
Environmental Media: Linking Virtual Environments to the Real World [an article by Scott]
WEM project at Keio U.
Urban Tapestries
toys and games (mobile/networked/bits)
It's Alive
Can you See me Now?
Blast Theory
media X (bolas)
I-C-IT Smart Toys
Tangible Bits (almost all projects)
toys and games (traditional)
majestic
mario party
Ambrosia
Lego
Froebel's gifts (kindergarten).
sound
Glasbead
Gakkimon Planet
SMDK SimilationSoundMosaic
Augmented Composer (Rodney Brooks)
Sound Toys for the non-musical (Sony CSL) [.PDF]
this list is a never ending work in progress. I want to look at more traditional games too, so anyone, please feel free to point me in any direction...
January 13, 2004
embedded music / sound
new project:
- embed authored sounds in the physical world
- track gps user & continuously upload gps data to mySQL server using wireless/JDBC
- play appropriate sound back to user
this is relatively simple, once you get around the hurdles of maintaining a strong wireless signal. test device for this would clearly be a tablet, as my abilities to code jdbc stuff are pretty frail anyway, and would be particularly meek in a j2me vs. a full java environment. but this could be super cool. 2 specific content ideas are a) remote musical (and you could add video or whatever) performance using location as an instrument or b) I like the idea of embedding tracks from an album into the space, and having people interface with the music through the environment. so this was inspired by the fact that I'm trying to think of cool ways to release music (from my nascent label sao bento music), and it would be cool to release albums into the environment, provided that it would be someday feasible for people to easily access that content. Yeah, and I guess you wouldn't need gps for this either -- you could easily do a similar thing using other stuff like bluetooth or glyph stuff. I hope that some big record company steals this idea and makes it work. or better yet, hires me to make it work for them (in which case I would contract out other workers to make it work better). that would probably be the end of the hiring.
anyway, going to start building this...