feedback

thanks everybody for the feedback tonight. Below are my notes -- hastily scribed before I forget them.

Perry: More unique ways to access sounds -- based on different things like Time of Day, Speed, Weather? (would be pretty cool...). Have mobile sound spots that are "themed," or like a particular character or voice or something...good idea. How much buffer time is there on the PDA -- how will that effect things like binaural sound, etc, i.e., what would the lag be between when the compass data was received, and when the sound that was mixed left or right, correlated to that specific compass reading, would be read through the buffer. This is great stuff. Before with Perry's criticisms of this specific project, I thought he was talking about more of a 1 to 1 mapping of stuff like speed = rate of playback, etc., which kind of turned me off. but talking through these points helped me out.

Noah: Noah is a real DJ, so perhaps my use of the DJ as a metaphor for my project was not the best for tonight (although for a non DJ audience, maybe...). Make some good points about how DJs do what they do, and how it could be applied to my work. This stuff definitely brings up the all-important issue of making an entirely composed space vs. a user-authored/contributed space. I think there is a happy balance somewhere, but for right now, I'm focusing on creating some compositions that I can control, as one of my primary interests in this project is not only creating the system to do it, which is a technology goal, but also creating a compelling virtual space for people to access. So I want to focus on creating that space first, all the while thinking of how I can add in the element of user authoring to the space, which I think is really important in order to make the system more dynamic.

Micheal Lew: Thanks to Micheal for the links. I was aware of most of these projects, save the sony one. They are all doing some great stuff with sound and location, although none are specifically focusing on a GPS+wireless based system. Very good references though, as a lot of these projects all address similar issues that I've been dealing with. Part of me wants to say that I guess it's not necessarily this technology platform that I'm developing -- it's more a means to an end of finding out why I think this project can be as compelling as I think it can.

http://www.csl.sony.fr/~atau/cafesoundlife/followmode.html#poster

http://www.medialabeurope.org/hc/projects/tuna/
http://www.tii.se/sonic-city/
http://mcs.open.ac.uk/mobsound/

Kellee: reference to NYC boombox event where people walk around with their boomboxes, weaving in and out of each other, which sounds like it would create a really great space -- esp. since these are mobile groups, moving around the city. I'd love to see / participate in one of these.

thanks again.

japanese camera phone stuff

;

Been doing some interesting research recently into camera-phone applications, and came across some really interesting, crazy stuff in a couple phone magazines from japan. Most of this stuff is just simple photo frames, but it's remarkable how much more compelling even those are than any of the stuff I've seen from U.S. developers.

Link via ME

also check out wireless moment, a good news source for mobile phone stuff.

rules

red: grows colliding elements larger ::IMPLEMENTED::
blue: shrinks colliding elements ::IMPLEMENTED::
green: multiples itself when colliding on the x axis ::IMPLEMENTED::
magenta: turns other blocks black and then stops them from moving ::IMPLEMENTED::
orange: deletes most recent element when colliding w/ purple ::IMPLEMENTED::
purple: deletes most recent element when colliding w/ orange ::IMPLEMENTED::
yellow: makes colliding boxes (except green) lose gravity until they undertake another collision ::IMPLEMENTED::
cyan: returns collided elements to their original state ::IMPLMENTED::
black: copies it's state onto colliding elements ::IMPLEMENTED::
white: stops the movement of a colliding element ::IMPLEMENTED::
brown: reestablishes the movement of a colliding element ::IMPLEMENTED::

update 3/5: woo hoo! environment is complete + working nicely. now time to reintroduce the player. I'm watching American Chopper in the background and can't help feel like I just finished the fabrication process, and now I have to get the thing painted and then rebuild.

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.

Josh Kit Clayton

help: anyone who was at the talk; I misspelled the first link below -- if anyone knows the correct address, would you post it to the comments? thanks.

josh gave a great talk last night. The mix of the 8:30-11:30 time frame, and the couple beers made me a little sleepy, but it was nice hearing him talk about some of the more advanced stuff you can do with max/msp/jitter. I especially liked his point about making art with these tools, that too often people make their work about the power of technology, rather than simply using the power of the tools to realize a project. Anyway, I wrote down some urls, which are listed below.

http://www.orthloring.com/jkc/jitternightSchool.rdf
http://www.bix.at
http://www.makingthings.com
http://www.spintermedia.com
http://www.publicbeta.cv/max

ok.

zombie algorithm / notes

Rule Set for Zombies:

This is Kevan Davis's movement rule for his zombie sim:

Zombies...move very slowly and change direction randomly and frequently unless they can see something moving in front of them, in which case they start walking towards it. After a while they get bored and wander randomly again.

This is a pretty solid movement. It works especially well in his sim because the movement of zombies is impeded by building objects. We don't have these barriers, so it's best to think about altering his algorithm for movement.

rule set:

zombie movement:
- when humans are outside the radar of the zombie, they move about randomly.
- zombies move at a fixed speed towards the player if the player comes within a certain radius of the zombie.
- zombies lose interest if the player gets far enough away (outside the radius)

zombie behavior:
- zombie infects player if they occupy the same space (pixel radius of 2)
- zombies cannot occupy the same space (pixel radius of 2)

We need to determine the average walking / running speed, for a player moving across the location so we can program a reasonable default speed for the zombies.

here is a basic example of zombies following a player, with none of the behavior attributes (therefore, zombies cluster together - uggh):

Move with W, S, A, D (make sure applet is active)

zombie move test