I attribute the word mosiac with this piece because of the dark lines that appear between the mixing colors. The original intent was to allow the person to click on the sketch to release drops of color. Those colors would then expand slowly across the piece. Eventually multiple drops collide and mix into another color. The process still does this, but the dark lines seperate the area of mixtures from the original color so that a moving mosaic style creation is released on the sketch.
I find the patterns very alluring do to there flowing color patterns as the drops mix. Also, the sharper lines contrast the more organic growth of the drop and their natural color.

Seeing the formation of stacked or expending circles made me think of the formation of waves and bubble. Therefore I made a sketch of a puddle that you can poke or run your finger through with your mouse.

I first thought of making a triangle and doing a rip off of the famous Pink Floyd cover. But I didn’t want that. So my mind went from light deflecting off prisms to light hitting elements in the sky. The natural show is called an aurora and there is one in both the Southern and Northern hemispheres, australis and borealis. The impressive lighting appears due to solarwind hitting which excite the atoms in the air causing the release of light as their excitation state is normalized. The different colors are produced by specific elements or mixture of elements. The main atoms are nitrogen, which releases green, and oxygen, which releases red. The color combinations are more or less likely depending on altitude of the action. Usually red is more common up high and green is more common lower down. I added in this fact into the elements of my sketch.

By dragging in across the night sky you can produce your own aurora in the air.
You can hit the enter key to clear the sky if you want to clear the night again.

As an IMGD major, I am very interested in the converging of art and technology; it is what drew me to games in the first place, and one of the reasons I love what I do as a digital artist. Aside from video games, one of my other passions is music, and I similarly love new, creative combinations of music and technology.

Audio sampling and drum machines can provide a means to mix audio into new songs, but does not always create flowing pieces of music. I was very impressed the first time I found Otomata, an online generative music sequencer with an easy-to-use interface that allows the user to quickly and intuitively create music without needing to fuss with too many buttons.

http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otomata/?q=10_0_150_650160620220032831601732

Otomata is a generative sequencer that uses cellular automaton logic, comprising of a grid with cells in four states: the four arrow directions, up, down, left, and right. Pitch is triggered when an arrow cell encounters a wall, with the pitch itself determined by the location of the collision, after which the arrow changes direction. Pretty cool! Just by playing with Otomata and watching it sequence it is not hard to understand the logic behind it. Still, it creates beautiful music for a relatively simple sequencer. The music evolves over time as the sequencer continues to cycle and play, and really does create flowing music out of what seems to be just logic (in terms of coding) or chaos (depending on how many arrows you decide to add to it!). Users can add, remove, and change arrows real-time as well as adjusting the tempo of the sequencer and the scale used, which changes the overall tone and mood of the music generated. Additionally, you can record and download the music you create with Otomata!

Otomata is very approachable, with an easy to understand interface and it isn’t hard to grasp how it works if you play with it even for only a couple minutes.This is definitely part of what makes it so successful; it is so easy to use anyone can find it online and play with it, and additionally, no two sequences will be similar as you interact with it. Even with such a simple interface, the results are limitless depending on how you play with it, and it is satisfying to see and hear Otomata react to your input in real-time.

Generative music is very cool, so it would be cool to extend this idea of approachable, real-time generative audio. Adding generative visual elements would be cool, in addition to the interface that allows you to create and manipulate the generative audio. A similar set of buttons that could create generative art based on the generative audio that the user creates would be a neat addition to Otomata!

For my Interactive Qualifying Project in Venice Italy, my team and I went to this grand art exhibition known as the Venice Biennale. Inside the exhibition were countries from all around the world who brought really talented artists to construct both electronic and interactive artwork. I remember almost a year ago visiting the French Pavilion and seeing one of the most incredible works of interactive art that really captured the attention of everyone in the room. The installation was titled “chance” and had pictures of newborn faces on old style film that was sent all throughout a main room through tracks of scaffolding. In the adjacent room were two counters, the current birth rate and the current death rate in the entire world. Here is a link to a video that our team actually took while we were there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LHkjUUgfqsw

By far the most successful part of the exhibit was the shear size of the installation. The track which ran all of the film filled the entire room and really gave the exhibit a “worldly” scale which really went in line of the overall message of the piece, which was that the whole world is really interconnected from birth. From the get go, the installation held your attention due to the fast moving parts, loud volume, and maze like structure that the exhibition goers had to navigate to reach the next room. The reason why the artwork was so compelling stemmed from the fact that birth, and the chance that you could be born in any part of the world is completely relate-able. Most people at one point or another in their lives have thought what it would have been like to be born in another part of the world, with a new appearance, and new style of living. A great aspect of this work is that it’s completely extensible. This same structure could be applied to many other social issues such as world hunger rates, or awareness of diseases. To see more about this exhibit you can check out this full length video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47o10W_ltVc

Go here to see the art: http://www.smoothware.com/danny/newshinyballsmirror.html

I like this piece because it redefines what a mirror can be made of. We can’t think of mirrors in any other way than just the shiny smooth glass surfaces we are used to. This work is successful in that it provides a working version of a mirror in a medium that we wouldn’t think could be used to make one. This mirror is made of pinball-like balls that are moved by motors, directed by a camera, to produce the image that the camera sees. I’m not really sure how this could be taken to a new direction, other than finding other unusual ways to make a functioning mirror.

Here are some images from the site.

This was my fall-back idea when I couldn’t think of anything to do for the last piece. I wanted to simply do a piece with clouds going by in the sky. However, I ran into the same problems we ran into with the moving gnats in that when the clouds hit an edge/corner in certain ways they would get stuck on it, and since they would reset to x and y values of zero they would get stuck after one loop.
I wanted to add different shapes of clouds, but I wanted to figure out the edge issue first as it seemed more important to figure out.
Sprite mySprite;
Sprite[] sprites = new Sprite[30];
PImage myPicture;
PImage myPicture2;
void setup() {
size(350, 350);
background(200);
myPicture = loadImage(“cloud.png”);
myPicture2 = loadImage(“sky.png”);
imageMode(CENTER);

for (int i=0;i=(width-imageSize/2)-1) {
x=30;
}
else if (x<=imageSize/2-1) { x=30; } else if (y>=(height-imageSize/2)-1) {
y=30;
}
else if (y<=imageSize/2-1) { y=30; } } } I’m unable to get my projects to load properly on the blog currently, so I’m just going to post the code for the time being, and will probably upload a screen shot later or something to show what it should look like when working.

I find a lot of inspiration in trees. For this piece I wanted to give the user the ability to plant a forest…sort of. The idea is that a tree is created in a random shade of green, with a height based on where the mouse is when it is clicked. The only part of this that still bothers me is that if you click to create a small tree, which would appear to be off in the background, it will appear on top of larger trees in the foreground.

PImage myPicture;
PImage myPicture2;
color myColor;

void setup() {
size(500, 400);
myPicture2 = loadImage(“http://www.joshuarosenstock.com/teaching/IMGD3x00_B12/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/background.png”);
background(myPicture2);
myPicture = loadImage(“http://www.joshuarosenstock.com/teaching/IMGD3x00_B12/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/tree.png”); //load this image file (must be in same directory as sketch)
//when sketch is online, put a URL for the image, which must be on same server as sketch)
imageMode(CENTER);
}

void draw(){
}
void mousePressed(){
myColor=color(random(150,220));
tint(myColor);
image(myPicture,mouseX,400-height/2,80,mouseY);
}

I’m unable to get my projects to load properly on the blog currently, so I’m just going to post the code for the time being, and will probably upload a screen shot later or something to show what it should look like when working.

click to generate falling leaves (well, okay, circles, not leaves).

In this one, you can click and drag to create crystals on the screen. each crystal’s color is determined by the point at which you start clicking, so crystals which grow from the same point will all be the same color. Press “R” to reset.