Reading Response — Understanding Networks Week 1

The author of "The Linked" starts with two examples - MafiaBoy and Paul. Though MafiaBoy is an act of destruction and he operates the Internet, Paul built a wide early Christian communities and he operates social network, They both used networks to increase their impact dramatically. Their success depends on the fact that "everything touches everything". In the first chapter, the author also talks about the opposite research method to reductionism. Cause in complex system the parts can be put together in many different ways, the simple "divide and conquer" method is not enough anymore. Instead of seeing things in isolation, we need to see the world where most events and phenomena are connected.

After the first chapter, I was convinced by the author. I became excited about the new science of networks. It not only about the Internet, it's also about social network, neurology, and other diverse systems that all share some similarities.

The third chapter tells the whole background story of Six Degrees of Separation, which suggests that people are linked by at most 5.5 links. Six Degrees of Separation is intriguing, because no matter how enormous our society is, it can easily be navigated by following social links between people. That is, our world is actually quiet small because of its dense web.

In addition, the Web is small world too. Network’s diameter is a function of the number of nodes, and the diameter of the Web was 18.59, close to 19. So here comes nineteen degrees of separation. Also, the Internet, a network of hundreds of thousands of routers, has a separation of ten. The reason for these theories exit is that these networks are highly interconnected. However, the author pointed out that these theories have limitations. It must be shorter than six people cause Milgram's subject didn't know the shortest path to their target.

In conclusion, in general, networks is genetically "small", but our ability to reach a node has less to do with the physical distance. So we need a new geometry to understand the complex networks.

This remind me of the development of NYC subway map. At first, the map is analogical. It shows all the actual distance between two nodes and the precise position of each node. However, this map is confusing to people. People don't need to know that details. So the new map simplified nodes and links, and emphasized the relationships of nodes. The new map is much more easy for people to understand.

Subtraction Week 1: Router

This week's Skill Builders is to use a powerful and affordable tool - router - to recreate a shape. After making it, I fully understood this sentence: the only way to learn the tools is to use them. Cause I made mistakes when I was using the router, and that's how I got to know routers.

If I can make it again, I will definitely improve two things. First of all,  when I attached the circle jig to the router, I chose the wrong side of the circle jig, so the four screws stood out of the surface which made the router's bottom surface not flat. This is a stupid mistake, and I didn't notice it until the end........! The funny part is that my photo documented my mistake perfectly.... Because of this mistake, I can't move the router smoothly, so the cutting edge is not good. If I use a router again, I will double check the bottom surface.

The second thing is the setup for the plywood, router and jig. I used a clamp to hold the piece of plywood, but the clamp always gets in the way of the long jig. I have to stop once to screw the 3/4 circle. Next time, I will choose bigger plywood to keep clamps far away from jig, or use two nails to fixate plywood. Also I will use two clamps instead of one to hold plywood completely.

Because the bottom surface is not flat, the straight cutting line is so uneven. I will be careful next time. Also while something is not going well, instead of continuing doing it, I should just stop and check tools and setup, and think about how to make it right.

Although the final piece is not perfect, but I enjoyed the process, I also learned something that became my tips for my future work. I feel like I'm one step closer to an artsy craftsman.:D

Unconventional Drawing

After brainstorming many different ways to do unconventional drawing including sewing pills and pearls onto fabric and drawing 3D objects on papers, I finally decided to use stamp to draw a Kakashi portrait. The reason I chose a stamp as tool is that I was fascinated by an artist I met on the street. He only uses one single pattern to draw his entire drawing. I think the smart part is that when people look at his drawing from a distance, people can understand, "oh, that's a man's portrait". And when people walk close to his drawing, people will find that it's full of interesting details.

Kakashi is a character from a Japanese comic called Naruto. I like him so much, and I started drawing him when I was in middle school. I'm so familiar with his hair, eyes, etc. The picture below is Kakashi.

This is my tool.

This is a part of my drawing.

This is the final piece.

I like the final result, though I think I shouldn't add the red color, cause it feels inconsistent to other part of my drawing. I also think unconventional drawing is hard, cause it is difficult to control the tool and make ideal strokes. I feel like pencils and brushes are perfect for conventional drawing. But there are still many other possibilities.

"Already Home": ICM Final Project documentation

Description: This is a visual animation that can change along with my favorite song. The song's called Already Home. I used minim library to detect the beats and the frequency, used subtitle txt file to add lyrics, and add 3d background. I love the song because it can calm me down, I hope it will be relax and peaceful experience. The audience will be the people who like listening music and like to picture the lyric and the melody.

https://vimeo.com/114224765

In the future, I also want to add some user interaction. There will be two spheres flying around. One is about beats, the other one is about the frequency. And users can use keyboards to control one sphere. If the two spheres are close to each other, the background will light up, otherwise the background will be dark again. So users can follow the two spheres explore the space. It will also be a relax experience.

Animation Final Project: On the Road

https://vimeo.com/114224612

Atomospheric Sound Lamp

https://vimeo.com/113624641   

     

Atmospheric Sound Lamp is a group project alongside Gabriel Andrade.

It is a physical instrument that combines two sensations - sound and light - to bring an atmospheric experience. It is made of three white paper mache lamps on a rack. When people touch a lamp, it will emit warm light and play cosmic sounds. More specifically, the light that comes out from the lamp case with many cuts creates many small shadows in the room. The volume is determined by the area of the touch, and tune depends on the length of the touch. In addition the paper mache provides a crafty texture that encourage touches from people. People could touch two or three lamps, or touch the lamps in different orders to play with the sound and also enjoy the warmth. For adults, these lamps will bring a peaceful meditative warm experience; for kids, they will increase their curiosity on light and sound.

ideation: I like projects that combines multi-channeled senses to diversify the experience. So this time I made touch as input, light and sound as output to creative a rich and consistent interaction. In addition, I have always been attracted to lights, especially in the winter time. I always try to bring warmth and comfort to people around me.

Implementation: We used MAX MSP to generate atmospheric sounds. Also we took aluminum paper, 12v lamps, 12v DC power supply, Arduino to build the circuits. In addition, we used old newspapers to build paper mache lamp case. Here's the circuits.

  

User test: We started with encouraging users to light the lamps by singing out loud. However, in the user test most people are not comfortable with doing so in public. Instead, they are more likely to touch and speak. Therefore, we changed our method of interaction to touching. We learned to respect the behaviors of users and create interactions that follow the trends.

PCOMP Final Project Documentary 3.0

For now, when the lamp is touched, it will light up, and MAX/MSP will play the note. The volume of the note is decided by how much area is covered by the hand. And in MAX/MSP, we can see the metal foil's variable. When it's bigger than 100, MAX will play 440 Hz note. Here's a video we made. https://vimeo.com/112332575

After Effect Animation: Story Board

This time, I want to create an animation that visualizes a song. I always like visualization. When I listen to my favorite songs, I will picture the melody and the lyrics in my mind. Also I saw the animation that Ashley sent us. I like how the image change and match the lyrics. Inspired by my favorite song's MV, an animation called "Semi Permanent Titles", and a short story by Haruki Murakami(ON SEEING THE 100% PERFECT GIRL ONE BEAUTIFUL APRIL MORNING), I decided to use my animation to tell a very short story. The screen will be divided into two. First of all, I like the symmetrical beauty: Semi Permanent Titles. The left side looks exactly like the right side.

Secondly, I want to use the two sides to express the story. There are two characters in the story, a girl and a boy. They're so similar, and they're right for each other. They are the 100% perfect person to each other. But they are divided by a wall, by the time, by the distance.

Recently, my favorite song is Already Home from A Great Big World.

    

Jimmy Liao, a Taiwan illustrator and a picture book writer, his picture book A Chance of Sunshine

And here's my storyboard.

Animation Stop Motion: the water cycle

https://vimeo.com/114224524

ICM Week 9: Final Project Proposal--Visualizing Music

visualizing music

• a visual animation that can change along with a song(the volume and the frequency).

How did I become interested in it?

• I like listening to music very much. I always wear my headphones when I'm in the subway, and when I'm doing my homework. Music always calms me down and helps me focus on my mind. And when I was thinking what to do in my final project, I listened a song named "already home" by A Great Big World(a band in New York City). This is one of my favorite song. The lyrics really got into my head. One of the lyrics said "If only New York wasn't so far away, I promise the city won't get in our way ". I started to visualize the song, the picture of new york city, the street, as well as the sound wave of the piano. So I think it would be interesting to visualize a song using processing.

Who is the audience?

• the people who like listening music and like to picture the lyric and the melody.

Something visual for us to look at in class: drawings, images, video, etc.

• First of all, I want to create a processing sketch that changes according to the song's volume and frequency. Here's some music visualization from iTunes. These are several light planets and many particles. It's very beautiful when you see it changing along with the music.

• secondly, I want to add related pictures in the sketch by using the google image API. I want to divide the screen into two similar pictures to express the story in the song. Below are some pictures from MV "already home". It seems the boy lives in California and the girl lives in the New York City.

A sample Processing sketch that demonstrates a first step

Questions for the class (conceptual or technical)

• how to make visualization like iTunes did? or other visualization ideas?
• do I need to cover all the songs, so people can search one song and play it, or focus on one particular song, to make the animation and pictures matching the melody very well?
• do I need to add some lyrics into the animation?

Things I need to do:

• make better visualization.
• add pictures, use google image API, generate the pictures, divide the screen into two and put two similar pirctures.
• make the sketch interactive. Users can press some keys to change the animation, or they can add pictures into the animation as background by themselves and create their own MV. for example:

           The [+] and [-] keys allow you to progressively Increase or Decrease the intensity of the particles.

           The [A] and [S] keys let you Add or Subtract particles to the visualizer you are currently viewing.

           The [R] key will Reset the intensity and particle count to their default values.

PCOMP Final project documentary 2.0

For this week, Gabriel and I

• made three shapes of the lamp by using paper mache;
• built a prototype that has the circuits for 12v lamp and metal foil;
• figured out the serial communication between MAX MSP and Arduino;(Because we want to add some effects to the sound, and also make sound loops in realtime, we choose to use MAX MSP instead of the Wave Shield in the end)
• read the MAX MSP tutorial and learned how to make music in MAX MSP.

Here's some pictures and videos.

These are our three paper maches. We'll paint them when they totally dry out.

This is the circuits with 12v lamp and metal foil.

These are three videos testing the lamp. We decided to use the 20w yellow lamp and cut more holes on the shape of the lamp.

https://vimeo.com/111483956

https://vimeo.com/111483955

https://vimeo.com/111483957

This is a screenshot of our serial communication code in MAX MSP.

PCOMP: Final Project Playtest Result

Last week, for the final project, Gabriel, Sweta and I had a play test last week. We showed users the pictures below and asked them "what will you do if you see this" and "the system t", and the circuits(the touching lamp with two metal foils).

The result of the playtest is very helpful. It turns out that many users thinking about the input and output differently, so we need to change our original idea.

Playtest result:

First of all, most users don't like singing in public, and they preferred to talk first. I thought the singing part will be fun, but it turns out many people don't like it so much. One or two people said they'll trying to sing if someone told them to. But still, singing is a difficult part.

Secondly, they don't feel like to touch lamp. We think the two kinds of inputs may confused users. But if we only have one kind of input and make the lamp very beautiful, or maybe instruct users to try to touch them and see what will happen, maybe the input will be clear to users.

Because of the result, we are going to leave the "singing" input for a while, and just get done with the "touching" input first. And if we still have time, we'll try to use different way to convert sound input to visual output, like the singing input did.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's some notes we prepared for the user test:

    What We Want Answered

• Does the name “Piano Lamps” make sense? What does the user picture when they hear the name ‘Piano Lamps’?
• Do we need a visible microphone?
• Can the user easily figure out how to play with the installation?
• Does the user get confused by being able to sing and touch in order to play the notes?
• Does the user have to sing accurately?
• Does the light get brighter if the user is singing more accurately or if the user is singing more loudly? how are we defining ‘accuracy’?
• Does the user learn that if they sing a certain note the same lamp turns on?
• Does the piece work with multiple people?
• Do the lamps have to light up in a particular order to make sense?

    Before the Test

• Do you like singing? Do you think you’re a good or a bad singer?

    Instructions We have a series of lamps here that will light up when you talk or sing. Each lamp lights up on a different note when you sing. If you touch it, the lamp will also light up and make a sound.

Don’t worry about singing, you can also talk if you’re not comfortable.

Now we’re going to sing together. Let’s see what happens if we both sing a song together.

    Ask the User - Post Test

• Would you change the name from “Piano Lamps”? If so, what would you call it?
• On a scale of 1 - 7, how easy or difficult was it to play with the lamps?
• On a scale of 1 - 7, how easy or difficult was it to understand how to play the piece?
• Did you expect the lamp to sing when you sang a note?
• What do you think is happening when the light is dim? What do you think makes the light brighter?
• Do you think you have to sing well to play with the lamps?
• Would you want to sing with another person?

ICM Week 8: Data

For this week, we learned about data and text. My home work is about counting word frequencies in two different novels (The Hungry Game and The Power of Throne), and visualize the words. For now, the words are arranged by frequency on the y-axis, and the different color represents different novel. Originally, I wanted to draw different size of circles to present different frequencies, and also made them bouncing in the screen. But the problem is that I don't know how to link the circle and the word properly. I'm not satisfied by the visualization, so I'm still thinking about a more interesting way for visualizing the words.

PCOMP Final Project plan, timeline and BOM

For this week, gabriel and I did the project plan, timeline, system diagram, testing plan and bill of materials. Project plan: 

"Piano Lamp" is a physical instrument that combines the sound and the light. There are 7 lamps on the wall, the lamp will light up and play different note when user touch them. We also have a application scenery in mind. This is like a challenging game(because we think game is a perfect example for interaction and easy to engage users into it). The lamp will automatically light up in certain order and play a short piece of music first. And users will be asked to repeat the piece of music by touching the lamp in the right order. A second design is to involve a processing sketch in our project to create a interface like "guitar hero".

Timeline:

The final presentation is on Wednesday, 12/3/2014.

11.5-11.12:

• create sounds in MAX MSP
• serial communication between Arduino and MAX MSP
• control sound with Arduino
• design sketch of the lamp
• use balloons make two paper mache lamps
• select the better 12v Lamp in two kinds of lamps

11.12-11.19:

• build the whole system(lamp, Arduino circuit, MAX msp)
• adjust and confirm the final design of the lamp
• get all materials
• build all the seven lamps
• user test all the time as soon as we have a prototype

11.19-11.26:

• continue user test and modify it
• polish the prototype
• ensemble the final project
• troubleshoot and increase the stability of our system

11.26-12.3:

• add the game scenery
• continue user test and redesign the system

System diagram and brief description:

Testing plan:

As said on the timeline, we want to try the first prototype (one or two lamps) on the week of the 12th of november, and the finish prototype (seven lamps) on the 19th of november. That would allow us to see if some changes are needed with the installation.

Bill of Materials:

12v 20W lamp                                                    $ 3.00            Radio Shack

10 LED lights 5mm pre wired 12 V                    $8.96             Amazon

newspaper

Arduino board

wires

balloons

12V transformers

paints

black fabric

PCOMP week 8: Labs!

Lab: Using a Transistor to Control High Current Loads with Arduino

I got the TIP120, diode, DC supply from the shop, and the 12v lamp from RadioShack.I made two silly mistakes in this lab.

Mistake 1: the lamp acts so wired, it lights up sometime, and it didn't do anything sometime. Finally I found that it's because there's no common ground and common power on the both edge sides on the breadboard.

Mistake 2: the lamp lights up immediately and is not controlled by potentiometer. This is because I connected the lamp to the base instead of the collector. The picture on the website has this little mistake.

This is the video with the DC motor:

https://vimeo.com/110742647

This is the video with the 12v lamp:

https://vimeo.com/110742645

Lab: Controlling a DC Motor with an H-Bridge

https://vimeo.com/110742646

PCOMP Final project documentary 1.0

https://vimeo.com/110279888 For this week, we built a simple prototype with the touching lamp. If you touch the two metal foils, the LED will light up and the piezo will play two different notes.

ICM week 7: Pixels

I made a "textmirror".  Instead of pixels, certain letters compose the image. The brightness of every letter decides the font size of every letter. As you can see, my hair is darker, so the letters on my hair are bigger. The default letters are "zero". I can type anything on the screen to compose my portrait.

And when I press the arrow up and arrow down key, the font size will increase or decrease. When I press the arrow left and arrow right key, the hue of every letter will change.

And if I press the mouse, the program will save the image as .png file. The name of the file is the time when you save the image.

So, in this way, everyone could have his customized portrait.

Visual Language Week 6: color

Playing with colors

For the last assignment, I used processing to create a blossoming flower: moving the mouse horizontally, the flower will blossom, and moving the mouse vertically, the circles will rotate.

Hue

Saturation

Brightness

Color challenge

Video&Sound Final Project: A Documentary about acupuncturist

The video: https://vimeo.com/109993924

Things I learned:

I learned so much thing through this whole process, like how to choose a topic for a documentary, how to set story board, how to set key shoot, how to use 5D, how to edit video, and how to work as a team.

About the topic:

I knew nothing about acupuncture before. I just thought acupuncture was a ancient Chinese treatment. However, as we got to know the acupuncture through shooting the documentary, I was amazed by the acupuncturist. The acupuncturist can tell my current body state just by taking my pulse. She told me that I drank too less water per day, and I was a little bit stress out. She also asked me whether I had asthma before. And the truth is, I indeed had asthma when I was younger. And I also saw the patient who really felt much better after the treatment. We even interviewed an old man who told us the acupuncture help him avoid getting a surgery.

Here's the story board I drew:

I considered close-up shot, medium shot and wide shot.

PCOMP Final project concept

1. Singing Lamp--a combination of light and music We'll have 7 lamps representing do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti. when you sing a certain note, the related lamp will light up for a moment. when you sing a song, all the lamp will light up depending on the song.

This is one way to interaction with the lamp. The other way is to touch the lamp, when you touch it, it will play a note. You can even arrange the order of the lamps, and touch them in order, in this way, you can make your own song.

These are two pictures I found on the internet. The project will be presented in a dark environment, and the lights brought by lamp will make a warm and sweet atmosphere. And the jelly fish lamp is amazing! And maybe when every jelly fish lamp sings a note, the jelly fish will get a little bigger, or pop out a little bit. Actually, I become loving this idea after I saw the two pictures. I hope this project could be fun and beautiful.

2. teach you how to dance

sometimes when I learn some kind of dance, I watch the dance video, and follow the teacher's move, but it's hard to know whether I'm doing right or not.

So, in this project, there will be a professional dancer on a projector. She will teach you some moves. But at the same time, you could see your body's shadow on the project, you can follow the teacher and repeat the move. Your shadow and the teacher's shadow are overlapped, so you could easily see whether you're doing right or not.

3. tech you how to play a song using a keyboard.

When you need to hit a piano key, the key will light up in advance.  So the user will know the next key. So everyone can use piano keyboard to play a song.