All My Friends: Document
Project: Emergence and Navigating Space

Here's the final video of my project. Here are a few notes about the video and the project as a whole:
1) The two audio tracks are: Tsuxiit by Islands and All My Friends by LCD Soundsystem.

2) The video ends after going to the inverted world, but the experience takes you back and forth between the inverted and normal worlds if you continue to "play" it. Although the project kinda feels like a video game, I'd like to imagine it is more of an experience.

3) For comments about the meaning of the project, please see my previous post.

Let me know what you think, all comments are appreciated :-)

Wed, Mar 19, 2008  Permanent link

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All My Friends: Refinement
Project: Emergence and Navigating Space

In my project, I wanted to create an experience in which the player moves and interacts with the creatures around him/her in a pseudo-3D environment. The space is navigated by a dual analog controller, and the player moves horizontally and vertically by pointing both sticks in the appropriate direction. By pushing both sticks toward each other, or away from each other, the creature is allowed to zoom in or out, respectively (think of how two fingers come to and spread apart to zoom in and out of an iPhone).

The experience is supposed to simulate the emotional rollercoaster that people experience throughout their lives. There are times when things are going very well in your life, and you are able to see your friends all the time, and other times when you feel very distant to everyone around you, and you must search within yourself to find the strength to rise above the current obstacles. The former times is represented by the state where you are able to interact with the other creatures around you. The latter time is represented by the maze state, where you must find your way back to the good times, back to where your friends live. Each time you finish the maze, you're placed back in the initial state, but the colors are inverted. Here are some pictures, in sequence that show the flow of the experience.

Initial State


Navigating Around


Maze Part


Zooming Through Maze Portal


Inverted World


Inverted Creatures


Your Inverted Character


Inverted Maze Portal

Fri, Mar 14, 2008  Permanent link

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All My Friends: Visual Research
Project: Emergence and Navigating Space

Mon, Feb 11, 2008  Permanent link

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Distress, Unite, Collaborate, Disperse 3
Project: Emergence and Navigating Space

Here's the final print of my program, at 1/16th size. The balance between the whites, blacks, and grays turned out nicely. Again, this is the visual representation of creatures coming together, feeding off each other's momentum, and dispersing after gaining enough speed. The lighter lines represent the fast creatures, while the grayer/black lines represent those creatures that are slowing down or stopped. If a creature moves too slow, it begins to show the black dot as a distress signal, and grows it's radius of interaction. That way, more creatures are likely to come along and help it get moving. See the previous post with the video to get a better idea of whats going on.

Here are some other images that the program produced. I really like the one below, but I just couldn't get the same effect when the playing field was much larger.





Please feel free to leave comments

Wed, Feb 6, 2008  Permanent link

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Distress, Unite, Collaborate, Disperse 2
Project: Emergence and Navigating Space

Here's a video of my work so far. When scaling it down, the work began a sweeping motion after awhile. While this kinda produces a unique effect, it takes away from how I wanted the piece to play out.

Wed, Jan 30, 2008  Permanent link

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Distress, Unite, Collaborate, Disperse 1
Project: Emergence and Navigating Space

Emerging Something From Nothing
After seeing the presentations on different emergent topics, I was inspired to drive my first project in the direction of swarm intelligence and BOIDs. I want to create a system where, based on a small set of rules, creatures will make autonomous actions (according to the surroundings) and achieve some goal that would have otherwise not been attained without the help of accompanying creatures. The process is divided into three parts: Unity, Collaboration, Dispersion.



The idea is as follows: all creatures (or lines that represent creatures) will move at random in whatever direction it feels like. Once a creature comes within a certain range of another creature, the creatures will unite and feed off each others momentum to propel each other fast through the space. Once a creature has maxed out its speed, it'll disperse from the group and continue on its normal rules of movement. The more creatures that join in each other's "momentum cloud", the faster each creature will be able to accelerate. The creatures will rotate about each other in a sinusoidal manner while they're still feeding off each others momentum.

This idea of coming together to propel one another forward, where "something is created from nothing", was inspired by a segment in Kevin Kelly's "Out of Control" book, where it explains that most things in life are "Distributed" beings: "When the sum of the parts can add up to more than the parts, then that extra being (that something from nothing) is distributed among the parts."

In my case, the creatures themselves all want to move faster throughout their space, and the only way that is achieved is through emerging themselves together with the other creatures; that "extra being" is speed, which is distributed to all the creatures who are within each others momentum clouds.

I'm hoping that from this decentralized system, where only autonomous decisions are made on an individual basis, we'll be able to see some fascinating interactions and even more interesting visuals that exhibit the process.

Wed, Jan 16, 2008  Permanent link

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Cause and Abstract Space
Project: Emergence and Navigating Space

Cause, Principle, and Unity - Gordon Terry



This acrylic piece has an organic feel to it, where the main object has similar structures to that of an eye or an animal cell. But notice that this simple shape with its analog center represents the theme of oneness achieved through it's intricate parts.

Here's Gordon's take on his work:
"There's always a confusion implied between my materials and the way I manipulate them. The sterile, sleek, refined and clinical qualities of my cast, molded, and spilled acrylic polymers are filtered through the fluid, the organic, the chaotic, and the ornamental. Categorical shifts like these are very meaningful to me—much more so than the actual choice of physical material. I'm fascinated by the ways in which, for instance, my paintings can reference at once psychedelia, science fiction, modernism, the rococo, decadence, and hermetic texts—wholesome, natural beauty, and toxic, synthetic glamour." - Gordon Terry



This abstract work can be thought of as the metaphysical representation of the Big Bang, with the structures stretching outwards, trying to fill the space around it. Unfortunately, after some research, I could not find out the name for this specific style, only that most authors call it "abstract". Here's another image of similar style:



*Note: Authors could not be found for the last two images

Wed, Jan 9, 2008  Permanent link

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