Once the genie is let out of the bottle into the internet, there is no going back. Edison Chen - and his many now disgraced sex partners - have learned the hard way. Chen was involved in a major sex scandal in January 2008, when hundreds of racy photographs of himself as well as several high-profile female celebrities from the Hong Kong entertainment industry became widely circulated on the Internet. The photographs originated from a pink MacBook which he sent to repair at a local computer shop, which then extracted them for viewing pleasure.

An anonymous user named 'Kira' was the first to post the images on a Chinese BB, which were then taken down hours later. Kira then promised to release images at set times in retaliation to police who were searching for them. One by one, the images became racier and racier, implicating more. Disgraced celebrities include Gillian Chung, Bobo Chan, Mandy Chen, Candace Chan, Rachel Ngan and Cecilia Cheung, all of whom have built their image around a role-model good girl motif.

This project is a representation of the massive set of images that were passed on from user to user. This despite law enforcement attempting to firewall and block the images. The images are the content that is being passed around in a Bit-Torrent network and other internet traffic. When clicked upon, bulletin board content and blog comments are loaded. This creates the stream of though that are the users. Online, users are free to air out, often in harsh criticism and flaming comments.

The second senario involves Tom Cruise and his Scientology video that were leaked on gossip websites, instantly becoming a YouTube hit. Tom Cruise as Tom Cruise the Scientologist in the video was like an alien dropping onto earth. Scientologists sued every media outlet for copyright infringment. However, in vein with the Edison Chen sex scandal, blogs such as gossip outlet Gawker.com. Once out, there is no containing the madness.




Documentation of project:

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Full movie available for download:
http://users.design.ucla.edu/~mmsnow/edison_chen.mov
Load movie in Quicktime, then click on bottom right to "Save Movie As."

If this does not work, then you can download the zipped file of the clip here:
http://users.design.ucla.edu/~mmsnow/edison_chen.zip
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Application:

For those who are curious, the application can be downloaded here:

For Mac:http://users.design.ucla.edu/~mmsnow/edison_mac.zip

For Windows:http://users.design.ucla.edu/~mmsnow/edison_windows.zip

Photographs are a slice in time captured through light. Oral speech and writing are ideas expressed by the mind.

As we go about our daily lives, we leave traces of our existence. From these traces of memories, a journey can be traced, and an identity formed.

Project II will involve the navigation through the 'Space' that is one's traces and memories, to bring to light sometimes clearly and other times abstractly the identity of the subject.


Memory of wedding, fleeting


Blog of one woman's year in cooking through Julia Child's French cooking bible.


Use of one's flickr images to composite photo collection.


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Implementation:

Social Networking illustration by: Ivan Kozik

I created a Processing program that outputs infinite organism variations that are then put through fitness function and cuteness function tests. The print describes this process:

Generation One (1000) = Original Organisms —>
Generation One Survivors (64) = Passed Fitness Function (Has one black dot within white circle) —>
Generation Two (32) = Procreate for two white dots and two black dots —>
Generation Two ‘Cuties’ (6) = Passed Beauty Function. Polled through Amazon Mechanical Turk anonymous polling, 994 results total, percentages are as chosen, one of the ‘cutest.’ Majority advances —>
Generation Three (infinite) = Random reproduction of the majority six to produce infinite numbers of fit and ‘cute’ organisms

The Amazon Mechanical Turk anonymous polling resulted in 1000 completions, of which 6 were rejected due to user incompetence, resulting in 994 total. Surprisingly, ones that I thought would be exceedingly cute were cute, and some which I thought were not, were. Only six out of thirty-two were above majority and thus advances.

These results can be compared to a real-world senario:

Imagine:
Another Chernobyl has struck a neighboring town. Cats are the only few remnants left to stay and survive, and thus, are mutated by the excessive radiation. These cats (1000 of them) undergo a fitness function test - only those with a distinct eye survive to mate to the next generation (eliminates to 64). Once matured, these cats reproduce with their neighbor, producing one kitten with two eyes (32 of them). It is at this point where a local Animal Shelter decides it is safe enough to extract the new kittens for adoption. As choosing pets usually goes, the cuttest are adopted first, while the 'ugly' ones languish. If only six people come and choose, there is more than a 2/3 chance that all will pick one of the top cuttest, in line with the Amazon Mechanical Turk results.

Full image can be seen here:
http://tinyurl.com/yrmsvu

Video of process coming shortly.

Please comment!

Is this cute?

Cuteness is a subjective matter where machines have difficulty evaluating. Here, a program runs through four different scenarios and parameters, each producing over 600 variations - from thin lines to thick, from two eyes to none from many lines to few.

Pending the results of the Amazon Turk Mechanism poll, the cutest from each category will be chosen and cloned with slight variation and then pitted against all to see which one is the cutest of all.

Some initial observations are - the more symmetrical the eyes, the cuter; the larger the eyes and eyeballs, the cuter; the more the placement is towards the middle, 100px, 100px, the cuter.

— Michael Sun

There’s a new fluidity in design. For Project 1, I’m building an emergent process using existing algorithms that are simple in design, yet elegant and complex in execution. The parameters calls for a high level of visual refinement using only black lines.

It is very easy to become overwhelmed with all the great visual complexity and generative artworks through collectives such as VisualComplexity.com, SpaceCollective.org, and Processing.org’s exhibitions. Also, I’ve been reading up on John Maeda’s Creative Code and Casey and Fry’s Processing: A Programmer’s Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists (see: Synthesis 4: Structure and Interface, esp. Andreas Schlegel’s swingtree works). With this in mind, my expectations in terms of the level of refinement given the two weeks to complete it will not be beyond my limits.



Reading Blobjects & Beyond by Steven and Maria Holt inspires me to use an existing (which will make the process much easier) algorithm that is visually pure form, held together by its quintessential fluidity. A Blobject as the authors describe, “engenders emotion – an immediate visceral response o its exaggerated, caricatured, or otherwise exuberant form.”

One algorithm, by artist Peter de Jong is the following:


According to his website, these images plot the phase space of the Peter d Jong system using arbitrary starting values within the image region.
(http://www.complexification.net/gallery/machines/peterdejong/)

Kudos to Peter for enabling fellow programmers to view the source code to learn the inner workings and execution of the program.

The next step is to refine the program in giving it extra parameters in the elegance that is mathematics. I will consult with Casey and Aaron Siegel.

Also, I considered using existing data sets such as Digg’s API or social networking, however, I just want to stick with the simple mathematical algorithms for now.

Here’s to a wonderful Processing journey.

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(update)
After a class critique, I have refined the project to include a fitness function into the equations, to evolve them so they are not merely cliche images. More to come in the next post.

— Michael Sun

There is truth to the saying: "you are what you eat." If one is vegan, living a sustainable and moral-aware life is paramount. If one is malnourished, growth is stunted and pangs of hunger dominate. At last year's Arts and Activism Sustainable Foods lecture, Peter Sellers of the World Arts and Culture major at UCLA spoke of food as "the daily essential nourishment that sustains the body through the next 24 hours"
Giuseppe Arcimboldo 1 of 3 (1527-1593, Milan) abstract portrait of a man made from fruits and flowers takes a surrealist view of a larger picture of what one's diet sustains one's nutritional outlook. With bright fruit, vegetables, and life, the subject is buoyant and happy about the space that is the sum of his parts. If made of meat and other junk foods, his complexion would not be the same. One's diet is the emerging and live process that fills the most important space - the body.

Recently, documenting one's intake of food has been on the rise in seeing trends and activities. Artist Chris Gillet of Britian recently exhibited photos of all the meals he ate in one year - 2500 of them at the Bradford-on-Avon gallery in England. Camile O. is currently documenting her intake of food in fulfilling her diet. Seeking and analyzing data of diets from those with differing health will enable better nutritional advice.

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Earth Night from National Geographic reveals the light illuminating from our earth. Light density symbolizes development versus darkness where there is third world conditions. The emergence of light fills only 20 percent of earth's surface mainly on the North American, European, and Asian countries. Specifically, one can see the stark differences between North Korea and South Korea where only one major city - Ponyang is highlighted versus many for South Korea. Earth night also shows natural gas deposits are, night fishing areas, and recent fire activity.