Social Creatures
Nick Hardeman and Bruce Drummond, 03.23.10.

Social Creatures is an interactive audio-visual installation that aims to make users more aware of the act of creating their public identity. To create their ‘identity’, people use gestures to select a particular form and then interact with a pseudo-musical instrument. The instrument consists of eight visual zones that influence the shape and aural properties of the resulting entity. Once complete, users can name the entity using a mobile device, and then set it free into an eco-system inhabited by similar entities. In the eco-system, the entities react to one another, much like human beings in a social network. Users can use a mobile device to command various entities or cause environmental disturbances through simple gestures.

The physical gestures required of the users ensures a higher level of investment in the process, causing a heightened awareness of one’s creation, and thus oneself. Watching the entity interact with other entities is a reflection of our own interaction in our social networks.

Latest technical prototype, concept statement, look and feel prototype and interaction model for thesis.

Midterm Presentation:

Here’s the latest prototype Nick and me created for thesis. This was programmed in OpenFrameworks to prototype the following:

• Physics and attributes of the virus
• Virus attacking characteristics, not demonstrated in this video
• Amount of user movement required to create virus
• User interaction with virus

Here’s the latest iteration of our thesis abstract for more context on what we are working towards.

Humanizer – A Study of Humans as Viruses, Infecting and Mutating Systems.

Humanizer is an interactive audio/visual installation that explores the relationship between humans and systems. The state of the system is represented by an evolving audio/visual composition, projected on a large surface. Users can infect and mutate the components of the system with the human virus through gestures. This leads to evolving and humanizing the system, emphasizing humans’ effect on existing systems.

A refreshed drawing application. This one stores the color and x and y positions of the drawing and plays back an animated Julia Set fractal.

The circular rings are rotated around a center point based on the time the news piece was posted. The size of the ring is based on the number of characters in the headline and different colors are used for each section (for purely aesthetic reasons). The dense area in the middle indicates that a majority of the headlines are around the same characters in length. Click on the image to view the visualization.

Here the length of the characters are represented as a equalizer-like histogram. Moving the mouse over the bars reveals the headline and generates/plays a pulse wave. The frequency is also based on the number of characters in each headline – low for shorter and high for longer headlines.

The mockup below is intended to be a generative tetris-like game. The pieces are generated based the headline that is displayed along with the piece. Each section is color coded and has a piece assigned to it. Higher points can be scored by attaching the pieces to headlines that are related based on terms or people mentioned.

Another prototype for thesis – a refined squid and a new tick creature created in oF. Both are hooked up to Reaktor via OSC. The squid produces the screechy sounds and the tick produces the beats.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here the speed at which the tick kicks it’s legs is controlled via a slider. The tempo of the beats produced by the tick are also manipulated at the same time. Created with oF, Reaktor and OSC.

The first prototype for thesis – hooked up Nick’s squid to Reaktor. The squid breathes and moves towards the mouse. OpenFrameworks sends OSC messages based on the squids properties to control 3 parameters in Skrewell within Reaktor – breath controls flow, x position controls filter and y position controls delay.

miBass is a bass guitar-like instrument that can be played on an iphone. Mrmr on the iphone is used to communicate with Max/MSP/Jitter via UDP messages. These messages are interpreted and converted to preset musical notes that are then driven through Native Instruments Guitar Rig, as a VST Instrument, to achieve the bass tone. There are 8 notes in all, 2 groups of 4, which can be switched by rotating the iphone up and down. The visuals are created using Jitter nurbs (jit.gl.nurbs) which get modified based on the levels of the tone produced.

Second prototype for the theremin style instrument. It is more of a sequencer now with 4 POT’s for changing frequencies in a looped melody and a sensor changing the tempo.

This is the first implementation prototype of an instrument inspired by a theremin. The POT changes the frequency and the sensor adds another frequency to the mix. The idea is to create a theremin and an analog sequencer hybrid. I want to add 4 potentiometers to generate a looping melody and using the sensor to alter or add to it.

I tested the Tweetlite on 2 potential users. They both thought the product was marketable, would appeal to the Twitter community and gave me some great feedback.