Prototype3-Almost Completed Visual Comp

This is the almost completed visual comp for my DIGIA (Dynamic Information Generated Interactive Art) with the new name 'Let It Be.'

I switched for the picture of Jimi Hendrix into the Beatles' last album 'Let it be' to create a pun that imply my statement as artist towards today's music industry.

I divided the picture into 40x40 tiles, and then by default placed black and white music label logos into each tile. When every 1000 Bittorrent users get online, one tile flips into a Torrent client logo.

The automatic interactivity implies the domination of music sharing over the old days major labels sales.

Check out the demo here: http://www.umyot.com/thesis/prototype3/

website visualization

Website as a graph shows a website differently, not in pages but in graph. The users can type in url, and the online applet will generate a visual of the input url.

The designer uses colors to indicate different information.

"blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags (quote from http://www.aharef.info/2006/05/websites_as_graphs.htm)"

this is new way to experience a website literally 'visually.'For example, this is a graph version of msn.com



Try it yourself
More info

Three Views: Our planet and money on military

Three Views is an application that visualize the world money spending on military and earning sorted by countries. Size of the circles indicates money for military; Colors indicate the earning amount.

Check out the official website

Look for more help

Getting info from Bittorrent is not an easy task at all. It involves many things, programming, networking, and data base. Now, i’m stuck at this point, so I looked for more help at this guy blog. He’s a .NET developer. Hope he can me with something.

http://davidjsmitty.com/blog/me/about.aspx

New sound for the Prototype

Since I focus my thesis message on expressing the evolution of music industry, I prototype needs new sound set because the first version is too chaotic. I'm working with Reason, a sound program, to make a new set of sound that convey positive message about the new music era. In other words, since I'm taking the pirate side, visualizing and creating sounds from Bittorrent users should sound good.

This is the link to the prototype version 2:
http://www.umyot.com/thesis/prototype2/index.html

This is the project file:
http://www.umyot.com/thesis/prototype2/pmbProtype6.fla

Thesis Statement 3

Thesis statement: In the 21st century, the blurring line between art and science and the information age encourage interactive artists to use information on the internet as an art element.


For centuries, artists have captured and transformed everything around them into art forms. From their daily lives to landscapes to religious beliefs to inner self-explorations, these art works have provided aesthetic experience and inspired generations. Today, in the information age, interactive artists explore beyond the real world. They communicate with the audience using information as an art element. Through artistic information visualization, information conveys not only data but also aesthetic experience and inspirations like another other art forms. 



Hook - The reasons why information becomes an element in interactive art and design.


1. Today, the line that divides art and science is blurring.

1.1. Artists are also scientists

1.2. Art and science influence each other.

2. Information visualization can reflect the world’s overall movement, social issues, and bias.

3. The activities on the Internet affect the real world. The activities and communities on the Internet become more meaningful to people’s way of life.

4. Since there is much information flowing on the internet, information visualization requires craftsmanship to design information architecture.

5. Example of information visualizations

Studio 2 Schedule

This is my schedule for this Fall. Pretty much I am trying to squeeze 60% more of my final thesis into this quarter. It's a tight schedule, i know. But isn't it always like this?

Well, something I have to mention is I have to look for an out sourcing programmer to work on my Java component–taking the number of online bittorrent users from Azureus client–because I can save 3 months of learning Java, which is a small part of my thesis. I also need a good actionscript programmer to help me this quarter too.

Example - We Feel Fine

We Feel Fine is an applet that display the Internet user's mood by detecting key words from weblogs dynamically such as happy, sad, guilty, joy, etc. We Feel Fine displays those keywords in six color particles.

http://www.wefeelfine.org/movements.html

Example - Flickr time

Flickr time is a clock interface that uses images from flickr to assemble a clock dynamically. The users can type in 2 tags, one for the hour and the other for minute.

http://www.hottoast.org/convexstyle/flickrtime/

Example-Amaztype

Amaztype synchronizes with amazon database to allow users to search for book title. Amaztype will arrange the book covers into the keyword the user typed in.

http://amaztype.tha.jp/

Example- Digg Lab and the new information displays

Digg labb came up with many new and experimental ways of displaying storie people digged real-time.

http://labs.digg.com/bigspy/?popular

Bigspy-headline style



Stack


Points



Arc

Example-Voyage - RSS Reader

Voyage is an RSS Reader that pulls information from the user's browser favorites and simulates them in a nice 3D interface.

a href="http://rssvoyage.com/#RSS=loaded

Example-News Map

News Map is an application that tracks news headlines from Google news and visualizes them to show relationships between tons of pieces of informations. The bigger the headline, the more it's shown in Google search result. News map shows how the world conceives informations through Google bias.

http://www.marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/

Pirate Music Box Prototype1 - The end of Studio1

Finally, I came up with the first prove of concept on Pirate Music Box that users can try it online. Please follow this link to try the project yourself. http://www.umyot.com/thesis/prototype1/

There are many parts need to be improve
1. The syncronization between Flash and the number of user online from Azureus
2. Movieclip graphic and animation
3. Sounds need to be more musical

Download the project design document at:
http://www.umyot.com/thesis/prototype1/pmbDesignDoc.pdf

Download the prototype Flash project file at:
http://www.umyot.com/thesis/prototype1/prototype1.fla

Refine 3rd thesis statement

This is my 3rd version of thesis statement.

Interactive media installations can help advertising catch an audience's attention. However, not every out-of-home interactive advertisement is successful in terms of the marketing impact that was expected. This thesis studies examples of both successful and failed out-of-home interactive advertising in order to develop a prototype interactive installation and accompanying guidelines to improve out-of-home interactive advertising.

Scope
This research covers these areas that involve advertising and marketing success.

Location: How does one pick a good out-of-home location for interactive advertising?
Target group: What are good targets group for interactive advertising?
Campaign Length : How long should the interactive advertising be displayed, and how long should the campaign run?
Time: How long should the participation take to participate with the piece?
Space: How big should the interactive installation be?
Interaction: What kind and level of interaction are suitable for interactive advertising?

Motograph: Interactive music for marketing

Motorola is always famous for using music marketing correctly to achieve youth market. Motograph is another success about the use of a combination of interactive media and music. Motograph opened the campaign with an event that invited many graffiti artists to do graffiti with grow in the dark paint. Then the system translated the strokes into sound signals combined to songs that people can log on a website to download them. The audience also had a chance to join and paint themselves, and they could go to the site to load their self-graffiti translated ringtones.

However, the event was over, and Motorola does not provide the previous service anymore. Motograph transformed into web-based DIY ringtone maker. The users can pick any elements, text message, logo or graphic, to let the system translates them into ringtones that the users can download them into their Motorola cell phone.

This project is a good example of a successful project because it caught a lot of attentions and emphasized Motorola brand for the market. Also, the project shows an example of dynamic visual translation into sound, influence of music on interactive art, using music and interactive art as marketing components, and adaptation from interactive event into web-based interaction.

BBC World On-Site Voting Billboard

BBC World penetrates the US viewer market using interactive billboard in the heart of New York city. The board shows a current social issue and let people vote by using text messages. This idea from BBDO New York answers the current interactive ad stream in the right place and time. The location is right because it has high traffic. Most important, the billboard works as a counter itself that proves ad viewed number while it promotes BBC dynamic content image. In addition, BBDO New York walked with a Best of show award from OBIE awarded by Outdoor Advertising Association of America.



This is a successful example of subtly using interactive component for advertising. The ad fixes the issue moving media and moving people because normally moving ad cannot communicate with moving audience very well. However, BBC vote billboard is still to support moving audience but dynamic enough to be very interesting.

Read more:
- Advertising Age: http://adage.com/article.php?article_id=116589
- BBC UK: http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/bbcworld/worldstories/pressreleases/2006/06_june/wnt_ad_camp.shtml
- International Herald Tribune, “British news outlets seek to fill U.S. hole”: http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/01/business/adco.php

Interactive and Music integration

Jason Freeman, professor of Georgia Tech and a composer, installed a new approach to music composition with interactive component called Flock. Flock is described on the official website in “Flock is a full evening performance work for saxophone quartet, conceived to directly engage audiences in the composition of music by physically bringing them out of their seats and enfolding them into the creative process. During the performance, the four musicians and 60-80 audience members move freely around the performance space. A computer vision system determines the locations of the audience members and musicians, and it uses that data to generate performance instructions for the saxophonists, who view them on wireless handheld displays mounted on their instruments. The data is also artistically rendered and projected on multiple video screens to provide a visual experience of the score. ”

‘Though this is not the first time of interactive approach in music, Flock is a updated example proving interactive music projects are not out dated.

Flock Official site : http://music.columbia.edu/~jason/flock/

More Budget on New Media

Advertising fee of new media like website banner ad might not be a big cash, but it has a good sign, at least for now. Although the clients still believe in big events like Super Bowl, WPP group, one of the largest communication service groups, is trying to put client’s money on new media.

"Clients are experimenting because they are sick and tired of media escalating faster than the general price of inflation," Martin Sorrell, Keynote Presentation, Entrepreneur Conference, Silicon Valley, May 1, 2007. (Quote from Adage.com <http://adage.com/article.php?article_id=116465> )

Interactive Art Component in Ad.

Nokia Hong Kong launched interactive work as marketing material to establish a new maketing campaign ‘New’. Universal Everything is a studio that produced this piece. The interactive campaign focuses on showing newness and advanced technology of the new phone. The studio developed an interactive window display for Nokia shops in Hong Kong. The interactive theme still carries to interior design inside the shops and T-shirts as well.








Actually, this interactive component has been seen in many fine art installation such as Daneil Rozin’s Wooden Mirror <http://www.smoothware.com/danny/smallmirror.html> , Geoffery Bell’s Penumbra <http://www.gmbell.com/penumbra_small.mov>, and Øyvind Kolås’s Now and Then <http://pippin.gimp.org/#gallery/video/naa_av_da.flv>

In short, from my point of view, experimental interactive art can influences advertising where newnesws quality is needed. Advertising can save some times achieving higher standard by selecting and applying interactive art component correctly. In order to use interactive advertising successfully, advertising producers have to study and understand the concept of interactive art.

Links:
Universal Everything - http://www.universaleverything.com/recent_activity/

TRYSUMER: Interactive media can help

March 2007, Consumers, the Generation C(ontent), are Trysumers. Experienced consumers expect to access to more information more than before. Sellers have to provide more than samples but trial of the products. They rent instead of buy; they try to make sure the products can satisfy them.

"While price and picture quality remain strong purchase motivators, competitive parity is making product features, functions and brand reputation less important to consumers," said Steve Kirkeby, executive director of telecommunications and technology research at J.D. Power and Associates. "In a market where there is increasing product parity, listening and effectively responding to the voice of the customer is crucial to manufacturers in providing products that will improve satisfaction and solidify loyalty."


The list of TRYSUMER observations goes on:







        •        As all things digital and virtual are so much easier to sample, TRYSUMERS and the online space are a match made in heaven. Expect a renewed interest in lifelike avatars, which can try out and try on anything on behalf of their real world alter-egos. Companies like My Virtual Model (which already partners with Sears, Land's End, H&M, Speedo and Adidas), and Gizmoz, a Flash-based 3D avatar product made from a single picture of a person plus their recorded voice. The company calls it 'bringing Pixar to the people'. (Source: Techcrunch.)

The TRYSUMER pay-off? According to My Virtual Model, shoppers using their solutions spend more, buy more and return far fewer items—resulting in higher sales and reduced shipping and handling costs.

<Read whole article from Trend Watcher / http://www.trendwatching.com/trends/trysumers.htm>

Flight Interactive: Best Location for Interaction

Air France offers “In-Flight Education” that allows passengers to learn languages from 23 option interactively with the flight touching screen. This move shows a response to Status Skill trend that continues from the last year.

The idea of time killing interactive media is a great example of location utilizing for interactive advertisement because the users don’t have anything to do anyway. Classic Ad. law: if the medium moves, the audience is still. If the audience is still, medium moves. Interactive media are moving media.
<Read Whole Article at http://www.springwise.com/education/inflight_education/index.php>
<Read Status Skill article at http://www.trendwatching.com/trends/status-skills.htm>

Advertising Trend: Supporting my Hypothesis

Advertising Age, the April 19, 2007 issue, just reported that Toyata Yaris promoted TV spot in a new way in Smallville TV show embed commercial in the show concept. The commercial is two-minute comic book stylish TVC that leads to another interactive campaign on Smallville website <http://justice.cwtv.com/user/smallville/landing> . Therefore, there is no big commercial break that the audience will leave the screen to the bathroom. This TVC can guarantee that the Ad would be seen; moreover, the web game will count the number of users logging on the site to prove that how impact the ad does.

This shows that today’s commercials have to be embedded with the content because there are so many clutters in media that the audience will ignore every message. One of the solution is to render Ads. as contents, so they wouldn’t be junk messages for viewers.

The tie-in concept supports interactive adverting that the ad and content are one. The user can play and interact with the ad, so the ad can communicate more efficient. However, interactive ads have to due with the issue that how they can bring people to interact with because not everyone wants to hold his busy life and play with something all the time.

Read the whole article at <http://adage.com/article.php?article_id=116206>

More Feed Back on Technical Aspect

I just got more on technical aspect from Jeff Atwood, a guy who is working on making a game based on Bittorrent info. His suggestions are he pull the code out of Google cache and refactor it to work with Processing. See his blog entry. <http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000777.html>

And he also suggest to see another person’s work. This guy wrote the original Processing code. http://www.aphid.org/

Next move: If I have time after interview people for achdemic aspect, I’ll get into technical aspect. If not, programming will be in studio2.

Interactive Advertising From Adobe CS3

Brand New School, an advertising and motion graphic production house, just cooperated with The Studio for Interactive Media launch an interactive campaign for Adobe CS3. The work look facinating at the first glance ‘though the doesn’t have Ad character much. I think I’ll try to interview people from these company see if they can give any good thoughts.


Watch VDO
<http://www.brandnewschool.com/project.php?id=410>

Looked for help with programming

For the past weekend, I spent my time researching how to make the Bittorrent based installation work. I posted my issues on many webboards and asked many people. Here are the feedbacks although they are clear tutorial.

Jeff Atwood: Bittorrent Visualization with Processing

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000795.html

Feedback: His suggestions are he pull the code out of Google cache and refactor it to work with Processing. This is his tutorial.
Next Move: Try the code.

Source Forge.net Forum: Azureus home site
https://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1715300&forum_id=349817
Feedback: No feedback
Next move: Wait, Post more.


Dan Morrill: A guy who wrote an article about getting info. from Azureus
http://www.ittoolbox.com/profiles/rmorril
Feedback: Try this program http://torrentfreak.com/generate-3d-worlds-from-your-p2p-traffic/
I have been playing around with it, and makes a 3d world of traffic coming from the PC.
Next move: Download the software and try it. The project name is Packet Garden. It’s a cool online data visualization using plants metaphor that each kind of plants represents each online informations. This is the official homepage. http://www.selectparks.net/~julian/pg/pmwiki.php?n=Main.HomePage


Slyck.com: Bittorrent Forum
http://www.slyck.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=32401
Feedback: From IneptVagrant - The "azureus.statistics" file in Documents and Settings\[Profile]\Application Data\Azureus\ has the info in it. Its written to disk periodically with updated information. Make a simple .bat to cat the lines you need to a log, and set a schedule to run the script. I could write the .bat for you, but I don't use azerous. If you post the "azureus.statistics" file, perhaps I'll see what I can do.
Next move: Try to find a PC and find the file. Seems like he is more familiar with PC. This is the first time I feel life is harder using mac.

More inspiration reference
Breathing Earth: Flash based interactive art gathering the number of people born, die, and CO2 quantity dynamically. http://home.iprimus.com.au/dawidbleja/microcosm/pages/BreathingEarth-real.html



Packet Garden: Grow a world from network traffic. Packet Garden captures information about how you use the internet and uses this stored information to grow a private world you can later explore.
http://www.selectparks.net/~julian/pg/pmwiki.php?n=Main.HomePage

System work - Java and Flash dynamic app

This week I start to gather technical info. I think I’ll start with Azureus Client ‘cause is Java open source application, and the app shows the number of users online. I think it’s the best bet for me. Therefore, I checked out some Java and in-depth data-based and dynamic programming. Flash books to go over.

I also got some more information about Bittorrent based media from Justin Gardner. His name is Aaron Myers. He used Bittorrent users’ IP address to create a game. He also used Azureus client. I’ll contact him. Hopefully, I can find a shortcut, instead of reading a whole Java programming book.

Link to Aaron’s Torrent Raiders project site http://www.torrentraiders.com/proposal/ and his blog http://interactive.usc.edu/members/adm/

Thesis topic refine 2nd

I decided to change my coast to the music installation idea; however, I still keep the interactive advertising for my research paper. Therefore, the installation will be my example for a good interactive advertisement. I also develop my idea about the piece as well. The update version of the installation is called Pirate’s music box (PMB). The installation focuses on creating visual and sound out of bittorrent users.

PMB develops from the original idea about taking out pixels from a musician picture or audio to a new version with more interaction. PMB provides a chance for the audience to interact with the piece. PMB works like a music player that has a play and stop button. the user can control the index point or the playhead to play loop or to stop (see sketch for details.)

PMB allows users to click on the broken pixels. The user can use the mouse to click on broken pixel to hi-light them. Each hi-ligthed pixel works like a pin in a music box. When the playhead reaches a pin, the playhead sounds from PMB sound library. Each pin or pixel that is broken will contain the an IP address of an online user. The last two digits of each IP address will decide which sound should be played.

Interactive Studio 1 Schedule

This is the first draft of my time table of studio 1 that I will be working with through out the Spring quarter of the 2007.

Thesis Statement

I decided to try to approach two from three pitches which are #1 and 3. Here are the thesis statements and the scopes of the projects.

1. What makes a sucessful out-of-home interactive advertising?

Thesis - While newness of interactive media is the quality that can help advertising to catch audiences attention, not every out-of-home interactive advertising is sucessful in the term of marketing impact as it was expected. The thesis studies example of both sucessful and fail out-of-home interactive advertising in order to develop a guideline to improve out-of-home interactive advertising on communication aspect.

Scope - Location: Study how to pick location in out-of-home interactive advertising
- Target group: Which are good target group of interactive advertising
- Time and space: what are the range of time and space for an interactive advertising piece. How long to participate and how big for the space of participant?
- Interaction: What kind and level of interaction fit for interactive advertising.
- Life cycle: How long for an installation should be use?


3. The sinking boat

Thesis - Interactive installation has a great advantage about catching the audience attention because of its newness quality. However, after the first experience, an installation loses the newness quality. Therefore, an interactive installation does not have a long aesthetic life because it does not have meaning or visual elements for the audience to discover like any other kinds of artworks. The sinking boat is an attempt to merge social message and aesthetic elements into interactive installtion that syncronizes with real-time in order to add artistic value to the art piece.

Scope- pop-culture influences in installation art
- social context in installation art
- music influences in installation art
- dynamic database in interactive installation art
- meaningful interactive installation art
- high aesthetic quality interactive installation art

Brief - (from the last post) An interactive installation that tries to convey a message about the fall of music industry. I'll bring up pictures of music legend like Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, etc... and devide them in pixels. And then, i'll sync those pixels in each picture with the among of online Bittorrent users. The pixels on of the pictures will be distorted depends on the number of the user. For example, 1000 users online, Jimi Hendrix's portait will be destroy 1000 pixels.

Thesis Pitches

I worked on many different ideas for my MFA.thesis at SCAD, and I came up with three ideas from two areas that I am passionate about.

Interactive advertising
1. What makes a sucessful interactive advertising? A study about why some good interactive ads don't work, and make all the working one works in order to develop a general guideline to produce interactive advertising.

2. How to utilize interactivity in advertising? Study when, how, and how much to use interactivity in advertising media.

Music
3. The sinking boat: An interactive installation that tries to convey a message about the fall of music industry. I'll bring up pictures of music legend like Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, etc... and devide them in pixels. And then, i'll sync those pixels in each picture with the among of online Bittorrent users. The pixels on of the pictures will be distorted depends on the number of the user. For example, 1000 users online, Jimi Hendrix's portait will be destroy 1000 pixels.