Category Archives: 0-Introduction

Andrew Sweet

14 Jan 2014

Hello, my name is Andrew Sweet. I’m currently a junior studying Computer Science and Art here at Carnegie Mellon. In the past, I’ve worked with a number of startups at different stages of development, in education, games, and social tools. In this course, I hope to escape standard definition and regulation to pursue ambition that comes from within.

Twitter: @HeySweet

GitHub (Pretty barren)

While I’ve worked on other, much smaller projects for classes, the most substantial thing I’ve completed to date is GeekSeek. Long story short, I convinced Geek & Sundry, a Hollywood-based webseries company that I could design and develop an app for them, despite the fact that I had no prior experience with the tools I’d be needing (Objective C, Parse, xcode) or any formal app or interface design experience. The learning process of both sides was incredible, with tons of research and hands-on development. It should hit the App Market within the month.

GeekSeek is an iOS app that allows you to find Geeky places nearby. Find sci-fi bars, arcades, comic book shops and more! Post nearby nerdy locations, vote on others’ locations, comment, or join Geek & Sundry at one of their local events.

All design and implementation with the exception of icons was done by me (icons by Luna Lie, Geek & Sundry’s Web Designer)

GeekSeek Logo

Click here for photos

Celine Nguyen

14 Jan 2014

Hello! I’m a junior studying computer science & communication design under the BXA program. Previously, I have written scripts and small programs or indulged in traditional print design, but I’m focused now on merging my interests and really working in the intersection of multiple fields: CS, design, art, creative writing.

I’m interested in: interactive information visualization, computational typesetting, designing methods of trans-media storytelling, & automated aesthetic analysis.  I hope to explore some of these areas during the class!

I tweet things (@mynameisceline) and use Github (celinenguyen). You can find my website here.

Typeface Grid Game

Screenshot of the typeface grid game made by Celine Nguyen (2013)

For one of my sophomore typography studios, we were asked to arrange a grid of characters from a particular typeface, and then develop the static grid into an animation. I chose to develop an interactive grid. When clicked, individual letter squares slide into the empty slot, revealing factoids about the typeface Helvetica Neue. You can double-click on a square to reverse the color, refresh the grid to get new characters, and add in different fonts (roman, italic, bold, bold italic) to the mix.

It’s technologically fairly simple (HTML, CSS, JS), but was extraordinarily helpful in getting me comfortable with small Javascript projects and ruminating about interfaces that allow the user to create their own typographic compositions.

You can poke at the live version, and check out the Git repo (of note: increasingly curt commit messages as the project progressed).

Chanamon Ratanalert

14 Jan 2014

A new year, a new semester, and possibly a new outlook on life for some. Seems like a new semester really brings about starting anew by having us present ourselves to the rest of the class. This is even more daunting to me because I had to pathetically select only myself in a survey of “people you know in this class.” Anyway, my name is Chanamon Ratanalert. I’m a junior in Information Systems and Human-Computer Interaction. I absolutely love design but was discouraged from pursuing it for the entire time that I spent legally under my parent’s control. I find it pretty funny that I ended up steering my career as an IS major into the path of design anyway (take that, mother).

So far, my classes have either been entirely computing or entirely design, never together. It’s something that I’ve dabbled with on the side but haven’t fully experienced. I have high hopes for this class (IACD) to not only mesh together the two sides of my life but to teach me numerous methods and mediums for creativity.

My Twitter: @jaguarspeaks
My Github: https://github.com/chanamonster

A project that I worked on last semester was bringing the board game Battleship, popularized by Milton Bradley, to the computer screen and creating it as a version that you could play with someone without needing to be in the same room as them. I do not currently have it online because I ran over the trial time for its previous host; I’ll hopefully get it up shortly. This month-long project was the first that I created entirely from scratch–from idea conception to project presentation. It was also a fair collaboration between my coding side and my design side, since I wanted to present it with multiple graphics (see images below) and interactions. It was written using Javascript and Socket.io. I’m pretty proud of how it turned out (unlike how I felt about my janky 15112 project). I had been actually excited to present it despite my general hesitation toward public speaking, and it ended up winning two awards: Best User Experience and Best Visual Design.

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Jeff Crossman

14 Jan 2014

I’m currently a master’s student at the  Human-Computer Interaction Institute. Formerly I was a senior software engineer where over the years I got a taste for design. Now I am back at school to develop this skill and follow my interests in interactive art, data visualization, and all manner of creative and beautiful uses for computers and software.

Previous Project: VECHO

“VECHO creates a visual reflection of the spoken word. Say a few sentences, or tell a story. VECHO will listen and find imagery for keywords, no matter what you say.”

With this application I explored the use of some of the latest speech recognition and natural language processing technologies to create a fun and interesting application that automatically creates visuals based off speech detected by the microphone.

Site: https://vecho.co/

Links

Website: http://www.jeffcrossman.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeffcrossman
GitHub: https://github.com/jeffcrossman

MacKenzie Bates

14 Jan 2014

WHO IS I?:

I am currently a junior majoring in: Computer Science & Art.

I am Interested in video game development and wants to greater explore music visualization. I have a decent amount of 2D video game development and have made a large number of music videos. In IACD I want to either explore 3D game development or deal with music visualization programmatically instead of using videos or photos.

Originally from Avon Lake, Ohio (a suburb of Cleveland).

A Project of Mine:

itbmac.com

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While the main goal of itbmac.com is to serve as my official portfolio, it is also houses my self-documentation (my in-progress autobiography if you wish). Another goal of itbmac.com is it to present my artistic works from my very beginnings as an artist to what I am currently working on. An artist timeline. What this means though is that a decent amount of content on itbmac.com will be older works of mine and won’t be up to my current day quality of work, but I make this clear with how information is presented.

The amusing thing is that I think the best piece of art on the website currently is the website itself. Honestly. This is the single piece of art I have spent the most time on. Its kind of ironic in a way, I spend all this time creating this to showcase art and its better than the art it is showcasing but I guess that just sort of fits who I am.

The Links:

Wobsite: itbmac.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/itbmac
GitHub: https://github.com/itbmac