Category Archives: 01-introduction

chen

13 Jan 2015

Hi everyone, I’m Chen Liang and I currently study in Music & Technology program as a master student. Some of my works related to laptop orchestra and vocal analysis. I’m kind of a vocal music learner and I’d been a member of choruses for many years.

I’d like to create works in IACD that people may think interesting.

Twitter: @jimoyouchong

Github: @chenlianMT

Laptop Orchestra Project: Tinnitus

Description:

When a soldier wakes up in the battlefield, what would be in his mind? Tinnitus is the name of my program describing the annoying sound in this soldier’s ear. The program maps controller’s real-time motion into audio synthesis parameters or audio samples playback parameters and then put generated audio into different channels. The standard interaction between the controller and ChucK is offered officially by the author of ChucK.

to be used

It’s really an interesting experience to directly control sound through a programming language like ChucK, and it was great to tell a story using audio. I know this work is pretty simple and short, and it would be better to add spatial effects using more speakers.

dantasse

13 Jan 2015

Hey all, I’m Dan. PhD student in HCI. Research focuses on using geotagged social media data to better understand and engage with cities. I like riding and building bikes, drinking coffee, traveling to places that are remote, playing fast word games, and cooking Indian food. I want to use IACD to develop both tools to be able to go from idea to execution faster, and to practice coming up with ideas in the first place.

Twitter: @dantasse (or @sedatesnail for day to day lunch tweets that Golan would say should probably be on Facebook)

Github: https://github.com/dantasse

A project: Radiohead or Horse_ebooks? is a simple site that presents a cryptic snippet and asks you to guess whether it was created by megaplatinum world-conquering rock heroes Radiohead, or by Twitter bot Horse_ebooks.

radiohead or horse ebooks

They’re kind of similar, really, but one is among the highest pop culture created today, and one is a spambot. (Okay, was a spambot.) One is a cult favorite, the other is… a cult favorite.

What worked? The site did, technically. It’s still running, still grabbing a few more Horse_ebooks tweets to its database every day, adding in a few more Radiohead lyrics to balance them out, and, well, no obvious bugs. I built it in a few stints in cafes and bars over a week in Wellington, New Zealand, on a crummy eeepc, so I was kind of proud of that. And I’ve sent it to my friends and we all had a nice chuckle.

What didn’t? Well, I’m sure there’s something in there about semiotics or how we create signs that friends can rally around regardless of what they mean, but honestly I just thought it was kind of funny. And therefore maybe it’s less meaningful than some things I hope to build in this class, but it’s the only thing I can find that involved code, was mostly by myself, and was somewhat creative.

Credits: Google App Engine for infrastructure and free hosting. Green Plastic Radiohead for lyrics. Code’s here.

For the record, “The Pleiadian Mission, A time of Awareness” was Horse_ebooks.

Bryce Summers

13 Jan 2015

Introduction

Bryce likes generating images through computation, playing bassoon, designing board games, inventing new fonts and corresponding font renderers, data structures, trains, photography, designing beautiful algorithms, conversing with other humans, inventing the school of Brycian Philosophy, playing Ultimate, writing blog posts, and many other particular things.

As for this semester in IACD, Bryce is hoping to meet interesting people and work on interesting projects. Bryce might theoretically use taking this course as an opportunity to implement some ideas that he has had on the back burner for the past few years.

Twitter Account

https://twitter.com/Bryce_Works

Github Account

https://github.com/Bryce-Summers

One Prior Project — Hoth 2.0

Hoth2 Screenshot

http://www.funtheemental.com/gamehoth2.html

Hoth 2.0 is a computer game that I designed and programmed. In this game, the player needs to overcome many obstacles such as swinging axes, spikes, pushers, giant worms, etc in order to recapture pieces of their spirit. Players often need to use their mind in addition to their finger dexterity skills to beat the levels.

Execution Successes

The atmosphere and lighting worked well in addition to the many neat obstacles and enemies. Players enjoyed the difficulty of the game, because they felt more satisfaction from progressing though it.

Pitfalls of the Execution

I programmed the game several years ago in Game Maker and have therefore been unable to get the game working on non Microsoft Windows operating systems. It has become evident that many of the would be players of Hoth 2.0 are also partial to computers made by the Apple company.

I was not able to fully realize my visions of arbitrary shaped platforms. Since I used Game Maker, I did not have enough control over the structures and programmatic techniques that I could employ. I am working on a third iteration of the game in Java that should hopefully overcome some of these execution maladies.

rlciavar

13 Jan 2015

I’m currently studying industrial design at Carnegie Mellon University with a concentration in physical computing. As a designer I work to create unique and engaging experiences that stretch our understanding of current product interactions. I am especially interested in the intersection of digital and physical worlds.

When I’m not working in my studio I enjoy, riding my bike (and sometimes falling off), discovering interesting music, exploring urban spaces, tinkering with electronics, playing guitar and, late night botanical garden visits.

This semester I hope to become more fluent in using code and software as a medium for my creative work.

https://twitter.com/flock_of_fishes

https://github.com/rachciav

http://www.rachelciavarella.com/

Previous creative code work

Kim vs. Comet (Rachel Ciavarella 2014)

Created for Ali Momeni’s course, Hybrid Instrument Building, this project is an exploration in data creation through social media, focuses of public attention and the effects of digital communication on decision making. Using Processing, Twitter is scraped for the most recent tweets @KimKardashian and @ESA_Rosetta. These tweets are then sent over a serial connection through an arduino to be printed by either thermal printer.

Kim kardashian’s “internet breaking” photoshoot was released on the same day that human’s successfully landed on the Rosetta comet. I was intrigued by the sheer volume of media attention one event received next to the other and decided to physicalize this in the form of printed tweets.

I feel I was successful in unbiasedly presenting the viewer with information to pass judgement on themselves. There are a few technical changes I would make, such as, flipping the text so it prints right side up, adjusting the twitter scraping rates so I am not kicked off the network so often, and reducing the code to one processing sketch and the hardware to one arduino or ideally a raspberry pi.