Final pieces

Here are the final pieces sitting on the podium during the show. Shot by Jared who was nice enough to drive back out here, even though he has graduated, and come see our show.

Final pieces at the show: Banners (on front of podium), processing application, website, notebook, AWARE book, cds and cd cases, t-shirt and tag, and business cards.

Podium!

My Dad and I built the podium for this project over Thanksgiving break and I spent the next two days painting it in the studio. Turned out awesome. I'm excited to put this in the show. The glowing lights work perfectly, and the color is spot on (better be for $30).

I decided I'm going to use this as a bar in my next place. Far too nice to let such a thing go to waste. And glowing lights? How can that not become a bar. Sweet.

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AWARE pt 2

Got it tweaked to where it will be at the show. Kind of a nasty lookin tweak code-wise, but I'm a noob soooo what can you expect. That's exciting. Now to focus on the actual design of everything else.

Shirt

I went through a few revisions and this is the final shirt. The idea would be that someone wearing the shirt would make a conscious effort to notice something new every time they wore the shirt. The tag reads "Everytime I wear this shirt I will notice something new" and this fits in with the theme of my project. Being aware. I would hope that if people were to actually get and wear these shirts, they would start to notice things and eventually make it a daily practice, one that doesn't require the shirt.

Business Cards

Well here are a few ideas for business cards (front and back of card in same image). The two above are finals.

AWARE

Got the application running!

logos

Did some logo sketching, came up with a final to be scanned in. And then scanned it in and created the final logo. Pretty exciting. This is starting to come together, and I really like the idea behind the logo.

Color scheme

This is the final color scheme:

Picking a color scheme was hard for this. I wasn't sure where to take it. I struggled for quite a while until I stumbled across the perfect one on kuler. Here are a few images I was looking at for ideas.

learning processing pt2

And now I've written this one on my own using the first sketch to jog my memory when I forgot exactly what to do:

void setup() {
size (400,400);
smooth();
}

void draw() {
//background (0);
for (int i=0; i < 100; i++) {
int xPos = int(random(-width, width));
int yPos = int(random(-height, height));
int diam = int(random(30));
color col = color(random(255), random(255), random(255));
drawCircle (xPos, yPos, diam, col);
}
}

void drawCircle(int xPos, int yPos, int diam, color col) {
fill(col);
noStroke();
ellipse(xPos, yPos, diam, diam);
}

learning processing pt1

So Derek and I had a little learning session last night. He's attempting to teach me how to code in processing. It's starting to make better sense to me now, and we wrote a program last night that helped me a ton.

Here is what we did:
void setup() {
size(400,400); //WINDOW SIZE
smooth();
}

void draw() {
background(0); //BG COLOR
translate(width/2, height/2); //CENTERS SCREEN

for(int i=0; i < 10; i++) {
int xPos = int(random(-width, width));
int yPos = int(random(-height, height));

drawCircle(xPos, yPos, 50, color(50, 0, 100));
}
}

void drawCircle(int xPos, int yPos, int diam, color col) {
fill(col);
noStroke();
ellipse(xPos, yPos, diam, diam);
}

It turned out well and got me to understand how processing works as a language. I'm happy with what we did last night and I look forward to more learning... apparently he created a folder for me on his desktop: "Zac Lessons" haha. Thanks dude.

Research begins

The first design firm I ever got to listen to was LUST. They are based in The Hague and their presentation really intrigued me. I saw them give a talk as part of the Walker Without Walls series a few years ago and I was instantly compelled by their attitudes and design philosophies. I just found this article on a project they completed on the sound of the internet. The link to the project no longer works, so I have no example of how it actually worked, which is disappointing. But the basic concept, as I understand it, is to take the IP addresses of all the devices between your machine and the server that the project is hosted on and derive a sound from them. I really wish I could find the project.

This is one library I'm going to try and use for the project. I hope it will be simple enough for me to figure out. All I need it to do (I think) is import the sound from the microphone, and Ess should be able to handle that.

I am going to have to figure out how to define my variables -- which frequencies each will pick up. So I hopped over to wikipedia and looked at some audio frequencies.

installation piece

I had the idea to do a dynamic or interactive piece for the show. I see lots of repetition in GD Senior shows here, and while the work is often spectacular, I have gotten bored with the same old printed material.

My strongest idea so far is to do something in Processing or Flash that will react to the sound in the gallery during the show. The idea so far is to translate volume levels of certain tones or pitches into movement. A grid of text would be projected onto the wall. Each letter in the grid would be tied to a certain tone/pitch and fluctuate in size based on the volume of the particular tone it was tied to.

Thats what I have so far.

More later.

Senior Project 2008

Here I will be posting research, ideas, images, thoughts, etc about my senior project. I'll be using it rather like a digital process book.

More later...