Last Post

This will be the final post for this incarnation of the ArchaID blog. All the posts have been ported over to a new Wordpress blog at www.archaid.org - see you there!

Finished!!!

Linked Research Question

Acknowledging that there is a transition in information from physical to digital, how can the curation of digital artefacts and the mapping of research adjacencies tell a personal narrative that constitutes towards the representation of self in both physical and digital space?

Michael Smith

The Now Tangible Table

The bodies of both my tables are finished. Just the painting and security points to go... Despite being unfinished both already perform the beverage support role admirably.

I've also been working on the graphics for the table top explaining my project.

InfoVis and a Shameless Plug

I wanted to let everyone know about my first gallery show which starts at 6pm on Friday (18th November) at the Biscuit Factory – a commercial art gallery in Newcastle. The exhibition will be unusual for the gallery which is predominantly focused on craft based work as my work consists of digital prints of ‘Data Portraits’. Data Portraits are information visualisations consisting of node and link diagrams representing hyperlinks from a given URL. The images make use of force directed graphs to organise the nodes into a pattern where related nodes (i.e. pages with links between them) gravitate together and unrelated nodes spring apart. A series of them can be seen here.

As well as being a commercial enterprise the underlying motivation behind Data Portraits is to understand the limits of self representation. It’s intriguing to me that people do identify with these graphics even though they are far removed from what they represent. The notion that a web site is spatial has a long history traced back to the idea of a hyperlink as a means of ‘navigating’ information and we are now surrounded by network graphics on everything from News TV intros to the cover of Computing Textbooks. This is only one possible conceptualisation for what the web it and how it works but it has become of framing our interactions with it and one of the dominant schemas of the 21st century.

Prototype 12: First Working (ish) Prototype

Here is my prototype working (well sort of). I have managed to successfully export the mesh as a STL and import it into appropriate software. A quite interesting accident happens when you press a personality and apply it more than once.

Further work to do

I need to add the option to create more shapes but I think that it is important to iron out some of the more major bugs first.

Bugs to fix

1. The shape variable slider does not work, I will have to hard code the variables to change the size. This is ok for a dodecahedron as there is only one variable but for other shapes, this may cause problems. I want to have it so that you show the space and then as you change variables, the variables of the shape change.
2. The personalities teasing and secretive work but not very well. I want to try and make twist work better. Also, these two seem to rotate in the viewport when around a global axis rather than a local one
3. The way the all personality sliders work is not that great, you have to select a value and then press the button to generate. I want to have it so that you can alter them in real time so that you can see how the values affect the shape more easily.
4. The reset button does not work – I have no idea how to do this yet… I am still thinking about it.

Applet download

Open Processing link

The Applied Anthropomorphic Language

This series of images demonstrate how my chosen personalities can be mapped onto the Tailored Tangible Research Artefacts. I am proposing that each personality has a button that initiates them and a slider which controls the scale of each personality.

Base Shape: Dodecahedron

Personality one: confrontational Modifier: extrude

Personality two: nagging Modifier: noise

Personality three: teasing Modifier: twist

Personality four: friendly Modifier: catmullclark

Personality five: divided Modifier: planar subdivide

Personality six: secrative Modifier: skew