sub for next 2 weeks - Sven?

review of assignment 1, lab time for assignment 2

foreignID can be used instead of a linking table

no class next week unless told otherwise

Midterm presentations

Watched
- 1927 Oskar Fishinger

create style boards instead of story boards when not enough time

For next week:
email Tiya
bring all midterm project elements

Final concept presentation
Prototype planning
Reading / assignments

prototypes embrace concept while raising questions and causing friction

prototype planning
- develop plan / tasks
- define goals over 4 weeks
- non working prototype
- working prototype
- budget?

Player
- more like musical device, less like Blackberry
- fewer buttons (are they necessary?)
- touch screen
- voice messages instead of text?
- not “live” communication, more a delayed “I saw u”
- personal profiles as audio recorded to player

Fashion
- pendant?
- as receiver for text / voice msgs?

Web
- see what other users recommend
- profile as business card
- no chat room
- simplify interface and mimic player
- expandable interface, layers of complexity - unfolding
- dataviz of “traces / tags”
- simply say what Eavesdrop is / does
- 2 scenarios - first time user / power user

Tower
- a landmark
- billboard
- totemic
- kiosk (look less like one)
- translucent?
- vertical layout of monitors (totem)
- sections move?
- attractive to gather around
- coffee table - where people gather
- address connection w/ player
- brightens w/ population density?

cultural reference to channels
- map those that cross channels

Fashion
- button? to send / receive info?

Project identity
- fonts
- colors

Prototype plan
- 2 people on tower
- 2 people on player / fashion

week 1
- player / fashion form
- research
- shopping
- documentation

week 2/3
- table top functionality
- fashion - lights, interaction

week 4
- tower functionality, screen, audio, interaction
- testing

For next week
- non working prototype
- reading

NO CLASS NEXT WEEK

Class was spent furthering my attempts at connecting to a MySQL database. I continued my attempts to connect to both the Parsons MySQL server as well as the database residing with my personal web host. It seems as though I made progress with the Parsons ‘a’ server, at the very least I started receiving an error message instead of connection attempts freezing MAX. Connections to my web host continue to give me difficulty despite allowing connections from the 149.31.xxx.xxx ip of the NSU network. I spent some more time revisiting all of the message boards of both the ITP sound list and the Cycling 74 site. I also played with some of my buttons and continued my research into their wiring.

UPDATE:
What the ! I don’t know why I didn’t think about this before! For some reason I was under the impression that you could not install MySQL server on Windows, but guess what, you can, as well as just about any other platform that exists. I downloaded the server today (Sunday) and am able to connect to the database on my local machine as ‘root’ on ‘localhost’. I will install on my laptop as soon as possible.

Guests:
Marina Zurkow
Nancy Nowacek

Metropolis magazine - next generation contest, big ideas, sustainable, $10,000 funding
Marina - power & play conference cards

01 (zero one) - tech money for art projects
Transmaterial website
Droog (Dutch designers)

Karaoke Ice - example of user flow

Rachael Whiteread

- scenario for channels (me - tower)
- ideas for fashion channel
- sketch of channels (me - tower)

Emergence:
* evolutionary algorhithms
* genetic programming
* neural nets: using computers to imitate human brain
- many simple processing elements
- interconnection
- simple messages
- adaptive interaction between elements
- data mining
- modeling + prediction
- inference
- pattern recognition
- robotics

von Neumann architecture

expose and train network with patterns
define desired result
we don’t understand how it reaches conclusions

computer vision:
* EyesWeb software
* MAX / MSP

m-Train robot
Eliza
chatterbots

Thesis as problem space
- produce something in response to question in first semester
- first year should be collecting tool sets / skills

For Tuesday:
Come in with prototypes of project

Group work:
Jon
Subway
- unwritten rules
- ad space

Sym(ball)ic postmortem

Group members:
Ana Velez
Greg Gangemi

Most people�s first attempts at making a game really suck. This didn�t really suck.
- Katie Salen

For our project our group focused primarily on the symbolic nature of Tamara, the world Ana chose from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, while combining some aspects of my world, Eutropia, and Greg�s world of xxx. We began by taking one study Ana had done which involved the creation of a symbol-based map utilizing the form of her box. Using this concept we devised a scavenger hunt type game which we would present as an interface to explore the nature of this symbolic world.

We came up with the name Sym(ball)ic for our project, where the �(ball)� in the title is replaced with a graphical or symbolic representation of a ball as there was a component of the game which included ping pong balls. While we did not formally write out the directions of the game, which would have certainly been helpful for us and our players, I will illustrate the game play below:

• 1. Choose a colored ball from the large glass bowl and find the symbol printed on it.
• 2. Pick up the map that has a symbol which corresponds to the one found on your ball and go to the location on the map indicated by your symbol.
• 3. At this location there will be three cards, face down. Turn over the card with your symbol printed on it and read the clue. Once you have finished examining the clue proceed to the next destination indicated by the new symbol found at the bottom of the card.
• 4. This next clue is visual in nature. Examine the graphic them go the symbol indicated in the center of the screen.
• 5. Continue following the symbols and reading the clues until you arrive back at the starting point. Here you will find three boxes each with a symbol. Find the box with your symbol and using the sense related to your symbol (hand = touch, ear=listen, mouth=taste) try to guess the nature of the contents of the box and write your answer on the card provided.
• 6. Hand your answer to the game leader. The answers will be read aloud and correct answers will be rewarded with glasses whose color corresponds to the color found on the ball you initially drew at the start of the game.

Our group purposely kept the game simple to reduce any confusion and one group member followed each of the three teams playing. Each team was able to navigate the space of the 10th floor and find all of the clues with the aid of their map and the directions provided. Each team also arrived at the correct answer and was rewarded.

As with any interactive project, the introduction of users unfamiliar with the project, its process, expectations, or intentions of the creators, will result in unexpected behavior. This project was no different. After giving the three teams initial instructions and setting them loose, their initial reaction was to include a time-based element which added to the competitiveness of the game. We had thought about the basics of game play and did add what we though to be an essential competitive element with the final guessing and reward for correct answers. It was unexpected that the teams would add a speed component to the game but as each of the teams collectively introduced this aspect it illustrated to me that many games include the clock as another competitor.

The reaction following the game was, for the most part, positive but there were a few aspects which our group could address in future iterations. The first and most important of these was the use of symbols in the game itself. If the point of the game was to illustrate the use of symbols in the fictional world of Tamara we could have utilized symbols in more aspects of the game. Where we relied on graphic and narrative elements as clues we could have used symbols and pushed further the notion of symbols in navigation and direction.

If this game were to be created on a larger scale and used Manhattan as a play space many more location specific symbols could be introduced as this city is full of iconic spaces. The introduction of technology could also aid in the utilization of more symbols. Many computer and technology based interfaces rely heavily on symbols to allow users to navigate and manipulate information. The mapping of the city as a symbolic interface could be an interesting future project.

Photographic documentation can be found here.

Google also:
• geocaching
• urban scavenger hunt
• “scavenger hunt” “symbols”
• “scavenger hunt” “team building”

mysql object issues

I’ve been trying to get the mysql object to work on both my PC and the Macs in the lab but am not having any luck. I have already searched through every post on the Cycling74 message boards that relate to mysql and while I have found some useful information I have yet to have any success in connecting to the database. I would like to try installing mysql locally on one of the Macs to try connecting to a local database to see if I have any more luck. I’ll ask Dave about this possibility. To connect to a mysql database the following synax is used in a message box and is passed to the mysql object:

[connect: user, host, pass, database, port, socket, cflag]
[connect: srance, a.parsons.edu, password, srance, 0, 0, 0] (0s passed for default values which are: port - 3306, socket - /tmp/mysql.sock, cflag - -I /usr/local/mysql/include/mysql)

I have tried connecting to my parsons mysql database as well as one I created through my personal webhost (Dreamhost). I know that the a.parsons.edu server has some non-default characteristics so I tried to determine what the port, socket, and cflags were to see if that was causing me problems. To find this out I logged into the a server and did a mysql_config query which resulted in the following:

srance@a ~ $ mysql_config
Usage: /usr/bin/mysql_config [OPTIONS]
Options:
–cflags [-I/usr/include/mysql -march=pentium4 -fomit-frame-pointer -DHAVE_ERRNO_AS_DEFINE=1 -DUSE_OLD_FUNCTIONS]
–include [-I/usr/include/mysql]
–libs [-L/usr/lib/mysql -lmysqlclient -lz -lcrypt -lnsl -lm -L/usr/lib -lssl -lcrypto]
–libs_r [-L/usr/lib/mysql -lmysqlclient_r -lpthread -lz -lcrypt -lnsl -lm -lpthread -L/usr/lib -lssl -lcrypto]
–socket [/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock]
–port [3306]
–version [4.0.24]
–libmysqld-libs [-L/usr/lib/mysql -lmysqld -lpthread -lz -lcrypt -lnsl -lm -lpthread -lwrap]

I substituted these values for the defaults and tried the following syntax:

[connect: srance, a.parsons.edu, password, srance, 3306, /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock, -L/usr/lib/mysql]

This did not work either. I will continue to try a few more modifications of the syntax but if this does not work I may abandon the mysql approach and instead focus on simple uploading of the images to a web directory using the ‘uldl’ (upload / download) object that Jonathan mentioned on Wednesday.