William Lindmeier's Student Work @ ITP / NYU

Nature of Code final: Mutone

wdlindmeier — Wed, 15 May 2013 22:53:12 +0000

Mutone is an iPad app that I created to explore genetic algorithms and evolution in code. In a nutshell, you draw a bunch of audio tracks and let them reproduce when they bump into each other. As this happens the sounds mutate and change in unexpected ways. The selection process is an aesthetic decision which is made by the user. Periodically pruning the soundscape keeps the unfit tracks from dominating the soundscape.

Mutone is available for free in the AppStore.

Data Representation Final: Cupping Data

wdlindmeier — Wed, 15 May 2013 22:36:15 +0000

Here’s a screen-cast of my final project for Data Representation. It’s an iPad app called Cupping Data, and it visualizes the cupping scores of over 700 specialty coffees.

A huge thanks goes out to Sweet Maria’s for granting me access to their data and allowing me to publish the app. Also, their coffee is damn good.

You can download Cupping Data for free from the AppStore.

Nature of Code iOS available in the AppStore

wdlindmeier — Wed, 15 May 2013 22:00:36 +0000

Throughout the semester I’ve been compiling my Nature of Code homework into an umbrella app. This allowed me to build up a reusable collection of iOS classes, and it’s also nice to have the sketches in a single place. The code that resulted from this process has been really useful in a handful of other OpenGL iOS apps that I’ve been working on.

This app is now available for free in the AppStore. Each of the sketches links to its respective source code on Github, as well as the relevant chapter in Dan Shiffman’s book. Visit the AppStore to download the Nature of Code app for iPad or iPhone, or if you’d rather compile the app from source, you can grab it at the Github repo.

This is an ongoing project to build up Objective-C classes for creative coding. Pull-requests are appreciated and additional sketches are also welcome! If there’s enough interest, updates will be submitted to the AppStore.

Flying Robots: Drone Checkin

wdlindmeier — Thu, 09 May 2013 22:08:59 +0000

Here’s some footage of our drone “checkin” at Think Coffee on Mercer street.

Sculpting Data Final: Sandy Basin

wdlindmeier — Wed, 01 May 2013 01:27:31 +0000

Last night Liz and I presented our final project in Sculpting Data Into Everyday Objects, and got some great feedback from our guest critics. As I’ve previously described, we we’re looking into the impact of Hurricane Sandy on the NYC Subway System using the MTA turnstile data. The ultimate expression of our research is a sink containing a topographical print of the subway system showing how long it took each station to come back online after the shutdown of October 28, 2012. Here’s a brief video describing a little bit of our process, and the final sculpture in action:

Lying With Data

wdlindmeier — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 19:59:49 +0000

This week in Data Representation we’re looking at different ways that data can lie. So as any good data-scientist would, we’re immersing ourselves in the dark art of lying with numbers. For this assignment I’m looking at the US Government’s Fuel Economy Data. These graphs are all looking at the same data: miles per gallon of cars available in a given year. The first graph paints a negative trend by selecting a subset of the data and looking at only the extreme cases. The second graph paints a positive picture by looking at the inverse subset (but also only the extreme points). The third graph is a “non-lying” depiction which shows the average of all of the data points for the entire data set.

Nature of Code: Final Proposal

wdlindmeier — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 04:20:34 +0000

Overview

After exploring a few paths over last couple weeks, I’ve arrived at a general idea for my final project in Nature of Code. Briefly, it’s a toy to create evolving audio landscapes. The user creates gestures in a 3D space (the genotype) which gets mapped to audio (the phenotype). Lets call these gestural/audio pairings “monads”. These monads are then released into a field of other monads and allowed to reproduce through collision. This will ideally create an continually changing sound-scape, that I can’t quite imagine yet.

The “Evolution of Code” chapter is fascinating and I wanted to use a genetic algorithm in a non-visual way. The “phasing” music of Steve Reich has also been an inspiration and I wonder if I can tease out similar transitions with mutation and selection.

Questions

There are still quite a few unknowns that I’m thinking about for this project:

1) Sound is fundamentally 1-dimensional. What are effective/intuitive ways of mapping it to 3-dimensional forms? I’m currently using three sounds per monad—one for each axis—and adjusting the pitch along that axis.

2) What’s a good balance between a controlled experience (e.g. using an instrument) and a discovery-based experience? I’m leaning more towards discovery because it fosters moments of serendipity.

3) What kinds of fitness testing (if any) is appropriate for this toy? Some kind of user-selection may be good since it’s an aesthetic experience.

4) Is there a better way to handle reproduction than collision?

Initial Sketch

So far I’ve got a simple input interface and audio playback working with OpenAL.

Nature of Code: Flocking and Evolution

wdlindmeier — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 03:53:50 +0000

Here are some more sketches that have been added to the Nature of Code iOS app.

Evolution

This sketch takes a page from Jer Thorp’s “Smart Rockets“. Each generation of lines are fitness tested by how close they got to the target, and how long it took them to get there. It takes just 3 generations for most of them to hit the target.

Obstructions can be added to their path by swiping the screen.

Flow Field

This flow field is generated with 3D Perlin Noise. The particle motion is influenced by the vector that they’re positioned above. There’s also a small repulsion force so they don’t get bunched up.

Flocking

I was inspired to bang out this flocking sketch after reading The Power of Swarms in Wired, and delighted to see it form a proper torus rather quickly.

Data Sonification

wdlindmeier — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 04:22:15 +0000

This week in Data Rep we’re using the Beads library to generate audio based on a data set. Here are a few sketches that I created:

Image Sonifiers

This image sonifier sketch reads the pixel value from an image and converts those to tones. The intensity of the red, green and blue blocks correspond to the pixel that it’s currently reading. Clicking within the image allows you to jump around. You can download the sketch here.

Rainbow

NOTE: YouTube audio is out-of-sync with the frames.

Image Sonifier: Black and White

NOTE: YouTube audio is out-of-sync with the frames.

Tweet Sonifier

This sketch plays the tweets from my personal archive. A tone is generated for each letter that’s on-screen, and the pitch is mapped to the characters’ ASCII code (multiplied for range).

NOTE: YouTube audio is out-of-sync with the frames.

Nature of Code: Seeds for a Final

wdlindmeier — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 03:12:30 +0000

This week I’ve been exploring the Evolution of Code; Chapter 9. The process has been rather slow and iterative, and indeed feels like a kind of evolution itself. Code, observe, tweak, repeat. I’ve made some inroads into the mechanisms of an evolving system, but I’m discovering that the most challenging part is choosing which questions to ask of the system, and how to evaluate it’s success.

At any rate, here are some screenshots of my process. The goal of these sketches is to evolve a set of trails that conform to the surface of an invisible sphere.