#bctintracity

With the illustration and composition of Intra-city completed I used yesterday to test how the processing aspect will work.

Jed had exported a couple of files in the .mov format which encodes the video with an alpha channel (transparency) - something that we need if we want to run animations ontop of another. However, running these in processing, the sketch simply filled in the empty space with the colour black. Damn. I set to work finding different ways of getting around this. One way that I found was to use a mask effect. Similar to in Photoshop, we can create another video that is black and white which tells processing where to render the pixels on the colour video. This however doesn't allow for fade in/out as the mask only tells processing to render the whole pixel or none of it. This makes it hard to show the fade in/out of the buildings. This would also almost double the size of the program as for every one video on the screen there would be another running that isn't visible.

Another was to export from after effects as a .png sequence. The processing sketch then plays the .png sequence in the background process of the sketch. It then takes a snapshot of each frame as it happens and saves it in the data folder. It then renders the images on the screen in sequence to appear like a moving film. This is a lot of code but probably achievable if the output was worth it.

However, since the animation that we had for the buildings had already been toned back to a colour burn effect instead of a building animation. I wonder if it's worth doing anything in after effects at all. When a very similar thing can be achieved directly in processing through fade in/out and blending modes. This won't prove to be an issue with cars on the ground since it's the lowest layer of the animation but it would with the cars on the motorway. The .png sequence that I mentioned before might have to be implemented for this.

A weight off my shoulders. The roads, buildings, parks, carparks, trees have all been drawn up. This has taken about two weeks longer than I had hoped for but I'm happy with the way everything has turned out. Overall there would be upwards of 50 different structures across the three states not including repeated buildings. Although this is a lot, this allows us to create a massive amount of cityscapes. The scale of the city was also necessary as if we were to work with the original Block scale there would have been too few buildings for much noticeable change. While at the scale that we have chosen to work with, the audience should really gain a sense of density as the population increases/decreases.

While meeting with Tim Davison, the go-to man for the datasets we need for our project, it became clear that the best way that we could get a live representation of who is in the building at a time is by looking at WiFi connections. Previous to this meeting my team did believe that this would be the easiest way to gage an approximate number of people in the building at a time as opposed to CO2 levels, room temperatures etc. However we were aware that there would be issues around privacy as instead of looking at the data of rooms occupied by individuals, we would have access to individual's data. Luckily this doesn't seem to be a problem in terms of the building of the project since we're getting access to the data. But it would be interesting to look at other projects/artworks that use WiFi data in perhaps a more personal and invasive manner to see where people draw the line in how their WiFi related data is displayed to the public.

After the meeting, Laurent met with us and made us realize that now we know how we're creating approximations of people in the building, that we need to work out how we should be communicating this to the audience. How is the public going to understand that the number of WiFi connections correspond to the size of the city? This is a point that I think I've neglected and need to discuss further with the team. There are a couple of ways I've decided we could go about this without adding to our work load too heavily.

1: To have a simple counter showing the number of WiFi connections that our program is picking up displayed somewhere on the screen. Although this is simple it could give quite a different perspective on the people in the building. This is because as a user there's no way to really tell how busy or empty the building is just by walking around normally as the perception is based solely on the areas/floors the user walks through.

2: By spawning people in the display with WiFi symbols above their heads for every WiFi connection there is. Although this would be visually cool. I'm afraid that the footpaths would fill up much too quickly and end up becoming a blur - not to mention the fact that at times there could be thousands and thousands of people in the buildings so running thousands of animations at a time would slow the machine down to a halt.

Known as “minimalist” architecture, International style buildings are well-known for it’s plane surfaces, creating an open, fluid, interior spaces  (‘International Style of Modern Architecture: Origins, Characteristics’, n.d.). Regarding the last post this was an architectural style, I discovered as I was challenged to find a style which takes the more of the form of the buildings that I had created for this project.

Why International style? A lot of the previous design work I focused more on simplicity. De Stilj being an art form that was recommended focused on the aspect of straight lines and geometric shapes which creates that simplicity of using squares and rectangles. With the international style it does emphasis straight lines with the plane surfaces. It also has that distinct modern look that we are use to. Where as De Stilj was more of a Utopian look. One key take away which our building had was the use of modern material. including glass for the facade, steel type exterior. (“The International Style Movement, Artists and Major Works,” n.d.)

International Style of Modern Architecture: Origins, Characteristics. (n.d.). Retrieved May 10, 2018, from http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/architecture/international-style.htm

Looking at Metropolis, a 3 minute stop animated video of the urban growth of Charlotte, North Carolina. This video starts with small buildings and able to see patches of land. As we go through the city develops due to the economical upraise.

I found that this video is very close to our idea of our city growth and its change of urban planning due to people. An aspect that we are implement with ours is the interactivity with the development of the city and the person in the real world.

Part of Rob Carter context of creating this metropolis city is due to Charlotte being one of the fastest growing cities. “This is primarily due to the influx of the banking community, creating unusually fast architectural and population expansion. This new downtown metropolis is therefore subject to the whim of the market and interest of the corporations who choose to do business there” (R.Carter, 2013).

This is similar to our thinking behind the three stages of our city. Stage 1 would be very small building  and very spacious being able to see a lot of land. Stage 2 being a developed, almost super city and stage 3 being a metropolis. The city’s reaction to change is by the amount of people that it detects inside the new engineering building.

Something that we thought of was the location of the building and what it mean. This is a project that is placed in institution, which teaches subjects younger generation to develop in technology. This way we use the metaphor of you are the future of the city. By getting an education they will play apart of the future of the city and how it’s going to be.

I was so caught up into creating and designing these building and thinking about colour that personally I forgot to prototype how the possible architectures would fit in, in certain areas. This was some thing that I realised and after designing building for three of the areas I was assigned to do. I failed to realised this after I decided to stop creating and design and do some of composition testing. My process was to first get a real life reference on how things should be placed. By looking and the picture that there were building that we were only able to see its back.

in-spite that I continued on and played around  with only the front views of the building. Having both angles of the architectures is vital because it allows us to get a realistic of of things. Creating things one angle making the town look very unnatural, designed is very in your face and most important you lose a lot of depth. What realising this wasn't all bad as it allowed me to play around with eh front angle first and what building fits where.

With just the one angle it made the city look stiff and really uniformed. For me it gives the impression that the city is quite, making it seem likes its abandoned.

With the roads designed we have a layout to base our buildings on. We split things into sections of what types of building we need to build in that area. With each area we would design three stages. What it would look like during low, mid, and high population. With each of the areas something that I would do is to put up a mood board so I can see similarities of what certain areas should looks like and what building to create. 

For the time being, I’ve been assigned to do as many as possible but focus on section C,J,K,I,H,D,E. Although that is a lot to do for one person there is also Austin that will also work on the other sections and also work on the details of the buildings. My job is just to build the bases of the buildings.

This post is a continuation from the week 7 presentation and critique post.

It production time!