Toby Tobias

Indoor Design - 2007

A convertable coffee table/chair with dvd, magazine and pillow storage beneath the seat. Constructed using closed cell polystyrene and fibre glass with an epoxy resin, finished with cherry red spray paint detail and an epoxy pigment mix for the exterior.

I recently made a web applet to search for youtube videos, create a list and store it locally. It was my first time delving into HTML5 localstorage but it was a pleasure. There's still a bug when removing and/or clearing the list though,I wasn't careful with .load and .sync.

DECO3200 Human Computer Experience Design Studio

I've implemented a simple animated menu with sounds (sounds in game too) with 'game modes' to launch the game with different settings.

Above and below is the goldrush map with all resources spawning in the middle then expanding in a circle before forming a flock.

Below is the twenty20 mode where players have 20 rounds to capture more triangles than the opposition. I've had the most fun playing this mode as it is much more important how you manage your triangles and what decisions are made when expanding or attacking.

Below show's the end of a twenty20 game, although no attacks were made, it's still enjoyable and suspenseful chasing after resources, with the lead changing often within a short amount of time.

Here are some screenshots from my Web Art and Design major project, it focuses on user generated content and its artistic value as well as social reflection. I took the first and last 10 pages of lolbender.tumblr.com posts, a tumblr for internet images and fanart based on 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' (ATLA). I then categorised them into;

Crossover (references to other shows as well as ATLA)

Real World Crossover (cosplay and photos)

Fanart/comics

Memes (demotivational, captions, lolz)

Special (some that didn't fit in the other categories)

Above shows the beginning stages of the visualiser. I used Dan Shiffman's flocking library to control the movement of the images and then created five separate flocks for the categories.

After time the pattern emerges and the images can easily be compared and contrasted whilst at the same time revealing a broader picture of the aesthetic composition within the categories. The mouse repels the images so it can be used to disrupt the images and even separate one by 'herding' it.

Below the visualiser is a brief description of the site and two collapsed 'accordions' containing all the images, one for the first 10 pages and one for the last, with posted videos at the end.

Each accordion has a show all, hide all link that controls all five categories at once. The categories can also be controlled individually, making it easy to compare the memes, for example, from the beginning posts to the ones from the end posts.

The images expand when hovering, allowing the audience to inspect the images closely and read text without disturbing the overall layout of the site.

Technical:

Visualiser - Processing exported to Java applet, using Dan Shiffmen's flocking library http://www.shiffman.net/teaching/nature/steering/

Accordions - Javascript using a library from http://www.dynamicdrive.com/

Styling and mouseover - CSS

I have about a week to go with Triage but am going to try and finish it today so I can work on an Arduino project. I have uploaded a beta version of Triage to my isp account. The basic functions work and I just need to find some enjoyable play settings to make suggested scenarios and then make a nice GUI.

You can play it at http://members.dodo.com.au/tobiasreid1990/index/ 

Objective: Eliminate all opponent triangles, once a player doesn't have any triangles they're unable to do anything with their turn and the game is over.

I have coded the replication of the two different triangles (red and blue) and the grey triangles are just some visual feedback for selecting and hovering (light and dark grey respectively).

Here's the grid I'm using:

This shows about 20 moves each of me vs. me:

  I'm now working on something to control whose turn it is and the scoring. After/before/during that, I'll be working on resource distribution, attacking and defending.

To do:

turn controller

resources: distribution and collection

scoring: turning resources into turns

conflicts: attacking and defending

If I have time:

I'm using Dan Shiffman's flocking library (here) with processing to display images that have varying relevance to each other. This is a combination of ideas, remix theory and intertextuality, in the hope of revealing insightful information about user generated content, artworks and their influences/originals. I will give each 'piece' an attraction value so that they form flocks of similar works OR similar works will flock towards a specific point.

I started with a previous experiment in which I changed the flocking example to form two distinct flocks:

Then I added images to see how it would look and to get some code developed:

The game is coming along slowly but surely, I've finalised rules and behaviours and now just need to continue implementing them in Processing. 

0100101110101101 = K

Online artist collective:

http://www.0100101110101101.org/projects.html

A collective energy can be extremely productive through communication and sharing within a communal environment. Clay Shirky calls this phenomenon a cognitive surplus, using the examples of both lolcats and an open source fundraising site (Ushahidi) to demonstrate the power of a large population getting active with their creating and sharing rather than being passive, previously relying on the media and other consumables rather than user generated content. These communities are not unlike an artist collective, as they are gathering people, using the power of numbers to be constructive (or destructive) in an effort to advance or explore our artistic and cultural understanding. The online collective 0100101110101101 (k) has been constructed as a modern tool of expression for its members, applying traditional art practices to a much more modern environment with extremely original and sometimes provocative results.

Design

There is a clear intention and purpose for the site, reflected by the design and layout, they want you to see what they've done and sometimes what they're doing. This is obviously an effective medium as it can reach such a broad audience but does not hold artistic value in itself, instead the works on display serve to demonstrate their exploration and creations into relatively new areas. The digital works, such as 'Freedom' are designed with a more artistic purpose.

'Freedom' is a work by one of the site's artists, Eva, where she participates in a game of counter-strike with the anti-intention of not killing people even though that's the game's objective. The work was designed to fail, she is killed repeatedly and doesn't score in a gaming context. Instead Eva aims to highlight the violent nature of the game through her proposed real context, trying to convince the game's avatar population that the violence in unnecessary. This intertextuality of digital and real world is continued throughout the site's other work including, 'Colourless, Odourless and Tasteless', which combines a digital racing game with a real engine placed in a room with potentially fatal results, depending on the player's in game progress. 

The broad range of objects and software allow the collective to have an almost omnipotent presence as they're not restricted to digital or physical environments. This is furthered by their collaborative nature as it is not one person orchestrating but instead any of the members are able to contribute and influence works.

I participated in the Sydney Information Marathon last weekend, a 24 hour development marathon from midday Saturday to midday Sunday. It was at the Australian Technology Park, a pretty cool venue also used for Animania the previous weekend. I used Processing as I wanted to be able to parse and manipulate the raw csv data files, whilst the other two members of my group (Amber and Fam) were using Flash, later substituted for Illustrator. I did a few donut bar graph sketches, which had to be exported to pdf for use with illustrator/photoshop if you want to keep opacity, although I think it just pretends that white areas are see through. I used a library developed by Jan Vantomme. I didn't have much input to the final image but it was great practice for Processing and data visualisation and I helped word the text we used.

Team TAMFA's submission:

The actual file is too big for tumblr so visit the link to see full size and proper colours.

My Processing sketch:

There's a man called Jim Denevan who uses a big stick to draw artworks in sand. It reminds me of crop circles but the patterned ones are more similar to computer generated works.

Website: http://www.jimdenevan.com/jim.htm

I played a lot of Portal 2 lately and instead of taking a break in the fresh air, I did some portal inspired sketches using Illustrator.

This is a diagram of an analogue portal system. I was wondering what it would look like if someone arranged two mirrors, one at the blue line and the other at the orange line to somehow trick the viewer. It wouldn't really work but it'd be cool to see a portal installation or horror house. The picture below is an existing mirror but I wonder how real the simulation could look with a more game realistic frame.

Some in game pictures:

The picture below has the blue portal directly opposite the orange one, like an elevator mirror.

I found a very interesting installation by Lev Manovich, Jeremy Douglass and William Huber. It's titled Mapping Time: Visualisation of temporal patterns in media and art and was done in attempt to visualise interactive and visual media.

http://remixtheory.net/?p=450

http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2010/11/one-million-manga-pages.html

Part of the installation was to analyse and sort 1 million pages of manga using their own software, then displaying the pages together distributed according to colour.