Category Archives: Atlanta connections

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#nicehashtag – Building a data-driven sculpture

  March 1, 2015 , ,

Since early fall 2014 I’ve been working on a data-driven sculpture for HLN called “#nicehashtag” that is now installed in the CNN World Headquarters in here in Atlanta (if you take the Inside CNN tour you’ll see it outside Studio 7). Programmable Hue bulbs change color to reflect realtime sentiment analysis of Twitter. The algorithm accesses Twitter every few seconds and pulls the most recent tweet into its program, determines whether the tweet is positive, neutral, or negative, then compares it to previous tweets and converts it into a percentage that it stores in memory. When that percentage reaches a certain threshold, the color changes. My goal with this project was to consider how we use technology to interact with each other, and how that affects our emotional connections. Screens have enhanced and expanded our communication capabilities enormously, but there are still concerns about what it does to our ability to empathize with others. #nicehashtag is a physical representation of internet emotion, at least within the Twitterverse. The challenge with any technologically-enhanced artwork is that the novelty of the tech will overpower the concept that (hopefully) supports it. Using tech in art just because it’s there is seductive but also dangerous for the above reason.

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New Semester–Same Exciting Projects

  February 3, 2015 , ,

Hey Guys! *long sigh of relief* Finally on the other side of a flu storm that started last week. The other good news is that I get to give you guys some updates on all the projects I’ve been working on. Let’s start with the Digital Signage Project: I turned in a final prototype for the Digital Signage Project to the Exchange to start the process of getting it on campus. It’s been a long road with that project but it’s worked out great! Both hands can be used to interact with the objects, but only the right hand can interact with the arrows that cycle through the different models. It will be very easy to add more models as we need them–I just need to drop a few files, add a few lines of code, and recompile the project to a flash drive. The colors and fonts used in the project are all official Georgia State University colors and fonts, and we even have our own official logo for the SIF program! If you guys get a chance, go play with this project at the Exchange and send in any feedback! It’s a basic prototype right now, but with time it can be expanded to do more! My main focus the past few weeks has been split between the 3D Atlanta project and the new NextEngine Scanners we have at CURVE. NextEngine Scanners: These things are great! They do a great job at getting small objects scanned in at … Continue reading

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Learning from a Legend

  February 1, 2015

This week I was able to shadow a great musician and filmmaker from Malaysia named Pete Teo (google him). He is a Chinese born Malaysian and I really got to learn a lot from him. His journey that led him to film started as a music composer, to songwriter, to musician, to actor, to filmmaker, and now organic farmer. I kid you not that is my same journey. Before I met Pete I was shopping for an organic coffee farm.  So here are some of the take aways from our conversations. 1. As a filmmaker, it doesn’t matter what equipment you use. It can be a cel phone, an ipad, a digital camera, or even a camera that shoots on 35mm. Whatever it is you use to record media will add to the effect or character of your film. The media you use says the time period you live in as well as many other things such as social class. This part of our conversation reminded me of my film theory classes whereby we learned that the camera is actually a character and not just a mechanical device. 2. Pete’s films are political. He is a reformer and wants to see his country united. As a  result, he has been questioned and followed by the secret police of Malaysia. He released 15 short films on the internet 2 days apart and gained instant fame. His first film had 15 million views in less than two days. He broke a record … Continue reading

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Hole in History

  December 7, 2014 , , , , , ,

As you all may know, I am a part of a team of awesome SIFs who are working on an educational, innovative project. The project is aimed towards recreating an interactive virtual 3D model of the intersection of Decatur St. and Ivy St. (now Peachtree Center Ave.) in what it would have been like in the 1930s. Working on this project for the last semester has shed light in the fact that the project has taken a lot more time and energy than expected, while also hitting several bumps on the road. To me, that’s no problem as I know that all great masterpieces (not implying that our project will live up to the word “masterpiece”) take hard work, time, and dedication. Currently we have been at a standstill with the project because of one fact: there is a lack of pictures of the street during the 1930s. In order to resolve our problem, My job for the project was to search the internet inside and out for any pictures of buildings, preferably head-on shots, that would aid in recreating the building in a virtual 3D model as accurately as possible. Another SIF was setting up the 3D world in the game engine called Unity. As the search continued and the results were very disheartening and minimal, we decided to look to outside sources for help. One of our project supervisors heard that Emory was attempting to recreate the city of Atlanta into virtual 3D model in a similar project. … Continue reading

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Update from the SIF Computing Team

  November 20, 2014 , ,

Last Friday night, our Hoccleve Archive team has presented our work at the SAMLA Conference held at Marriott Hotel, Buck head. The theme of this year’s conference was sustainability and our team has put in efforts to highlight the work we have done suiting the theme. It felt good meeting up people from different parts of the country. Everyone were very passionate about their works and were equally attentive to the other presentations. We have also got books and other publications for a good discounted price at the conference. Overall, it has been a memorable experience to be present at a prestigious conference like SAMLA.     This week, we also had a meeting regarding the Almanac Archive project with Lindsay Jane Eckert and Julia Grandson. We were briefed on the design part on what the team has been expecting from us. We have given them the option of choosing a platform for developing their design and explained the pros and cons of each of the platform. At the end of the meeting, we have finally decided to go ahead with the ASP.Net architecture and decided to use MS SQL Server for our database design. The team has also given us a complete picture of the number of archives available now and how many more archives might be available in the coming future. All this has led us to discussing the scalability of the project. We now need to make sure that the developed application is scalable enough to accommodate all the … Continue reading