particles, space and 3D

November 14, 2008 at 7:23 am · Filed under design

A few quick sketches. I am still learning the possibilities of Processing for doing simple and quick sketches. There are a few projects I want to use this in but, having no background in computers, it takes awhile to get my head around the electronic palette - objects, arrays, classes and such.

This here is a very quick experiment where I composed a palette with 5000 particles moving around semi-randomly in 3D space with their color subtly affected by the movement in the 3D-space (the z-axis). Instead of doing anything more fancy, the aim here was merely to experiment with the possibilities of this and to prove the concept,. Even this might look a bit more complex, in fact, I actually only used rectangles and ellipses to compose these images. I let the program run for a few hours and see what comes of it.

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theory:praxis in emerging digital technologies and cultures

November 5, 2008 at 3:27 pm · Filed under play

So its official now: we are currently working on a book for Routledge India where me and Soum (with guest star Angad Chowdhry) will co-write a chapter on the work we do.  While I really have no idea at this point how the chapter will be organized — I increasingly believe in improvisation and semi-random iteration when generating new ideas — momentary closure was nonetheless achieved on the note that had to be sent to the publishers.  Can we use genetic algorythms as new metaphors for thinking?  What is the use of literary narratives of time such as sideshadowing and foreshadowing for understanding the future of technological development?  Though perhaps a bit academically dry for my tastes, I thought I’d like to share these here.

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the pirates and their loot!

November 3, 2008 at 9:52 pm · Filed under design

Amongst the most insane places to visit in Mumbai is Chorbazar (or, ‘thieves’ market’), where you could purchase everything from parts of dismantled ships, to statues stolen from dilapidated monuments, from original hand-sketched posters of extremely old bollywood films, to books and magazines that date back to early 1900s.

This image was taken in an anonymous warehouse that you had to enter through a backdoor…

The ‘loot’ comes from everywhere, each store has its own network spread across the country and outside (you would find stuff from Sri Lanka, parts of Africa…)…

Obviously, photography is not allowed. However, a few gentle words helped break into their world.

As I started digging into the history of the place, I found that the Wikipedia entry about the place itself had been hijacked! An excerpt below :-

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uncanny valley: the prototyping machines

October 25, 2008 at 3:20 pm · Filed under design

Whenever I have had some time in the past months away from the more classical research-oriented work, I have been catching up with some of the latest developments in Machinima and other virtual reality and/or game-engine methods for art and design.  While for some more purists, this admittedly sounds geeky and probably as exciting as a can of tuna, I have found that there is quite a lot that can be done and said using these “machines.”  With the usual reservations, of course.

The primary problem I have with more classical animation, drawing and painting (and 3D) is that it is very time-consuming.  Being sometimes peripatetically cross-displine and cross-media, I am interested in doing things in almost every possible format that I get my hands on.  But, say, if I wanted to create a digital character with some facial expressions and mix it with some photography or video to get some idea across, doing these with the old ways would take days to complete.  A simple expressive character, in the end, is rather difficult and laborious to create properly and with style.

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