NAILAH DAVIS
Creative Technologist, Artist, & Designer
Week 2
Intro to Computational Media
Boombox Sketch, by Nailah Davis
Link to edit here.
The most rewarding feeling that I experienced while doing this assignment was finally seeing the ability to understand the computer's language, to then insert it as input, and to then see the output. My mind's visualization was able to be converted to a screen. To some this may sound like a simple concept, but I've never been great at math, although this is done with numerous numbers. Looking past this, coding has made me feel like I can use numbers in a way that involves creating images. It's like when you're a child who doesn't like to eat broccoli, but then you get to add cheese to it, so it makes it much more enjoyable. That's math and art for me. These numbers had designated purposes. Also, I recently read Chris Crawford's The Art of Interactive Design and one of the things Crawford talked about was this concept that lives within interactive design, which is that the human/user is able to discover and use their capabilities through the machine, rather than the machine's interface doing all of the work for the user. I attempted to sketch a boombox. As an avid Hip-Hop lover, I wanted to extend a bit of myself through this sketch.
Week 3
Link to edit here.
This week I collaborated with Julie Lizardo. We explored making buttons through code, implementing visual icons, and sound. This idea derived from a conversation between myself and Julie. I discovered that Julie majored in Biology during undergrad, but when one of her professors introduced computer science/coding to her, she discovered something new that she was capable of. Although Julie and I come from two different backgrounds, one thing that stood as a common ground between us was our love of music. As an icebreaker, I asked Julie to list the kinds of music that she liked. It turned out that we both had eclectic tastes in music, but Hip-Hop was a genre that we were both excited about and agreed on. I suggested making buttons, and then together, we shortly brainstormed what the reaction would be after the button was pressed. The obvious element that we landed on was sound.
I started by finding photographs of performing artists/rappers who have been deemed icons in pop culture. I have an obsession with iconography and the symbols associated with it, and how they're selected. I wanted to riff off of the vibrating speaker from last week and apply it to this code to visualize the sound and the source it came from.
The idea was just to have the music pause when clicking on the background and then when clicking back onto the icon the music would play from where it left off. What currently happens is that how many ever times one presses the icon, the song will play numerous times, overlapping each time, resulting in this chaotic mess of sound. The "jump" function is what allowed us to play the song from a specific timecode in the song.
We understood that ordering and layering was crucial in making this code function, so the trip-up at one point became about where things went. Through coding this sketch I was able to understand why the preload function was necessary to use at the beginning of the code. We had to upload our images as PNG files, and our sound files as MP3 in order for them to be read.
It was important while creating the icons in photoshop for me to implement a circle in the background of the portrait. Julie made note of this. It was a matter of being able to identify the radius of the circle, so that the mousePressed function would activate. Finding the radius of asymmetrical symbol would have been difficult, thus we arrived at the circle.
Week 4
Link to edit here.
This week's assignment was to focus on for loops, while loops, and or nested loops. What I noticed while practicing in the p5 editor was that the format of the while loop made more sense, as far as its layout. The visual structure of initializing the variable, then setting an exiting factor, and then the incrementation felt a bit easier to read. I think that this might be because I'm realizing how condensed a seemingly complex code can become.
Week 6
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This week the assignment was to focus on arrays, objects, and for looping. The idea behind my sketch for this week was to have a bunch of small circles, randomly fill up the screen , from behind the computer graphic image that I made in photoshop, while inside of a loop. I've walked away with more understanding of arrays, objects and their potential to function individually and within a loop. I wanted to make it so that when the spacebar is pressed, music begins, along with the looping of random circles.
Section 2: Week 1
My partner Stacy Yuan and I created a project for our midterm for P-Comp. After my first Wednesday class of the second ICM session last week, I introduced the video array concept that we went over in class with my partner. Together we created a sound device that controls both audio and visual affects. We were able to come up with the visual idea through the help of the class lab and through Dan Shiffman's videos.
I actually found this week's class to be super challenging. I'm definitely still having difficulties understanding the logic. However the syntax is becoming to come quicker for me to read and understand a bit of what line of code is controlling what. (ex: the formula that we went over in class (x + (y * w)) * 4.
Week 8
These two images depict lines of code that are controlling the visual functions in the video seen above.
Section 2: Week 2
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This week's assignment was to either continue working on last week's sketch, or to make a new one using color. I decided to make a new sketch playing with distortion/abstraction. (I used a vibrant purple hue for a little NYU pride)! I was drawn to having the sketch take on the form of multiple circles, and then I recognized the association with this style's visual culture and the Pop Art era. Although he wasn't my direct source of inspiration, this style is deeply influenced by Roy Lichtenstein.
I didn't have a goal in mind. However, I was attracted to the idea of pixel arrays in combination with the webcam during Dan Shiffman's pixel array introduction From that. I found myself wanting to explore with obscuring the face, or whatever was placed in front of the webcam.
Depending on the amount of light in the room when using this camera sketch, you can see that the colors shift between a purple, magenta, greenish, grayish hue. The "brightness" variable translates to the lighter things in the room.
Section 2: Week 3
Link to edit here.
This week's assignment focused on sound visualization (one of my favorite topics explored with ICM so far)! This week felt really complicated to conceptualize something, so I decided to return to an older sketch of mine. I originally made this "Computer Love" sketch during the for loop lesson. For this iteration I added music, and in stead of the object array, I included random ellipses to appear based on the the microphone level.
Below is the first sketch that I made to try and fully understand the concept of the waveform just to retain how to write the code.
Link to this sketch here.
Section 2: Week 4
Link to edit here.
Wrist detected
Wrist not detected
This week's assignment was to work with a partner to create an interactive code fo users to experience. My partner Jason and I used sound, paired with the ML5 body recognition function to read the left and right wrists. Jason came up an idea to make something like a drum pad.
While working through the code together, Jason expressed that he wanted to be able to make a song using different sounds based on the positioning of the wrists within each small rectangle. We hit a bump in the road with trying to make the sound cohesive and sonically pleasing. Since the code depends on the looping of each frame within the canvas, this causes each sound to loop along with it (which we are curious about how to go about fixing).
I suggested trying to make an instrument that users could make their own rhythm patterns to play over prerecorded vocals. I sampled vocal files, (Michael Jackson's "They Don't Care About Us" song in the code) stripping the song of any instrumentals. Then I pulled a simple drum kit from my personal sound library. We noticed that it wasn't possible to control the lagging with ML5 and P5. This delay, in addition to the looping of the sounds didn't allow for users to play along with in a sequential, nor rhythmic style (also interested in how we can improve these results). On the bright side, last weeks Yotam Mann readings about the arguable definition of "music" strongly applies here. :)
Section 2: Week 5
This week's assignment was to make a sketch using text. I found RiTa to be a bit more advanced in regards to the libraries functionalities.
I had trouble with conceptualizing a sketch, while also feeling overwhelmed with the newness of RiTa and its capabilities. I finally arrived at creating a lottery scratch-off life sketch that involves the user to use the mouse in order to reveal money.
Section 2: Week 6
Final Project
I found that trying to search for API developers that I was interested in, with special regards to sociopolitical issues around Black life was lacking. Either that, or I would have to pay to access an API from certain developers. Moreover, my first attempts of this sketch were to try and create data visualizations from my hometown, Chicago, IL, in regards to the crime rate there. Shootings and homicide cases are at a high rate, and I wanted to find a way to display that, but it quickly became harder to achieve.
I arrived at using NewsApi.org. This sketch that I made is interesting because if you want to search the same word but would like a different result, you can add a decimal and a number. For example, if I search the word "life", I get a headline. If I search "life.2," I receive a new headline. What I like about the headlines are that they are live and always being updated with the most recent news. This could be fund for generating prompts for a discussion pieces.
I found that a lot of the data that I was interested in didn't have an open database for users to receive an API key from. After bouncing from multiple API developers that weren't the most user friendly, I finally made the most progress with Wordnik until I discovered that my API key wouldn't be accessible for me until a week from today. I tried to use a temporary API, but that also gave me trouble. I was hitting a wall continuously and eventually ran out of time to fix this.
One thing I would do with this with more time moving forward is explore more with the giphy API we went over in class, because I wanted images to generate based off the results of the searches.
First attempt above
Before the search
Link to edit code here.
Making a search
