Sources of Inspiration
The Hearth project began with the initial exploration of the health and nutrition of products, and brainstorming as to how this concept could be abstracted into an interesting visual form.
We concentrated on aspects of "growth", as good health and nutrition were the basis of growth, and also because the dataset to be utilised was one that would be continually growing in real-time. This lead to the concept of "building blocks", and the idea of creating a collaborative artwork that would continually grow, unit by unit, as users added data to it, via their shopping experience.
Exploration into several existing artworks and projects that utilised repetition, pixellation, montage, and collaboration then began.
Conceptual Influences
| Excel Drawings | Montage-A-Google | PixelFest | Gridcosm |
Excel Drawings
http://danielleaubert.com/print/exceldrawings_book.html
A book of drawings created by artist Danielle Aubert using the Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet program was found to be quite interesting by our group, as she utilised the grids provided in a spreadsheet to create interesting images such as the one shown above. These artworks gave us ideas on abrastraction via pixellation, and insight into how a single unit can have a wide range of attributes with which to play with, such as colour, position, and size.
Montage-A-Google
http://grant.robinson.name/projects/montage-a-google/
An online project by designer Grant Robinson which creates a photo montage using pictures from a google image search. This project opened up possibilities for utilising a photo montage. This particular program used repetition of the single square unit to create interesting pieces of artwork as seen above.
We also quickly realised that many cafes already use the form of photo montage to create a "Customer Wall", filled with photos of their regular customers. This drew into ideas of personalisation, and how a person's identity could be used as an artistic statement. We also Montage-A-Googled the word "Hearth" to create the montage seen below. The potential for generating interesting and unique artworks was realised through the exploration of this particular work.
PixelFest Collaborative Artwork
http://www.themaninblue.com/experiment/Pixelfest/
An online collaborative artwork in which users can freely change the color of any pixel they wish. This collaborative artwork inspired us to create a sense of collaboration within our project. We realised the enjoyment behind being able to contribute to this particular artwork, and were influenced to create a sense of contribution within our project. Thus one of our goals was to ensure that the users of Artos were able to easily recognise their contribution to the overall outcome of the installation.
Gridcosm
http://www.sito.org/synergy/gridcosm/
Gridcosm is an online collaborative project in which artists from around the world contribute images into a compounding series of graphical squares. The study of this project showed us the potential for user creativity, should some level of user contribution be provided for them. It gave us ideas as to how a certain level of interaction and contribution could play a big role in our project, as an interactive project is one that will be everchanging, intriguing, and produce emergent and unexpected results.
Coding Sources
Several sources of programming code were utilised in the process of creating the Hearth Installation.
Flash Developer Center
We developed much of our coding knowledge of Flash through the Online Flash Developer Center.
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/
This resource was mainly used to gain a better understanding of the BitmapData API, which played a major part in driving the webcam snapshot function. More specifically the following articles were utilised:
Webcam Motion Detection: Using the BitmapData API in Flash 8
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/webcam_motion.html
Introducing the Image API in Flash 8
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/image_api.html
Kirupa.com
Online Flash tutorials from Kirupa.com were referenced to code the hittest function for the projection and the timer function.
Infostudio 2006 Clipsal and C-Bus Tutorials
We referred to tutorial slides and programming examples provided by our Tutors Nick and Matt particularly regarding Clipsal C-Bus Integration in Flash.