Nature Of Code: Final Project Proposal, Tetris and Conway's Game Of Life

Our Nature of Code final project is about as abstract as you can get, with the option to leverage just about any and all sides of the various phenomena.  What's more, the visualization (or lack thereof) is also completely open ended.  In short, we were asked to look at the huge amount of material covered this semester, and get inspired.

For me, that meant childhood video games - Specifically, Tetris.  While reading this article on Conway's Game Of Life, I was struck by how similar the cellular shapes were to Tetris pieces.  This got me thinking as to whether there might be a way to combine the two into a video game that yielded novel game play, driven by cellular automata.

While I'm still fleshing out the idea, you can check out my thoughts so far in the proposal below.

ppt: Nature of Code Final Project Proposal - Tetris and Conway's Game Of Life

Sound And The City: Orchestra Seating Mk. 2

This week in Sound And The City finds us re-presenting our final project proposals, this time with the addition of an exterior critique.  As such, I've modified my initial proposal to include a specific site, and a more specific implementation plan.  I've also implemented a rudimentary demo in Logic Pro to simulate the effect of the installation.

ppt: orchestraSeating mk. 2

Nature Of Code: Midterm Proposal

For the Nature of Code midterm, we were asked to do the following:  

Develop a proposal and a prototype for a "midterm" project. The scope of the project can be quite large (trial idea for a final, for example), however, you will not be expected to implement the entire project. For the proposal, include a description, relevant links, and a quick Processing sketch of the first step towards the idea. Link your proposal from the wiki. Next week, we will look at a selection of proposals and then on Mar 2/3, the results for all midterm projects will be presented.

As such, I've decided to continue my work on modeling popcorn using the Box2D library.  While the original attempt was moderately successful, there are a number of aspects that I'd like to modify and enhance so that the simulation will be more realistic.  Specifically, they are to:

• Enhance the geometry of the popcorn so that the kernels and popped corns are not uniform in shape and size.
• Work with density variables to create more realistic behavior as the corn pops and expands out of the kettle.
•  Work with kernel placement and velocity so that the kernels don't breach the kettle walls upon popping.
• Allow for user interaction and variability with the simulation, including: amount of popcorn, turning the kettle on an off,
• Create more realistic visualizations to associate with the simulation as a whole.

These changes will also serve to further familiarize me with the Box2d library, and its ramifications for geometry and particle systems in a modeling context.  The project will not be the prototype for a final project, but rather the final iteration of an earlier project before I embark on a final.

Sound And The City: Final Project Proposal - orchestraSeating

This week for Sound and The City, we presented our proposals for final projects. My project, orchestraSeating, is an installation piece that interactively deconstructs classical music scores. The Power Point presentation for my proposal is can be found below.


ppt: orchestraSeating Proposal