4 Apr 04 / fun with p5

art

There are a lot of projects in progress 'round here, and some of them will make an appearance on this site in the near future. For now, though, you'll have to make do with this fun little applet I made yesterday.

This may or may not be related to the fact that I finally saw Style Wars.

17 Mar 04 / project description

art, design

Ok, I admit -- the previous post needs a bit more of a description. Here's the idea:

There's this site that contains a huge database of hip hop samples. That is, it's a list of songs that are sampled matched to the songs that sample them. You can query the database now, but it's just itching for a good interactive visualization.

The implementation I'm working on right now will show the sample sources on the bottom half, plotted on axes of release year and number of times sampled. This is the part that's working in the current demo. Then I'm going to add the artists that sample those albums in the top half. (I think I'll choose their position based on some force-based model using relative levels of attraction to the sample sources.)

Right now, I'm thinking that if you run your mouse over an album on the bottom, it'll connect the dots representing that artist's other albums, and then draw lines to the sampling artists that sample that album.

That's the basic approach. It sounds complicated, but it'll make way more sense when I actually build it.

Also, I'm totally open to suggestions of other display methods or interactions.

17 Mar 04 / sneak peek

art, design

Here's a (very early) preview of my next project for information visualization.

Be patient with the loading (~0.5mb), then mouseover the little squares. You may need to click in the applet window to give it focus.

Many more features to come, including the other half of the data...

24 Feb 04 / Why We Don't Need Grey Tuesday

art, music

I should start with this: I think Danger Mouse is brilliant, and I'm no fan of EMI. And as much as I like to see someone taking action in this age of questionable copyright enforcement, Downhill Battle is a bit misdirected.

Yes, the RIAA takes part in some questionable activities. Yes, major labels screw artists day after day. But there are limits to fair use, and there are laws regulating the use of copyrighted material.

One of Downhill Battle's war cries is "EMI isn't looking for compensation, they're trying to ban a work of art." This may be EMI's intent, but here's the thing: try as they might, there is no way that EMI can keep people from listening to The Grey Album.

Thousands of people have already heard The Grey Album, and EMI can't take it from them. There is no way to keep them from sharing it with their friends.

So what can EMI do in this situation? They call their lawyers. They write cease and desist letters. And that is exactly what they should be doing. There is no way EMI can let this go, simply because of the precedence it would set. It is their right and their duty to try and protect their property.

So they fight. And they will win any debate about commercial distribution, but they will never be able to ban The Grey Album.

I'm all for supporting Danger Mouse and passing on the word about his work of art, but if Grey Tuesday is a protest, what are we protesting? Danger Mouse's case is a cause for celebration -- it shows how impossible it is for a major corporation to eradicate a work of art.

In my mind, Illegal Art has exactly the right stance. Art that infringes on copyrights is still art. It should be available to the public. Read about it, download it, share it with your friends. But it's not about fighting the record labels. It's about making art that matters regardless of what the labels think.

[update: Lawrence Lessig weighs in]

29 Jan 04 / data visualization

art, design

So I'm taking a very interesting class from Golan Levin this semester. Here's a sneak preview of my current project. It isn't done yet, but it's an interactive visualization of FM radio stations across the country. I'm using Processing, a very cool Java-derived environment for creating interactive (or not) visual art.

Green = commercial, blue = educational. The next version will have Clear Channel highlighted in some sinister way...