25 Mar 04 / upcoming performances

announcements, design, hci, music, performance, tech toys

Last semester, I created an interactive video performance system (using Max/MSP and Jitter) that responds to audio input for a jazz duo here in Pittsburgh. It started as my final project for Roger Dannenberg's computer music class here at Carnegie Mellon, but it has taken on a life of its own.

Here's the announcement: we'll be playing two gigs at the Distillery Jazz Festival in Toronto. I'll bring my tech toys, and Lee and Ravish will improvise up a storm.

Here are the dates:
Friday, May 28 - 11:00pm
Saturday, May 29 - 2:30pm

Lee Robinson - saxophone
Ravish Momin - drums
Jesse Kriss - interactive performance system creation

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 / small multiples v2

design

I've updated my small multiples project -- I think it's more readable and more interesting. This time, it's all about the shape of the band or artist as determined by their emotional profile.

Artistic Emotions

13 Feb 04 / catching up

design, music

I hate to just repost links that are making the blog rounds, but some things just need to be shared.

1. Forget iTunes and Winamp. Show me a visualization of musical structure.

2. If you haven't heard Ghetto Pop Life, you really need to. Then check out Danger Mouse's Grey Album.

3. iTunes social networks?

4. It looks like Technics and the iTunes music store can finally play together.

Also, here's another sneak preview from Information Visualization as Art Practice. There's a lot to tweak still, but I figured I'd post it anyway. (I know, I know...I still haven't posted my last assigment.)

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...