Darren Gray
BA (Hons) Digital Art and Technology
Final Year Project – Garden Community
Learning is happening constantly in many new ways because of collaborative opportunities offered by social networking sites, wikis, blogs and many other interactive digital sources. These technologies used to connect learners have significantly shifted thinking within education. At the centre of this shift in thinking is the idea that students should be actively engaged in a sustainable community of learners.
Designed for young learners, Garden Community is an immersive and interactive learning environment which approaches the ways we learn in the 21st century. With particular emphasis of learning by doing, Garden Community allows multiple users to explore and collaborate in the virtual garden while making use of a number of these technologies in order to create an effective learning experience.
Dissertation – The Potential of Web 2.0 Technologies in Transforming Higher Education
Below is a link to the final version of my dissertation:
The Potential of Web 2.0 Technologies in Transforming Higher Education
Realtime – Testing in the Dome
Below are two videos from when I tested the final dome corrected animations in the dome. The video quality isn’t great but I can confirm that they worked pretty well in inducing vection and I was happy with how they turned out. I do feel I have achieved what I had set out to do for this project. This was to create an immersive data visualisation that gives the viewer the feeling they are on a ride through the data in real time. Looking forward I would love to explore this idea further and develop a much larger programme that uses a long series of animations. This would provide viewers with more unique experiences.
Realtime – Economy Run
The video below shows the final version of my realtime project ‘Economy Run’. The final step is to dome correct the videos and change to resolution to match the dome.
Realtime – Animations
Below are the three videos I have created to represent when the exchange rate is increasing, decreasing and staying the same.
Video to represent exchange rate staying the same:
Video to represent exchange rate increasing:
Video to represent exchange rate decreasing:
Realtime – Blender
To create the animations for my project I have used Blender. I had decided to use a similar idea to the prototype I created and create three different animations which will be triggered depending on whether the exchange rate has either increased, decreased or stayed the same. I have decided to base the animations on a tunnel as I felt this would be an effective way of inducing vection in the done environment. When creating the animation in Blender I first modeled a straight tunnel and parented all the elements of the tunnel to a curve as shown below. The camera has also been parented to the centre curve so that it follow the path when animated. This model was also used to represent when the exhange rate stayed the same.
Simply by moving the points of this curve would adjust the whole model and allow me to create the animations for when the exchange rate increased and decresed. The image below is the model I have set up for when the exchange rate increases.
This is the model I have set up for when the exchange rate decreases.
Realtime – Data
I had originally planned on using data from the FTSE 100 but I was quite surpised at how difficult it was to access a feed from this. So instead I have decided to use the excahnge rate between the pound and the dollar as a way of showing the current trends of the stock market. While I was developing the prototype of my project I worked on a tutorial which used twitter to access information. With this in mind, I discovered this twitter page currencywatch which provides the exact data I need. For this I will need to use the exact same sub-string method to extract the required figures.
This is how the RSS feed looks:
Realtime – The Prototype
After deciding to that I would use Processing for my Realtime project I have finally developed a working prototype. For this I have just used an RSS of weather data and used a sub-string method to extract the temperature figure. This feed only shows the temperature from the last five days which were 10, 13, 12, 14 and 11. So to test the programme I set up if statements to determine which one of the two videos is played. If the temperature is below 12 the white video is displayed and if the temperature is above 12 the black video is displayed.
if (temperature <= 12) {
playing = Movie1;
println(temperature);
}
if (temperature > 12) {
playing = Movie2;
println(temperature);
The video below shows this initial prototype version of my project. Depending on how I decide to use the stock market data the programme is likely to include a number of videos. The resolution of these videos would also need to change to fit the dome. The next step is to experiment with the stock market data.
Realtime – Project Development
This week I spend most of my time experimenting with how I can actually implement my realtime project. I was originally looking into two options. The first option involves using Unity to manipulate the animation according to the stock market data. The second option involved using Processing to retrieve the data and trigger a set of animations. After having real difficulty getting anywhere with Unity I decided that it was best to use the second option of Processing.
I also thought this would be the better option as I had recently began learning Processing following one of the workshops in the module. ‘Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to create images, animations, and interactions. Initially developed to serve as a software sketchbook and to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context, Processing also has evolved into a tool for generating finished professional work. Today, there are tens of thousands of students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists who use Processing for learning, prototyping, and production.’
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Darren Gray 