See Something or Say Something is a project by Eric Fischer which maps out locations of Flickr pictures (red dots) and locations of Twitter tweets (blue dots). Note the white dots are locations that have been posted to both services. Although there are no conclusions and none intended, it does raise some interesting questions about what makes us take a photo rather than post a tweet, and vice versa. What do they tell you?

The software that creates the maps is a C program that runs through the photos/tweets in chronological order, plotting the

Continue reading.... See Something or Say Something [c]

Cascade is the latest project by NYTimes R&D department that allows precise analysis of the structures that underly sharing activity on the web. Initiated by Mark Hansen and working with Jer Thorp and Jake Porway (Data Scientist at the Times) the team spent the last 6 months building the tool to understand how information propagates through the social media space. While initially applied to New York Times stories and information, the tool and its underlying logic may be applied to any publisher or brand interested in understanding how its messages are shared.

The app is primarily an exploratory tool, Jer explains. NYTimes publishes more than 6,000 pieces of content every month, and the team can now analyse every sharing event involving this content using Cascade. Jer describes the basic app workflow:

- A ‘Story Mode’ which shows a set of stories, and their associated event cascades. These stories can be requested via keyword search, section search, or a variety of ‘interestingness’ metrics. This view has some low-level visualizations of activity over time which allow us to focus in on event cascades which might be particularly interesting.

- A ‘Cascade Mode’ which allows us to view the event cascades. The cascades build over time – one of the things we’ve been most interested in with this tool has the time-based analysis. Rather than seeing static views of the social graph, we can actually see the sharing networks unfold over time. This mode has three distinct views in which each cascade can be examined:
1) A ‘side view’ which shows all of the events over time, and uses the Y axis to indicate degrees of separation from the originating event
2) A ‘radar view’ which views the system from overhead and lets users identify ‘threads’ of conversation
3) A 3D ‘tree view’ which combines views 1 and 2

The tool is built in Processing, with a lot of help from Andres Colubri’s GLGraphics library and toxiclibs. It runs on any machine, but is staged on a 5-screen video wall. This ‘exhibition’ app runs in an automatic mode, in which it explores the terrain of available data and wanders through the various presentation modes. The wall can also be controlled by a custom iPhone app which is a fairly simple and sends OSC commands to the display system. The team considered using touch or gestural input to control the display but in the end this gave them the control they wanted while being able to use the interface at some distance from the screens.

All of the data is stored in a Mongo database, which they access through a Python API. They also used R quite a lot during the exploratory phases. The largest cascades they are currently loading have about 25,000 events. These are all rendered in 3D at full framerate (60fps) across 5 screens (6400×720) by a single machine. Jer suspects the system could handle trees of up to 50,000 events (all thanks to Andres & GLGraphics). The data that the team are currently using is a 2-week sample from July/August, but Jer says they will be moving to a near real-time data feed very soon.

The implementation used right now looks at the sharing of NYTimes content over Twitter but Jer explains that in fact Cascade is a system that could be used to model any kind of sharing activity. They’re already looking at implementing it for other Times properties (boston.com, etc. ) and will be testing it out on other sharing systems over the coming months.

If you would like to know more about the project, make sure you also check out Coverage on Project Cascade from Nieman Journalism Lab. Of course, there is also the Project Page at NYTLabs.

–

Jer will be presenting latest work including Cascades at Resonate, new digital arts festival taking place later this year in Belgrade. Other confirmed speakers are available here + sign up to the newsletter for more info available soon. You can also follow on Twitter or join the group on Facebook.

NewSpeak is a project created by Immo Blaese for anticensor, the 10th Web Biennial at the Istanbul Contemporary Art Museum. As new words are picked up every minute, NewSpeak will display the opposite meaning (antonym) based on an Orwellian scenario of doublespeak.

The creation of a new over simplified language to limit the expressions and thoughts possible in a dystopian totalitarian regime.

All images and tweets are loaded via public feeds provided by Flickr and Twitter. The full project including screensavers for Mac and Windows can be downloaded here.

Play > newspeak.zonkzone.net

Created by Christian Marc Schmidt & Liangjie Xia, Invisible Cities is a information mapping project that reveals social networks present within the urban environment. The application, built using Processing, allows realtime mapping of activity on Twitter and Flickr by displaying intensities and geographical relationships of twitter conversations. Data is displayed by location and hills and valleys are displayed representing areas with high and low densities of data.

Invisible Cities maps information from one realm—online social networks—to another: an immersive, three dimensional space. In doing so, the piece creates a parallel experience to the physical urban environment. The interplay between the aggregate and the real-time recreates the kind of dynamics present within the physical world, where the city is both a vessel for and a product of human activity. It is ultimately a parallel city of intersections, discovery, and memory, and a medium for experiencing the physical environment anew.

The application is still in development and should be available for download sometime in the future. To stay in touch, sign up for general news and future software releases here.

Project page

Christian Marc Schmidt is a German/American designer and media artist, educated in Europe and the United States and currently residing in New York. Christian earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Parsons School of Design in New York, and attended the Yale University School of Art in New Haven, where he graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in 2004.

Liangjie Xia is a media artist and programmer presently based in New York City. His work explores alternative forms of communication through innovative applications of technology, his experiments vary from interactive data visualization, mobile applications to physical installations. He loves and contributes to open source projects, and hacks with whatever is handy. Liangjie recently received Master of Professional Studies degree from Interactive Telecommunications Program of NYU.

(Thanks Josh)

Invisible Cities (Italian: Le città invisibili) is also a novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino, and a worthy read.

With Twitter users generating tens of thousands of messages per minute, Hit-A-Tweet by Andreas Schlegel is a project that utilizes this data-flow overload in twitter to allow participants to create new tweet narratives. Project was created using Processing and twitter4j, a Java library for the Twitter API.

Andreas writes:
In this work, words from the 41-word long poem ‘I AM’ by Hani Haykal are extracted and used as a resource for search queries within the twitter universe. These search results will return and filter the most current tweets containing those words sequentially selected from the poem. They will then be stored in a Hit-A-Tweet database.

By hitting the Hit-A-Tweet Buzzer, a highlighted tweet will be selected, displayed and at the same time, also reveals the author’s twitter identity. These chance encounters, made possible with every hit, will be fed back to twitter, forming a sort of dada-ist inspired non-sense. These sequentially selected tweets go on to become new narratives which can be viewed at www.twitter.com/hitatweet .

In participating in Hit-A-Tweet, each audience is an active composer of a new arrangement of twitter text. These selections that form a larger non-sense narrative is a commentary about the temporal nature of tweet identities, voyeurism of the net user and is an attempt to create new arrangements of information fragments within the twitter universe.

To read more about the project, see sojamo.de/projects/hitatweet/

As most of us already know and those who don’t are not from this planet, the iPad is launching in the US tomorrow. With all the excitement and hype we thought we’d collect the most exciting, well designed and impactful apps we came across for your new object of affection. Many of the reviews and hit lists we have seen are the usual suspects and although they fill the roles of getting things done, we at app.itize.us and CreativeApplications.Net like to look at things slightly different. This post is a showcase of some of the most inspiring, beautiful, challenging and most exciting apps out there at the time of the iPad release. Of course, we look forward to what is yet to come, as we are as excited about iPad as everyone else. Enjoy.

Granimator™

A free-form, immersive touch and sound experience that allows you to become the artist using noted designers and artists special ‘design’ packs including signature elements, shapes and backgrounds to play with.

Platform: iPad only
Version: 1.0
Cost: Free
Developer: ustwo™

Chirp Frame

Turn your iPad into a simple and elegant twitter picture frame. there are 3 different stylized graphic themes to fit you and your own personal taste (black&white, western and nature). you can also respond to tweets in the app.

Platform: iPad only
Version: 1.0
Cost: $0.99
Developer: work in progress

Touch OSC

TouchOSC is an iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad application that lets you send and receive Open Sound Control messages over a Wi-Fi network using the UDP protocol. Whilst this does not mean much for many, the usage of this app has no limits. Say you are a musician and want to control your Pro-Tools from your iPad or what if you have built an arduino robot you want to control from your iPad, well this is the way to do it. This is a must in the area of custom hardware software using OSC networks. Check it out even if you have no use for it today you may tomorrow..

Platform: iPad/iPhone
Version: 1.5
Cost: $4.99
Developer:  Hexler

Raindrops for iPad

Touch the screen and trigger pleasant musical sounds to your own beat. record your compositions and share with others online. you don’t need any previous musical knowledge to enjoy this.

Platform: iPad only
Version: 1.0
Cost: $1.99
Developer: Masayuki Akamatsu , Yusuke Kawabata , Junpei Wada

C64 Paint XL

This is THE paint program from 1984. a retro pixel art inspired app that lets you paint on a canvas up to 160 by 200 pixels with all the 16 colors of the classic 8-bit computer of the 1980s, the Commodore 64. It has both square pixels and non-square pixels to replicate the way the C64 and other 8-bit computers really looked on a TV screen.

Platform: iPhone/iPad
Version: 1.0
Cost: $2.99
Developer: Felt Tip Inc

Thicket

An audio-visual mix and manipulation of texture, movement, line and tone. by drawing on the screen with your fingers, you create dense, mesmerizing sonic and visual patterns within a space of warm, bright, rhythmic sound design and constantly evolving, bending, elegant scrawls.

Platform: iPhone/iPad
Version: 1.0
Cost: $2.99
Developer: Interval Studios Inc

Kaleidescope X Pad

Much more than just a traditional kaleidoscope, this app is a creative tool for producing beautiful moving mirrored images… its literally an interactive work of art. comes standard with all the features you would expect in a digital kaleidoscope, but adds an impressive collection of features incl. a STEREOSCOPIC 3-D mirror and the amazing IMAGE SYNTHESIZER which creates image variations on the fly.

Platform: iPad only
Version: 1.0
Cost: $0.99
Developer: Gritless Digital

Zen Bound 2

Amazing graphics and sound set the atmosphere for this zen inspiring puzzle app. you need to wrap a length of rope around various sized and stylized wooden sculptures. takes full advantage of tilt and multi-touch so you will not only need to use your fingers to wrap and twist the shapes, but also tilt your iPad to solve the puzzles.

Platform: iPad only
Version: 1.0
Cost: $7.99
Developer: Secret Exit Ltd

The Elements: A Visual Exploration

This is one of the most amazing digital experiences i have seen. not only an amazing resource to provide context to the periodic table, but, also takes full advantage of the tablet based interface of the iPad. over 500 examples of the chemical elements in virtual form and every one can be spun around a complete circle with the touch of your finger. you can even view them in stereo 3D using glasses available from the publisher.

Platform: iPad only
Version: 1.0
Cost: $13.99
Developer: Element Collection

Depict HD

This app was recommended to me by my good friend lopetz at büro destruct. an amazing pixel art game which you draw a picture and others across the internet (via openfeint) try to guess the image or take part and guess yourself. a unique take on pictionary, but with pixels. fantasitic idea and addicting to play. this version for iPad takes it to a whole new level.

Platform: iPad/iPhone
Version: 1.0
Cost: $1.99
Developer: Makeshift Games

Intellivision

This one brings back memories of me playing intellivision at my friends house after school on his families walnut cabinet tv set. the app has a selection of vintage titles for you to take you back in time. the visual design of the app and its various menus is spot on, down to the paddle controller and the pixelated graphics of the games. def one to get for the nostalgic values alone.

Platform: iPad only
Version: 1.0
Cost: $2.99
Developer: VH1 and MTV Networks

TiltShift Generator

my favourite photo manipulation app on the face of the earth has now come to the iPad. they have totally reformatted the controls specially for the tablet. amazing photo manipulations to make your photos look like they are shots with miniatures, toy camera images and fake DSLR. just stunning results from this app.

Platform: iPad/iPhone
Version: 1.0
Cost: $2.99
Developer: Takayuki Fukatsu & Takuma Mori

Noby Noby Boy

a fantastic port of the recent iPhone release from Keita Takahashi to the iPad. takes full advantage of the new screen size and has some enhancements as well. you can now paint on the background and save them as well. also, the controls are made much larger and easy for smaller fingers (and kids). just too insane to explain, so go get it!

Platform: iPad/iPhone
Version: 1.1.0
Cost: $1.99
Developer: NAMCO BANDAI Games

IQ mirror X

This app is deceptively hard, you need to replicate the randomly created dot pattern displayed in the mirrored pattern below it. use your fingers to change the sizes of the spheres to match the ones above, but, its not that easy, you have a time limit as well.

Platform: iPad/iPhone
Version: 1.0
Cost: $2.99
Developer: Studio Loupe

Ludo Board Game

This board game app is a result of the evolution of the well known ancient game Ludo (Latin: I Play) that we all played as kids. the board game itself has a very simple concept so it is suitable for anyone from 4 to 99 years. you can play solo against the computer intelligence or mix computer vs human to add an extra dimension of challenge. the graphics are elegant and colorful and represent the original with a twist.

Platform: iPad Only
Version: 1.0
Cost: $3.99
Developer: SIS software

This is truly one awesome messaging service created by Protein’s boy Bjorn. The idea is simple, write text, choose style and save with the link to post to your friends. Big, bold, just the way we love it. Inspired by Barbara Kruger.
(sorry about the language below but sh*t and cr*p seem to work best =])

http://bigassmessage.com/

(via Will of Protein OS)

See also the awesome ColorBarsScreensaver

Nearly 4 months since our last post on Twitter Art Projects but this time we have collected more diverse than ever collection of art installations/web projects that utilize twitter in a very unique way. From radio controlled cars to hand drawings these show that there is much more to twitter than what some may have had for breakfast – definetly a reflection on our group consciousness.. (vol 1). If you missed the previous editions, check out:

Volume 1 + Volume 2

Hard Drivin

Hard Drivin’ is a kinetic installation created by Ivan Twohig, Benjamin Gaulon and Brian Solon. The title of the piece references Hard Drivin’ a video game released in 1989. The game featured the first 3D polygon driving environment.

The installation involves radio controlled (R/C) cars that physically react to short messages (‘tweets’) sent through the popular social networking site Twitter. The cars are placed on a 3d-like structure inspired by polygonal modeling. Anyone can participate by telling the cars to begin following another user, by sending a simple command inside a tweet.

You can get the cars to start following a user, by sending a reply to @harddrivin, e.g.: @harddrivin follow @exchangedublin
Then every time that user tweets, one of the cars will move in a random direction.

More info @ http://harddrivin.com + see this Flickr Set for more images.

Default to Public

“Default to Public” is a project by Jens Wunderling dealing with the discrepancy between people’s feeling of privacy on the web and the physical world. It consists of an ongoing series of objects and interventions linking the physical world to the online world in unexpected and narrative ways to create awareness for self-exposure.

Currently there are three projects, Status Panel, TweetScreen and Tweetleak with another two still under wraps named Classified Tweets and Tweetcast.

Status Panel enhances the well known interface – the doorbell providing a small LCD panel displaying one’s twitter status along with the name. Additionally the status panel has it’s own Twitter Account and then the button is pressed it re-tweets one’s current tweet.

Tweetscreen is a networked projection/installation in public space showing tweets which have been written near it’s own physical location on a large projection screen. The twitter users whose tweets have been chosen receive a reply message aling with the photo taken by a webcam.

Tweetleak is a monolithic anthracithe-coloured pole which is placed in a public place aggregating tweets from nearby and “materialises them”. After the tweet has been printed out the author is notified.

All works follow a simple, yet powerful principle: Information from the twitter network (standing for information on the web) are displayed in another public environment, the documentation of this process is fed back into the digital public sphere and the authors of the information are notified of that abduction. Two public spheres are temporarily linked, creating repercussions of communication in the digital public sphere, which seems to be regarded as less public than the physical world, although it has a far wider reach than classic media, plus it never expires or is written over.

More information at defaulttopublic.net

Tweeting Colors

Tweeting Colors is webpage comprised of vertical color bars created by special tweets from Twitter users. New bars are added from the left, pushing the existing arrangement to the right. A project by A Feverish Dream, this piece allows the audience to directly manipulate the resulting visual. Anyone can view the piece, but a Twitter user can add bars by following these simple directions. The page auto-refreshes a few times a minute, so sit back and enjoy the Color Feed.

To participate in Tweeting Colors, simply post a tweet containing the following three elements:

#afd (This is a tag acting as a filter. The “afd” stands for A Feverish Dream)
a color name from the HTML color chart below. It is not case-sensitive, so you can use all caps or all lowercase.
a number between 1 and 20, inclusive. This determines the width of the vertical band of color you’re creating.

Your tweet should show up in the Color Feed within a minute.
Examples of acceptable tweets:  #afd DARKRED 4 or  deeppink 18 #afd or  you can simply work these tags into a normal post: Cleaning out the blue garage today #afd 8

See more at tweetingcolors.com

UTV

UTV is the transposition of our Internet identities from Twitter feeds to an over-the-air TV broadcast.

UTV is part of an exhibition entitled “Ill Communication” by Rob Duarte, which examines the role of technology in our understandings of community and communication. The format of the exhibition is such that each of the participating artists presents a work that spans two halves of the gallery space – an “interface” and an “output”.

Interface

The UTV installation begins with an open presentation of the technology behind the television broadcast. A laptop computer connects to a display, which shows the real-time workings of the scripts and patches that gather Twitter feeds from people in the Chicago area. A camcorder then converts the image into a ready-for-TV signal and finally leads to a UHF transmitter that broadcasts the content to any television sets in the area. The corkboard above this makeshift TV station contains my notes, sketches and observations about the technical process, comparisons between the sociopolitical histories of Internet and broadcast TV media, and the re-appropriation of the obsolete medium of analog TV for the purposes of broadcasting local community-produced content.

Output

In the second half of the gallery, a pile of TVs and their rabbit-ear antennae are tuned to UHF channel 14½ to receive the reconfigured broadcast. The commentaries and mini-monologues from the once-digital medium scroll past the TV screens at varying speeds. The translation of this content to the fuzzy world of analog TV happens as the medium reaches the final stage of its gradual appropriation for purely commercial purposes. When it is discontinued this year, its final remains will be sold to private corporations and its demise as a medium for geographically relevant, freely available, community-driven content will be complete. UTV is an effort to filter “local” content from the world-wide medium of the Internet and funnel it back into the communication void that will exist during the final days of analog TV and beyond. This project also serves to expose this sociopolitical history of analog broadcasting and compare it to the power struggles that the Internet has and will face in the future.

More about Rob and his other work can be found at robduarte.com

Twitter Drawings

On February 19th, 2009, Marc Horowitz posted this “tweet” on twitter.com (see first image below). Each of the 100 original drawings were mailed out to the first 100 respondents after the entire collection was put on display at Postmasters Gallery in New York as part of the exhibition “The future is not what it used to be” from February 28th – April 4th, 2009.

This limited-edition catalog contains all 100 drawings and you can purchase it at http://bit.ly/buytwitterbook.
You can see all the drawings at http://bit.ly/twitterdrawings.

If you are interested in purchasing the book, see here.

Marc continues to tweet and you should add him at @marchorowitz.

N Building is a commercial structure located near Tachikawa station amidst a shopping district. The team at Qosmo working together with teradadesign architecture studio thought of using QR Code (two-dimensional bar code) as the facade of the building. By reading the QR Code with your mobile device you can obtain up to date shop information but the fun doesn’t end there. Using the iPhone with specially developed application you can see what is happening inside the building with people’s comments made on online appearing in speech bubbles. You can also browse shop information, make reservations and download coupons (see video).

The building is detected in real time by its shape. Characters are then superimposed over the live video. Twitter feed comments are located via GPS tagging. Store information, reservations and other infrastructure is part of the iPhone application.

The iPhone application is not for sale in the iTunes App Store, but is available to interested parties on request. The project is a collaboration between teradadesign + Qosmo. For more information see this post by Nao Tokui, CEO of Qosmo Inc.

(Thanks Nao)

Andreas Pihlström (suprb.com) has just posted a new invitation URL to his recently launched Qonversation micro-forum website. The site has been private until now and has just opened up for few more new members who have been following Andreas and his blog.

I have been a memeber since the first launch and have been generally impressed with the site. Driven around the idea of micro-forum, and somewhat inspired by Twitter, Qonversation tries to bridge the gap between mass user forums to small discussions between few users. Here is how Andreas describes it:

Micro-forum-chat-app is the easiest way to describe Qonversation. People compare it with Twitter because of its functionality. This is both correct and not. Instead of “following” people you think is interesting, you “follow” / “join” a topic / Qonversation. This way, you connect and find more (like-minded) people who shares the same interest(s) as you. Qonversation also suggests other topics that might interest you, based on your given “interests” as well as which topics you’ve joined.

So if you haven’t joined yet, today might be you last chance. If you know Dropular, another service by Andreas, you know that these “open” doors don’t stay open for long.

Current invitation URL is: http://qonversation.com/signup?code=superexcited

via Qonversation