dopefulhopefiend

soul exhaust

May 30th, 2006 at 11:11 am (Art, Webnology)

A visualization of death tolls from September 11, Iraq, Indian Ocean tsunami, and Darfur, Sudan. The visualization uses four particle systems to generate circles for each location, differentiated by size, color. Each circle represents 1000 people killed. The life of particles is the total number of deaths in thousands. The size of each particle is the sum (in millions) of the number of results from five Google searches for
death
dead
casualties
killed
death toll
to represent our collective interest and compassion for each crisis.

Due to the large death count in Darfur, the particles would not fade out before exiting the screen. So, I added methods so the particles would bounce off of the bottom and side of the window. This is accomplished by reversing the acceleration vector of a particle as it hits a point below the window (to give the illusion of compression). The acceleration increases after collision to indicate the souls’ release from their bodies. Representations of Iraq and Sept 11 quickly puff out of the window, so I didn’t give them bouncing abilities.

To engage the viewer and emphasize the concept,  the user can interact with the particles using a mouse. This feature proved too disruptive to the larger circles and took away from the effectiveness of the presentation. To play on the visual idea of souls flowing from the location, moving the mouse can disrupt or pause the path of a particle, so the user can speed up release of souls or catch a few so they fade before they can exit the window. To accomplish this, a particle’s acceleration vector is altered by subtracting the current mouse location from the previous frame’s mouse location so moving slowly seems to hold the particle under the mouse and moving quickly seems to collide with it.
NOTE: firefox and camino seem better than safari at rendering the visualization

P.S.:

I received a greenlight today for exhibiting the currently-unnamed 3-d video mapping applet you can find below. It will be modified so that the projection into 3-d space is determined by pixel brightness and sound levels around the installation. It will be shown at TN’s Bonnarroo Music & Arts Festival in various spots so it will respond to live performances. Hopefully a sizeable portion of the 100,000 attendees will experience it. The installation will use a mac, microphone, DV camera, lcd projector, walls, and white bedsheets. I will update with lots of photos, etc, of the video project as well as the sand, bamboo, and rock installation I am working on.