Spring semester wrap-up

Hi everyone! I would like to share with you some of my projects from this semester.

1. The Networked Byte Organ takes data from the network, breaks down the bytes into bits, then uses those bits to trigger music (like a virtual piano roll). It's a continuous (and involuntary) collaborative composition. Will be in ITP's Spring Show.

2. Super Pixel Island is a gardening simulation/generative drawing tool. It's Animal Crossing meets Karl Sims! That's the idea I had, at least. Please please try it out and let me know what you think (or if it even works on your computer, I didn't really user test this thing at all).

3. The Life Tower draws Conway's Game of Life in three dimensions: subsequent generations are drawn beneath the current generation. As the tower grows, interesting forms emerge (kind of like one-dimensional cellular automata).

4. Generative Poetry with L-Systems: I mentioned this idea earlier but found it much less crappy after I played with the algorithm a little bit. Includes a web interface and Perl source code.

5. We were told to give a presentation about our "work" in Marina Zurkow's Site-Specific class, particularly our work that related to the theme of the class. Here's the presentation I gave (and here are notes for each slide). As it happened, Ruth Ozeki was visiting the class that day. After class, she took me aside to compliment the presentation and repeated back to me a synthesis of the presentation's ideas, in a manner more precise and compelling than my own. She even asked for a copy! So that was cool.

Smaller assignments and miscellanea:

• Personal Map Island (previously posted)
• Expressive potential of pseudorandom numbers, an assignment for my Audio Art class in which I attempt to recreate (in Max/MSP) the pseudorandom number generators of the NES and the C64. (Includes a quick demo done up in Schism Tracker)
• Gravitational Cut-Up, re-arranging words gravitationally.
• SpiritBook, a ouija board-esque program for Apple laptops equipped with a sudden motion sensor.