Literary License Blog

Generative Art and Processing

September 18, 2013 by michellechandra in Processing

I have two words for you: Generative Art

This week’s ICM course involved moving from a static, manual idea of Processing to animation and interaction. Not surprisingly, when Dan Shiffman began to show us different ways to create an interactive drawing, my initial reaction was : oooh! things move! shiny! colors! more! more! more!

Ziv Schneider and I met later in the week to discuss a complimentary collaboration for ICM. Luckily, Ziv came prepared having actually researched some pretty awesome examples of Generative Art as inspiration. In the context of my programming class, Generative Art is using Processing (programming language) to create artistic work (i.e. painting).

At the end of the day, I didn’t have much time so I decided play around with randomness, transparency and stroke weight to create painterly effects.

Here is my first attempt at building layers of color, thinking back to basic painting practices (the composition of the sketches is partially randomly generated): → Read more

City Walk Sound Piece

September 17, 2013 by michellechandra in Video

Danqing Wang and I created a short soundscape of NY city sounds for our ITP Audio/Video Lab. Our ambient recordings of NY weren’t great (lots of wind and mic noise, oops!) so we largely used sounds downloaded from freesound.org. However, we did record the violin sound heard in the beginning of the track in a tunnel in Central Park.

Using ProTools to edit our piece was tough, but we managed to do a couple fades and panning!

Listen to ME

What is Physical Interaction?

September 14, 2013 by michellechandra in Physical Computing

What defines physical interaction, and what makes for good physical interactive experiences? In The Art of Interactive Design, Chris Crawford defines interaction as a conversation with two actors who “listen, think and speak.” Physical interaction involves a give and take, and is not simply a reaction (for example, a viewer watching a movie) or participation (a couple dancing).

In “A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design,” Bret Victor defines physical interaction in opposition to this video (produced by Microsoft) that envisions a future in which perfect happy people living in sterile environments (a la Ikea) passively swipe screens to interact with each other. Throughout the video, every need and desire is met in a homogenized manner – apparently, things don’t go wrong, and chaos does not exist.

Victor defines tools as objects that amplify human capabilities. He outlines the many capabilities of the human hand, and questions a future in which tactility is left behind for tools that are “Pictures Under Glass” and involve minimal human interaction (largely, swiping a screen). To Victor, this future fails to take advantage of the myriad capabilities of the human hand. → Read more

Fantasy Device: Infinite Container

September 10, 2013 by michellechandra in Physical Computing

Yesterday was my first Physical Computing class at ITP. In similar ITP fashion, it was of course amazing. Sam Lavigne, Saki Ichikawa and I were tasked with prototyping a fantasy device. We decided to dream up an Infinite Container!

At first, we were struggling with the physical limitations of reality and an infinite container. How big is the container? Is it made of a special fabric that can expand and collapse? Once you place an object inside, how would you find it again?

Then we realized we needed to think of the “container” as a metaphor. We realized we needed to dream up a fantastical technology that could scan and digitize an object, but also regenerate the object again. Voila! Infinite Container!

The Infinite Container is designed to look like any old ho-hum-drum shopping bag (a la Whole Foods) in order to make scanning discrete.

Demonstrated by yours truly!

→ Read more

Design Thinking and Rapid Prototyping

April 16, 2013 by michellechandra in Creative Process, User-Experience Design

Over the past year as I have been learning about visual design and interaction design, I have worked on side projects for friends and organizations. One of the big pieces missing from classes has been knowledge around process and design thinking. What are good ways to approach a project in the initial stages? How do you discover a user need?

I was glad recently to have the opportunity to take General Assembly’s workshop on Design Thinking, and remove some mystery from the design process! Jim Ratcliffe, who has taught classes at Stanford’s d.school, and Olga Trusova of Blue Fig Labs led the workshop. After a quick recap on the design process, we split into pairs. Time to rapid prototype – on steroids!

→ Read more

John Maeda, Money and Freedom

April 9, 2013 by michellechandra in Creative Process

“Having some money gives you the freedom to explore what you want to do. But earning money is often not freedom.”
–John Maeda from How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer by Debbie Millman

Intuition and the Street

March 31, 2013 by michellechandra in Creative Process, Photography

Often I am afraid I am going to wake up one day and suddenly be incapable of taking a decent photograph. I know it’s an irrational fear because photography is intuitive. But it’s easy to fear something when you don’t fully understand the magic formula that makes it happen.

Grille, San Francisco, California, 2013

I recently started organizing the photographs I have shot these past few months into a new body of work, Everything: Transitory. There is something about the process of defining one’s work that is both educational and paralyzing. → Read more

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