MAPP Website is operational

MAPP (Mechanical Art Production Platform) now has its very own web space at my website . Woo! Anyway, there’s a lot of writing on there about the machine, the process, etc. Plus some pictures and even a video of the damn thing working. How about that.

Also, MAPP will be displayed at the ITP Spring Show (Monday May 12th and Tuesday May 13th, 5-9PM) @ 721 Broadway. The show is free and open to the public.

Finally, if you would like to see the thesis presentation of MAPP, it will streamed live from ITP on Thursday, MAY 8th at Noon. Check itp.nyu.edu for more details.

Cheers.\

Final Proposal – A2Z

For my A2Z final I will be writing a custom library of drawing commands for my drawing machine.  The commands will be written in C, for Arduino, and will translate custom G-Code commands from a text file, through a Processing sketch which reads the commands in and sends them out line by line.

Here is the code for some early commands I have been working on:

case 5:
p.x = (long)(search_string(‘X’, instruction, size) * x_units);
p.y = (long)(search_string(‘Y’, instruction, size) * y_units);
p.z = (long)(search_string(‘Z’, instruction, size) * z_units);

x.setTarget(x.current + p.x);
ddaMove();
y.setTarget(y.current + p.y);
ddaMove();
x.setTarget(x.current – p.x);
ddaMove();
y.setTarget(y.current – p.y);
ddaMove();
break;

//Custom 2
case 6:
p.x = (long)(search_string(‘X’, instruction, size) * x_units);
p.y = (long)(search_string(‘Y’, instruction, size) * y_units);
p.z = (long)(search_string(‘Z’, instruction, size) * z_units);

for (int op = 0; op < 4; op++) {

x.setTarget(x.current + p.x * 2);
ddaMove();
y.setTarget(y.current + p.y * 2);
ddaMove();
x.setTarget(x.current – p.x);
ddaMove();
y.setTarget(y.current – p.y);
ddaMove();

}

break;

//Custom 3
case 7:

p.x = (long)(search_string(‘X’, instruction, size) * x_units);
p.y = (long)(search_string(‘Y’, instruction, size) * y_units);
p.z = (long)(search_string(‘Z’, instruction, size) * z_units);

for (int op = 0; op < 4; op++) {

int num = 2;

x.setTarget(x.current + p.x * num);
ddaMove();
y.setTarget(y.current + p.y * num);
ddaMove();
x.setTarget(x.current – p.x);
ddaMove();
y.setTarget(y.current – p.y);
ddaMove();

//num++;

}

break;

More commands to come as well as a homing function and edge detection.

Midterm Visualizations

For my A-Z Midterm (and in preparation for my thesis), I did four different visualizations based off the same process of entering a single URL into a page scraper, which in turn generates a text file with the result (a concordance list of the words and how many times they appeared on the page).  These four visualization were generated using the myspace.com homepage.

The four different visualizations make use of this information by reading in the text file and drawing the text in different ways, making use of the text itself, the frequency of the word in the text, the length of the word, and the physical width of the word itself as different variables.

Here are some screen shots:

Here’s some example code for this last one, just to give an idea:

package concordance.processing;

//import java.awt.Font;
//import java.awt.Graphics;
import java.io.*;
//import java.lang.reflect.Array;
import java.util.*;
import java.util.regex.*;

import a2z.*;
import concordance.processing.Word;
import processing.core.PApplet;
import processing.core.PFont;

public class DrawText4 extends PApplet {

ArrayList words;
PFont f;
float r;

public static void main(String[] args) {
PApplet.main(new String[] {“concordance.processing.DrawText4″});
}

public void setup() {
size(1000,720);
words = new ArrayList();
fillConcordance(“test.txt”);
f = createFont(“Georgia”,64,true);
//textFont(f);

}

public void draw() {
background(50);
//10 boxes along the curve
int totalBoxes = 10;
// We must keep track of our position along the curve
float arclength = 0;

translate(width/2,height/2);
// We’re done, print out contents of Tree!

//System.out.println(“Here are the contents of your tree:”);
//Iterator iterator = words.values().iterator();
Iterator iterator = words.iterator();
r = 160;//values + 1000;
while (iterator.hasNext()) {

Word word = (Word) iterator.next();
println(word.getCount());
r = word.getCount()*100;

String output = word.getWord();
int values = word.getCount();
float length = output.length();

textFont(f, (values*length)*values);
//for (int i = 0; i < output.length(); i++)
//{
// The character and its width
//char currentChar = output.charAt(i);
//float w = textWidth(currentChar);
float w = textWidth(output);

// Each box is centered so we move half the width
arclength += w/2;
// Angle in radians is the arclength divided by the radius
// Starting on the left side of the circle by adding PI
float theta = PI + arclength / r;

pushMatrix();
// Polar to cartesian coordinate conversion
translate(r*cos(theta), r*sin(theta));
// Rotate the box
rotate(theta+PI/2); // rotation is offset by 90 degrees
// Display the character (darker = lower count)
fill(values+w);

text(output,0,0);//random(10),random(180));
popMatrix();
// Move halfway again
arclength += w/2;
//}

r+= 1;

}

noLoop();
}
//}

public void fillConcordance(String path) {
String[] lines = loadStrings(path);
for (int i = 0; i < lines.length; i++) {
String line = lines[i];
String[] stuff = line.split(” “);
Word w = new Word(stuff[0]);
w.setCount(Integer.parseInt(stuff[1]));
words.add(w);
}
}

}