PaperRobotArmy.com

(Content provided by Joe Galbreath. All rights reserved, © Joe Galbreath 2011)

Client: AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts)
Product: Gallery Interactive Mural | Size: 36 foot x 10 foot | Studio: alfalfa studio

“The 36 x 10 foot Design Journeys Mural was designed exclusively for the show titled You Are Here, a participatory exhibition shinning light on the careers of 25 designers from a variety of backgrounds, whose own lives and experiences demonstrate the ideal combination of diversity and excellence.

The mural showcases the last names of the 25 designers united in a visual typographic journey. In an organic, fluid way, one last name leads to the other, inviting the viewer to follow the journey by connecting the various shapes, letters, and textures. Each of the 25 last names are rendered in a different typographic style combining organic and geometric forms—script, serif, san serifs and everything in between. The mural visually demonstrates how all the designer’s journeys are different and unique yet they all are part of a whole.

At the opening, and, during the two-month exhibition, attendees were encouraged to be active participants by coloring the mural. At the end of this interactive experience, the mural became a colorful, graffiti-like artwork that captured the experience not only of the 25 featured designers but, also, of the attendees to the exhibit.”

Credits: Designer & Creative Director: Rafael Esquer; Mural painting assitants: Jessica Atkinson, Miriam Castillo, Marco De Mel, Sho Momma, Minal Nairi, Mattia Novello and Nigel Sielegar.

(Content provided by Alfalfa Studio. All rights reserved, © Alfalfa Studio 2011)

“Terra EnCognito is a realtime data visualization of online discussions as they unfold on the social news site digg.com . The project’s primary goal is to enable quick, accurate, comparative, and qualitative assessments of individual story discussions across the entire site. By exploiting our instinctual response to organic form, movement, and behavior, I increased the number of data axes and overall complexity in the visualization without increasing the amount of learning or abstraction required by the viewer to understand it. The result is a visualization that embodies unique, dynamic, on-line discussions as a population of unique, dynamic, living creatures—with corresponding form and traits.

Discussions are scored according to a set of metrics designed to reveal more of the discussion’s nature rather than its quantitative attributes. Those scores are normalized and mapped to variables in Johan Gielis’ Superformula–creating organic forms, with added behavioral traits and lifecycles. The entire visualization is rendered in realtime using the Unity game engine.

There are nine metrics used to derive discussion qualities. For example, the Polarization Index describes the level of accord or discord within a discussion by looking at the spread and distribution of comment ratings and the ratio of uppercase to lowercase characters; Dialogical Balance describes how well the discussion is fostering dialogue by looking at the spread and distribution of comment nesting depth, occurrences of multiple comments by individual users, and the ratio between the number of first level comments and nested comments.

The rendered color palate is purposely muted to emphasize spatial, shape, and behavior attributes. Juveniles, or stories not yet promoted to the front page, are smaller, shapeless, flocking black orbs. Once promoted, they morph into adults and move to a category/topic based region defined by a treemap. At death, objects fall to the ground where their accumulated numbers provide a historical record. Shapes and behaviors are complex, and never identical, but are intuitive and consistent in their expression of the metrics–number of arms, thin/fat, long/short, docile/aggressive, slow/fast, spiked/rounded–so that one can immediately grasp the nature of a discussion, and over time can begin to recognize species.

A summary of the entire site’s state of discussions is expressed in a separate scene of weather and water surface roughness.”

Michael Thompson
http://codedmeaning.com

(Content provided by Michael Thompson. All rights reserved, © Michael Thompson 2007)

“How are we encouraged to interact? A tab instructs us to fold or tear. A wall of lasercut tabs begs to be manipulated.

I installed this piece on the third floor of Pollack on March 8th, around 5 PM. I did not pre-fold/-tear any of the tabs, nor did I leave any instructions with the piece. I thought the initial start of the tab manipulation would be a slow one. I thought many would walk by it and possibly be intrigued, but ultimately feel uncomfortable/confused about the expectations until some brave soul took the plunge and folded and/or tore to begin the process. However, I arrived at Pollack at 9 AM the following day and students were already folding away. Progress was quick and the reception was positive.

On March 12, 2011, the messages of the tab installation include Tyler, Love, the start of Hate, Time, Wow, Fun, a few patterns, and a heart.

I explored the affordances of tearing and folding with the tab installations. Black paper with laser cut tabs laid over neon papers were installed through the simple means of stapling to the bulletin boards in the hallway.

For the rectangular tab installation, I did not leave any instructions or indication of intended interaction. I left its progress up to the intuition of the audience. Not knowing if intuition would be enough, I started the triangular tab installation off by creating the letterform “G” in the first panel.

The rectangular tab interface was being manipulated within six hours of its installation. A few of the tabs were torn but the majority were folded to create images and messages. The triangular tab installation was a bit slower to progress and I believe this was due to the fact that the small triangular tabs were much more difficult to pick up or snag with your fingernail in order to tear and fold. But, despite the difficulty, the triangular tabs were folded to create a great message.”

Cassie Hester,  cassiehester.wordpress.com/2011/03/12/tab-installation/

(Content provided by Cassie Hester. All rights reserved, © Cassie Hester 2011)

“The affordances of pushing and pulling were explored in the creation of a one foot by five feet installation featuring beads strung on neon thread on a lateral grid.

I relied on the tactile nature of the piece to encourage interaction. It was a success. The inhabitants of Pollack quickly began forming simple messages and imagery. However, they also, quite unexpectedly, strummed the strands and manipulated the interface to create sounds/music. I had not anticipated this, though I am not displeased.

The construction of this piece was incredibly time consuming and tedious. Already the interface is showing the wear and tear of interaction as well as the ravages of gravity. Materials will have to be further explored for this piece.” —Cassie Hester

Cassie Hester,  http://cassiehester.wordpress.com/2011/04/23/bead-interface/

(Content provided by Cassie Hester. All rights reserved, © Cassie Hester 2011)

“The affordances of pushing and pulling was explored in an interface targeted directly at the creation of language. Each long strip of the alphabet could be pulled to either the left or the right to highlight one letterform in the simple frame. The interaction is quick and easy, so the interface garnered a lot of attention. I expected the simple construction and presence of letterforms to quickly convey the intended interaction, but I did not expect the interface to be a sort of status update system. The first message created? “KILL ME NOW” — a pretty apt sentiment for the last days of the semester. The next message? “NEED MORE SLEEP” — just a few more days of sleepless nights to go. And two of the following messages  — “REVIEWS OVER” and “VICTORY” — illustrate the sense of relief and triumph shared by the students.”

Cassie Hester,  cassiehester.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/alphabet-slide/

(Content provided by Cassie Hester. All rights reserved, © Cassie Hester 2011)

“Love First, Ask Questions Later” words by Mary Elizabeth Peterson

“It began as a project to inspire collaboration with between the artist and the viewer. Readers are an integral part of the creative process by providing the spark for each work. They initiate the collaboration by submitting a word or phrase that becomes the creative starting point for drawings. Each illustration is an interpretation of the word(s) and is posted with the submitters name. The submissions keep pouring in and the blog has reached 200 illustrations and counting. Visit the blog and submit a word.”

—Mark Burrier, www.rarewords.org/

(Content provided by Mark Burrier. All rights reserved, © Mark Burrier 2011)

Attendees at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in June 2009 that visited the JanSport booth were able to express their inner-creative and help create a limited edition run of ‘Bonnaroo’ JanSport backpacks.  Fourteen 5’ x 15’ white canvases were displayed over the duration of the festival.

Backpacks were sold and all proceeds donated to charity.

www.welcometocreature.com

(Content provided by Creature. All rights reserved, © Creature  2011)

These letterpress notecards require the sender to personalize the message for the recipient.

“Animal Parade” features a word bubble uniting a group of land animals for a message in concert.

“A Mix Tape” uses the image of the cassette format and repurposes the idea of making someone a mix tape to bring back written correspondence.

—Jason Wong and Jordan Provost

enormouschampion.com/

(Content provided by Enormous Champion. All rights reserved, © Enormous Champion 2011)

” The Recession Nation Project is a book of photos, short essays and poems about the recession.

Recession or no recession, the current economic situation is stirring up dust all around us. This project is meant to capture and share a multi-perspective, mixed media, insightful, shared and visual response to this dust and its consequences.

If nothing else, this project will be an interesting experiment about what happens when technology, social networking, modern on-demand printing, art, design and social responsibility come together. Content was submitted by anyone and everyone effected by the recession.  I recruited contributors using facebook, flickr, and email. It uses on demand printing and all proceeds go to the needy.“

By Andres Zapata

www.idfive.com

(Content provided by Andres Zapata. All rights reserved, © Andres Zapata 2011)