The documentation

Well finally finished the project. Everything worked as expected (although the shakepad could do with some spacers just to make the movement a bit smoother).
Quartz in the end did what i wanted, so im happy there too.
But enough of that, here is the documentation:

The destruction of the wellington town hall's clocktower and facade.

The original story was that after the Napier earthquake in 1931, the Wellington council decided to do a survey of its buildings to see which were earthquake safe.
It was decided that the clocktower and facade of the town hall were a majour risk, so in 1934 they were destroyed, leaving just the building.

I decided to re-interpret this story in a way where the user could get one of two outcomes: an earthquake comes and destroys the building, or the clocktower is removed making the building earthquake-safe.









The Interaction
For the perpose of retelling this story through interaction, I created 3 distinct controls.













1. The floorPad:
The floorpad is basically the on switch for the program, as the user steps up onto the pad the town hall fades in and the program is activated.
When the user steps off, everything is reset and readyed for the next user.



corrosponds to the mouse's left click.






















2. The Detonator:
The detonator represents an old fashioned TNT detonator in the form of a plunger.
To activate it the handle is pushed to the bottom.
If after stepping onto the floorpad, the user goes straight to the Detonator, The clocktower is removed earthquake-proofing the town hall.
However if he/she uses it after causing an earthquake it simply clears away the rubble.



corrosponds to the mouse's right click.


















3.The earthquake pad:
The last object is the earthquake pad. The user interacts with it by shaking it back and forth.
If the user uses the shake pad before destroying the clocktower (by using the detonator), The town hall is destroyed leaving only rubble.
However if he/she uses it after the detonator, the hall shakes but is not destroyed or damaged.


corrosponds to the mouse's position.

The three objects are connected as following:

The earthquake pad contains the controller itself. the colours of the connections corrospond with the colour of the wires coming out of the shake pad.



The Space

The space which the display uses is against a wall, prefrebally where the user can see the floorpad from far away, so opposite the door.

The stand itself takes up 100 x 70 cm so is not huge, but the floorpad protrudes out another 35 cm making the total space taken 100 x 105 cm.
The display used is a widescreen monitor, but it dosnt matter what size.


The Stand

The shakepad goes on the higher part, on the left, while the detonator gets placed on the lower part.
the height is approximatly that of a standard desk, which is just high enough for the average adult to reach without bending, but low enough for a child to reach.
The lower part for the detonator is just to make it more accessible for children, who might struggle to reach the high handle. It also however makes the detonator less dominant over the shakepad, so the user dosn't feel its more important.


Cheers
Ben Jack

My quartz

Bit of a birdsnest, but it works :P

Quartz, my patch and some Javascript.

Well as i said before, Ive finished my patch and have some handy bits to share.

First off is the Object type.
While trawling around trying to find a way to store values across frames i came across the Object type.
I haven't done much JavaScript before (just Java) and am not sure if this is just a quartz thing or not, but if you define an attribute of the Object class the attribute will be held like a normal variable instead of being calculated every frame (very helpful for storing values).
done by saying

if (Object.someVariable == undefined)
Object.someVariable = 0; //initializes the value to zero when composition is first started

you can then use this variable in your script.

here is an example using this. This script is for when my shake pad is shaken, it adds 1 to an object and sends true to one of the outputs when it reaches a certain value.
the output is then used to activate an animation.
inputs[1] is used as a reset switch.

if(Object.out == undefined || inputs[1])
Object.out = 0;
if(Object.count == undefined || inputs[1])
Object.count = 0;
if(Object.lastVal == undefined || inputs[1])
Object.lastVal = inputs[0];


else if(Object.lastVal != inputs[0])
{
Object.out = inputs[0]/2;
Object.count++;
Object.lastVal = inputs[0];
}

outputs[0] = Object.out;

if(Object.count < 70)
outputs[1] = false;
else
outputs[1] = true;


this script holds a click, ie output will be false until you press and release a button. it will then constantly output true (even after you release) until you press again. Sort of a toggle i suppose.

if(Object.released == undefined)
Object.released = true;
if(Object.out == undefined)
Object.out = false;

if(inputs[0] && Object.released)
{
Object.out = !Object.out;
Object.released = false;
}
else if(!inputs[0] )
Object.released = true;

outputs[0] = Object.out;

yer, thats all i have that other people might find helpful, but if scripts need writing I'm happy to help.

Finally.... updates!

I have been neglecting my blog a bit lately, and have some updates....

So.

Images, YAY. Here are some images of the city hall (before and after the destruction of the clock tower) i got from the turnbull library.

I've cut them up and made the first animation using flash (the demolisher animation)



I have completed my quartz composition, and will post some of the JavaScript patches i wrote encase anybody else finds them helpful.
ill make a new post for all that, however.

Quartz and a bit of JavaScript

Ive been experimenting with quartz a bit, in particular, what i can achieve with the JavaScript macro.
so far I've just made a moving button that can change size.
movie of it in action is below.
when the button is clicked on it enables a clear object which blackens the screen. it could however be used to enable any object or macro.
If anybody needs the script Im happy to oblige.





This next one was me experimenting with image generation, the script in this case was just a bit of maths.
I could have done it with maths objects but felt a JavaScript would be simpler.
the colour of the image is based on the x and y position of the mouse.




I will upload more as i make them.

cheers

the limits of imagination.

(these are my views on the matter that i came up with today while making coffee for grumpy customers)

Imagination is the creative extrapolation of previous experiances.

OK hear me out...

What i mean is that our imagination although limitless is still restricted by the bounds of our experiance.
For example, we cannot imagine a sixth sense without describing it with one of our previous five senses (say mindreading, we imagine it as hearing the person. aka sound or hearing).
Or the fourth dimension (excluding the whole time theory) how can we imagine a fourth dimension when we have never experenced anything like it (and if you try you'll probablly get 3d images trying to describe it).

im NOT saying our imagination is limited, im saying there are infinite possibilitys, those possibilitys are just restricted to our current experiance. (similar to there being infinite decimal values between 0 and 1, ie 0.1 0.11 0.111 0.1111........ and so on forever)

Maybe genious comes from being able to take a longer leap, or make a further abstraction from what we have already experinced, or to combine several pieces of information into something so different it almost seems random (i think surreal art, why would you put such unrelated things together?.......).

when a new experiance is had, it opens infinatly new possibilitys, which is maybe why people enjoy new things so much.

maybe also intelligence can be measured by a persons ability to construct new information from what they know or their previous experiance, how then is intelligence different from imagination?

well basically yeah thats it, my deep thoughts for the day. ( i do wonder how i came up with these ideas though, imagination and thought are creepy they come from seemingly nowhere, but always have a reason for being there.)

how this relates to design: My design ambition therefore is to give people new experences to enrich the world with the infinate possibilitys they open up.
Design always comes from somewhere (a realisiation ive only just made).. huh i suppose thats why precidant images seem to be held in such high esteem down here at design.

New era/fun times in the blogging world

Well, this is the first blog I've ever even looked at.
I suppose thats a bit of an uncommon thing these days, especially as i do alot of computer work.

Well DMDN,.. bit of a change from the maths and physics based world of systems engineering but I've decided that a digital design course will best utilize both my creativity and technical abilities.
And really.... who enjoys maths, physics and data-crunching computer programming?

Change is good (this is my 3rd,and last degree change) so here i am.

DMDN 305.
(busting mice and building cool shit.)