After submitting my work so far this year, for the first Semester, and speaking to a number of people about my work, I’ve started realising a number of things. For a long time now, I’ve been excited and amped towards making a particular thing, an interactive experience with video game elements using type as a recurring theme. But, after creating a working side scrolling game in Flash, with a typeform as a character and hand drawn backdrops, I started to repeatedly realise I didn’t really have a narrative for the work, a reasoning behind it. I knew what I wanted to make and the medium I wanted to use, but no purpose or drive or content as it were.
So, I’ve come to a revelation or a possible turning point in my research for the years body of work. After meetings earlier in the year with Aaron, our design lecturer we had discussed if or wether I’d like to head in the direction of ‘Educational Design’, in other words, informative, or a kind of learning experience, or even ‘Infographics’. I originally wanted to stay clear of this, but after much thought and a constant pull towards having type to be a huge part of my work, even the content itself revolving around type, I’ve decided this is actually exactly what I want to explore. I’d like to create an interactive experience, with elements of games, an element of control illustrating and exploring in depth typeface anatomy. Throughout previous Research Proposal drafts during the year (which are posted on this blog) explored works that have inspired me and talked about possible narratives for a video game utlising type as a main theme, but I really think now the best option for me to explore is a thorough look into showing and displaying in an interactive and intuitive way, the anatomy of type.
I’ve had a few influential works that have lead me into this resolution. Including this AMAZING work titled Creative Code Multitouch Proof of Concept, by a University student overseas:
Creative code is a multitouch prototype I made for media class at University. The task was to create a folder (print/movie or digital) about/inspired by important designers and artist from the last century. The context of it should be a fictional exibition of the specific designer. I chose Ben Fry and Casey Reas and wanted to create a tool which is fun to interact with but also tries to illustrate the concept of using custom programs/code to create art. In concept the multitouch application would be placed as some sort of terminal in an exhibition about generative art. A screensaver encourages the visitor to interact with it since most people are not used to multitouch in their daily life. The main tool is just a blank canvas you can draw and move circles on. You can toggle different behaviours to get various visual results. The bottleneck of the whole thing is that you can flip the canvas and see some pseudocode, explanations and controls of how the current image gets created. The toggles are also available there to see the direct impact on the code and output as soon as you toggle something. The “codeside” is kept in a really sketchy style to enhance the metaphor of using code as a brush or artistic tool in general. The program is not finished at all but it’s enough to proof the concept I had in mind. Everything about the software aswell as the hardware setup was done really quickly and roughly but the video is still ok i guess. I know the title is a total rip off from john maedas book but it simply fits perfect for the application and since reas and fry are his students there is nothing wrong with that.
Technical details:
I wrote a small 2D Verlet Physics engine which can handle up to 500 particles with collisions at 60fps (on my 3 years old MBP). I could have used box2D but I thought it would be a good chance of learning a little bit more about physics simulation. Other than that it uses a work in progress version of the next ofxTuio client for openFrameworks I am working on from time to time. Tracking is done with CCV.
After watching the video of this work being used, I realised I could do the same thing but using type and the CONTENT being entirely about teaching the anatomy of TYPE. I have access to multitouch systems through our University HitLAB who I caught up with earlier in the year. I need to figure out what software and what programming is involved with creating this kind of project and if its still going to be possible within the time frame I have remaining.
Also, here is another inspirational work involving type and animation I’ve discovered:
Wow, really impressive. Can I try that?
The touch screen polka dots looked fun, but without a purpose behind it, there is no reason to hold the user for more than a few minutes. Teaching type anatomy sounds promising though.
Hey Mon, Thanks for the comment! Yeah, that work is all about ‘Generative Art’, its about providing a tool, like this, and then watching the outcome and just plain seeing what people do with it, the viewers or people who play around on it, generally bring something new to it!