week 15

particle movement exploration, translating .csv to .js

descriptive

after my unsuccessful attempts to animate online codes of biophilic fractals, i had to find another way of creating biophilic features that would look pleasing to the human eye. i decided to look into flow fields and particle movement. i wanted to use the animation, but see if i was able to change the shapes of the particles to something more organic. biophilic fractal imagery often had this movement of flow fields and particles morphing into shapes. i tried playing with a few codes online.

making different textures with flow fields was fine, and changing the colour or textures of the code as a whole was alright, but i could not merge any of the two files together. i realised i was trying to create a visual system, where for example, emotions that had to do with anxiety could translate into movement, breathing patterns could be translated into rhythm, lack of social interactions in a day resulting to loneliness could be translated into circle particle shapes, and injustice felt could be translated into flow fields, etc. i wanted my prototype to take the form of a visual journal, and the feeling of completeness would inspire people to continue mindfulness exercises for better work-life balance.

i could not merge any of the two codes together to create visuals together, so i decided to move on to firstly test if it was even possible for me to translate data files into javascript visuals. i used the least intimidating code, the particle one, and it worked. i had to make a few changes to my data collection file along the way, but all worked fine. it’s a simple system, and i haven’t figured out the methods of input yet. i also wanted to polish up the visuals created with the code. i don’t think circles are very biophilic. there were also the colours i had to deal with. i needed something that could reflect different colours at once.

i felt like all that was out of my skill level for now, so i continued with trying to create an interactive interface for my data visualisation system. in the least technical terms possible for me to understand, i wanted to find a way to translate-

user interaction with prototype > javascript data input > .csv conversion > javascript output (experience of visuals, sounds)

these were a lot of steps, and i wanted to find a way to get rid of the .csv conversion, which i don’t know if it was even possible with code.

analytical

i thought i simplified it for myself already, but the visuals were still very difficult to create. i wanted to start looking into audio visualisers, to see how others were able to translate audio files into visual images, but i don’t know if i have the capacity to take that in for now.

simple experiments worked better in the end. i was confusing myself with fancy imagery and all that, when i realised i could just create a simple system to store and reflect data. i could then change the shapes used in those animations.

reflective

i was avoiding experiments because i’m an idealistic person, and also experiments were very time-consuming in my head. after trying and failing, it was actually still quite satisfying collecting the failed files for documentation, and it was even more satisfying when i managed to get the .csv translation to work. i am quite bad with terms however, and i realised that’s the part that takes up the most time in my experimental stage. i have a lot of difficulty trying to figure out what i’m actually doing in technical terms, and i end up spending a lot of time looking for tutorials online.

since i realised experimenting isn’t all that intimidating any more, i will try my best to experiment more in the next semester. if my experiments fail, i am still left with documentation of my failures.