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| Spring Quarter 1997 | Project Team: | |
| Project Sponsor: | Alp Sendil | (Manager) |
| Gregory Abowd | Enda Sullivan | (Architect) & (QA) |
| Bob Sumner | (Programmer) | |
| Lynn Bacher | (Technical Writer) | |
We like cool images. Cool images are useful. By cool, we mean something that is aesthetic, pleasing to look at, or causes a person to say, "Wow, cool picture dude!" They can be soothing paintings on your living room wall or interesting backgrounds on your computer screen. We want to create a program that can learn what a cool image is, and then create them. This relates to the Domisilica projects. Genetic Art, as we call it, may be displayed on your refrigerator, or on an LCD in your living room; just add a frame to go around the screen. The picture would periodically update its self, creating new cool images.
The criteria used to evaluate "cool" would come from an application that we place on the World Wide Web (see demo). Our program on the web would display nine images, asking the user to select their top choices. Periodically, the 'votes' would be counted up and the 'coolest' image would be selected for your viewing pleasure. The exact generation process is yet to be determined, but here is an example:
The top three images are kept in the evaluation pool, and the other six images are replaced by new pictures created from parameters similar to those of the top three. Eventually the program will learn to produce cool pictures, and by placing them on your living room wall (or kitchen) you will enjoy the comforts of you modern domicile that much more.
We decided to use fractals for our cool images. The project will require some knowledge of CGI, perl, and HTML for the evaluating the criteria and also requires C to construct the fractals. We considered using Java, but since the pictures take some time to generate (a minute or two) we decided that C would be the best developing tool for the job. The images will be created and saved to GIF format, then transferred to the web server, where they may be judged. The update will occur periodically (once every hour).
We still have to research the generation algorithms, as well as those for the fractals, but they all exist. There are two similar projects, International Interactive Genetic Art and John Mount's International Interactive Genetic Art II from which we have drawn ideas. We discussed how this project could have a future not only as an added feature of Domisilica, also used in marketing schemes to generate images based on social profiles.
The Jones have been redecorating their living room and have yet to come to a decision about the painting to hang over the couch. Finally, they decide to hang a flat LCD screen instead of a boring static painting. This screen has cables that lead to a machine that runs an internet browser set to the DNA's graphic page. Every hour the graphic page loads up a new fractal image that is displayed over the Jones' couch. They are very pleased and everyone comments on how "cool" it is. But lately the fractals haven't been to the Jones' taste; some have been too purple, others too wavy. Mrs. Jones goes to her computer and connects to DNA's voting page. It displays nine fractal images. She really likes the yellow ones, so she selects her top three choices. Two aren't very wavy and none are purple. Mr. Jones goes to his computer and selects his favorite fractals, too. In an hour when the next image pops up, the fractals are far less wavy and have a lot more yellow in them. Mrs. Jones likes the current one so much, she saves the image and uses it as her new background image on her computer.
Darian listened to the jazz ensemble, as she sat in the corner of the coffee shop known as 'under the couch'. The music resembled a mixture of blues and grass roots themes. The dim lighting gave it the rustic coffee house feel. Thick carpets covered parts of the hard wood floor, but their colors and designs could not be discerned in the semi-darkness. Old couches lay adjacent to small wooden end-tables. Small votive candles flickering on most of the tables, caused shadows to dance on the low ceiling, surrounding the whole place in a cozy atmosphere.
On the wall closest to her, Darian could see some kind of digital painting. The flat panel LCD took the place of the canvas, and a dark wooden frame bordered the image. The picture, a fractal of some kind, consisted mostly of cool colors. The dark forest greens bled into shards of navy and then tapered off into black voids along the edges. From where she sat, Darian could not really see the band, but that was the least of her concerns. She was meeting Gregory to talk about some of her concerns with his latest software project. They had a mountain of obstacles ahead of them, and even though most of the best minds in the industry viewed Gregory as a software engineering genius, Darian wanted to insure certain things.
She had arrived early, and as she sat on the couch, the image on the electronic canvas changed. Slowly, it created a new fractal, similar to the previous image. Some of the colors were the same, but now among the blues, there were new wisps of purple. The more jagged spikes from the last painting adopted more of a curve to them, and most of the hard edges transformed into softer figures, almost cloud- like. A digital lava lamp! Staring at the colors, Darian drifted into a soothing day dream. Her thoughts were not about Gregory and the software project, but of the blues and greens on the wall. They reminded her of ocean waves battling jagged cliffs on the northern coast of California. The image began to change again, and as Darian came back to reality all she could think was "where can I get me one of these!"
Billy has a very sore throat and has to be taken to the doctor. As usual the wait is far too long. Luckily a new "toy" has been installed in the doctor's waiting room. It is a touch screen that displays a selection of fractal images that are very colorful. Above on the wall, hangs another screen. As the children touch the images they like, their selections are highlighted in a different color. After they pick three, the picture hanging above changes to a new fractal. This time it has characteristics more similar to the pictures the child chose. Another selection of images is generated using those same characteristics. The pretty pictures keep them captivated again and again. This ongoing process keeps the children so entertained they don't even realize how long they are having to wait.
During our first meeting there were many prototypes drawn on the white board. This was mainly just brainstorming on our part. We needed an interesting interface for our users. We knew there needed to be a selection of images. We also needed some way t o show the users selections. From the rough sketches, you can see some of our earliest ideas.
From these initial efforts Enda was able to put together a prototype. We showed it to a few people unrelated to our project to get some objective opinions. While they liked the general layout of the images, using frames on either side made it confusing as to the intent. They images did not fit onto the initial screen very well. That and difficulties in the selection methods made us evolve the user interface to the current prototype.
At this point we still have to iron out the details as to how many initial selections a user needs to make. We have decided that nine fractal images will be used, but that may change due to the generation requirements. We will show them in thumbnail (small) view and when a user clicks on a particular image it expands to show a more detailed view.
On the output end, we envision a framed screen that hangs on the wall. Every hour (or sooner) a new image will be displayed. A mockup is shown below.
The following requirements are listed in order of importance to our project with the highest priority tasks listed first. While certain parts of our project are being developed independently (see our schedule of activities) , the lower numbers are dependent on the higher priority processes being implemented.
Non-functional requirements deal with the environment in which our system evolves. The following list show our top three non-functional requirements from highest to lower priority.
There are three sections of our project that have development and implementation platforms: the fractal generation, vote processing, and the web pages.
The following detail some of the risks we perceive with our project. They are listed in order of importance.