Twitter Conversation Trees is a work of data art created by design technologist Peter Beshai to accompany a presentation for Deb Roy and Bridgit Mendler. The work seeks to visualize the toxicity in conversations on twitter. A twitter post is modeled in real time as a cone shaped tree, which branches out from the replies. The more toxic a reply thread is, the more withered it’s branch appears. The data is extracted from popular public posts, using methodology and criteria developed by Bridgit Mendler. In order to generate the visual Beshai primarily utilized Houdini, which meshed well with the generative nature of the project and his background in programing. Furthermore Houdini had excellent python compatibility which complemented the use of the Python library Tulip to structure the trees.
The author takes a fairly neutral stance on the issue on internet toxicity in this piece. The piece conveys the amount of toxicity on twitter, without making a judgement on what one’s reaction should be. This is likely because the presentation this was displayed in was done with scientific intention and therefore had little intent on passing judgement, instead focusing more on the methodology used to register toxicity in a post. While the presentation did, the artwork itself does not display the actual contents of the threads rendered toxic. Instead it chooses to focus on the patterns and prevalence of toxicity in general.
link: https://medium.com/cortico/visualizing-toxicity-in-twitter-conversations-3cd336e5db81
This program generates the face of a female figure with randomized facial features on the click of the mouse. Each rendering independently randomizes the curvatures for each facet of the hair along with its color. Similarly the program randomizes the curvature for the face and jawline. For the mouth, the program alters the width of the mouth along with its curvatures. The two eyes vary in shape and relative position to the eyelids in tandem. These two elements help develop a variance in emotion. Finally the nose also changes shape at the bridge.
The most difficult feature to develop in this project was the variance in the eyes, primarily because the two eyes had to change in tandem despite being different sizes. I initially endeavored to apply the changes to the eyelids, which produced uneven shaping. Eventually I discovered that the factor of change was much more even on the eyes themselves, so I applied the changes to them instead, thereby changing their relative position to the eyelids so the eyelids would still appear to move.
Link to code: https://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/592659
Amygdala is a generative art installation created by fuse that interprets the collective emotional condition of the internet. Named after the amygdala neural network within the human brain, the artwork scans through a large number of tweets on the internet. Then utilizing a rendition of the Sentiment Analysis algorithm and comparing the contents of the tweet to a database of words with attached emotional connotations to determine the emotional state exhibited by the tweet. Repeating this over the hundreds of tweets being sent in that instance the system then generates a light display based on its interpretation of these emotions. The display itself is composed of 41 luminous pillars arranged in a circle that displays its interpretation in the moment, as well as 12 horizontal screens that display the history of the various interpretations.
In making this artwork the artist is surrendering a great amount of control to the computer. Beyond setting up the lights and giving it the sound files, the artist leaves creating the visual and audio output entirely to the computer. Fuse has little idea or control over what the finished art piece looks like, instead allowing the computer to determine it. However, it’s also difficult to say that the computer is being entirely original in this case, as it’s not generating the image solely in it’s own head but instead pulling firstly from the contents of the tweets of a set pattern and secondly from a database in the algorithm and using its knowledge to visualize that. However, I’d say that this computers are just as original as humans are, as just as this computer is pulling information from what it observes from the tweets into the contents of the artwork, human artists base the contents of their artwork on their experience, surroundings, or knowledge. Neither of these entities are creating an image from nothing.
Multiverse is an artistic installation created by fuse that visualizes the multiverse theory concocted by Lee Smolin. The installation is composed of a digital display projected on a vertical screen and mirrors at it’s foot and head to generate an infinite number of reflections of said display. The display cycles through images generated by an openFrameworks application. While the physics in each generated image remains constant, randomly assigned parameters allow the application to generate a variety of images as infinite as the universes they represent.
There is an ingenuity in this work that fascinates me. The artist brilliantly captures the daunting concept of infinity through the parallel mirrors and randomly generated scenes whilst maintaining the constant of life and death through the physics. Furthermore, there is a remarkable poetry in allowing randomness to act on the piece as the enigmatic universe acts upon us.
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