Working with APIs.

For inspiration on working with text see:

• The work of pioneering net artists Y0UNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES
• A travel guide and other projects by Allison Parish
• Darius Kazemi, various twitter bots.
• Rose colored window and other works by Katie Rose Pipkin
• Infinite Campaign by Sam Lavigne
• And here is a Learning objectives generator I made when procrastinating from writing my syllabus one year.
• Josh Begley’s dronestre.am

For more background readings on working with data see:

• The Anxieties of Big Data by Kate Crawford
• Zuck Speaks: Facebook Restricts API Data Access And Shares Updates On User Privacy Efforts
• What Information is “Personally Identifiable”? by Seth Schoen
• How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to Push Its Drivers’ Buttons by Noem Scheiber (NY Times)

Homework

1) Revise the API tutorial and what we covered in class on callbacks. See the p5 textbook entry on call backs or review Video 10.4. And video 10.5  and video 10.7.

2) Working with Data: Online APIs

Create a sketch that uses data from an online API. You might choose to make a simple animation of this data, or create a simple dashboard to present the data in an interesting way (think of the dashboards for the various weather apps on your phone but weirder). Your sketch should respond in a specific way as an aspect of the data stream changes, eg. as a variable from your datasource gets bigger, a color changes in a specific way. Use the setInterval() function to manage the timing of your API calls.

Post a link to your project on this blog, add it to the Working with Data post you’ve already made. Include its title, a description, a screenshot and a link to your sketch.

See the tutorial on working with APIs. 

Below are a few APIs to use, with example code. Here is a much longer list of even more APIS to consider:

• • Weather: https://www.apixu.com/api.aspx (you will need to register) Code example.
  • Data on space stuff: http://open-notify.org/ Note that this API will not return data from OpenProcessing, as OpenProcessing is https and this api is http. You must use an editor with a local server to work with this API.
  • Drone data: https://dronestre.am/ Take a look at this Code example as this API needs the loadJSON called in a particular way.
  • Earthquake Data: https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/feed/v1.0/geojson.php Code example.
  • NY Times API: https://developer.nytimes.com/  (you will need to register) Code Example.
  • Citibike API: https://api.citybik.es/v2/    Code example
  • Giphy: https://developers.giphy.com/ You will need to register by clicking Create an App on this site. Code example.

There are a huge amount of APIs and datasets for download from NYC here: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/about/datafeeds.shtml. Feel free to explore, but I’m not sure how well documented they all are. Be aware that badly documented APIS can be complicated to use.

3) Research Post, Programmed Rules: Write a post reviewing the exhibition Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965–2018 . Choose two works that you saw in the show write a paragraph describing and analyzing each of them. For each work:

• include a photo you took of the work
• describe the aesthetic experience of seeing it in person
• write a few sentences about its historical context. What context or histories did it build upon? What earlier works/aesthetics/technologies did it continue or break from?

4) Generate 3 concepts for your final project. Be ready to work more on these in class next Tuesday. You might choose to build on a class exercise or generate something completely new. Do some research on each of these starting points. What other artists have worked in similar ways? What would you would need to build this idea out ? (an api, assets, external libraries?) How does the visual and technical elements of your idea marry to the concepts or questions you are exploring? Post these to the blog.