the singapore river as a psychogeographical faultline

CUBE, HAO, Community Museum Project, Really AR, Generi-City, Reclaimland and other digressions

2010-11-19T05:47:00.000-08:00

Hello folks. This is the super-long update on recent going-ons: CUBE, HAO, Community Museum Project, Really AR, Generi-City, Reclaimland and other lovely digressions which I have encountered recently.

CUBEOpen

My work had been selected for the CUBE Open 2010 but sadly it was logistically impossible to bring my work to Manchester on such short notice. Nevertheless I am now working on a portable version of my reactable! From now onwards, where ever appropriate or feasible, portability shall be a consideration in all subsequent projects.

HAO

Last week I attended HAO, a four-day summit involving curators, art managers, and artists from Singapore and the region, organised by Audrey Wong and Khairuddin Hori and curated by Villains (well done you guys! it was one of the best things I have ever been to).

Amongst numerous other things (forgive me if I don't list every single thing down here), Mikal Telle shared with us his experience running Telle Records in Bergen and how he brought together musicians and artists (a rollercoaster story from bankruptcy to banksy! remarkable!), Margaret Chan regaled us with her research and insights on Tangki practice in the region (ritual, performance, and bicycle handles and other modern apparatus through the cheek?), Audrey Wong brought us to see her mother's Chinese Opera Teahouse on South Bridge Road (Cantonese Opera Karaoke!), and Zaki Razak also orchestrated/mediated a rather interesting dialogue-as-performance on the Lasalle Bridge (like a bridge over troubled waters?). Khairuddin Hori from SAM also took a gander at describing a "brief history of singapore contemporary art", which was pretty accurate and something which I think ought to be basic knowledge or incorporated into every single damn art school in Singapore. Everyone making art in Singapore should at least first understand the context in which art is created in Singapore even if they don't want to make work that fits into any particular tradition of the creation of art. I'm at the point where I think that the most sad thing for an artist is to make work which is completely universal and generic.

Community Museum Project

Which brings me to one of the things I saw there that completely blew me away. Howard Chen's presentation on his Community Museum Project - sheer genius. The "Street as Museum" and "Museum of Complaints" shares some commonalities with my own work, but Community Museum Project executes it so brilliantly and goes one step further by working closely with the communities and NGOs to effect changes/improvements after using their projects to uncover insights or hidden knowledge about the places.

From Community Museum Project: "Street as Museum".
Photo from Community Museum Project site.

This is constructive action, people! I want to be making works like that. Like what Raoul Vaneigem says, "people who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth." I think I would have more respect for people who go into "Opposition politics" in Singapore if they spent less time casting aspersions on PAP or inventing puerile nicknames for hot-button issues or newsmakers, and more time putting their money where their mouth is: finding out what is the real problem, and fixing these issues.

Everyone should go see the Community Museum Project site. Now.

Syndicate - DJ Nobody & Nocando (@ HOME Club)

Anyway, HAO was so perfectly organised that it coincided with Syndicate. So we all went down to where DJ Nobody & Nocando (L.A) played, a good one for the hardcore hiphop fans who turned up that night. Also saw Kiat, Max Lane and Darren Dubwise on the decks during the night, until ridiculous o'clock...

Circuitry, Crying Catz (@ Straits Records)

On the last night of HAO I also saw two acts play outside Straits Records - Circuitry and Crying Catz. Circuitry did an intense, punishing noise performance like the last time I saw them at Blackhole. As for Crying Catz, he makes this compellingly danceable combination of all the lovely ravey/dubby sounds. Todd-Edwards-cut-up-&-re-pitched vocals meets Zomby's-arcade-game-influenced jungle all mashed up with big wobbly bass. The metal screams make it even better! Strangely, I initially mis-remembered Crying Catz as Crazy Catz, which meant I unintentionally led me to many cat pictures and cat videos on the internet before I found the real Crying Catz. "Crying" makes more sense though, like that quote that i always remember from dj /rupture, of the "aestheticized cry" of auto-tune. But I digress...

Really AR

Last month I was invited by re:act to share my work at "Really AR 5". It ran alongside the opening of Generi-city, a photographic exhibition comparing "generic spaces" in Singapore and London. This was part of the ArchiFest 2010 fringe, and it featured photographs by Singaporean architects and architectural students/writers based in London. I forgot to write about it then, so here is a somewhat belated outpouring about that event. Johnny Gao & Pan Yichen spoke about the Generi-city project, Justin Zhuang shared with us his Reclaimland.sg project, and the eminent architect William Lim gave a talk about Singlish, proving his prowess as a nimble polymath (but maybe not so convincing as a Singlish speaker). For those who are unfamiliar with his work, he is responsible for well-loved buildings such as People's Park and Golden Mile, and he also worked on the conservation of Central Market (with the Annexe behind it) and its development into a cultural, shopping food and entertainment area.

Generi-city

The Generi-city project was "a series of conversations between six pairs of architects and architecture students", culminating in a series of images selected to fit broad categories such as "Transit, Eating, Leisure, Retail, Living and Occupational". A curious choice of categorization, I thought. Even with fairly good knowledge of both cities, sometimes I could not always immediately discern the usage of the space from just looking at the photograph.

Generi-city:
Photos of opening by Olivia Kwok

I find it incidental that this shot involves the two images which stood out the most for me. The small temple dwarfed by a new carpark is certainly one of the more compelling shots, especially when framed next to a picture of Shoreditch. I was excited to see a street that I recognised but hadn't visited in a long while, but the punctum for me in that shot was not what was in it, but what was not (ie: my not living in that city or walking down that exact street every single day anymore). If there is one road I remember in London, it has to be the path that a pedestrian has to take from Brick Lane to get to the bus stop on Shoreditch High St next to Tescos. This is of course, a memory that is special only to me.

But would the images have any meaning or impact on people who hadn't been to both cities before? How would one know the "use" of a space if one had not personally attempted to conduct any activities in that space before? For example, I am frequently confused about the boundaries of the proper prescribed "eating zone", like for example when I'm grabbing a small quick bite at one of those massive food halls in ION or Tangs after my Japanese classes. But couldn't anywhere be an "eating spot"? This would be simply a matter of taste, wouldn't it, in more ways than one; or would the act of eating in an unusual/unexpected place be viewed as a tasteless act by others? What about classifying spaces by number of people who depend on the building's existence, or the number of people interact with it, or how open/confined the space is?

I suppose their point was that the generic city is much more malleable - Singapore will custom-build its buildings to fit the needs of businesses; meaning that we can construct all sorts of big new spaces to specs and then stuff them full of things - whereas a place like London may have less room for maneuvering if it is to keep in the "spirit" of a grand old city; so people must retrofit old buildings or build conservatively in order to pander to urban planning approvals. A neat observation, but where then does it leads us from here? What does all this mean for the Generic (but actually flexible) city, and the Unique (but actually tidy) city? This seems to raise more questions than to provide any understanding on the issue; perhaps Johnny and team would like to explain more or expand more on this when they publish a more complete set of writing on this?

Reclaimland

Reclaimland.sg: Street barber Lee Yoon Tong
Photo by Sam Kang Li

Justin Zhuang also shared his work at Really Ar and I really loved the project he did with three other journalism students from NTU's Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information. They trace a number of cases in which people in the community have reclaimed land for their own usage in Singapore. From stories about community-built skateparks, citizen gardens under HBD flats, hidden kampung farms near the KTM rail tracks, to the old uncle who conducts his barber business behind the shophouses in Telok Ayer, they have been investigating these issues from a journalistic viewpoint, along with brilliant photo documentation. To read more, visit the Reclaimland site at http://reclaimland.sg. Justin also writes some really interesting stuff about design at his own site, http://justrambling.sg.

I think I have to stop now. How did this post get so ridiculously long...

Here is a list of all the links mentioned above. ENJOY!
Community Museum Project
Reclaimland.sg
Generi-city
reallyarchitecture

Catalogue: Still on Sale!

2010-10-20T08:46:00.000-07:00

A few more copies of my catalogue can still be purchased directly at The Substation
- and maybe other places soon as well! More details to come...

BUILD!

2010-10-19T18:10:00.000-07:00

Last week I built a new site to collate links about projects which interest me:

BUILD! is a grid-style weblog about maps, art, architecture, non-places, urbanism, psychogeography, metaverses, transportation, technology, sound art, augmented reality, data visualisations, and other things which I love! This is a visual library of links to inspire one to build more things.

But then of course, I really must finish uploading the memories for Here the River Lies FIRST! I promise I will get on that before the end of November! I'm trying to get some other projects off the ground at the moment too!

Really AR 5 and other post-exhibition talks

2010-10-08T07:55:00.000-07:00

Hello world! I'm still alive! I've been a bit of a hermit lately, working on new projects, but tomorrow I will be out in the world again - probably heading down to Barcamp first), and later in the evening I'll be sharing my work at Really AR?

Really Ar? is a sharing session where invited creatives and academics share their projects that explores various facets of the built environment. This edition of Really Ar? presents 5 exciting projects that explores the question of identity and community in our landscape through the lenses of diverse disciplines such as film, sociology, architecture, illustration and graphic design, which will conclude with a Question and Answer segment on the different perspectives that defines Our Singapore?

This Really AR? session is held in conjunction with the opening party of the 'Uniquely Singapore – Distinctively London: a GENERICITY project' exhibition at Illuma.

Featuring Debbie Ding, Justin Zhuang, Johnny Gao and Pan Yichen, and the eminent William S.W Lim!

Date: 09 October 2010
Time: 6.30pm - 9pm
Location: Illuma Bugis, Filmgarde, Level 5
201 Victoria Street

Session is moderated by Tan Szue Hann.

In other news, here are links to some other interviews I did last month:

Interview with Rajinder Singh
Interview with Superyouth

And thanks so much to Hazel & Gilles for asking me down to Lasalle to speak last week! I had a great time talking with the lovely and very lively folks from fine art there. We had a discussion about natural geographical features and one of the girls who came to my talk noted that Singapore doesn't have a culture of going out and appreciating nature since there is very little of it which is not man-made. Nobody goes "rambling" here, because a garden city is something that is immaculately pruned by human hands - a completely different experience compared to the rolling fields of say, the Cotswolds.

Gilles also mentioned that it is not that Singapore is flat by nature, but rather that reclamation and the flattening of Singapore's natural features (so it could be built on) was something that had been conducted from the very beginning, once the British arrived. Must investigate this further!

Closing of Exhibition

2010-09-27T17:24:00.000-07:00

Goodbye Substation Gallery! Thanks once again to all those who made my first solo exhibition possible and gave me so much help and support with this - The Substation, my parents, Effendy, Annabelle, Tania, Asylum, Emily & Chris and the rest of the team at Substation, Dominic, Hongda, KK, Steve Black, Lu Jia, Ah Fu, and all my colleagues at Redworks. Thanks must also go to everyone who gave me invaluable advice along the way - Martin, Andreas, Vladimir, Yanying & Bin! And thanks to my gallery sitters for their patience in monitoring the equipiment and helping to set up the somewhat complicated map table every single morning - Vicknes, Nell, and Marc.

\\ is now packed off and rolled up, hopefully to find another venue at which to exhibit again in the near future! Thank you to all who came down to see it! If you've left memories by the riverside, be sure to check back in a few days to see if your card is online at psychogeography.sg/river

Two days ago, one of my fan blades spontaneously broke apart after working tirelessly for almost a full month. The thing about computer fans is that if one blade breaks then the fan is rendered completely useless as a missing blade will cause too much vibration. So I had to amputate it. Poor thing. It does take a heavy toll on all the equipment...

I'll be updating the FULL documentation of all the memories in the next day or so, along with more on the technical setup while its still fresh in my mind! I will be drawing up some models of my setup on sketchup, which I am trying to learn to use properly for once. It is good to be working from home once again.

on a geeky sidenote: after spending so much time at Substation,
I became Mayor of Substation on Foursquare....
come and oust me if you dare!

In the Gallery

2010-09-23T19:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Jiekai and his crew popped by to film some things at the gallery, including Debbie rambling on about Singapore River - he's working on a project about Singapore's prehistory. We were talking IP rights where historical material/maps are concerned, and he mentioned a book that sounded pretty interesting: The Makers and Keepers of Singapore History. I want to read that!

Later in the evening, I also recorded a video of some of my ex-colleagues playing with the table. Ridz, Leeyen, Jess and Michele were amongst the first people whom I asked to draw their impressions of the river - more than a year ago. Inbetween working intensively on all those flash banners and microsites, I decided to start collecting sketches from people around me. Some of my renderings were based on their sketches, so it was really interesting to see their responses to it!

\\ from Debbie Ding on Vimeo.

One full month of operating has taken its toll on the poor ancient Macbook inside, which was already slow to begin with, and now suffering a lag of a few seconds. Even Marc (who has been gallery sitting for me recently) has begun to recognise its quirks, like its habit of shutting down suddenly when its too hot. But at least it is still running!

LAST THREE DAYS!

Panoramic shot of Substation Gallery

2010-09-22T19:26:00.000-07:00

LAST FOUR DAYS of The Singapore River as a Psychogeographical Faultline
at the Substation Gallery, 45 Armenian Street, Singapore 179936
Open from 12-9pm, until Sunday

Do come by and see it if you haven't been able to yet! I'll be there on most afternoons.

Psychogeographical Faultline... In Chinese

2010-09-13T18:48:00.000-07:00

《新加坡河: 人们心中的断辰线》
xin jia po he: ren men xin zong de duan chen xian

This is the chinese translation of my exhibition title. I gave a short talk about my work at a session called "Re-inhabiting the City" recently and the audience turned out to be more chinese-speaking than initially expected. Siew Ching and others helped to provide a running chinese translation for the session and this was their translation of the title!

I am also thinking that "心理地理学" might be an appropriate translation for "psychogeography". Would any superior chinese speakers like to comment on this!

Drupal, WP Geo and Google Maps

2010-09-11T09:20:00.001-07:00

Last night I spent a considerable number of hours wrestling with Drupal, Views, Location, Gmaps, and the confounding CCK. I dont think I fully understand Drupal's taxonomy yet, so maybe that's why its still a struggle to edit Drupal. And so this morning I woke up early, deleted Drupal off my server, installed Wordpress and WP Geo - AND GOT EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED UP AND RUNNING IN LITERALLY HALF AN HOUR. With simply Wordpress and WP Geo!

Nuff said.

ITS UP AND I'M READY TO DOCUMENT IT ALL!

http://psychogeography.sg/river

Site building

I'm no web developer, but a peculiar thing happened again which I don't really understand. Each time I create a new database, it seems to suggest to me that the hostname would naturally be that string of numbers that appears behind it - in this case, the 209 number. In fact, the EVIL, evil MySQL Manager even says that its the Hostname.

But it is not! I actually have to go into phpMyAdmin to find out the real server hostname, which in this case is actually a 216 number as reflected on top. The last time I installed Drupal, I vaguely recall the exact same thing happening? WHY? WHAT IS THAT FIRST MYSTERIOUS NUMBER FOR THEN?

NON COMPRENDRE. Can anyone explain this?

psychogeography.sg/river was built with:
Wordpress 3.0
WP Geo Plugin
Foliogrid Template

Documentation: Catalogue

2010-09-08T16:17:00.000-07:00

Flipbook Catalogue

for \\ : The Singapore River as a Psychogeographical Faultline

Featuring an essay by Tania De Rozario
Designed by Asylum
Other Writing by Debbie Ding

Available at $16 from The Substation

Flipbook images depict the historical changes in the Singapore River from 1819 to present day, and also projects it into the future, into an imaginary flatline.

Documentation: The Shape of the Singapore River (Series of 20)

2010-09-08T15:57:00.000-07:00

THE SHAPE OF THE SINGAPORE RIVER

part of the THE SINGAPORE RIVER AS A PSYCHOGEOGRAPHICAL FAULTLINE
at The Substation from 2-26 september

a series of 20 illustrations of the map of the singapore river, based on collected sketches made by people and what they think the shape of the Singapore River looks like, without making reference to anything else.

Documentation: Here the River Lies

2010-09-03T05:07:00.000-07:00

HERE THE RIVER LIES

part of the THE SINGAPORE RIVER AS A PSYCHOGEOGRAPHICAL FAULTLINE
at The Substation from 2-26 september

a psychogeographical game in which visitors can leave both real and imagined/mythic memories on locations by the riverside - a 1.5metre x 3.75metre handdrawn map of the Singapore River (with an isometric projection) and its surroundings - where visitors can also indicate which memories they collectively believe in, with small stickers. see what memories lie by the river, or add your own to the map!

after opening night

map of the river

memory cards

a bit like skyscrapers

in the gallery

"LKY Sighting"

"I BECAME A GOD" (at St Andrews Cathedral)

"Monster Creeper taking over the world one creep at a time"

"A Memory of Grandfather"

"She wouldn't come, but..."

"UFO LANDING" (mmm yes, that thing which landed opposite funan)

Opening Night, 2 September 2010

Kevin Lim (Whattheart) took some great photos on opening night.
Click on the image above to see more images from his flickr set.
Thanks for sharing these pictures, Kevin!

Documentation: interactive map table

2010-09-03T03:39:00.000-07:00

interactive map table installation

part of the THE SINGAPORE RIVER AS A PSYCHOGEOGRAPHICAL FAULTLINE
at The Substation from 2-26 september
speculating on the shape of the singapore river and city around it
come on down and see it!

equipment used:
15" macbook pro on opening night/13.3" macbook on all other exhibition days
modified ps3 eye camera with m12 mount, 3.6mm lens, 850nm IR filter (from peauproductions)
panasonic PJ503D viewsonic projector
aluminium profiles for projector mount
two mirrors (85cm x 85cm, 40cm x 30cm)
two surveillance camera infrared lights (850nm)
wooden box (80cm x 100cm x 100cm)

software:
reactivision
udp flashlc bridge
flash (coded up in flash builder, as3)
safari + saft (fullscreen mode)

concept, design, and flash programming by debbie ding
hardware construction and mounting by dominic ho and zhuo hongda

BUILT WITHIN TWO MONTHS FTW

if anyone else is interested in this sort of interactive tables, i would love to find other collaborators (in and around singapore) who would like to build other interactive/touch table setups, especially with music and sound.

PS: better quality video coming soon

Opening of The Singapore River as a Psychogeographical Faultline

2010-09-02T08:43:00.000-07:00

from the drawing board:

to the interactive table:

thank to everyone who came down specially to the opening earlier today! proper thanks are also in order to Substation for believing in me and letting me do this rather ambitious installation under their annual Open Call, and everyone who helped along the way.

within the next week i'll start compiling all the contributed memories from the psychogeographical game, and collate them on a site at psychogeography.sg/river... which currently points to this blog for the time being. so come back in a few days time to see the update on that part of the installation!!

a more detailed update is in order soon, after i finally have some sleep...

Debbie's exhibition is ongoing at The Substation from 2-26 September 2010!

Setting up

2010-09-01T09:44:00.001-07:00

my little visitor at the gallery, while i was setting up

Promo Video: \\

2010-09-01T05:37:00.000-07:00

edited by jared keh
photography by keshav sishta
audio composed by simon petre

jared and keshav shooting the video

Map Scale

2010-09-01T05:14:00.000-07:00

Some people have asked me really good questions while I've been in the gallery setting up. Effendy asked me: "What is the scale of your map?"

After some calculation with the rulers on Google Maps, I have confirmed that the approximate scale for my 3.75metre long map is about 1:1000. (In case you are wondering how I managed to fit a 4.1km river in a representation of a 3.75km stretch, it is simply because the river is CURVY)

The ruler/line function is not automatically switched on in Google Maps, you'll have to click on the green beaker icon on the top right corner to see this feature!

Meanswhile, I must admit that it has been a steep learning curve to use Flash Builder and AS3. Somehow I just could not get a certain offending child object to pass variables to the main document class, even after flagrantly abusing public variables. In the wee hours of this morning, I finally solved the problem, but resultantly it has all become SPAGHETTI CODE. WITH MEATBALLS ON TOP. But it doesn't matter, as long as it works tomorrow...

6 Days to go

2010-08-26T11:07:00.000-07:00

ROLLING ROLLING ROLLING

we're rolling-in to the substation gallery tomorrow morning. more updates soon.

Google River Tunnel View

2010-08-25T04:55:00.000-07:00

What a great address this Google "Street View" spot has...

One small thing I noticed recently was that Google Street View also includes the underground expressway tunnels as well. Even the ones that go under the Singapore River. So, that qualifies as a street too?

Fiducial Tracking Success

2010-08-25T04:22:00.000-07:00

today me and dominic succeeded in approximately aligning the camera/projection/fiducial setup with the visual response in my flex swf. i've switched to using CS5 Flash Builder because I eventually want to publish it as an Air app. so far its been sweet using reactivision with TUIO AS3 library.

we are using a 3.6mm lens for the PS3 Eye and the projector is at a resolution of 1024 x 768 x 96hertz. apparently hertz refers to the refresh rate and when i set it higher than 120 hertz it says out of range. this is all gobbledygook to me too but what i know is that when i stare at the back of the projector and shake my head (oh the migraine!), for a split second i see the light dividing itself into bright bands of red, green, and blue...

Singapore River Timelapse

2010-08-25T03:32:00.000-07:00

The View from Cavenagh Bridge

Yesterday Keshav and Jared kindly helped me shoot a timelapse of the River, which we are going to edit down into a small introductory video for the exhibition. Coincidentally, in trying to find the words to articulate the tone I wanted to go for, I discovered the "Blue Hour". Apparently the French have already thought of a word for it (ah! they think of everything!) - with the expression "l'heure bleue", referring to the blue part of twilight, between darkness and daylight.

I've seen the phrase "Blue Hour" thrown around in photography forums such as like skyscrapercity, but bizarrely, for quite some time I always thought it was some internationally francised club that happened to set up shop at locations with magnificient aerial views of different urban cities. I was led to this mistaken conclusion because of the odd way in which it is sometimes spoken about - as if the Blue Hour is actually a physical space and not a time of day.

"Yeah, I was there at the Blue Hour yesterday, it was really cool."

my "blue hour" moodboard

a. ferris wheel scene, chris yeo's in the house of straw, 2010
b. photo i took at dawn, 2007
c. gaspar noe's enter the void, 2009

Aluminium Profiles

2010-08-18T05:07:00.000-07:00

Dominic and Edward have been helping me with the projector mounts and testing the setup for the table. while studying mechanical engineering, Edward previously built other things with aluminum profiles, so he recommended using these aluminum bits to build the mount instead of wood (as it would help conduct the heat away from the projector better!)

despite its complex appearance, (well, to construction noobs like me) it's actually a rather simple and modular system to build with, along with other parts (gussets, glass/mirror mounts, hinges, etc). plus it has the benefit of being lightweight and easily adjustable for height/length...

one thing is that you MUST remember to do in advance is to: TAPPING THE SCREWS. and what is this mystical tapping business? this refers to the process of creating a thread for the screw to go into. according to Edward you can do it by hand, but of course it is always ideal if you can just get the supplier to thread it on the spot. saves you from the heart attack of suddenly having to google for hardware stores in the city area...

Fiducial Tracking Testing

2010-08-10T05:54:00.000-07:00

I downloaded the TUIO AS3 Library, ran the demo file for fiducials successfully, and checked it with a trace. ClassID is the fiducial marker number, SessionID is the Movieclip instance number. x and y are the onscreen coordinates. a is the rotation. capital-letter X Y A refer to the velocity at which the variables have changed.

Current setup:
+ TUIO AS3 Library with LCConnector
+ UDP FlashLC Bridge
+ reacTIVision
+ In-built Macbook Pro iSight

Lego Brick Card Stand

2010-08-09T22:34:00.000-07:00

while looking for card stands, i saw a muji-lego collaboration involving a special muji hole puncher and lego bricks, used to make little toy paper characters.

you can make the same type of card stand with any 5mm hole puncher - in my case i am using an "Eyelet Punch PU-101" - a standard eyelet/hole puncher used mostly with rivets (bought a long time ago from Popular). i tested out a homemade version with some of dominic's lego bricks. it works just as expected, but i may or may not use this method of a cardstand for the "psychogeographical game" in the end...

the bricks are incidentally "Red & White & WOW!" yesterday i watched the National Day Parade while sketching the canvas. as i was standing in the sketch area which represented the bay, NDP telecast showed a panoramic shot of the fireworks lighting up the entire bay area.

also in the process of hunting for stray lego bricks, i realised we had given away all my lego but i did find my TOMY toy parts instead. here is an instant tableaux from the box of NATIVE AMERICAN CHEMICAL DISASTER PLAYSET:

Canvas Dreams

2010-08-08T17:27:00.001-07:00

Have been preparing a huge canvas map for the last few days. After staring at this monstrosity occupying most of the living room floor for the last few days, this morning all of the Ding family realised that they had dreamt about the huge canvas the night before:

Mother dreamt that she woke up in the morning and saw that I had completed my entire painting in full colour! During the night!

I dreamt that I had subdivided the canvas into 6 parts and had painted for hours, only to discover that I had only finished 3 parts but inexplicably now had 4 more parts to go?

My father dreamt that I had accidentally made a horrifying and gigantic hole in the canvas and he was trying to figure out how to piece and patch canvases back together...

Now you know where I get my grandiose and yet paranoid tendencies from, respectively.

Preliminary Testing

2010-07-25T07:04:00.000-07:00

25 JULY: me and dominic conducted the first preliminary hardware tests within the actual physical box which will be used in the exhibition. the following discoveries were made:

IR light reflects somewhat differently from visible light. rather than defusing in the same way that visible light usually defuses on normal surface, it bounces straight off some surfaces which might be expected to absorb visible light, like cardboard
even though you cannot see IR light, IR LEDs still get very hot if left on for long. also, projectors get very very hot as well, so computer fans and good ventilation/air conditioning will be ESSENTIAL in a DIY tangible table setup
infrared light hotspots (insufficient diffusion and spotlights instead) adversely affect the detection of fidicuals
accidentally sticking your finger inside a computer fan does not actually result in injury or death
tracing paper will warp with moisture over time. an additional acrylic sheet is essential for holding down tracing paper and for improving sensation of touch on the touch surface.
using developed film as a "poor man's IR filter" is not effective enough for the use of a tangible touch table which wants to detect fidicual symbols. purchasing specialised IR filters and additional focal lenses will be crucial to the success of the project.

29 JULY: After significant wrangling and wrestling with Singpost's Speedpost service, I received the 2nd PS3 eye camera with m12 mount with 850nm IR filter and set of lenses ranging from 2.8mm to 16mm. (these were purchased online from peauproductions, which stocks a lot of essential equipment for DIY touch surfaces)

With the 16mm lens, reactivision can now detect 3cm fiducials at a range of 1 metre!

footnote: i assumed i needed the BIGGEST lens initially, but later dominic showed me that the smaller lenses could SEE MORE, and the final lens we went with for our table was 3.6mm

Bridges on the Singapore River (2010)

2010-07-24T00:55:00.000-07:00

Kim Seng Bridge 金声桥 (Vehicular Bridge: Kim Seng Rd) [This marks the source of the SIngapore River, named after Peranakan philanthropist Tam Kim Seng, whose donations help pay for the construction cost of this bridge.]
Jiak Kim Bridge 若锦桥 (Pedestrian Bridge: Behind Zouk) [Completed 1999, CPG. Built to develop Roberson promenade by improving connectivity between both sides of river around Roberson Quay Area]
Robertson Bridge 罗拔申桥 (Pedestrian Bridge: ) [Completed 1999, CPG. Built to develop Roberson promenade by improving connectivity between both sides of river around Roberson Quay Area]
Pulau Saigon Bridge 浮罗西贡桥 (Vehicular Bridge: Saiboo St) [Originally built in 1890, demolished in 1986, rebuilt 1997]
Alkaff Bridge 阿尔卡夫行人桥 (Pedestrian Bridge: By Roberson Promenade, behind Mohammad Sultan Rd) [Completed 1997, CPG. Built to develop Roberson promenade by improving connectivity between both sides of river around Roberson Quay Area, decorated as "Art Bridge" by Pacita Abad with STPI]
Clemenceau Bridge 克里门梭桥 (Large Vehicular Bridge: near UE Square and Clemenceau CTE exit) [Completed 1920, named after French Prime minister]
Ord Bridge 渥桥 (Pedestrian Bridge: Liang Court) [First built 1886] Steel Truss bridge built to replace footbridge named ABC Bridge which was also known as Ordnance Bridge. Named after Sir Harry St. George Ord, first british Govt of Straits Settlement.
Read Bridge 李德桥 (Pedestrian Bridge: Clarke Quay and Riverside Point) [Previously Merchant Bridge which had to be rebuilt higher to allow ships to pass, Read Bridge was rebuilt in the same spot in 1889]
Coleman Bridge 哥里门桥 or "Yi ma lo khiu" (cantonese for bridge at second road) (Vehicular Bridge: New Bridge Road, MICA to The Central) [2nd bridge built over Singapore River in 1840, made of bricks. Replaced in 1865 with wooden bridge, replaced with iron in 1886, but unable to cope with increasing traffic flow, replaced with 1986 concrete bridge which retains some decorative elements from iron bridge. Previously known as New Bridge thus the name of New Bridge Road.]
Elgin Bridge 爱琴桥 or "Thih Tiau Kio" (hokkien for iron suspension bridge) (Vehicular Bridge: North Bridge to South Bridge Rd) [First and unnamed footbridge on Singapore river which was present when Raffles first landed. Replaced by wooden drawbridge in 1822, a footbridge in 1843 and rebuild int 1929 and named after Lord Elgin, Governor General of India. As it was first bridge ever, the roads are named North Bridge and South Bridge accordingly]
Cavenagh Bridge 加文纳桥 (Pedestrian Bridge: ACM to Maybank Tower and One Fullerton) [First built in 1869, originally was to be drawbridge but on completion was only suitable as fixed structure. overloaded in 1880s and resulted in need to build Anderson Bridge. Lighting was added in 1990s]
Anderson Bridge 安德逊桥 (Vehicular Bridge: Connaugh Dr) [First built in 1910 to replace Cavenagh Bridge and to handle heavier traffic, named after Sir John Anderson, Governor of Straits Settlement]
Esplanade Bridge 滨海桥 (Large Vehicular Bridge: Nicoll Highway leading to Esplanade Dr) [Completed March 1997 / Built to provide faster access from Marina Centre/Downtown Core to Shenton Way and CBD]
The Helix Bridge 螺旋桥 (Pedestrian Bridge: Marina Bay) [Completed 24 April 2010]
Bayfront Bridge 海湾桥 (Vehicular Bridge: Bayfront Avenue) [Completed 24 April 2010]

Compiled with the help of Mighty Minds Street Directory 2009/2010, Google Maps, Streetdirectory.com, rednano, Wikipedia, and Stephen Dobb's "The Singapore River : A Social History 1819-2002"; the chinese names were from 韩山元's "新加坡河: 讲不完的故事" and a very interesting chinese blog by the name of Kagawara Miss Flora.

Other Singapore Map Trivia:

The 2009/2010 edition of the Mighty Minds Street Directory erroneously named the "Pulau Saigon Bridge" as "Saiboo Bridge". While trying to figure out why my map reflected a mysterious Saiboo Bridge I discovered this helpful article about the Pulau Saigon Bridge
Gothere.sg and Google Maps do not depict or show the existence of ANY pedestrian bridges on their maps. They do show vehicular bridges, but do not name the bridges, and only label the river crossings with the road names.
Streetdirectory.com and Rednano.sg do show the names of all bridges, both pedestrian and vehicular.

Regular Expressions and L-Systems

2010-07-20T01:17:00.000-07:00

Regular Expressions refer to the use of a formal language which can be read by a processor which examines the text and can identify what parts match the provided phrases. Its like a uniform way to parse text and to get information.

AS3 has a RegExp class, for which there are also characters, metacharacters, metasequences(characters or sequences of characters which have special meaning in regular expression), and flags and properties (settings for the matching of the regular expressions).

You can probably see where I'm going with this: if we are going to make an L-system generator, RegExp comes in rather handy:

A sample grammar could be like

F : draw straight forward
L : move forward by this algorithm
+ : rotate right by R degrees (clockwise)
- : rotate left by R degrees (counterclockwise)
[ : PUSH [saves current position, starts new branch]
] : POP [resume last saved position, starts growing again]

N : number of generations
R : rotation (degrees)
X : start point

! : reverse the rotation angle
< : increase line segment length
> : decrease line segment length

my observation from playing around with another recursive ruleset generator, contextfree, is that putting odd shaped boxes on the ends of L systems of 90 degrees gives the resemblance of a city. the end of the "pop" that is where the leaf or cherry of the L system tree is usually placed, so that is where generic box-buildings are placed (if all buildings were to be generic rather than landmarks)

In a similar way one could create a notation for the algorithms for dérives and other exploratory walks around a city:

W : walk straight forward ignoring any turns
+ : next right turn
- : next left turn

EXAMPLE: WWW+W-
(walk down three streets, take a right turn, walk down one street, take a left)

Additional rules could be added, such as for staying on right side or left side of the road pavement, or for the direction that one is to observe, or the manner of one's walk (running, brisk walking, slow meander).

I am beginning to understand why when I first met Vladimir to ask his advice on building a generative map for a tangible touch table, he asked me whether I could do Natural Language Processing. It so happened that a few weeks before that I had just picked up a book on the Natural Language Toolkit and tried to play around with it out of curiosity, so the idea was not alien to me.

Generative code is based on grammars or rules which must be followed - basically in order to program anything, one first has to learn or create the language. It sort of makes me wish I took more linguistics classes back at uni. Linguistics! Something that could have combined both my love for english and my interest in learning programming!

Other links and libraries:

- More info on RegExp here: Regular Expressions Info
- Collision Detection: Port of Grant Skinner's Collision Detection in AS3
- Collision Detection: Corey O'Neil's Collision Detection Kit (CDK) [Example]
- Isometric Projection: Isometric Library for creating isometrically projected content

Infrared LED Lights

2010-07-17T23:24:00.000-07:00

Infrared LED Lights
S8030-30-C-IR (850NM) + 12V power source

These will have to be pointed to the white walls of the inside of the box in order to diffuse the IR light onto the rear projection. We have bought 2 lights at the moment but when we finally can test it out in the box itself, then we will know whether 2 will suffice or not.

As these pre-assembled lights with power source are more commonly used in conjunction with surveillance cameras, they have a light sensor which automatically turns them off when there is sunlight, and turns them on only when its dark. As we won't need this feature, we will probably block out the light sensor with electrical tape.

I am getting a backup and preassembled PS3 Eye camera from the incredibly helpful Peau Productions as I am seriously very worried about camera burnout considering the length of time it will be on in public, and because I can already see that the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) lens is unable to focus properly on my fidicual symbols. With a preassembled PS3 Eye with m12 mount, at least if I already have a backup camera I can quickly remount the new lens on the other camera.

There have been some other delays with my production timeline, and with only 46 days to go, I am very very worried about many things.

Installing Reactivision Properly

2010-07-17T04:43:00.000-07:00

Above: Round Reactable at NTU ADM

This afternoon I met Yanying, one of the people who worked on the above round reactable which I saw at NTU, and she was kind enough to give me lots of advice on the process of building and testing such setups. One of the things I've learnt was that I really should think about including some reciprocal visual/audio feedback for all the interactions so that users know that their interaction is being registered by the machine.

As for more mucking around with using the PS3 Eye with Macam and reactivision, I was going to test some parts of the physical setup on a macbook tomorrow (as I was a dunce and got the wrong connector), so I reinstalled reactivision and macam on my 4 year old macbook.

For my future reference... Mini DVI Versus Mini DisplayPort
I've given up and bought the Mini DP for SGD17 on ebay
Do note that one step which is very easy to miss in the installation process of macam is the proper installation of the quicktime component. Boy I almost had a heart attack there when I opened up reactivision and THERE WAS NO MACAM PS3EYE. But then i realised that installing macam alone is not enough. One obviously has to install the quicktime component in order for all programs to detect the camera.

After recovering from the unnecessary apoplectic fit you just had when you thought that your USB camera might never ever be detected in reactivision and your reactable might explode, quit all the related programs which are currently open. Go to the Macam installer again. Drag the macam.component into "/Library/QuickTime".

Then restart reactivision and press "O" to see the following dialogue, which shows that the PS3 Eye can indeed be detected in reactivision.

Infrared light is present in sunlight - so that is me in a darkened room, with my face lit mostly by the evening sun. Out of the 1 kW/sq m of irradiance sunlight sends down to earth, apparently 527 watts is infrared radiation (light which is visible to this IR camera), 445 watts is visible light (the light we can see), and 32 watts is ultraviolet radiation (light which causes sunburns and skin cancer).

Isometric Map

2010-07-16T07:27:00.000-07:00

I have been drafting a huge map of the Singapore River area in preparation for a psychogeographical game to be conducted during the exhibition. While playing with googlemaps and crosschecking to see if i missed out any other landmarks this evening, I noticed that google earth is the same as google satellite except with a little bit of perspective to it.

Google Satellite

Google Earth

Animated for comparison

I've also figured out that what gives gothere.sg its unique look (and sets it apart from the other free singapore map services out there) is its additional 0.5 dimension to it, which helps provide some degree of perspective. Interestingly before this realisation, I had already decided that the map would have to have some manner of "projection" like Erwin Raisz's awesome handdrawn maps.

gothere.sg

Erwin Raisz is an American cartographer famous for the detail and readability of his maps, and for having created an armadillo-like projection which was similar to an isometric projection. Likewise I think the large map I draw will need to have some awareness of projection as it improves the readablity of maps - perhaps something like the infographic style or isometric projections which i like so much?

From an entry in my blog last year: isometric animations which i adore.

Projector Lens and Focal Length

2010-07-15T19:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I borrowed the Substation's projector and took it home to check out its specs. The model is a ViewSonic's PJ503D DLP.

Brightness: 1500 ANSI Lumens
Size: 26.42cm x 10.92cm x 21.84cm
Projection Screen Size (Diagonal): 96.52cm ~ 381cm
Throw Distance: 5ft. ~ 19.7ft. (1.52m ~ 6m)
Throw Ratio: 2:1
Vertical Keystone Correction: +/- 7 Degrees
Lens Aperture: F/2.57
Focal Length: 22.2 mm
Resolution: 800x600

Bin gave me a link to calculate the Projection Lens: Projection Lenses Questions and Answers with formulae.

Unfortunately after playing with numbers for a while I realised that my mathematics is a failure. I have to admit I didn't even take mathematics at 'A' levels. Good lord. But fortunately, there are things called calculators. So in the end I gave up fiddling about with the stupid numbers and found an online calculator:

Via Projection Calculator Pro:

From these calculations it seems to suggest my projector may not cover the whole surface if i want to keep it focused and I get a throw distance of 2.13. But what difference will a mirror make to the projection? I do not know... As a lot of things have already been set in motion, there is nothing to be done but to test the projector setup on Sunday.

Another link which might be helpful in understanding projectors is: HTRGroup's Projector Facts

Footnote: After testing it on 25th July, it became clear that apparently i needn't have worried as focusing the projector was a breeze, with a flick of the focusing dial on the projector. With a mirror setup as the projection throw is bound to be over 1.5m anyway due to the size of the box.

PS3 Eye Modified for Infrared

2010-07-15T09:14:00.000-07:00

Good news, world. After the previous night's lows and minor setbacks, this is something akin to a miracle. After Dominic's miraculous and patient disassembly of the camera, following the faithful instructions of the following videos, tonight there has been success in modifying the PS3 Eye for IR light!

Those who attempt to take out this camera may want to note that it is very hard to open the casing, and that the removal of the lens may benefit from the use of a slightly heated metal blade or tool to cut and melt the plastic around the lens area until it can be gently popped out - brilliant method which Dominic thought of.

We cut up an old negative which had been developed, popped it inside the lens, and then tested it with a TV remote. It picked up the flickering IR signal very clearly.

Other notes:

Noticed a small cloudy pattern - not sure if my negative had a cloud in it which was not so visible to the human eye. Must ensure that negatives are actually totally blank and not just one of those awkward pointless frames of blue skies with faint clouds which I am so fond of taking.
I will have to build a new housing for the camera as much brute force is required to open the housing and its nearly impossible to put back together.
Purchasing online may be more tricky as there are apparently two types of cameras out there (US vs Non-US, both with different lenses). Having bought it from the internet, I was lucky that my camera was the good type which I needed in particular for this project.
One sheet of negatives may not suffice; will need to replace the negative and put multiple sheets of cut negatives inside.

Besides modding this camera, there are many more unforeseen horrors to be tackled, but at least the camera is actually working after initial attempts at modification!

The CMOS Sensor

Flash AS3 with TUIO - An Option?

2010-07-12T08:23:00.000-07:00

I will have you know that I am beginning to capitulate on that decision to use Processing. Why was I going to use Processing? Because I thought it was the obvious choice to use with TUIO/Reactivision. And a few months ago while researching it, I turned away from using Flash AS3 because in the first para of that page it said Flash does not support TUIO/UDP and that made me very nervous. Very Nervous! What were all these confusing acronyms! I don't even code in AS3! What I read earlier also somehow gave me the impression that I'd have to use Processing to get the data, and if i wanted to use Flash, I'd have to make Processing talk to Flash on top of all the confusion! More confusion!

But, on rereading it yesterday on the advice of people more experienced with this than me, it seems like there is a way to use Flash/AS3 with TUIO. So, I had to investigate it, even though I don't know if I should be going so much into the technicalities.

UDP Flash-LocalConnection Bridging for TUIO/OSC Streams from Georg Kaindl on Vimeo.

What is UDP? UDP stands for User Datagram Protocol. Datagrams are like the little packets of information. UDP is quite simple is that it just transmits the datagrams without confirming or having to hand-shake the other side or anything, so it is good in cases where we don't mind losing a few packets along the way as opposed to making it all slow and laggy by having a two-way communication between the transmitter and the receiver.

How udp-flashlc-bridge works? it listens on the udp port and sends packets via flash Local Connection. so one could conceivably send TUIO tracking data to flash.

As I have no idea what I am doing (but it is important to learn how to do everything myself if I want to get anything done) I am going to take meticulous notes on everything as I try to figure it out. So please bear with me.

So as a simple test I downloaded udp-flashlc-bridge and ran it from Terminal.

Next, I ran tuiotest.swf while running reactivision and waving fidicual 1 in front of my camera, and flash DID receive the specific TUIOobject data. It also seemed very responsive.

What is TUIO? TUIO stands for Table-Top User Interfaces Objects and it is just a protocol for table-top tangible user interfaces. It was implemented using OpenSoundControl (OSC) so technically it is just a standardised way of presenting OSC information in a way that would be logical for use in TUIs.

in order to understand what all that frightful gobbledygook is about, i took a screenshot of the table on the TUIO page for easy reference. each packet which has the following attributes:

so you can interpret from the chart how i had taken the fidicual in and out of the camera range for about nine times by the time i had started running tuiotest.swf (based on sessionID increasing each time), and how i had moved it about (based on velocity and motion accelerator variables changing)...

in the course of trying to make the swf, i also learnt some things which will also reveal to anyone reading this blog how terrifyingly unfamiliar i am with AS3:

1. so i foolishly wrote a public class on the timeline
2. then it returned an error, saying public class must be within a package
3. then i put it inside a "package"
4. then it returned an error, saying the package was "nested"?
5. so i put the public class in a separate as file and used it as "include"
6. error persisted
7. then i used "import"
8. and then it worked

my layman's conjecture from this is that, apparently classes must be imported in with "import", upon which flash automatically puts them into a "package"? what i also understand is that up to this point i know very little about object oriented programming. goddam. i am trying to approach this like it's a manageable, reasonable thing i can figure out if i try hard enough.

USEFUL LINKS:
- Building your first multitouch app in as3

PS3 Eye

2010-07-07T05:42:00.000-07:00

Playstation Eye for PS3 (USB)
Video Capture: 640x480
Field of View: 56˚ to 75˚ FOV zoom lens
Frame Rate: 60fps (640x480) or 120fps (320x240)

It finally came in the mail. Although this was not any particular milestone, I should add that I spent a good 15 minutes SIMPLY TRYING TO OPEN THE PACKAGING. I just had to say that this reminded me of the time I bought a £3.99 blender from Argos and spent more time wrestling with the plastic packaging and reducing the hard plastic shell packaging to disorderly splintery bits with a blunt scissor in the process of trying to extricate the goddamn product - and then everyone said, "But why of course, you bought it from Argos..." Why do companies fashion such impenetrable packaging for certain electrical/electronic products?

I installed macam and it works with my mac without a cinch. Interestingly, I can even run both my mac's inbuilt camera and the PS3 Eye (via macam) at the same time?

Uncanny resemblance of the word "macam" with the slang word "maciam". Brings unexpected local flavour to this rather functional program. "MACIAM NOT COMPATIBLE THEN HOW?" That is my greatest fear. Or do I have faith in information from the internets?

Next: to test this particular camera for use with reactivision, and to modify it for infrared.

A Social History of the Singapore River

2010-07-04T01:17:00.000-07:00

I acquired a copy of Stephen Dobbs' "The Singapore River: A Social History 1819-2002" because I saw a quote about the Singapore River as a Dead Snake in a recent seminar (which I was sadly unable to attend). The quote is credited to Ow Chin Seng, treasurer of the Lighter Owners Association (1993) - who gave a lengthy interview about the Singapore River in 1993. This was a sentiment echoed by letters to the Straits Times that the removal of the lighterage industry (which had been rendered redundant by the work of the PSA) had subsequently rendered the river as "soulless"...

Spanning over 80 years of history, Dobbs focuses the bulk of his study on the life of lighters workers working directly on and along the river (including their migration patterns). I had not known that the jetties had been separated by dialects, and the book provides a sensitive study of riverside life (family life? vice? opium? new years? all in!).

The last three chapters are dedicated to the modern "post-clean-up" River, and this is where it gets a lot more ambivalent. One might go so far as to describe it as "speculative"? If a thing no longer looks the same, does it still have the same meaning? In any case, the current shape of the river is now actually nothing like the original shape of the river...

Andre de La Varre's Crossroads of the East 1938
"The Chinese believe their boats must see where they are going,
hence they are painted with huge eyes..."

Orchard River And Other New Singapore Rivers

2010-07-03T18:49:00.000-07:00

I did a radio interview on "The Living Room" on 938LIVE last week - much thanks to the Substation for arranging this. You can stream it from that link or download it here (18MB).

Meanswhile, due to work overload, things have been going a bit slower than I would have hoped. So far, I've sketched out the shape of what the setup will be like and the carpentry will be done soon.

I'm waiting for the PS3 Eye that I've ordered to arrive and after that I will need to find someone more nifty with disassembly to help me / guide me in removing the IR filter. Perhaps it is idealistic to hope that we can do this entirely with guides and information found on the internet, but CAN WE DO IT PLEASE!

In other news, there have been heavy rains here, with apparently 60% of the entire month of June's rain within a 3 hr rainfall occurring on 16th June - resulting in flash floods in Singapore, in unlikely places such as Orchard Road. thus causing it to be dubbed as "Orchard River".

Now it has become clear why underground MRT stations here have raised entrances - to prevent flooding! Also, in videos on youtube, you will notice that the water was flowing in the direction of the cars or away from Delfi. Here is a map from Stomp explaining the location of the blocked drain:

This is a picture of the singapore river later that evening, the same brown colour as "orchard river", instead of its normal army camouflage green. I contemplated going down to town to see how wet it was in orchard, but, seriously... no.

Procedural Cities, Procedural Roads, and L-Systems

2010-06-13T00:33:00.000-07:00

here is a well-documented procedurally generated city by shamus young - using no art/model assets and completely built from scratch.

he writes:

"In a section of the Left 4 Dead commentary (near the very end of the initial No Mercy level) one of the developers draws attention to an apartment building in the distance. He explains that it’s a very simple building with little detail, but because it’s mostly a silhouette against a detailed sky, the eye accepts it and your mind fills in details that aren’t really there."

i agree with that - i think my goal in making a procedural river map would also be to determine which are the most easy "visual suggestions" to add to give it the general impression of being a full and detailed map... i'm not a mathematician so i don't quite know either. would a Vonoroi Diagram suffice to give the visual cues of it being a city? what is it that makes certain sketches look instinctively like maps?

lindermayer systems

another brilliant link i found was about generating procedural roads systems with L-systems by lintfordpickle who appears to be building a giant procedural world called Britonia. he makes reference to a siggraph paper which suggests the solution is in L-systems - Procedural Modeling of Cities (by Yoav Parish and Pascal Mueller).

from my sketch blog:

"L-systems or “Lindenmayer systems” are used to model the growth processes of plant development. The recursive nature of the L-system rules leads to self-similarity and so it resembles the growth of plants which grow while becoming more and more complex."

my first introduction to playing with "grammars" was with ContextFree, which is basically a simple program which will generate images from whatever grammar you provide it -- so it could be used to generate L-systems, which are just a specific sort of grammar which looks natural yet complex. so now, how will i do this... in Processing? oh good gods what am i doing let's try not to panic.

like lintfordpickle's procedural road generation, in order to make my procedural river map, i would need to figure out how to use my other "environment" inputs to direct the growth of the L-system patterns...

processing: very simple edge detection

LEFT: original PNG map of Geylang which i drew in illustrator.
RIGHT: the same image with simple edge detection in Processing.

in Processing its possible to examine an image and determine the brightness of a pixel or the pixels around it. above is a slightly modified sketch adapted from an example in Kostas Terzidis' Algorithms for Visual Design.

each pixel has a counter saying how many pixels around it are dark, and another counter inside checking to see how many consecutive pixels around it are dark. (the rule used above is that if a pixel has 2-6 dark pixels around it and more than 2 consecutive dark pixels, then its probably a border!).

i imagine that this means that, theorectically, if i fed in a seperate "topo" image (with topography features marked out in black) or if i had the river on a seperate layer, i could potentially have it detected in advance and then tell the program to avoid those "elevated" or "wet/water" areas?

Voronoi Diagrams by the River

2010-06-12T21:12:00.000-07:00

So I want to make a speculative drawing of the river. But how do we go about creating a grammar for procedurally generating city maps? Looking at how generic city maps are drawn, I was thinking that one way I might approach the drawing is to come up with a Voronoi Diagram with additional internal subdivisions.

A Voronoi Diagram is a kind of decomposition of a metric space in which there is a set of specified points in the plane (Voronoi sites), and the walls of the segments of each Voronoi site are equidistant to the nearest other site.

I downloaded Marius Watz's demo of Lee Byron's Mesh Library for Processing:

Voronoi Diagram: displays the regions of space belonging to each randomly generated point.

Delaunay Diagram: displays the optimal triangulation of these points (forming a mesh)

Convex Hull: displays the perimeter line of the most extreme points

The shapes formed are sometimes called Thiessen polygons; there are very many names for this useful concept because they were discovered independently across different disciplines, and have been used in geography, geophysics, and meteorology to estimate the influence of catchment areas or watersheds.

In 1854, the physician John Snow used a Voronoi diagram to illustrate how most of the people who died in the Soho Cholera outbreak lived closer to the Broad Street pump than any other water pump and used this to persuade authorities to remove the handle of the pump to prevent more infections.

Basically, Voronoi Diagrams/Thiessen Polygons can be used to describe the influence of a point. For example, with a Voronoi diagram, one could determine the point at which it would be most ideal to build a 7-11 that would be as far as possible from all other existing convienience stores in the city. Autonomous mobile robot also use Voronoi diagrams to calculate routes which are theorectically furthest from any collisions.

I found an interesting article entitled Dynamic Segmentation and Thiessen Polygons: A Solution to the River Mile Problem which suggests that it may be more accurate to use Voronoi Diagrams/Thiessen Polygons to subdivide a river into seperate regions of influence. River Miles/Kilometres are analogous to the highway road distance markers. However, due to the meandering nature of rivers, the River Mile may not be accurate as a measure for dividing the river into regions of influence, so Thiessen Polygons make more sense because it uses spatial distribution rather than linear division.

also check out this "Voronoi City" by Santiago Ortiz built in flash based on a voronoi algorithm (found via serial consign). i like how he states that "the aim was to construct a city using the minimum information as possible"; because when we draw our own personal maps of places, we often start with very little information and mostly just vague approximations...

Colour Palette of the Singapore River

2010-06-07T08:08:00.000-07:00

last month, i went to take colour samples of the river, and on the bus ride there, i met a cycling geographer, who also pointed out to me that the colour of the river depended on the time of the day. which was very true. the sun started off bright and blazing hot, which made for unusually bright and vibrant colours. however thanks to our erratic tropical weather, by the time i'd walked from the marina bay to boat quay, it suddenly began raining, so i also got the darker, duller grey shades of overcast days - which was particularly apparent at the shallows near the steps, where we also discovered little fish doing peculiar little horizontal swims across flat steps (to eat stair algae?), and nervous kingfishers pacing along the stone path (to eat stair fish?).

its difficult to say what colour river water really ought to be. i've been told the singapore river used to be the colour of Coca Cola, before the cleanup of the 1980s. right now, it seems as if the Singapore River is usually in camouflage army green colours, with mottled brown, grey, and white spots, to blend in with the skyscrapers and ornamental riverside foliage. the sneaksy thing, trying to slip right past us without us noticing...

From the source itself...

2010-06-07T07:45:00.000-07:00

Welcome to a blog about "The Singapore River as a Psychogeographical Faultline".

I intend to build a speculative and generative map of the Singapore River. I chose the Singapore River because of its personal and historical significance, and I describe it as a "Psychogeographical Faultline" because the Singapore River is a site at which memories of spaces, fictional (imagined) spaces, and dream spaces interact, merge, or drift apart - like a series of tectonic plates...

This blog serves as my own record of the process of developing this work, which is being produced for The Substation Open Call 2010.