I created a data portrait that depicts information taken on what was done throughout a person's daily life. I choose to take a picture of my clock and list the things I did at what particular time during the span of a day. The lighter orange colours are actions occuring in the morning (AM) while the darker orange colours are actions occuring in the evening (PM). Activities that stretch across a long period of time have the words corresponding. I choose the colours based on my favourite colour (if I had made the portrait of another person the colours would relate their favourite as well).

This particular artist talk caught my attention because the technology she unveils is revolutionary for how people experience everyday life. The technology is hung around your neck and recognizes iconic gestures you make. You can take and upload photos, make phone calls, and it even provides data on grocery store items. It relates to course material when we learned how to make touch sensors using our arduinos. The technology this invention uses is just a step further by using touch projection technology. They both (the touch sensors we made and the Sixth Sense) are very portable and can be used just about anywhere. The Sixth Sense can connect to the internet and provide active information on things such as books. You can get ratings, reviews and annotations of books when the technology connects to Amazon.com. Similarly we've been taught the capability of integrating updating feeds from live websites such as Twitter in our works.

The project is described to create a new ease of access to Meta information. It is shown to be easily integrated into every day life by wearing the device around your neck and having the capability of projecting it onto any surface you desire, including your hand. It can instantly provide information on objects you pick up in a grocery store. If you want to determine which is most economically or even ecologically sensible to your consumption needs, you can instantly answer those questions by projecting information directly on to the product. It can also provide details on your flight information such as delays. Having these capabilities creates an easier and more organized way of life which is what every consumer wants.

If this device were ever to become accessible by the public, it could also become a great new media tool to be played with. With new devices comes new ways to hack them and produce new concepts for art projects using this technology.

This year at Nuit Blanche I found a piece called INFRA that I really loved. Not only are wolves a favourite of mine, the bright colours illuminating dark corners of the city in three locations, brought a new dimension to the piece than just a sculpture of wolves. It seemed to surprise you as their bright colours popped up in unusual places such as Cloud Gardens, and the front of the Scotia Plaza. They were described as painted and lit with fluorescent colours to display their thermal energy, similarly to the affects of infrared. Tonya explains her concept as the infrared being similar to the colours of camouflage which both display colours of hot and cold.

INFRA reminds me of the art piece we looked at in class called Sniff. They are both canine forms used to portray a message or concept through a significant visualization. Both pieces touch on the idea of an animal's basic instincts which as humans, we often take for granted. As well, they both touch on the idea of human and animal relationship as well as how they interact with one another. In Sniff, the dog reacts based on your movements. Usually when you walk by a dog that reacts as hyper-actively as the store-front projection that is without a visual constraint, it often makes the viewer feel nervous. This unease feeling with the wild nature of animals is also felt in the INFRA sculptures when you think strictly of the idea that a wolf is in a city landscape, it fills most respondents with fear. It seems as though many people would feel edgy around animals such as wolves or dogs that are not constrained or in their wild habitat, away from human environments. I like how both artists explore this relationship because often it is overlooked or socially accepted as a normal response, when it's often that nervous response that activates a negative relationship from the animal.

In all, I really enjoyed finding all three sculptures of this piece around the city. My connection with animals and wolves is vigorous as they have been the main focus of my digital art for many years. Based on these works, I have been inspired to further my relationship with the beauty behind wilderness and nature and make those connections through further potential art projects.

The motive behind this project was challenge myself as an artist and my abilities to understand the coding language. Often, when given the choice I would avoid processing altogether, not wanting to deal with the headaches of small syntactical errors. I decided it was time to face my fear and tackle the overshadowing inevitable demon of coding. The creation of a game became the ultimate test of my personal coding knowledge because artistic exceptions cannot be made when creating a game play system. The game either functions properly or it doesn't.

The game Sheepscape challenges users to take the position of a herding border collie who needs to contain as many of the escaped sheep as possible. As an added challenge, the users have a limited amount of lives which can be depleted by the ominous hawk flying around the landscape which can potentially threaten your sheep. These aspects reflect the real life, traditional situations farmers face with owning flocks of sheep. This theme was represented because the concept is simple while the game play still being challenging and engaging.

The environment of the game is made brightly with upbeat tunes to keep the user engaged to compensate for the simplicity, and sometimes tedious notions of the game. With more time a more engaging gameplay could be implemented; such as power ups that reverse the sheeps direction to flock directly to the player.

For now, the sheep have meerly escaped (hence the name "Sheepscape") and the user is faced with an ultimatium to herd them safely into the barn or allow them to succumb to the villianous hawk. baaaa!

In class we were given a workshop on vectors. I conjured up the idea for my game during the exploration of behaviours that can be created when implementing vectors into a sketch. There was a particular behaviour that we observed which was taking a vector and using its difference (to another point such as the mouse X and mouse Y position) to generate a behaviour that either avoided or was attracted to that point based on the speed (positive or negative). This was the sparking point for muse to create this project. My instant reaction to the driven behaviour was that it resembled the similar behaviours reflected when herding sheep. In turn, without learning about vectors in class I may have never conjured up the concept for this game.

Technical description:
The game is run using Processing. The cursor is player which is controlled by the user. There is a sheep, enemy (hawk), timer and free life class that are all implemented to function together. Lives are decreased when the hawk intersects with a sheep and lives can also be gained when an intersection with the player (the cursor) happens with a randomly appearing heart. These are the general aspects that make the game functional.