zannah marsh @ itp

Twigster

Twigster is an iPhone app designed to help urban users discover and explore the often-overlooked natural world in the city, and connect with others doing the same. This project is a collaboration with Rodrigo de Benito.

While moving about the city as usual, Twigster users are on the look-out for trees on the street and in parks. They use Twigster’s interactive, step-by-step visual key to identify an unfamiliar tree. The key calls out certain features– leaf shape, twig arrangement, etc– in helping users make an identification. The result, along with GPS data marking the tree’s location, can be sent from the iPhone to the user’s personal Twigster account, and to a collective interactive map. Users may choose to add a photo or notes about the tree they’ve found.

Some users may chose to interact with Twigster like a game, trying to identify the most trees, or seeking out the rarest, most unusual, or farthest flung trees in the city. Since identification can be tricky, users can mark a tree as a “mystery tree,” add it to the map, and ask other Twigster users for help in identifying that tree. Some users may be interested in monitoring the health of particular local trees, tracking seasonal changes in foliage, or observing bird and animal life associated with the trees, and sharing this information with other users: they can add tags and notes to the map for all users to see.

Twigster’s streamlined, online social networking component makes sharing information, experiences, and stories with other users easy and satisfying. Twigster aims to create a community of users fully engaged in exploring, understanding, and sharing nature with each other.

GIVE-N-GET final documentation

Here it is– the final documentation of the Give-n-Get economy outlet project, in fancy ACM-approved research paper form! Coming soon (perhaps next week) the Give-n-Get website at give-n-get.net, with photos of all the products and maps of transactions.

Read the paper here.

Nature of Code Final: Little World, Interactive

For my final project in nature of code, I contined to add functionality to my mini-ecosystem. To make my task managable, I focused on the relationship of between drifters and creepers only (omitting sprigs for the time being), and the relationship between these two species and their environment. For both species, code was added so all individuals had a lifespan, a defined reproductive phase or timeframe, a level of fertility.  Also since the response to my pen and ink sketches I showed at midterms was positive, I used PImages of my sketches, plus some vector graphics to “draw” the characters for a more irregular, hand-drawn look. Finally, as was also suggested at midterm, I coded for user interaction via sliders that controlled for fertility and gravity of drifters and creepers, and speed of creepers. By manipulating the sliders, the user can balance the populations of drifters and creeprs, and encourage them to interact by changing the force of gravity, enabling them to reach eachother more easily. Changing the fertility helps balance the system, however it’s easy to crash if you up the fertility on the drifters too high! I’ll modify this to limit and optimize processing of larger numbers of objects in future versions. Also there is still some tweaking to do related to the movement of the creatures near the edges of the screen, and with how they are dectecting eachother, but you can play with the latest version of the program here.

For the creepers, I wrote code for an affinity/attraction to baby drifters as a food source. But I had some trouble– all the creepers move in a coordinated a single available food source (the last baby in the array of drifters). My next step is to adjust this so that that force acts on the creepers according to their distance from the food source, or only respond to food sources within a certain range. I hope to continue working on this project— adding additonal creatures, genetic inheritence, and more ways to interact with the system (setting up population sizes, options to add species to a system in progress). I also plan to work on the background/landscape a bit more, to give the creatures a more readable context/location.

Sample Give-n-Get Products

Sketches, Matrix, and Mini-Storyboard for Little World

Nature of Code Midterm Project

I created the Creeper, Drifter, and Sprigs classes, each a child of the parent class creature. I spent some time tweaking forces on the creepers, getting them to move in an insect like way, and writing collision detection. An unexpected creeper behavior that occurred– between the code to constrain the creepers and the repelling force between them, creepers occasionally rocket into the sky. Some error checking turns creepers blue if they’ve had a direct collision (exact same location) with another creeper– this was to confirm that code I wrote to prevent them from overlapping was working. The drifters as rendered look more cloudlike than creaturelike; as I program more interactions between the classes I’ll re-design them. They’ll do non-cloud things, like eating and growing.

Click here to see the prototype ecosystem.

Thesis Project Goals (REVISED)

• Document a community at a particular moment, via collected/distributed stories
• Decentralize/distribute art-object-system: create/generate/distribute small art objects that are keepsakes
• Create interaction scenery: functional models/mock-ups to encourage playful behaviors
• Transform commercial practice
• Invert traditional branding system: identify OBJECTS with PARTICPANTS, not vice-versa
• Create connections among a community of participants, connect (personally) with those participants

Nature of Code: Midterm Proposal

I plan to experiment with creating a super-simplified ecosystem of three elements/actors/species, each with different behaviors and interdependencies.

Small blue dots, or Creepers. Have scurrying movement, tend to lay low (at bottom of screen) and hide in protected areas. Short life cycle, but population grows in response to height of Sprigs.

Green sticklike things are Sprigs. They are anchored but move with oscillating wavelike movement when disturbed by environmental forces. They grow slowly. Growth rates are effected by the number of Creepers around.

Larger white irregular circle elements are Drifters. They float around the top of the screen, and are moderately attracted to the Sprigs. If they find their way to the bottom of the screen, they may consume Creepers, and cause a growth spurt in nearby springs.

Each element has a finite lifespan (within a range). Behavior/presence of other elements may effect that lifespan.

References:

Here’s a mini-model of an “ecosystem” — a simple game that demonstrates interactions between species and a relationship with the environment (camouflage).

http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/interactives/evolution.html

This game is nothing like what I plan to do, but it deals in a very simplified way with natural selection… which is sort of where I’d (ideally) eventually be going with this project.

http://science.discovery.com/interactives/literacy/darwin/darwin.html

Product Packaging Samples (Reference)

Thesis Project Impulses/Motivations

• playful
• productive
• generous/greedy
• consumerist
• voyeuristic
• obsessive
• “official”/controlling