Jeff Crouse » dataviz

The Ecosystem Engine

Jeff — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:28:53 +0000

The Ecosystem Engine is a JavaScript and XML driven viewer and editor
for animated, sprite driven simulations. It is akin to a web browser,
except instead of web pages, it runs animations in which the “actors”interact and react to each other and the environment in such a way that the animation is never the same twice. The engine will have support for several input sources, including webcam data, online data, and direct user input via a keyboard and mouse.

For the past year, we have been developing the Ecosystem Engine in openFrameworks, although I am once again looking at Ogre3D and a few other engines as a good foundation for Ecosystem.

Ecosystem will be put into the dev.eyebeam.org system and we will invite coders from the openFrameworks community, the ITP program, oncall.eyebeam community, and other c++ game dev communities who are interested in animation to take part in its development. We will arrange a weekly or bi-weekly meeting to go over developments, using Steve Lambert’s add-art development strategy as a guide. Jeff Crouse will act as the project manager, monitoring code commits and ensuring the overall quality of the software.

Another team of volunteers (again, recruited from the communities mentioned above) would write documentation about the process of creating animations for the Ecosystem Engine and creating a website where it will be available for download for all major platforms. Our hope is that we can eventually attract animators to use Ecosystem and showcase other artists’ projects on the site.

FeedBlast

Jeff — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 22:02:35 +0000

FeedBlast is an experiment in directed generative video. It takes the form of a web-based application that creates an audiovisual mashup of web content using items from a collection of RSS feeds, also known as an OPML file. The goal of the mashup is to present a densely-packed summary of a users unread feed items in the smallest amount of time possible. The resulting Quicktime movie can be downloaded, viewed, and shared. Watching a FeedBlast is not about comprehension, but about gaining a general understanding of the information landscape that informs and directs later review of the feed information.

In 2007, I was a finalist for a Rhizome grant for the project. Check out the proposal here.

CarnivorePE

Jeff — Tue, 14 Oct 2003 18:36:55 +0000

The Carnivore Server is a surveillance tool, invented by Alex Galloway and the Radical Software Group, that monitors all traffic on the network on which it is run. In the Summer of 2003, I became the first official intern of the RSG. In this capacity, I created a Flash template for Carnivore Clients, and contributed to the completion of the OS X version of the Carnivore Server, which uses the Packet Capture Library (pcap) to monitor all traffic on the network on which it is run, and then sends this information to all connected clients. In the process, I learned about Interprocess Communications, including socket connections.