This document is the written portion of my MS defense at Georgia Tech. It is a survey of artworks that use live information sources, and a study of how emerging web technologies can encourage this type of art. Finally, it proposes Switchboard, my library for real-time art, and discusses the design and implementation of it.

Interactive Frank was part of my masters thesis at the Information Design and Technology Program at Georgia Tech, and an example of my interest in interactive narrative.  The program was meant to be mostly a proof of concept of my Processing library, Switchboard, and of the idea that it is possible to use content found on the web to algorithmically generate meaningful new content.

Switchboard is an open-source conceptual level interface to a library of data mining tools and web services, including Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Del.icio.us, Flickr, and many more. This library was created as part of my masters thesis at Georgia Tech. It is written in Java and packaged for the Processing environment.

In the setting of a late nineties startup Internet company, the player must interact with these characters – coworkers – in order to make decisions that will influence the success of the company, as well as how well he or she comes out in the end when the company goes public – or goes bust.

• NewsClock
• Wall Walkers
• Vine Gardner
• Particle Text
• Miracle of Life
• Insta-Angst Livejournaler
• Duo-Pong

In ChinASCII, the player takes on the role of Charles Bukowski, and must work to keep the balance between his love life, his work life, and his leisure time that led Bukowski to create the gritty poetry for which he is known. I created the engine and the “Love” game.

Operation Clyde is a multiplayer game which utilizes cell phones as the control device. In Operation Clyde, players control ghosts using the number pad on their cell phone, by calling into one of the game’s phone numbers. Operation Clyde was premeired at the Georgia Tech Living Gameworlds Symposium. I was co-programmer and game designer.

PixelTrainer is a Java game where you must collect all of the spinning tokens before the birds flying around the board can take them back.