Processing 1.0 - Processing Discourse - Play - An Interactive Drawing Game

mshaub

Play - An Interactive Drawing Game
Jan 16^th, 2010, 1:18pm

I just finished this interactive drawing + exploration game as an announcement for my place of employment, Sussman/Prejza, an environmental design company that does urban branding and wayfinding.

We sent out an email with several arrows to choose from, each of which leads to a slightly different version of the game. The game is meant to encourage us all to try new things, explore, and see the wonderful and beautiful results that can come from just a few steps into a world of creativity and new possibilities.
As you navigate this space with your arrow avatar of choice, you reveal hidden colors and create new shapes based on how you touch the different forms. Some simple decisions, like how far you will move your arrow or if your first move was to the left or to the right, determine major shifts of color.
Then, when you decide you are finished exploring, you can see the entire landscape you have explored and the results of your interactions. Each visitor is encouraged to sign their drawing and add it to a gallery of similar but unique works. I hope that it is just as interesting to see what was made as who made it.

The programming for this game was quite a learning experience, building on a class I took at Machine Project in LA and a number of simple Arduino projects I have completed in my free time. The largest hurdles were the trigonometry needed to complete the spinning and collision detection and the image uploading for saving images to our gallery. Thanks to the other Processing users who helped me in tackling the image uploading, you are also recognized in the source code!

I hope to build on this experience to create more projects for the web, mobile devices, and architectural spaces. And, I hope you play the game and I look forward to seeing even more additions to the image gallery.

_mike Shaub&&Artist, Designer, SEGD Member

Giles

Re: Play - An Interactive Drawing Game
Reply #1 - Jan 16^th, 2010, 2:35pm

Interesting. I have also been making some interactive drawing programs/artworks. There's always an issue (related to the notion of authorship) about how much aesthetic control (or agency) you give over to the user. Too little, and it can be like you are just using people to create instances of your own aesthetic vision - not satisfying for the user. Too much, and the creativity/authorship of the work really rests with the user, and the result becomes as unpredictable as the idiosyncratic qualities of the person doing the drawing.

Nice coding. I feel like the results of your different choices could be more dramatically apparent, though.

mshaub

Re: Play - An Interactive Drawing Game
Reply #2 - Jan 17^th, 2010, 2:15pm

Thanks Giles. I certainly agree with you about that trade off between open and closed results. I have a list of other interactions that I had hoped to get into the game that would have addressed some of that, but had a concrete deadline I had to meet. Not an excuse, but the image uploading issue almost derailed the whole project and ended up eating most of the time I'd allotted to extend the functionality. Even with a bunch more time, since I wanted the experience to be pretty intuitive that might have worked against building a very complex system.

Do you have any finished or partial work I can see? Please let me know what you're up to and what you're focusing on with that work. I hope to keep pursuing interaction and user generated content.

Thanks again for the comment
_mike

_mike Shaub&&Artist, Designer, SEGD Member

Giles

Re: Play - An Interactive Drawing Game
Reply #3 - Jan 17^th, 2010, 10:07pm

Hi Mike...

You can see the kind of stuff I am working on at my image blog at gileswhitaker.wordpress.com

These are just images, as I don't have a good place to show applications at the moment. I do have one interactive work you can play with on OpenProcessing:

www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=6266

I'm still thinking about interactivity, and the balance between what the user gets out of it, and what you (the artist/designer) get out of the user....

I look forward to seeing your future projects.

Giles

Re: Play - An Interactive Drawing Game
Reply #4 - Jan 19^th, 2010, 11:56am

Thinking about the interactivity question... I found this sketch by Martin Schneider on OpenProcessing:

http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=6742

To me this is a great example of a work where the aesthetic qualities of the drawing are controlled by the artist/programmer, but the exact form of the picture created is controlled by the user. A good balance.

knutEinar

Re: Play - An Interactive Drawing Game
Reply #5 - Jan 20^th, 2010, 4:16am

Quote:

I'm still thinking about interactivity, and the balance between what the user gets out of it, and what you (the artist/designer) get out of the user....

I agree with Giles, even though, I do not think the example you pointed us to, Giles, was a particularly good one in terms of user interaction. Imho, this one is, as in OP's app, too random (nothing wrong in randomness, but then this should also be an aspect of what the user controls). I have no control over what happens, other than deciding _where_ things will happen, which is, in my opinion a tad boring. The visual result _may_ be so nice/fresh/cool that it makes up for bad user interactivity though, but then again, maybe other solutions would work better in terms of creating the 'dynamics' of the piece. One simple thing one could do to increase the user interactivity (if that is the intention) is to add sliders. These could control speed, color, rotation, etc, etc, and then the mouse could come in addition to this. By doing this, the number of possible combinations of settings is getting very high, and if you manage to utilize that, you might catch the users interest for some longer time. That said, I think the visuals created in your app, mshaub, looks very promising, so keep it up, and it will be really good in the end!

Rick

Re: Play - An Interactive Drawing Game
Reply #6 - Jan 20^th, 2010, 4:47am

I thought the Martin Schneider sketch that was referenced could really be a lot more interesting if the drawing only occurred while mousePressed. In that way the Perlin noise effect on the brush strokes would mimic the degree of uncontrolled randomness you get with real brush strokes. Of course allowing the user to choose the color of the strokes would be another good addition along the same lines.

http://r6753.com/ _{I need a job.}

Giles

Re: Play - An Interactive Drawing Game
Reply #7 - Jan 20^th, 2010, 7:28am

I agree with your comments, Rick, and knutEinar. More control over the parameters would make it more interesting. I guess I am always thinking in terms of what you could display in a gallery context - where the method of interaction has to be simple and intuitive. Most non-technical people won't go and play with a bunch of sliders. I love it, you love it, but the average non-technical person can be intimidated by an interface that looks too complicated.

So linking parameter levels to how fast the mouse is moving, recognising certain types of gestures, etc, could work quite well for this. And I think you were trying to do this, mshaub - you said that the initial direction of the cursor, where you struck the target objects, and how fast you were moving when you struck them ,all affected the outcome. All great ideas for a very simple, intuitive interface - but as I mentioned, the differences weren't very apparent to me....

Giles Senior Member Offline Posts: 252	Re: Play - An Interactive Drawing Game Reply #8 - Jan 20^th, 2010, 7:31am Next revision will be great, I'm sure

knutEinar

Re: Play - An Interactive Drawing Game
Reply #9 - Jan 20^th, 2010, 1:21pm

Giles wrote on Jan 20^th, 2010, 7:28am:

I agree with your comments, I guess I am always thinking in terms of what you could display in a gallery context - where the method of interaction has to be simple and intuitive. Most non-technical people won't go and play with a bunch of sliders.

I agree with what you say here (and I don't intend to start a big fight here

) but this is at the same time a key issue, and something we, the artists, need to be very aware of. What is a 'simple and intuitive' interface, and what is not. First of, a few sliders, maybe 3, is enough to create a vast range of values/combinations. And to me, sliders are more intuitive (and precise) than moving the mouse around, and clicking with it. I am not saying that using the mouse is a bad thing, but it is not very exciting either (especially not as just a tracker).

Quote:

I love it, you love it, but the average non-technical person can be intimidated by an interface that looks too complicated.

I agree. And if you mean 'real life' gallery context (not just online), I think there is a huge range of possibilities that can be used to utilize other types of interfaces that can be complicated, but at the same time fun, inviting, and interesting for the viewer to use. In that context things like motion detection, heat sensors, sound, light, weight, etc, can be used to trigger physical, or just visual, results.

Quote:

So linking parameter levels to how fast the mouse is moving, recognising certain types of gestures, etc, could work quite well for this. And I think you were trying to do this, mshaub - you said that the initial direction of the cursor, where you struck the target objects, and how fast you were moving when you struck them ,all affected the outcome. All great ideas for a very simple, intuitive interface...

I have to say that this to me sounds like a much more complicated and non-intuitive interface than a couple of sliders (maybe coupled with mouse movement) would be ...

Now, for me, the only thing missing is to make these wonderful programs that produce wonderful visuals with my oh so intuitive and progressive interfaces. Btw, a pretty good example of this, is linked to on the front page of this site: http://mtg.upf.es/reactable/

Cheers! Cheesy

Giles

Re: Play - An Interactive Drawing Game
Reply #10 - Jan 20^th, 2010, 4:00pm

Yes, that's a really nice one. I think that might be the next challenge for me - setting up some non-mouse-based methods of interaction. I have an Arduino board that I haven't played with much. But maybe setting up a sketch controlled with a few physical dials and buttons might be a good start for me. I think if the the "sliders" are physical rather than on a screen, that might make them more enticing?

knutEinar

Re: Play - An Interactive Drawing Game
Reply #11 - Jan 21^st, 2010, 8:16am

Giles wrote on Jan 20^th, 2010, 4:00pm:

I think if the the "sliders" are physical rather than on a screen, that might make them more enticing

I believe so. But even if they only appear on the screen, they would be somewhat more intuitive than just mouse movements. I guess this also boils down to what sort of applications we are talking about, what is it we want to show the audience, and not the least, who is the audience ... No right or wrong answers to this one I guess