I was asked to create a state machine for an assessment that has a few simple rules, basically creating a self-determined “creature” that had a few basic abilities. Building on the initial ruleset, I decided to develop it into an automata simulation.

Check it out here.

The creatures have four attributes: thirst, hunger, fatigue, and boredom. They are capable of idling, walking, running, eating, drinking, sleeping, and with user interaction they can play. Clicking with the mouse will cause nearby creatures to react.

Each state has a transition pre-state that occurs before it. The color of the character will blend from a color representing his previous state to the color representing his new state.

- Initial values of the four attributes are generated randomly when the SWF is loaded.
- If no state is queued, it will idle. Idling causes its thirst, hunger, fatigue, and boredom to increase.
- If it gets too bored, it will either run or walk (50% chance).
- Walking increases all attributes except boredom, which decreases slightly. If it gets too thirsty, hungry, or tired it will switch to that action.
- Running increases all attributes except boredom, which decreases. If it drops below 50% boredom or above 100% fatigue, it will eat or sleep (50% chance).
- Playing causes all attributes to increase except boredom, which decreases significantly. It will not stop playing until the user releases the mouse button.
- Eating causes all attributes to decrease except thirst, which increases significantly. It will drink after eating.
- Drinking causes all attributes to decrease. It will idle after drinking.
- Sleeping causes fatigue and boredom to decrease, thirst and hunger increase. It will idle after sleeping.

I had to disable the real-time stats for the web version, otherwise it gets too choppy. But in a standalone player is runs nice and smooth. If you want the source code just shoot me an email.

The CDs are back from the printer, and the web version is up! The Connections CD is a technical walkthrough for new students at Northern Illinois University. The annual project started a few years before I came to work for ResTech, and in the five versions since I took over, it’s changed a lot (I used to suck at Photoshop).

The screen demos and interface were authored with Adobe Captivate. For the actual CDs, I wrote PC and Mac specific launchers in ActionScript and burned them to a dual-partition format. Hopefully whoever takes over for me next year likes working on this project as much as I did.

On April 16th, Northern Illinois University hosted an art exhibit called “Interreaction” in the Holmes Student Center Glass Gallery. The show was planned, organized, promoted, and featured work by undergraduate Time Arts students. The focus was interactive, installation-based work that balanced technology with artistic intent. We enjoyed high attendance and an overall positive response.

My piece, “Reflex,” was an interactive sculpture constructed out of nylon string, tape, and pellon fabric. The fabric is threaded through and suspended by a web of strings attached to the ceiling and floor. Each length of string was constructed in a fractal-like pattern: a length of 10-12 feet has offshoots at set distances, each of these 6-8 feet in length. Off of these branches are additional lengths of string, branching into 2 foot end segments.

Behind the structure is a computer, DLP projector, and a concealed webcam. A Flash/ActionScript application is projected onto the fabric and fed video data by the webcam. The Flash app populates a black screen with small, circular objects that drift around aimlessly. Every 50ms, the current frame of video is captured as bitmap data and applied as a difference filter to bitmap data of the previous frame, creating a two-color image map of motion in front of the camera. On each frame, the application iterates through the floating objects, and checks what color the image map is at this location. If motion is being recorded at the location of an object, it is sent flying away. When viewers walk past the installation, the objects ripple. If a viewer waves their hand around in front of it, the objects scatter and move away.

The result is an initially subtle level of interaction; many people would walk almost completely past the installation, then suddenly stop and do a double-take, wondering if the motion of the objects on the screen was tied to their movement or mere coincidence. This reaction contrasted sharply with the response later in the night, when the secret was out and viewers gathered to test the limits of the interaction.

If you have a webcam, you can view the Flash component of the project here. If you do not want the project to access your webcam when prompted, simply navigate away from the page. Clicking “Deny” may cause the plug-in to crash.

The installation shortly after it was set up:

Impromptu beard-off:

Photos courtesy of Adam Kohlhaas.