Context Behind The Project & Project Conclusion

The purpose of this Portland Square info graphic is to represent the continual change of an environment over time, in this case the change of resources and elements within and surrounding a building.

The info graphic is designed to provide visual data of the continual change in the form of graphic design that is able to change dynamically as the building itself changes in real time. It takes the idea of replicating a changing physical environment and recreates it in a digital realm in real time as means of visually displaying the often invisible changes that are occurring within the physical space.

The project itself does visualise the data flow of Portland Square with current updates every half a second, however there is much more room for development if time permitted. The animation process of how the data is displayed is fairly simple, it would be great to develop this further with more sophisticated techniques.

Platform of production could be developed further in the future to allow for greater control over the visual graphics and provide greater depth and increased number of sensors and animations.

Depsite being created in java for web distribution, it would be a great development to enhance the distribution possibilities of the project to mobile devices, standalone applications etc.

Design of Info Graphic

So now all the code and web deployment has been competed and resolved, I need to create a representation of Portland Square that will be used to display the changes present within the building.

I decided to create a polished design that would change dynamically rather than create an abstract visualisation (think iTunes) to show the real time change of Portland Square.

This is the design I came up with:

The six labelled sections of the graphic are the effected elements of the incoming live data feed from Portland Square and will fade in and out depending on the values they are receiving from the relevant sensors.

Inspiration for Visualisation Design

Originally I intended to use graphic visualisation tool Quartz Composer to develop what would be an abstract visualisation of real time information provided by GPS data. However after thought and inspiration I have decided to create a dynamic 'info-graphic' graphic design that is altered depending on live data input from an external source.

I found a great book that features a large number of visualisations and representations of data through the medium of graphic design. The book is called Data Flow 2: Visualising Information in Graphic Design'. The book features a range of graphic representations of data generally over a period of time in static form.

This lead me to think that It would be great to create a graphic representation that can be dynamically affected by live real time data.

Issue with Web Deployment

So i've had a slight setback in the form of not being able to deploy the current java applet for web use, due to usage permissions. Fortunately Martin Beck offered his help and resolved the issue by adapting the original code to be run on a web page.

Without his help this would have certainly denied me the opportunity to allow this to be a web based project and would have had to resort to running it directly from the java editor, which wouldn't have been ideal at all.

Further Progression

The project is progressing well. Previously I had set up the java project to pull in one data stream from Portland Square and enabled it to change the opacity levels of an associated image depending on the input of data it was receiving.

So far I have adapted this further so that now it pulls in multiple data streams from a variety of sensors linked with the building. I have connected a total of six sensors from Portland Square and are the following:

Lecture Theatre A - Co2

Lecture Theatre B - Co2

Lecture Theatre C - Co2

Main Electricity Meter - of the entire building

Hot & Cold Water usage of the entire building

The next stage is to start designing a graphic representation of the building that is is to be connected to the above sensors.

Project Progression

So to update the progress of the dynamic info graphic, I have managed to setup and adapt the java application so that it pulls in specified data from Portland Square so that it changes the alpha channels of the associated image linked to each sensor.

This will display the values of each sensor as they rise and fall depending on the opacity levels of the each image associated with it. The next stage is to adapt the project further by adding multiple sensors and to change the levels of how they might appear.

Once that is setup I need to adapt the java application to be deployed for web use.

Live Data Resource

So after deciding to move away from using live GPS data for technical reasons, I need to replace the input of data with another form of real time information in order to create a dynamic info graphic.

I decided to visualise the changes of data associated within a static environment, in this case a building...Portland Square based in the heart of Plymouth Universities campus. The building itself features a number of sensors that detect the changes in levels and values of resources and natural elements, from electrical usage to the levels of Co2, within specific rooms to the wind speed surrounding the building.

I intend to use a selection of these sensor outputs and incorporate them into a visual graphic that will determine the appearance of the visualisation and as a means of representing time based data flow in a more graphical form.

The information from the building is retrieved via XML and all available sensors are found at

http://arch-os.scce.plymouth.ac.uk/html_data.php?source=all_bms

The application will be built using Java and deployed as a web based application that will run in real time enabling the visual representation of a constantly changing building over time. First thing to do is to get the required data from the building and into Java to output a value.

Co-Mob Progression

The progression of the Co-Mob GPS visualisation idea is moving on slowly. I'm having issues with bringing data from the GPS applications server into Quartz Composer in XML form. It seems as if the format of Co-Mob is in ColdFusion which I am completely unfamiliar with.

I am thinking of developing the project to lead in another direction away from GPS data due to my lack of technical knowledge in this area, but still intend to use live real time data to produce a dynamic visualisation or representation of the data provided over time.

Current Idea

So after Investigating CoMob further I decided it would be a great application to use in order to create a GPS based art piece that would be in real time. I thought about ways in which it could be displayed, and mike suggested I looked at Apple's Quartz Composer. Its a visual editing program used by apple to make iTunes visualisers, screensavers etc. It can use real time data to manipulate the visuals in accordance to the data its being sent. For example the iTunes Visualiser uses an audio input to change the shape and match the beat of the track with the visuals.

Luckily Quartz Composer can feed XML data into it which is exactly what the CoMob application will receive at the specified server.

So the idea for the project is to setup a server site that other CoMob users can set their apps to which will then send all the data of users GPS whereabouts that can be fed into Quartz Composer in Realtime to achieve a live visual representation of GPS locative media. I hope to display the live feeds on the large screen outside Portland Square building or even set up a live stream on a website using the quartz composer web plugin.

My next step is to start playing around with Quartz and putting data into to it and seeing what kind of results I get from XML data. In the mean time I will keep thinking about the output of the visualisation.