chrisblunt.com

The digital organism - the beginnings of AI - requires the construction of a software life form, dependent on something, and free (as far as is possible) to carry out it’s life unaided. The organism is therefore nothing like the dependent life simulations, such as Tamigotchi toys.
I am working in a pair group to build our organism which references the idea of buildings as organisms. Built on the idea that an unused building decays and collapses, it would appear that buildings are as dependent on us for survival as we are on them. With this in mind, a building becomes almost parasitic in its organic form.

Our ‘digital parasite’ will utilise 3 bluetooth-equipped laptops, running Salling Clicker in aggressive connection mode. One person (the host) will therefore become the life-giver (and -taker) for the three laptops, each having been placed in an atrium within Portland Square.

The connected atrium will grow from the life-energy it receives from its host, whilst the other atria will cry out for attention as they gradually decay to the point of death. Each laptop will be connected to the atrium sound system, and assigned a vocal personality. This will hopefully play on the emotion of the host in deciding which atrium (if any) will survive
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The Media Industries module requires that in teams we establish and promote a pseudo-media company both on- and off-line. I have recently completed work on our company’s web site, www.undefinedexpressions.com. For this site, I designed the plastic vector icons and coded the site itself.

As well as being an excellent experience in developing my graphic style and skills (note the inkwell logo above…), the project has also been a learning experience in the triumphs and pitfalls of CSS design, even more so than this site. When will Internet Explorer (PC) get native PNG alpha channel support?

The Digital Organism was completed and presented at Apollo 11 on 1 November 2004. With no thanks to the stroke of bad luck that hit us 2 hours before due to present, the organism behaved well and the booming voices echoing around Portland Square certainly created an unnerving atmosphere.
The final project relied on 3 laptops, 1 bluetooth mobile device and a few hundred feet of cabling to connect to Portland Square’s impressive CHASM sound system.

True to the technical design of our original plan, the end result was an impressive display of the dependency modern architecture has on us to sustain its form and being.

The project earned an overall score of 77%. I worked on this project with Duncan Shingleton.

have developed a few key ideas to explore for this project, based on other digital art practices and various technological prototypes.

The idea for digital communicative mapping (DCM) was born out of investigation into using Bluetooth technology to construct an abstract, dynamic 3D map of peoples’ communicative abilities compared with their physical presence. According to research, it was possible to modify a standard USB Bluetooth adapter to have a range of up to 1 mile, using standard components.After experimenting with various coding options, (Cocoa, Java-Cocoa, Pure Java), I began coding a prototype for this implementation using Mac OS X, Java and AvetanaBluetooth. However, it soon became clear that Mac OS X 10.3 does not support ad-hoc device enquiries, and instead requires that a ‘manual’ device search if performed first. For a dynamic mapping system, this is totally unsuitable and hence the idea has been put on hold. According to speculation, the new Mac OS X (10.4) will support dynamic device enquiries, so I may ressurect this idea at a later date.2. Digital Realms

My second idea, based on works such as Hidden Worlds, is an Internet based application that shows the conversion of one’s voice into the digital domain. Based on the idea that nearly all our physical expressions can and are in some way digitised to cross the real-virtual border, the project takes peoples’ voices and shows this transformation.As more people login to the website, it is possible to see the flow of digital communication through the virtual world, and watch the it pass from and to the real world. I have produced a prototype of this idea using Shockwave 3D to demonstrate the fundamental concepts. Future incarnations may be converted to Java3D or Processing.