The exhibition is a series of data visualizations that weave together a story about population increase, climate change, natural disasters, refugees, and remittances and there affects on global communities. I was brought on to design and program the scenario about natural disasters and had the opportunity to work with three other amazing designer/programmers: Stewart Smith, Aaron Myers, and Bobby Pietrusko. The video was projected on a wall that circumscribes the gallery, surrounding the viewer with and immersive visual and audio experience. All visuals were created using Processing on the Eclipse platform.

The scenario on natural disasters compares the magnitude and frequency of different types of disasters with the population affected by them. Through this, we see that disasters in the “global south” have a greater affect than those in the “global north” or “rich north”. In trying to understand this concept, I created an application that parses a database of disaster data (year, magnitude, location, displacement) and allows you to compare these sets of data at various scales. I hope to post this application shortly, but for now check out the images:

I kept with this same concept for the postcard and choose two images that I felt most representative to the project. The backside contained further location information and used graphics to convey a sense of physical architecture.

The project was documented by creating a “memory map” that contained snippets from various quotes and photographs take over the course of the project. These snippets were put in a grid styled reminiscent of late 20th century road maps.

The opening and exhibition was a success, attended by the mayor and other community leaders. There are plans to work on future projects with REMAP in the near future.

Articles:
UCLA Today

What began as a simple end of the year party ended in a culmination of art, music, community, history, technology, and last but not least—tacos. UCLA’s TFT course in Interactive Multimedia teamed with REMAP to explore the history of Los Angeles through the integration of cutting edge Nokia N83 mobile devises and Cisco Systems WiFi grid. We used these devises to map Los Angeles in innovative ways using GPS and REMAP’s massive image database.

Monumento 872 was, at it’s core, a way of sharing these “maps” with the community. Though the collaborative conception of our class, this event was born. We could not have made it happen without the support of the REMAP team, especially Vids Samanta and Jeff Burke. Vids was the key programmer who developed the Python software for the Nokia Devices. They were loaded with a “GPS medal detector” application. When you came in proximity of a defined GPS location, your device would be fed a “hidden treasure” in the form of historical information and images about the location you were at.

The event was a huge success with a turnout of over 1000 people of various sub-cultures from across Los Angeles. It took place a Chiperaki and the adjacent historical park just north of Chinatown. The event include various music artists performing in the park, a mixed media art show, taco truck, and the interactive devices.

This piece was presented as part of the Visual Music Concert performed by UCLA Design | Media Arts students under the direction of Casey Reas. Each student chose from a list of experimental sound pieces. We then used Processing to create our representation of this piece through animate visuals. My visuals are an abstraction of Matmos’ piece “Germs Burn For Darby Crash”. It was originally intended as a performance, as the visuals were 50% controlled by myself and 50% by the sound itself.

The first stop on my SAS voyage around the world. Though I felt a bit unsafe at times, the people were wonderful and were ready to debate the current political situation at a flip of the hat. Don’t miss out on the “Cachapas” or their signature dish “Pabellon Criollo”.