Final Project Documentation

Title:

Arabic Identity Patterns

Project Description & Intentions:

For this project, I wanted to bring the beauty of my culture, yet make everyone relate to it. Therefore, I have decided to use the Arabic letters to create different patterns according to a certain rules or locations set for every letter. The participant will be able to type three letters to create different patterns every time they play. I chose three as a number for the viewer’s inputs, because it is an enough input to represent a person’s identity and to create an interesting patterns. To clarify, people will start relating to the piece by their inputs such as, having their first initial of their full name or their loved ones. Moreover, choosing three letters will help with creating a high range of patterns, which will keep the participant interested to interact with the piece longer. However, each participant will read or see the piece differently according to their background. To clarify, a person who do not understand Arabic will only be able to see the transformation of the English letters and the beauty of the positive and negative space its creating. On the other hand, a participant who can read arabic will have an extra layer of understanding the letters and being able to read them. Therefore, each participant will have different experiences according to their inputs and knowledge.

Class Material Connection:

Desmond Paul Henry was my inspiration for my final project. I liked the simplicity of his work, where he repeated a simple shape in a piece and created an interesting dynamic results. I found it fascinating how a simple shape being continuously placed in a certain rule could have so much power on affecting the positive and negative space. Therefore, I decided for my final project to create patterns from repeated Arabic letters. When the participant will type three letters, positive and negative space will start playing a role in how people visualize each result. Moreover, I decided to use Processing to create my piece, so I can have a more playful and people engaged piece. Therefore, the computer will keep reacting to participants’ inputs and create different patterns through time.

Technical Description:

I used Processing, where I chose a specific studied locations for each letter to have a more interesting pattern. Then, I downloaded an Arabic font into Processing and used the Arabic keyboard to transfer each English letter the viewer press into Arabic. Therefore, the viewer will be using an English keyboard, but actually pressing Arabic letters, which creates a nice transformation between the input and the output. Finally, I have the piece projected on a wall for a better final presentation.

Images:

I started working on visualizing how I can have more interesting shapes to help me with setting the rules in Processing. I found that having the letters in flipped horizontally of vertically helps with that as you can see bellow:

I started experimenting my idea on English letters to see how it will work first:

Some examples of the final results:

Code:

PFont font;

char[] input = {'ا', 'ب', 'ت'};

int inputIndex = 0;

int x= 35;

int y= 50;

void keyPressed() {

if ( key >= 'ا' && key <= 'ي' && inputIndex < 3) {

input[inputIndex] = (char)(key);

inputIndex++;

}

if ( key == BACKSPACE && inputIndex > 0) {

inputIndex--;

input[inputIndex] = ' ';

}

if (key == ' ') {

input[0] = ' ';

input[1] = ' ';

input[2] = ' ';

inputIndex = 0;

}

}

void setup() {

size(350,303 );

background(255);

stroke(0);

//font = loadFont ("BankGothic-Medium-100.vlw");

font = createFont ("GEMBFaresMedium-Medium", 75);

}

void draw() {

background(0);

textFont (font);

textAlign(CENTER);

fill(255);

//1st

text(input[0], x, y);

pushMatrix();

translate(x+53, y);

scale(-1,1);

text(input[1], 0, 0);

popMatrix();

text(input[2], x+28, y+25);

//2nd

text(input[1], x+112, y);

pushMatrix();

translate(x+168, y);

scale(-1,1);

text(input[0], 0, 0);

popMatrix();

pushMatrix();

translate(x+140, y+25);

scale(-1,1);

text(input[2], 0, 0);

popMatrix();

//3rd

pushMatrix();

translate(x+29, y+75);

scale(1,-1);

text(input[2], 0, 0);

popMatrix();

pushMatrix();

translate(x, y+100);

scale(1,-1);

text(input[0], 0, 0);

popMatrix();

pushMatrix();

translate(x+56, y+99);

scale(-1,-1);

text(input[1], 0, 0);

popMatrix();

//4th

pushMatrix();

translate(x+138, y+75);

scale(-1,-1);

text(input[2], 0, 0);

popMatrix();

pushMatrix();

translate(x+168, y+100);

scale(-1,-1);

text(input[0], 0, 0);

popMatrix();

pushMatrix();

translate(x+112, y+100);

scale(1,-1);

text(input[1], 0, 0);

popMatrix();

}

Johnny Cash Project's Response

In the Johnny Cash Project, fans from everywhere can participate in recreating Johnny Cash’s last video. On this website, people will be able to choose any frame of his video and draw it in their own way and style. They will be able to see different variations of the video as people keep adding more drawings with time. Viewers will also be able to see the process of peoples’ drawings, which portraits what Cash and his music meant to each one of them. Cash’s fans have also added some symbols to help them deliver their messages to others and help keeping Cash’s memory alive. This website is a living evolving memorial for Johnny Cash and what a better way to keep remembering and honoring such a great musician by being part of his own work. Moreover, combining all the different styles of each drawing is creating an amazing result of a final video. This work is example of how people participating for the same cause could create a great piece of work. In my opinion, it helps his fans to get over their grief by knowing that they have participated and connected with some of his other fans.

Chris Jordan's Response

Chris Jordan’s work points out some facts and statistics that causes problems in the American society. He is showing some examples of addictions such as, smoking, abuse or misuse of prescription drugs, and breast augmentation surgeries. For each piece, he uses the right object hoping to trigger people’s feelings of anger or grief back. To clarify, he used prisoners’ uniforms to present the 2.3 million american prisoners in the american prison in 2005, while he used barbie dolls to present the 32000 of breast augmentation surgeries that happens in America each month. Moreover, Jordan is not only showing the statistics visually, he is also creating a piece of art for each topic. For example, to raise awareness of the number of people dying each year from smoking cigarettes, he created a collage of boxes of cigarettes laid out to create the painting by Van Gogh “skull with cigarette”. In other words, Jordan is choosing the right visual to present each data for each topic, and laying the visuals in the right layout to create an appropriate big picture for the topic. In my opinion, his work is really inspiring people and other artists. He is using art to raise awareness and deliver an important message to people, which is what art is all about. Furthermore, he is using technology to help them rethink their decisions. Hoping for people to start changing our societies for the best.