I made a mockup box to experiment with creating organic shapes to hang LEDs on by wrapping fishing wire across it. The shapes that I made by doing this were ideal and similar to the universe simulation, however when I tested it in the dark with LEDs the light reflected off the strings and didn't create the effect I wanted at all.. 

My plan at the moment is to build it slightly bigger with thinner wood, and to use thin black string to hang LEDs on.

I am using the animation room at college to present my work which is good because it is a completely dark space. The only problem is that I would prefer to do this on a much bigger scale, in keeping with my views on immersive and experiential art. I also think that working on a bigger scale would communicate my original ideas behind the work better.

3D Graphs - house of 3D

http://www.houseof3d.com/index.html

This allows you to map different mathematical equations and see how they look on the 3D graph. 

This is the graph for y=-1/(x^2 + z^2)

For my data to match the simulation that I looked at before I would have to use something like the The Friedmann equation about the expansion of the universe but these equations are super complicated and need very powerful computers just to run the data.

So basically it doesn't matter what data I use, because it will still communicate the same idea. As long as it is something space related that still holds onto the whole 'carl sagan' concept, it will be saying the same thing.

Scatter graphs

I need to find some data about space which I can plot across my cube that bunches in the middle, or scatters almost randomly. I dont want it to actually look like one of these graphs, I would rather it showed loads of data that had no correlation in order to mimic the original simulations.

Tutorial notes

STILL need to articulate underlying themes that link to critical perspectives.


Materiality
real --> digital
parallel = physical dark room camera to digital photography
visualising otherwise impossible to understand data


My previous installation was experiential - no data - respond emotionally 
= more like James Turrell


Need to
-choose data for final piece. Doesn't matter what data it is or how to represent it.


Research
Systems art
Susanne Triester
Mike Nelson - amnesiac shrine


Research that relates to underlying themes
- Lucy Skaer - 'embodiment of a graphic'. Abstract and Physical relationship. + 'imposter artefact'
- Tate Modern 2007 workshop - inherent __ the replica and its implications
- Chrissy Illes - 2004. Projected image in american art. Xscreen momok

So it's definitely doable.

Formation of the universe simulations

I found a website full of simulations of how the Universe began. As soon as I saw them I knew I needed to make them 3D. As far as I can see they fit perfectly into my project visually and conceptually..

"One of the greatest challenges of modern astrophysics is understanding how various structures, such as galaxies and galaxy clusters, form within the framework of the Big Bang cosmology.

The current theory of structure formation, the extension of the Big Bang model called the Cold Dark Matter (CDM) scenario, predicts that massive galaxies and galaxy clusters were built from smaller galaxies that collided and merged, inducing bursts of star formation and resulting in the different types of structures observed today.

The sequence of events is thought to be seeded by quantum fluctuations in the very early Universe. These tiniest fluctuations were stretched by many orders of magnitude during a brief period of extremely rapid exponential expansion of the Universe called inflation. The growth of structures is thought to be governed by mysterious "dark matter" which constitutes about 85% of all matter in the Universe. The entire history of the cosmos in all its complexity is governed by a handful of cosmological parameters, such as the density of ordinary matter (baryons), the density of ``dark matter'', thought to consist of weakly interactive particles, and ``dark energy''.

The theory is both elegant and simple as it connects the processes operating on the smallest imaginable scales during the first 10^-33 seconds in the evolution of the Universe to the formation of the largest structures observed today."

Formation of the large-scale structure in the Universe: filaments

"The movie stills pictured above illustrate the formation formation of clusters and large-scale filaments in the Cold Dark Matter model with dark energy. The frames show the evolution of structures in a 43 million parsecs (or 140 million light years) box from redshift of 30 to the present epoch (upper left z=30 to lower right z=0). Click to see the full-resolution version of each panel. At the initial epoch (z=30), when the age of the Universe was less than 1% of its current age, distribution of matter appears to be uniform. This is because the seed fluctuations are still fairly small. As time goes on, the fluctuations grow resulting in a wealth of structures from the smallest bright clumps which have sizes and masses similar to those of galaxies to the large filaments. Notice the filament spanning the entire box from left to right and how it becomes more and more pronounced with time. Also, note that it does not change much between z=0.5 and z=0 (i.e., the last two panels). This is because the expansion of the universe is in the stage of acceleration as the "dark energy" becomes dominant at z<1. On large scales seen here, gravity cannot compete with the dark energy-driven acceleration and the growth of structures ceases. As the contraction of large-scale structures is halted they expand with the universe and appear "frozen" in our co-moving system of coordinates."

"Formation of a group of galaxies quite similar to our Local Group in which our galaxy, the Milky Way, is approaching our biggest neighbour the Andromeda Galaxy. The region shown here is 1/10 of the box shown in the filament formation page and is equal to 4.3 megaparsec or 14 million light years. Our "camera" is tracking the progenitor of the group so that it is always new the center of the field of view. The formation of an object such as our Local Group proceeds hierarchically in the Cold Dark Matter models. Small-mass objects form first at z>5, they quickly grow in size and violently merge with each other, creating increasingly larger and larger system. This galactic "cannibalism" persists even to the present day epoch (z=0). Indeed, the two main objects that you can see approaching at z~0, will also merge in about one billion years into the future. Note that many of the "cannibalized" systems do not loose their identity and become satellites orbiting in the gravitational pull of larger systems. The groups like the one modeled in these simulations are very common in the Universe. In fact, up to half of all galaxies are thought to be part of groups of different sizes."

To me these stills all look like my LED installation but on a more complicated level. 

I have said before that I am intrigued by the possibility of making something which references space not only visually but in terms of representing real data, and this is a perfect opportunity.

My ideas so far are as follows,

I could make a suspended box filled with a network of LEDs that represent one of these stills, carefully copied from the images

I could find the data used to make these simulations and run it through one of the programs I have been investigating to make a screenbased reproduction of the same simulation

Or I could make a suspended box of LEDs which *run from the simulation data*...

If anyone has the slightest clue how to do this that would be really useful!

simulations were performed at the National Center for Supercomputer Applications
by Andrey Kravtsov (The University of Chicago) and Anatoly Klypin (New Mexico State University).
Visualizations by Andrey Kravtsov.

QR codes and vincentinorbit

I follow an artist on twitter called vincentinorbit. I was checking out his blog and found he had been making art using QR codes. A QR code is  like a barcode designed to be scanned by a mobile phone with a camera, and usually contains a URL that takes the phone to a website. 

I thought QR codes were basically self promotion meeting ultimate geekery and made one for this page straight away which I may make into stickers or put around college.

My blog's QR code

vincentinorbit has a project where he invites people to use a blank QR code to draw their own pattern and fill in the squares. I saw a few people had done it but my favourite was one done by a child that didn't really look like a QR code at all.  Over the past few years I have become more familiar with making art on photoshop than by hand, so I did what seemed natural to me and pasted in some parts of my current work. It ended up being a very loose interpretation but I enjoyed breaking the rules!

(and naturally, the post has its own QR code)

I would like to make some 2D work of my sketches and ideas over the past few months for my assessment so this could be a good way to get myself back into some drawing.
For anyone who isn't here to assess my work, vincentinorbit's website has some lovely drawings and ongoing projects that I recommend you check out! http://vincentinorbit.com/

Mona Hatoum

"The work interrogates the notions of ‘boundaries’ through the depiction of a world map – an ongoing theme in the artist’s work. Hot Spot is a cage-like globe, approximately the size of a person’s height and arm span, which tilts at the same angle as the earth. Using delicate neon to outline the contours of the world on its surface, the work buzzes with an intense energy, bathing its surroundings in a luminescent red glow. Compelling and seemingly dangerous, Hot Spot suggests that it is not simply contested border zones that are political hot spots but an entire global situation: what Hatoum describes as a ‘world continually caught up in conflict and unrest’."http://www.whitecube.com/ 

Tron and JT Nimoy

Josh Nimoy created the visuals for the movie Tron Legacy, which has stunning visual graphics which almost steal the entire focus of the film.

Nimoy uses C++ and basically similar stuff to what I was looking at when I briefly explored processing. Essentially, everything he does is a complete mystery to me, so I won't try to summarise it any more than that. In his own words...

"I made software art before there was Flash or Processing. Things have not grown easier or harder, they are simply different. I am not just a user of Adobe and 3D programs. I work in the source ideas from which those programs originate. If I need a new algorithm, I learn it from theories, ask one of my peers, hunt for reusable code, or invent my own way. My most contagious meme is BallDroppings. My most visible work is commercial. My artiest works have shown in serious galleries and museums." http://jtnimoy.net/about.php

His work is exciting for me because it further shows that anything can be made with the right computer knowledge. It just so happens that his visuals for Tron Legacy are aesthetically similar to the sort of things I would like to make, but they were what drew me to his work initially.

I found JT Nimoy from a tweet by Golan Levin - and here is the original blog post.

(He includes the code for these 'shimmering stars' in openframeworks, I am working on understanding what that even means)