As a design enthusiast, I have had the privilege of exploring various design technologies during my tenure at Parsons. Below are some of the projects I have undertaken that have helped sharpen my design skills, passion and dedication towards my creative practice.
I read an excerpt of Tactics and Poetics of Invisible Writing by Amy Suo Wu, which mentions the idea of "sousveillance", a citizen tactic that monitors an activity of a corporation or a body of governance. I was inspired by this idea and wanted to create a project, so i decided to find existing public APIs that host JSON datasets on the web, then consider how it might serve our interests of creating a sousveillance tool.
As I started finding APIs that I wanted to look at, I decided to look into NYC 311 public portals as I was interested in seeing their data.To anyone who does not know about this, 311’s mission is to provide the public with quick, easy access to all New York City government services and information while maintaining the highest possible level of customer service. 311 allows other government bodies to focus on their core missions and manage their workload efficiently. 311 also helps City agencies improve their service delivery by providing accurate and consistent data tracking and analysis of all service requests.311 provides access to New York City government services through eight platforms: Call Center, Social Media, Mobile App, Text, Video Relay Service and TTY/text telephone.311 serves the public and handles all requests for government and non-emergency services, connecting residents, business owners, and visitors with the information and people who can help them best.
I initially thought I would make a slimy squishy ball that changes its shape but working with changing complicated forms seemed intimidating to get done in time, so I decided to make a face that blows up a bubblegum instead! I sketched out a basic face blowing a gum but it seemed incomplete so I decided I will add some interactivity with patterns in the background. After making all the elements with the help of functions like 2D Primitives, if else and beginShape(); curveVertex();. I discovered behinShape(); this week which was fun to figure out but it did take me some time to understand how the coordinates work. I then used mousePressed(); and random(); functions to change the colours of my background and the pattern on it. I used mouseX to make things move; the bubble gets bigger, the eyes sneakily move from left to right and the background elements move as well. I did want to include the popping of the bubble but I was out of time, but I will explore that too.
