Creative

Computation
for Visual

Communication
Design

WEEK 4 DAY 1

Data as Material

1 bit

Digital Information

0	1	0	0	0	0	0	1

1 or 0

ON or OFF

1 byte = 8 bits = 1 character

2^8 = 256 possibilities

Global data generated annually

1 byte = 8 bits = one character

1 zettabyte = 1000^7 bytes (21 zeros)

Data Production

Source: Statista

Data Science

= Recognising patterns in data

Machine Learning

= Advanced Pattern Recognition and Enhancement

Image Generation AIs

Stability AI
- Stable Diffusion
- Dream Studio
OpenAI
- DALL-E
- Midjourney
Craiyon
Adobe Firefly
Canva
Shutterstock

Datasets

GAN

= Generative Adversarial Network

Diffusion Model

Destructing data by adding noise

Generating samples by reducing noise

Inspired by fluid dynamics

Two competing Neural Networks

Guodong Zhao: How Stable Diffusion works, explained for non-technical people

Diffusion Model
Text to Image Generation

Latent Space & Manifold

"AI art is, in my view, soft propaganda for the ideology of prediction. As long as it remains tied to the paradigm and politics of ever-large models, increasing capital and marketing hyperbole, its contribution to art practice will have little meaning, if any."

Marco Donnarumma (2022) "AI Art Is Soft Propaganda for the Global North"

Image Generation as Ideology of Prediction

"Neoplatonic" Data Science

“Primary qualities such as number, magnitude, position and extension can be expressed mathematically, whereas aspects which seem to us an inseparable part of phenomena are relegated to secondary qualities”

Dan McQuillan (2018) "Data Science as Machinic Neoplatonism"

IDEAL FORM

IMPERFECT THING

WORLD OF IDEAS

WORLD OF MATTER

Objectivity of Data?

Materiality of Data

Representation of Data

Mapping of Data

Daina Taimiņa: Hyperbolic planes with crochet

Mapping of Data

Kim Costantino: Students for Obama/Romney (2012)

Data Visualisation

D3.js library for data visualisation

Data Visualisation

“If your main intent is not to communicate information in a concrete manner, you should not use infographics and data visualisation.”

Koponen & Hildén

Juuso Koponen & Jonatan Hildén: Tieto Näkyväksi (2016) Data visualization handbook (2019)

Data Visualisation

Barbara Hahn, Christine Zimmermann (2007)

Ryan MacEachern (2013)

Data Visualisation or Data Art?

Data Illustration

The Pyramid of Capitalist System (1919)

Data <--> Representation

“[...] The result is an emotional and poetic artwork using unpredictable yet precise algorithms that tell the story of financial recovery in a more immersive way.”

Generative Hut (2020)

@loackme (2020)

Data <--> Representation

Seung Lee: Baby's first year of sleep in the form of a knitted baby blanket (2019)

Disrupting Data?

Reddit: Data is ugly

Disrupting Data

Eevi Rutanen (2019) ColourShapeThing

Eevi Rutanen (2020) StockPoetry

Collecting Data

PROBLEM: WHERE AND HOW TO GET DATA TO USE AS RAW MATERIAL?

Collecting Data

Dear Data Project (2015) by Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec

Using data in p5.js

Writing directly into the sketch
- As strings
- As arrays
Loading a text file (.txt)
Loading a table (.csv)
Loading a JSON file
Using APIs
- Depending on the API,
  data might come as
  - XML
  - HTML
  - JSON
Working with data usually requires some cleaning / organising / parsing!

Tables

You can load tables in your sketch to access and parse the data
Formats like Microsoft Excel or Apple Numbers should be converted to CSV format first
Load the table in the preload() function using loadTable()

let myData = loadTable("path/to/file");

JSON

JSON is a file format that makes it easy to save and transfer data in a structured way
- Structure consists of JavaScript objects and JavaScript arrays
- It uses JavaScript syntax but also works with other languages
Organised in a hierarchical manner
- The format makes it easy to create categories and subcategories for the data
Load JSON files in the preload() function using loadJSON()

let myData = loadJSON("path/to/file");

APIs

An interface that allows one application to communicate with another application
Many companies and services provide APIs that allow developers to access their data and functionality
- Eg. displaying your Instagram feed, a custom Google Map, or weather data on your website
The data is retrieved by sending a request to a URL
- The request might contain details about your query, eg. search terms
APIs can often return data in different formats
- JSON, XML, HTML
Some APIs require authentication or payment
- You might have to sign up to get an API key to use the API

Resources for Data

Project Gutenberg
- Thousands of free books with expired copyrights
Corpora
- Large collection of fun and random datasets in JSON format
Kaggle
- Datasets in different formats
Google Dataset Search
- Search engine for public datasets
API List
- Large collection of useful APIs
Public APIs
- A directory of many public APIs
Datamuse API: Free word finding API
- Versatile and free API for finding words that match search criteria
Working with JSON
- Examples of how to access different elements in a JSON object
Daniel Shiffman tutorial
- Good tutorial about JSON files, APIs and libraries

Reference and Further Reading

Weekly Reading IV

John-Patrick Hartnett (2017): The Programmed Designer. Eye Magazine, Summer 2017

Read the article. Consider the impact of digital tools in your practice. (It's up to you how you define a tool in this context.)
- Which tools do you use?
- How do you use them?
- Why do you use them?
- Who has created the tools?
- Are the tools free or open source? If not, what is the profit model?
Answer some or all of these questions on the Week 4 Forum in approx. 3-10 sentences.
Reply to someone else's post.

Coding Workshop 4.1

What did we learn?

Nested loops
- Creating grids
  - "For every column, create rows"
Custom functions
- Declaring functions
- Calling functions

Basic concepts in computation

MEMORY
- Storing data and accessing it later
  - Variables, arrays, objects
SEQUENCE
- Running instructions in order
  - Functions, algorithms
SELECTION
- Making choices
  - Conditionals and logic (if, else, and, or, not)
REPETITION
- Doing the same thing more than once
  - Loops (for, while)

Arrays

PROBLEM:
HOW TO STORE AND ACCESS A LARGE NUMBER OF VALUES?

Arrays

An array is a variable that stores a list of data
Each item on the list is identified with its index number
- Index describes the item’s position in
  the array
- Indexes start from 0
The length and contents of an array can be modified

0

1

2

item

Array syntax

const myArray = [];

const myArray = [item0, item1, item2];

Use const in stead of let when declaring arrays.

Declare an empty array:

Declare an array with contained items:

An array can contain any type of data!

Numbers, strings, colours, images, other arrays...

array name (arbitrary)

square brackets

list of items, separated with commas

Accessing and changing arrays

const foods = ["pizza","burger","falafel"];
foods[0] //returns "pizza"
print(foods[2]); //prints "falafel"

foods[1] = "pasta";
//foods array is now ["pizza","pasta","falafel"]

Array items are accessed with their index

Array items can be changed using their index

ARRAY INDEXES ALWAYS START FROM 0!

Array length

const foods = ["pizza","pasta","falafel","burger"];
foods.length //returns 4

foods[foods.length-1]
//returns burger (the last element)

The length property returns the number of array items

Because the first item has index 0, the last item in the array always has index length-1

ARRAY INDEXES ALWAYS START FROM 0!

Array methods

const foods = ["pizza","burger"];
foods.push("salad"); //array is now ["pizza","burger","salad"]

New elements can be added to the end of array using push

Elements can be removed from the end of array using pop

const foods = ["pizza","burger","salad","risotto"];
foods.pop(); //array is now ["pizza","burger","salad"]

Elements can be removed from the beginning using shift

const foods = ["pizza","burger","salad","risotto"];
foods.shift(); //array is now ["burger","salad","risotto" ]

Stack = Last In First Out

Last item is on the top

First item is at the bottom

PUSH

POP

SHIFT

Array methods

const foods = ["pizza","burger","salad","risotto"];
let randomFood = random(foods);

Return a random element from the array using random

There’s also multiple other methods for arrays!
- Sorting, searching, removing, replacing, combining etc.
- If you can imagine it, it probably exists!

Arrays and loops

ARRAYS AND LOOPS
GO HAND IN HAND!

Arrays and loops

//looping through all the items in the array
for(let i=0; i<myArray.length; i++){
    print(myArray[i]); //print item at index i
}

For-loop can be used to traverse the array
- Accessing all the elements in the array one by one
  - Using or modifying the elements

Exercise 1: Artist name generator

Data used here is collected from the Corpora project
To make this exercise more simple, we are manually copying the contents of JS arrays into the sketch

Exercise 2: Array worm

VARIATION:

Draw the worm using interconnected lines:

Loop through the coordinates only until the second to last coordinate
Draw a line from each coordinate to the next coordinate in the array
- What is the index of the next coordinate after i?

Exercise 3: Moving bars

Exercise 4: Bouncing balls

Exercise 5: Text to Points

textToPoints() is used to deform the outline of the text
- It returns an array of points following the path for specified text
textBounds() is used to center the word on the canvas
- It returns the bounding box for a string of text

Exercise 6: Clickable Grid

Use a 2-dimensional array to store values in a grid
This way you can "save" the information about which grid cells have been clicked

Loading text files

loadStrings(filename, [callback], [errorCallback])

Reads the contents of a file and creates a String array of its individual lines
Use inside the preload function
Filename can also be a URL for external file hosted online
Can read files up to size of 64MB

let myText = loadStrings("textFile.txt");

Exercise 7: Dada Poem

Combine two different source texts randomly to create dadaist cut-up poetry!
You can download books as text files from Gutenber Project

Recap

//declare an array containing items
const foods = ["pizza","burger","salad","risotto"];
//acces elements in the array using indexes
let mySecondFood = foods[1]; //"burger"
//add a new element to end of array
foods.push("falafel");
//remove the last element
foods.pop();
//remove the first element
foods.shift();
//get a random item from array
let randomFood = random(foods);
//looping through all the items in the array
for(let i=0; i<myArray.length; i++){
    print(myArray[i]); //print item at index i
}
//get the outline of text as an array of points
let myPointArray = myFont.textToPoints("myText",x,y,textSize);
//load text from file into an array of strings
let myStringArray = loadStrings("myTextFile.txt");

To do

Post your cool coding creations on week 4 showcase!
Weekly reading IV
(due next Tuesday)

CC_w4_d1

By eevirutanen

Creative

Computation for Visual

Communication Design

Data as Material

Digital Information

Data Production

Data Science

Machine Learning

Image Generation AIs

Datasets

GAN

Diffusion Model

Diffusion Model Text to Image Generation

Latent Space & Manifold

Image Generation as Ideology of Prediction

"Neoplatonic" Data Science

Objectivity of Data?

Materiality of Data

Representation of Data

Mapping of Data

Mapping of Data

Data Visualisation

Data Visualisation

Data Visualisation

Data Visualisation or Data Art?

Data Illustration

Data <--> Representation

Data <--> Representation

Disrupting Data?

Disrupting Data

Collecting Data

Collecting Data

Using data in p5.js

Tables

JSON

APIs

Resources for Data

Reference and Further Reading

Weekly Reading IV

Coding Workshop 4.1

What did we learn?

Basic concepts in computation

Arrays

Arrays

0

1

2

Array syntax

Accessing and changing arrays

Array length

Array methods

Stack = Last In First Out

Array methods

Arrays and loops

Arrays and loops

Exercise 1: Artist name generator

Exercise 2: Array worm

Exercise 3: Moving bars

Exercise 4: Bouncing balls

Exercise 5: Text to Points

Exercise 6: Clickable Grid

Loading text files

Exercise 7: Dada Poem

Recap

To do

CC_w4_d1

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Diffusion Model
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