Tim Stutts: ITP Project Blog

View video of program here.

The Pitch

A graphical time-based display of statistics updated in real-time, which will dramatically give meaning to the Iraqi civilian death count, while respectfully acknowledging the over 48,000 deaths individually.

Description

Joseph Stalin said “One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.” Iraqi Death toll Shuffle will give emotional weight and meaning to the civilian death count in Iraq, a number which, on its own, is sufficiently large to be just a statistic. We will do this through a deceptively simple time-based visual presentation based on frequently updated statistics from iraqbodycount.org . When the program is launched from the web, it will display the death count in numerals. It will also begin counting up from zero using small red icons of human bodies. As the number of bodies approaches 100, it becomes increasingly apparent that together they form the shape of a skull. When the count of red bodies reaches 100, the count begins again but a single white skull, representing 100 civilian deaths, is added to the display. The red body cycle repeats over and over again and white skulls are added to the display until the most recent total of Iraqi civilian deaths is reached (Currently around 50,000). As the count begins, users will be invited to guess how long it will take at the end of the count, and their guesses will be compared to the actual time elapsed (several hours). It is our expectation that when implemented on the web, users will allow the program to run in the foreground or background until it is complete.

In the context of the ITP show, guests who only view the display once near the beginning of the count would get a sense of scale from the size of the frame to be filled. Ideally guests would see the display more than once, possibly on the way in and out, and get a sense of change over time.

Personal Statement

When we began developing the Iraqi death count shuffle we had a number of goals. The first was to create a new way of meaningfully depicting large statistics. The method we developed of graphically displaying large numbers over time can easily be adapted to the depiction of many different types of large statistics, including figures related to national budgets, resource consumption, demographic change, national jellybean consumption, etc.

Second by choosing the Iraqi civilian death count as our demonstration statistic, we hope to raise the quality of debate about the Iraqi war, by providing meaningful, accurate information in an easily understandable manner.

Finally we are interested in exploring and promoting discussion of notions of objectivity, politicization and propaganda in relationship to statistics. By dramatically presenting the Iraqi civilian death count are we politicizing this statistic in a biased manner? Already we have triggered surprisingly vigorous debate among our classmates. It has been argued that any depiction of Iraqi civilian deaths is likely to increase opposition to the war and that by making these numbers more meaningful, we are biased to the political left. On the other hand, it has been suggested that by basing our display on statistics for Iraqi civilian deaths which exclude possibly large numbers of unverifiable deaths we are biased towards the right. Perhaps by basing our display on the most rigorously verified statistic available and avoiding inflammatory graphics in favor of simple and accurate iconography, we are letting viewers come to their own conclusions about the implication of the statistic and being as unbiased as possible. On the other hand it has been suggested that by using simple video game like graphics we are dehumanizing victims of war and distancing the audience from the reality of death.

Audience

This project is intended to be distributed over the Internet. It is our hope that will be viewed by voters and decision-makers and that will inform the debate on the Iraq conflict. Our intention is to present useful data accurately and without bias.

User Scenario

We hope that users will view “Iraqi Death Toll Shuffle” over the Internet. We intend to construct a website to support it. Users will be able to either run our program directly from the website or download it as an applet. We also hope to gather data on people’s guesses as to how long the count will take.

References

www.iraqbodycount.org

Graphics and Concept: Dave Gordon
Programming: Tim Stutts
Special Thanks: Shawn Van Every

BOOLEAN is a program which uses a webcamera to generate music. It was written in Processing using the Ess library.

The webcamera image is filtered, creating a black and white image. The image is divided into 12 rows and 16 columns, creating 192 boxes. A balloon floats over each box. The balloons rate of inflation depends on the amount of dark pixels in its box. When the balloon reaches a maximum size it pops, triggering a percussive sample. A new balloon of a different color takes the place of the popped balloon.

Each row is associated with a different note. BOOLEAN scans through each column from left to right. The size of each balloon determines the amplitude of the note being played. Different colored balloons produce different sounds; teal balloons produce no sound, pink balloons produce a triangle wave, and orange balloons produce a square wave.

Like the Theremin, BOOLEAN is a musical instrument which does not need to be touched in order to be played.

Click here to download a beta version of the software.

View video of program here.

On a free afternoon, I decide to check out the Chelsea art scene. Boarding the X line at 4th Street, Washington Square, I travel in a soy-powered hyper-train and head northwest. On the train I am bombarded with moving advertisements controlled by eye-tracking software, incidentally designed by a former colleague, Lucas Longo. Originally intended to be a market research tool, the software is now also implemented to keep ads within a viewer’s field of vision. Looking down the aisle at an attractive young woman, I am unable to keep a CG Parrot out of view. The words “Parrot Paradise at the Bronx Zoo,” are scrolled onto a virtual banner that follows the bird. “Buggar off!” As a side note, British slang has completely taken over the former American slang, which fell out of popularity, once the hip-hop community shifted to UK Dubstep and Grime music.

Arriving at the 11th Avenue stop, I dismount, and walk past a stand selling pills—some nutritional, some experiential. I purchase a pack of “Protein Overload” and “Good, Serene Day,” and take them with a shot of aerosol water molecule assembly spray, solar cooled by my fleece Anthroplogie jacket. Anthropologie went to menswear several years back, once they realized their clothing could cater to aging pseudo-hippy mid-thirties males, like myself. I exit the station refreshed and ready. The sky is colored with pink smog—the city’s recent attempt to make air pollution prettier.

I’m in the Chelsea now. I have my doubts about this industrial, ultra-hip district in West Manhattan and all it’s pretentiousness. Today though, I decide to have an open attitude, and ignore the fact that this is essentially an art shopping mall for New York’s wealthiest, where current trends manifest themselves into art objects that sell for thousands of dollars.

A little background on the art world of 2016: The term “art objects” arrived on the scene about five years ago, when digital interactive works become so commonplace, that the “new media”—aside from it’s use as an historical reference point—was dropped from the art curriculums. The Chelsea, a monument on materialism, had become the natural final resting place of sold physical art. Paintings, drawings, sculptures, they are all still here.

I head to the Bitforms gallery on 20th Street. It’s located on the second floor of an unmarked brick building. I don’t know what to expect. These days, galleries do not announce what work is in show via the web. After all, the virtual reality and graphics capabilities of the modern duo quintuple-core processor with integrated video RAM are so resolute, that gallery goers would not need to make a trip out here in person to experience this. I enter a barren white room filled with minimal canvases. Bright light and hum from the air conditioning are the only other elements. These works feature highly detailed photographs of classically posed figures that are impossibly beautiful, framed in marble cut like ancient Greek architecture. The skin of the subjects are covered in a white body paint, giving the bodies a synthetic quality, as if they were rendered in 3D software from ten years back. In one of the photos, the body of a nude woman is reclined in some kind of prototype lawn chair, gazing up at a cloud of golden geometric patterns. In another, the face of a woman is covered in thousands of eyelashes. Finally my attention moves to the picture of a man with an outreached arm, whose crotch is conveniently hidden by a scarf-like piece of fabric suspended in midair. This is the kind of art that wealthy flat-owners around Central Park purchase for their flats—the perfect compliment to the historian with a lavish life style. Off to the side of the space, rests a text about the human face—one of the first books I’ve seen in a while. I flip through it and I’m reminded of a time, as an undergrad, when I had to lug these things around from class to class.

Speaking of class, I had to get back to ITP to prepare for an evening class. As a resident artist, I’d been investigating advanced audio synthesis techniques, in addition to teaching a course called Neural Networks for the Rest of You.

All and all, an interesting trip.

An early project that I wrote in Java-based Processing using eight moving points connected by transluscent vects. Fly the kite here.

As an excercize within Computational Media was making a ball bounce within a square. Here I have taken this a step further and programmed a square bouncing within a square, bouncing within a square, bouncing a within square…

My first project in Java-based Processing uses a series of dynamically offset circles to a create a spiraling effect. Sort of resembles a vinyl record. Watch it here.