Description

Still Life is an interactive gallery piece that takes traditional still life painting into the fourth dimension with a motion-sensitive frame on a rotating mount.

Concept

Years ago I had the idea of a still life painting that wasn’t so still, but could never quite wrap my head around how to build it. After various experiments and explorations, I settled on Unity 3D as the ideal tool to make it happen.

Technology

On the hardware side is a custom-framed television connected to a rotating mount from Ergomart. Attached to the back of the television is a spatial sensor from Phidgets, makers of fine USB sensors. On the software side is a simple C application to communicate with the sensor and feed the data to a Unity 3D scene. The scene itself consists of a camera tied to the sensor data with all lights and objects parented to it so they rotate in unison.

Gallery

Thanks

Many thanks to Andrew Butterworth for additional 3D support and Kenny Breit for helping shoot and edit the demo video. This project was produced at Süperfad.

Description

Created with Loren Judah of Süperfad Seattle, this second entry in the Mission Control series takes things even further with streaming video in a physical 3D space.

View the live version here: Mission Control II: Video Display System

Concept

After completing the first Mission Control, we were highly motivated to push the boundaries of web technologies even further, this time creating a 3D environment for browsing the catalog of Süperfad’s work in a more immersive way than a traditional web portfolio. We especially wanted to experiment with removing the normal layer of flat UI elements in favor of a more pure and tactile set of interactions.

Technology

The backend of MC II is driven by a custom PHP script that pulls data from the Süperfad website in JSON and then processes each project. The script grabs additional video data from the Vimeo Developer API and generates the dynamic background textures with a combination of GD and ImageMagick calls. Theora versions of each video are created as needed with ffmpeg2theora. Key front-end technologies include HTML5 video, CSS3 effects and, most notably, WebGL, which allows for hardware-accelerated 3D graphics directly within a web browser.

Thanks

Many thanks to Ricardo Cabello (Mr.doob) for his wonderful 3D Javascript engine, Three.js, and to AlteredQualia for his helpful feedback on performance tuning.

Demonstration

Description

Thumblr is a quick Tumblr slideshow I built to experiment with both the Tumblr API and CSS3 animations. The initial version was completed in Seattle, Washington on 2012-01-07.

Try it here: thumblr.j38.net

Description

Created with Loren Judah of Süperfad Seattle, this visualizer displays global web traffic for superfad.com along with various information about the home city of each visitor.

View the live version here: Mission Control: Global Traffic Visualizer

Concept

Every day, people from all around the world visit superfad.com to learn about us. We thought it would be nice to learn about them for a change. With that in mind, we created a global traffic visualizer to teach us more about our web audience and the cities and countries in which they live.

Technology

The visuals are driven by data from Google Analytics, the Yahoo! Developer Network and GeoNames. Key technologies include HTML5, CSS3 and, most notably, WebGL, which allows for hardware-accelerated 3D graphics directly within a web browser.

Thanks

Many thanks to Ricardo Cabello (Mr.doob) for his wonderful 3D Javascript engine, Three.js, as well as his very helpful feedback on performance tuning.

Demonstration

This is the final cover design for Ryan Manchester‘s album, The Expanse.

Design explorations can be seen on Flickr. It was completed in Seattle, Washington on 2011-04-02.

This is a logo I began for Amber "Bones" Harner in the spring of 2009 and never quite knew how to finish. I decided to finally wrap it up almost two years later.

It was completed in Seattle, Washington on 2011-03-08.

Written in the summer of 2010 as I traveled across Europe by train, this is a collection of letters to myself at various points throughout the 30 years I’ve lived so far. They include words of warning and wisdom I wish I’d had along the way.

Features 17 full-color illustrations by cartoonist Maré Odomo.

This book was completed in Seattle, Washington on 2011-03-08.

Buy Letters to Myself

This action for Apple’s Automator allows the user to archive a web page as a PDF document in a given workflow.  It has a number of options that are mostly obvious, but sooner or later I’ll probably write detailed instructions.

Status

Each new release of OSX breaks this action in new and exciting ways. The versions below should work in *most* cases, but I’m not terribly interested in supporting this action anymore, so if you’ve got a problem, check out the source.

Downloads

Download URLs as PDFs 0.5.0 (Snow Leopard)
Download URLs as PDFs 0.4.2 (Leopard)
Download URLs as PDFs 0.3.1 (Older)

Changelog
License

Donations

Developing and maintaining this action has taken a lot of time I’d rather have spent doing something cool. If you’ve found this action helpful, please consider donating a few dollars via PayPal.

Donate to J38

I started a new podcast with Maré Odomo and Cory Schmitz. People send in their secrets and we air them out to the world. Please check it out.

“I Replaced The Part You Broke, My Dear, And Now I’m Feeling Fine”

This is a pair of laser engraved panels I created for a group show at Grass Hut in Portland, Oregon next month called x²=√♥. Opening night is January 6th, 2010. Come!

They were cut at Metrix Create Space and completed in Seattle, Washington on 2010-12-24.