time is funny

A Website for Synesketch, my new artistic software project for textual emotion recognition & visualization, is finished. There you can find a downloadable code, documentation, gallary, info, new logo design, and a community portal.

Moreover, a post about the Synesketch was published on the Infosthetics blog, a major weblog for data visualization and visual communication!

Thanks to professor Michael Haller and this very generous Austrian scholarship, I’ll be spending one full month, October, in Hagenberg, small place near Linz, playing/working at the Media Interaction Lab, Department of Digital Media, Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences. It is a very cool place which glues art, technology, and interaction together, and probably best of that kind in Austria!

Also, the lab is connected with the world-famous Ars Electronica in Linz, a global leading platform for digital arts and media culture. I’ve missed the festival – Prix Ars Electronica, world’s premier cyberarts competition – but I can’t wait to see it’s Museum of the Future!

In a month or so, I’ll tell you my impressions.

“The Two Minutes of Eclipse”, a travel blog by Nenad Morača, Mario Janković-Romano, and me, about a 23 day eclipse chasing trip to Siberian and Mongolian never lands — is finished! All texts (unfortunately, still in Serbian) and 500+ photos, both geotagged on the interactive map, and more — could be found at:

http://sibir.krcadinac.com

So far (during last month and a half), blog had 20.000+ overall visits, or 350+ visits per day! Thank you all for reading!

Nenadov, Mario i moj putopisni blog o dvadesettrodnevnoj avanturi jurenja pomračenja Sunca po nedođijama Sibira i Mongolije je završen! Sve tekstove, više od 500 geotagovanih fotografija, interaktivnu mapu sa rutama i još svašta možete naći na:

http://sibir.krcadinac.com

Blog “Dva Minuta Pomračenja” je do sada (za oko mesec i po dana) imao preko 20.000 poseta, tj. preko 350 poseta po danu. Hvala vam svima na interesovanju!

Did you ever wonder how the emotion hidden in words could be transferred into the one caused by a picture? How do reading impressions look like? Is there a synesthesia-like abstract connection, hidden code, thread or a string, between poetry and painting? If yes, gather around, and let me tell you more about a new project of mine, about Synesketch.

Synesketch (Synesthesia + Sketch) is a bridge between words, images, and code. It is a computer program, free software library, interactive animation, and a creative open project for textual affect sensing and creative visualization of it.

Integrating several rather divers fields – natural language processing, affective computing, algorithmic visual art and design, animation, psychology and color theory – I have constructed a Java-based toy which scans a written conversation in real time (e.g. chat session), analyses emotional manifestations, and visualizes it via interactive algorithmic animated Processing graphics. Emotion types which can be recognized are the basic ones by Ekman: happiness, anger, fear, surprise, sadness, and disgust (on the picture you can see representative frames of these types, done by a demo visualization system, from left to right, top to bottom). One of the concrete Synesketch applications is the visual chat: while we talk, colors and shapes are being generated.

Besides being a new media experiment, an “automatic illuminator” with “artificial synesthesia”, Synesketch is also an open source free library, so that other Processing designers and artists can create their own text-based interactive works.

But, this is only a glimpse of the whole project. A lot, lot more on Synesketch later. For now, take a look at my thesis, where all of this is explained in detail:

http://www.krcadinac.com/papers/synesketch_rad.doc (in Serbian)

Da li ste se ikada zapitali kako se emocija skrivena u rečima može pretvoriti u onu izazvanu slikom? Kako doživljaju tokom čitanja zaista izgledaju? Postoji li apstraktna veza nalik na sinesteziju, skriveni kod, između poezije i slikarstva? Ako da, poslušajte nekoliko reči o mom novom projektu, projektu Synesketch.

Synesketch (Synesthesia + Sketch) je most između reči, slike i koda. To je kompjuterski program, softverska biblioteka, interaktivna animacija i kreativni otvoreni projekat za prepoznavanje i vizuelizaciju emotivnog sadržaja teksta.

Integrišući nekoliko solidno udaljenih oblasti – procesiranje prirodnog jezika, afektivno računarstvo, algoritamsku vizuelnu umetnost i dizajn, animaciju, psihologiju i teoriju boja – napravio sam Java igračku koja čita tekstualne razgovore u realnom vremenu (npr. čet sesije), prepoznaje manifestacije emocija i vizuelizuje ih interaktivnom algoritamskom animiranom Processing grafikom. Tipovi emocija koji mogu biti prepoznati su osnovni Ekmanovi: radost, bes, strah, čuđenje, tuga, i gađenje (na slici se vide reprezentativni frejmovi ovih tipova generisani od strane demonstracionog sistema za vizuelizaciju, s leva na desno, od gore ka dole). Jedna od konkretnih Synesketch aplikacija je vizuelni čet: dok mi razgovaramo, boje i oblici se generišu u obližnjem prozoru.

Pored eksperimenta u oblasti novih medija, „automatskog iluminatora” sa „veštačkom sinestezijom”, Synesketch je takođe i open source besplatna biblioteka kojom svaki Processing dizajner i umetnik može praviti svoje interaktivne radove bazirane na tekstu.

No, ovo je samo najava. Mnogo, mnogo više o Synesketchu kasnije. Za sada, možete pogledati rad u kome je ovo opisano u detalje:

http://www.krcadinac.com/papers/synesketch_rad.doc

After a screening in Moscow, Russia, in official selection of the Golden Knight (Zolotoy Vitiaz) Film Festival, film Self-Portrait will take part in NAFF, Neum Animated Film Festival (July 28 - August 04), Bosnia and Herzegovina, and BUSHO, Budapest Short Film Festival (September 03-07), Hungary.

In the just released Encyclopedia of Information Communication Technology, edited by Antonio Cartelli, you can find an article of Milan and me about software agents, written more then a year ago. (See the list of contributors.)

Self-Portrait entered the Red Stick International Animation Festival in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA. Festival stated that they received “entries from 30 countries, and the quality of work was extremely strong”, so only the small number of films were chosen for screening.

“The Red Stick International Animation Festival is an exciting community event that converges the worlds of technology, art, entertainment and exploration. Though artists have always used the tools of their time, at no time since the Renaissance has there been a similar convergence of science and art. Artists draw and paint with computers, and scientists convey their complex theories in color and motion. The 2008 Red Stick International Animation Festival highlights this convergence celebrating art, motion, and exploration in downtown Baton Rouge April 16-19, 2008.”

Also, Self-Portrait will be screened at official selection programmes of Athens Video Art Festival (April 11-13) and Naoussa International Short Film and Video Festival (May 7-11), both in Greece.

(Between us, what is it with me to create things that Greek people like?! This is the 5th Greek festival that accepts one of my films.)

Well, I love lucid dreams, long midnight walks, moving images, cold water mountain rivers, abstract structures, spicy and colorful dinners, winter constellations, lost and found frisbees, girls with the big sad eyes, and those tiny little birds chasing airplanes way up high. All that makes me make things. Films, drawings, computer programmes, animations, stories, adventures, poems, games… And I would like to share it all with you.

Welcome!