A Generative World

Hi, I'm Rasagy Sharma and this space is dedicated to my work in the field of Generative Art. I started diving into this field with the documentation for my colloquium paper on generative art, under the guidance of Prof. Venkatesh Rajamanickam at NID, Bangalore. I now post about my talks as well as any random experiments that I work on. Have some ideas? Questions? Feel free to get in touch!

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Two of my projects, “Visualizing 500 Days of Summer” & Viznam (Isonam & Gemnam) were put up along with bunch of other inspiring data art projects at the Life with Data Exhibition put together by the awesome folks from Gramener at Microsoft India!

More photos on Flickr!

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Some shots from the exciting time I had during the Data Canvas Exhibition at the Lift India Conference at National Gallery of Modern Art in Bangalore! Showcased my data-art project on “Visualizing Trains from Metros in India” and met tons of interesting folks!

For more photos, check the Flickr album for the conference.

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All set for the Data Canvas exhibition at National Gallery of Modern Art as part of the Lift India Conference!

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My data-art project “Visualizing Trains from Metros in India” will be featured in the Lift Interactive Design Exhibition – Data Canvas: Sense Your City, organized by Swissnex India. Held at NGMA (National Gallery of Modern Art) in Bangalore, the exhibition will feature projects around using datasets from the seven cities as part of the Data Canvas Project, along with guest Interaction Designers from Switzerland.

Find out more on Lift India Conference website!

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Got a chance to speak on Data Art as part of the Knowledge Sharing sessions at Barclays. This also led to a broader discussion amongst developers & designers on the role of Data, Visualization & Art in the context of Banking sector.

The session was sketchnoted by Pramiti from the India Design Team.

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Some shots from my talk on Introducing Generative Art at Barcamp Mumbai 2014. :)

More photos on Facebook!

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Attended the Barcamp 2014 in Mumbai. Super fun to meet a lot of new people and hear some interesting stories & discussions! More photos on Facebook!

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Visualization of 600 trains from the four Metros to the rest of India. Created by Rasagy Sharma using d3.js

“Visualizing Trains from Metros in India”

Brief: “Experience how one of the largest railway networks in the world connects the four major metros to the rest of the nation.”

Short description: Using a small open data set — as well as an interactive medium — provide a visually rich experience of the connections built by the massive Indian railways network. In the process of doing so, not only highlight the vast coverage of the system, but also bring to attention potential areas for expansion, while emphasizing on the skewed form of the country being formed by mass migration to metros.

Full Description: The aim of the project was to visualize India as connected by the railways network, which was the primary mode of inter-city transport for most Indians before flights became economical & long car drives became a leisure activity. In recent years, there’s been a constant shift of people from villages and smaller towns to major cities. This distress migration to the urban India means a large part of the country is being forgotten & slowly getting disconnected from the rest of us. The project thus reminds one through these rail routes, the connections that still exist and the areas no longer in direct connection with major cities. Focusing on the four metros — Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata — the visualization reverses this migration by highlighting routes from the metros to the rest of the country. 

The visualization starts by mapping short train routes that begin from these metros and end at the nearby cities & towns. What begins as four discrete clusters of lines & dots slowly starts to merge into one cohesive network, as longer train routes animate in. By the time the longest route starting from a metro — Delhi to Kanyakumari — fades in, a skewed image of India emerges, not comprised of states and boundaries but an expression of how connected — or disconnected — the nation is. With each route highlighted with a translucent line, some routes appear darker to show more number of train routes, and some dots stand out more representing cities that are better connected to these four metros. The observer can now interact with the visualization, exploring which route each line represents.

The final form lets the observer make his/her own conclusions about which parts of the country are still not connected directly with the metros, and whether to applaud or criticise the extent of the Indian Railway network.

Technical Details: This project was initiated during a weekend workshop by S Anand (Gramener) on Data Visualization. The original dataset provided roughly 5000+ train routes (with train types, start & end station names, distance etc.) of which 600 train routes were filtered that began from one of the four metros. The train stations were then geocoded using Excel Macros and Google Maps API. Instead of mapping them on a map, a cartogram approach was used to plot them on a cartesian plane with the same ratio as the map of India. Initial tests were done in Excel using a smaller data set, and the final output was created using D3.js — a Javascript library for creating interactive visualizations.

The project was created by Rasagy Sharma, with the help of Babuma R (NID Bangalore) and mentorship of S Anand & Venkatesh Rajamanickam (IDC, IIT Bombay).

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Some moments from HillHacks 2014: Hacking & Making in Himalayas! Photos from Flickr, Twitter, Eventifier & Tumblr 

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Off to HillHacks to talk about Data Art, and meet some crazy people who work at the intersection of art & technology! :)

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In an age where we are surrounded by data, what are the artists upto? This talk will give an introduction to using data in art, various media & properties that can be leveraged, and a quick primer on Generative Art.

Alrighty, all set to speak at HillHacks’2014 (The first edition in the beautiful Dharamsala, yay!)

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Using Data for Art

A teaser into the world of Generative Art, with hand-picked projects to illustrate different sources of data used in this field. Compiled by Rasagy Sharma.

Here are the slides from my talk at Fifth Elephant’14: Using Data for Art!

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Ended my talk on Using Data for Art with this quote:

“…Arts, which are conventionally considered “useless,” will be recognized as the whole reason why we ever try to live longer or more prosperously.”

— John Maeda (Creative Code)

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Quote that I referred to in my talk, Using Data for Art:

“She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”

— Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)

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Quotes that I referred to in my talk, Using Data for Art:

“Art for art’s sake. Design for the user’s sake.”

— Folks at Miranj

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Had a lot of fun speaking at Fifth Elephant’14 on Using Data for Art. Unfortunately, the videos from my track got messed up, but I’ll share the slides soon. :)

Also got a chance to meet a lot of folks, including the awesome team from Gramener!

For more photos, check HasGeek’s Flickr sets (Day 1 & Day 2).

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I'll be speaking at Fifth Elephant, a conference on Big Data & Analytics at Bangalore, on Using Data for Art! Here’s my proposal for the talk:

Objective

Why listen to a talk on art in a conference focused on technologies that power analytics? Because beyond the world of functional, need based & user-centered applications is a much more diverse world of data art. A field that has lesser constraints, and more opportunity for creative expression. Not only would it be exciting for any data enthusiast to see how technology & data are being used by the new breed of artists today, it'll open up the narrow view of how data can be represented (and hopefully motivate you to try something new!).

Through this talk I aim to introduce the essence of using data in art, various media & properties that can be leveraged, and a quick primer on Generative Art. I hope this will excite beginners to pursue this alternative way of using data, and let the experts take a break from conventional analytics & visualizations and enjoy something different.

Description

A talk on Data Art for a tech-focused audience must introduce the essence of art (vs design) and the purpose of creating art. I'll introduce the field with a few teasers (conventional art vs data art) and then introduce the modes in which data can be mapped in the final art form (mostly visual attributes, and a bit of other forms of media too). 

This will be followed by an introduction to Generative Systems in art, where an art form evolves from data (and isn't completely controlled by an artist) and a categorization of these systems (with hand picked examples) that I had explored recently.

Don’t forget to upvote my proposal if you liked it. See you at the event!