CS450 is an interdisciplinary course given at Sabancı University in Istanbul, Turkey. The class has been taught by Elif Ayiter, Selim Balcısoy and Murat Germen since 2005. This site presents a selection of projects by past CS450 students.
During the 14 weeks of the course, undergraduate and graduate students from the art/design and computer science programs who sign up for the class are randomly brought together into small teams comprised of members of both disciplines, in order to create and develop joint projects.
What is important to note is that artists and designers are not expected to become programmers, and engineers are not expected to become artists and designers, as part of the learning outcomes of the course. The idea is that both of these fields have their own, unique creative potential and when brought together this potential will be amplified. All parties are expected to have equal creative input during all phases of the process, and the outcomes have to be hybrids of both fields - art/design and computer science.
While the bulk of what you will see on this site is actual course content, generated by the interdisciplinary groups working together during CS450, a few Master’s thesis projects that were developed by alumni of the class who worked under the adage of “art/design and computing” are also shown. Also we have a few projects that are collaborations between the instructors of the course - sometimes together with CS450 students and sometimes among themselves.
The workings of the course have been discussed in papers that were presented at the ACM Creativity and Cognition conference in 2007 and the ArtsIT conference in 2009.
Pictory Time | Gülçe Evinç, Mustafa Hassan Malik (2016)
Pictory Time is an application that tells a story through pictures, dialogues displayed as chat bubbles, and animations. The app has been designed especially to occupy small children who need to wait whilst undergoing lengthy medical procedures in hospitals, such as chemotherapy.
In this prototype "The Story of a Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was" by Grimm Brothers was used, although it has been foreseen that if the app were to be developed for public usage other stories should be added to form an extended library of stories.
The project was implemented on the Android Platform, which was chosen because Android is open source and there is great deal of resources available for it. The animations were written in XML and animated using the native android's Animation library, which allows basic animations like scale, rotate and translate, which work perfectly with the application and its design because we wanted to keep things minimalistic.
Apart from animations, controls are implemented by making user tap right half of the screen to progress into the story and left half to replay the scene if they missed anything, There are also moments when the user is prompted to click on objects to explore them. These controls can be modified and thus allows us to have flexibility for any future expansions.
Fluctus | Alicem Batmansuyu, Tuğba Vardan, Oğuz Yüksek (2016)
Fluctus creates 3D printed accessories from your voice recordings. We thought to physically visualize the sound data of users that are unique for each individual and to make wearable objects from sound data like necklaces, key holders, bracelets etc. For the creation of this project, various technical supports have been put together to transform a sound to a 3D object. One of these technical supports is the application itself which provides an interactive platform to the user.
The application starts(opens) with an homepage with three options:
1) the part of creation, where the audio is recorded by the user. Then the app displays the specialized 3d image which is formed from the record. After shape is being displayed, the options are presented to the user, after the user’s choice is made the bill operations and sign in operation comes. In the backend of that process, record is saved in mp3 format and sent with web service to shade off the 3d shape. The image of 3d object is got by web service and shown in the screen to users.
2) In the second part of the application is the part where this time the app produces the sound of your object. In this part user is being asked to capture the picture of a 3d object and listen the voice that belongs to that object. In the backend, this time after the picture is saved as an image and sent it to server and it turns the mp3 player and user can reach the audio player. Both of two parts the project provides the transformation from sound to 3d object and image to sound.
3) The third part of the application guides to website of the project to get more information or the details of the project.
Stencil | Güneş Ünal, Berkay Kan, Ömer Kaya (2016)
Stencil is a smart device application that will allow you to add augmented reality photographs and texts to physical places. With this application you can write on any wall without damaging anything, without worrying that someone will erase it.
You can login with your facebook account and email easily to connect with your friends. When you want to leave a message on a wall for your friend, you can draw or write whatever you want and than select your friend from the list. When you choose a specific friend the application will send them a notification that, they have a message on a wall for them. They can view the message by going there and placing their phone against the wall that the message is on. You can either make it public or allow people that you choose to see your messages.
The app was built around the idea of using Augmented Reality(AR) technology through social opportunities provided by social media application. We built three different pillars for this project:
First of these is the backend service that provides user authentication and parsing processes which aimed to take user data, location and images, combine them in a way to create a world surrounded by virtual stencils.
Second one is the image processing part, where we use Brad Larson's GPUImage framework for swift to process images provided by user and turn them into stencil looking images. We made this with few simple lines of codes thanks to the powerful framework provided by Brad Larson.
Third one is the Augmented Reality part, where we take a marker from user and also take the stencil from the user database and render them in real world. We used KudanAR for this. A powerful framework for AR views. We also used geofencing to locate stencils and make them visible within a certain radius.
GluGlu | Buse Haberal, Adnan Can Kıran, Ege Güneş (2016)
GluGlu is a mobile application which is focused on a capella singing. People create their sound by using their own voices. People make groups with their friends and create sessions of maximum one minute. They can then share these sessions, they can “like” other group sessions and can download them also.
People love to sing: We do karaoke, create music bands even sing in the shower. So we think that people can make their own music session together in an app that provides an environment to do this. Because it can be fun also it can be inspiring. We think that people can create unique sounds by using their own voices which doesn't have to be musical at all. The idea is to create a platform which is about producing interesting sound.
Circles | Sernur Fulya Güney, Halil Kaan Kara, Imran Sharif Rizvi (2016)
Circles is a location aware anonymous chat and post board that automatically detects concentrations of people and creates communities out of them.
There are 2 types of circles called permanent and temporary. Permanent circles are created for areas that maintain a permanent community/concentration of people like schools, university campuses, apartment blocks, class rooms, cafes. As soon as you enter the geographical confines of this ‘circle’ you are automatically added to this community.
The community itself is organized into a main chat-wall and the main post-board. The main post-board contains the most popular posts from all the boards. Each of the posts can be upvoted, downvoted or commented on. The different orders in which posts are organized will then be based on these parameters.
HYPE: all-in-one percussion app | Mert Tacir, Idil Gücüyener (2014)
Hype is all about making collaborative music with your friends, in the same room, under the same Wi-Fi connection by using the screen of your smart device.
The app works through a series of screens: A main screen where you play your music with the help of your fingertips. You can record with your gestures or stop the recording; a BMP screen where you can set up your tempo in order to sync between your friends; and a Kit screen where you can choose your instrument by swiping between pages, like you do on a newspaperand tapping the instrument you like.
Users can select different percussion instruments from a given library, and create a musical piece by touching the pads on the screen. They can select the BPM, they can record and play their records.
The application will not serve as a social network where users have their own profiles etc. But instead, people using the application will be able to join together in a session and create music together. This means you can sit together with a couple of friends, connect your devices and play something together.
It has a very simple interface with icons and buttons for recording/start/stop, selecting kits, BPM, connect and settings.
Detectify | Ceren İçdem, Talha Ongun, Seda Çeşmebaşı (2014)
The project came out as a result of discussions on how we’re surrounded with invisible electromagnetic waves at all times, after we saw some artistic works done about the topic. Even though some studies claim that the devices around us do not cause a possible threat, we tried to focus on the health aspect of this subject.
To this end we have visualized Wi-Fi signal data in any given location so that users can see how much they’re being exposed to these signals in real time. When people see this data in a nice way then they may understand the threat and be able to locate the source and try to find precautions against it.
The motivation behind the Newsflip application is a personal strife for a better and more simple tool to experience rss news. This led the team to the development of a modernistic, simple mobile news feed reader application.
We set priority of the elements in the development as "ergonomy over design, design over functionality and functionality over ergonomy." Long story short, we are aware that in order to provide the best user experiment in mobile applications, each element must be tinkered as it is the upmost priority and only holistic goodness will suffice to lead that goal.
Ra | Batuhan Kamil Arslan, Fatma Betül Avcı (2014)
This project is about truthfulness on the internet and works as a social media platform via a dedicated website. After joining the community participants make statements about themselves that are either verified or denied by their friends. However, these denials/verifications are subject to further scrutiny by others, and through this a chain of verification ensues. This chain of verification determines the overall truthfulness score of all contributors.
The Needle | Candemir Döğer, Reysi Leon, Tuğçe Evirgen (2013)
The name 'Needle' comes from the saying 'searching for a needle in a haystack,' and consequently the application has came from the idea that people tend to lose or forget their belongings in places where most others lose things as well. The 'Neddle' application lets you find your lost item by giving results of where you could find your lost belonging from the data of twitter and google, with the starting point of typing the lost item you want to find into the search field of the app.
Video showing the coding process of the app (above) and the working prototype video (below).
1) Type your item that you want to find and needle it!
2) The application, by getting data from twitter and google, will present results of areas you can find your lost item with percentages. The percentages differs with the most found places and least.
3) As you choose a place from the results and really found your stuff at that recommended place, you will be able to share this information with facebook or twitter in order to tell your friends about it!!
DigOut | Selin Sargut, Francesco Stallo, Mine Sinal (2013)
We thought that consumers have a right to know more about what they are eating or buying. As it appears to be easier to convey information through images we tried to present the information in a very simple and understandable visual manner through an application for smart devices.
With DigOut, only by scanning the bar-code of a product, consumers may reach the information about the company that manufactured it, its owners, economic facts such as its net income and the wage rate of the employees and even their ethical rating. And not only is it the company that may interest consumers, they could also be interested in the country in which any given merchandise has been produced before they decide to make their purchases.
There are lots of brands in the market and sometimes consumers have no idea which company is behind them, what their policies and ethics might be. Therefore, this project is not only about scanning bar-codes to get some information, but it is also about breaking down the information and making it easier to understand. Thus, the project has social and economic concerns and aims to make consumers more conscious about what is happening around them.
MoodMe | Onur Akça, Selin Dönmez, Ali Kanıbelli (2013)
MoodMe is an application for smart devices that creates sounscapes which explore human emotions through music. The product takes its inspiration from Plutchik's wheel of emotions. Accoring to Plutchik, there are eight primary emotions (anger, fear, disgust, surprise, anticipation, trust and joy) and all other emotions are mixtures of these.
In order to start the music all users need to do is to tap out a sequence of emotions on the color wheel placed on the screens of their phones. The app will then find music files that correspond to these emotions from a large sample library and will mix them against continuous background loops in order to generate a special music that reflects the specified mood.
GoogleJack is an Android application that is developed and designed to provide a both technically and visually enriched keyword search engine for application users. Along with its cool appearance, it is equipped with user-friendly features.
Our first motivation for our Arts and Computing class project was to visualize Google Instant results. We thought of its limits and how to visualize it. In a progress of 16 weeks of study and experiments, both technically and visually, a keyword search engine evolved. We visualized acquired results from Google Instant and limited that wide range of results with auxiliary verbs; is, can, will, has, do, must. User directed to two main alternative ways after results screen; going to search page of Google by single tap to result box or starting a new search with a new keyword that chosen from a result box by holding and pressing. It aimed to motivate users to search more and more without control of relation between keywords, wondering about new things. Additionally, separate screens of a map designed for user to represent whole keywords that are searched by the user in a session.
When something is repeatedly copied with occasional mistakes (with the copies making further copies of themselves), and the differences (copying mistakes) in the new copies affect their copiability positively or negatively, evolution happens. If that something is a molecule, life evolves. If it is a graphical layout, graphic design evolves. This is the algorithm of evolution, and it works for every something that fulfills those conditions.
Gráphagos is an evolutionary environment for graphic design.
Technically, it is a program that:
initially generates random layouts with the given textual content,
offers them to a human user for selection,
takes the selected ones, slightly and randomly change them to create the next generation of products, and then returns to step 2.
With this cycle of step 2 and 3, the program navigates an endless space of designs, being created on-the-go. (It doesn’t use any ready templates.)
Gráphagos uses a genetic algorithm: Every graphago (individual design product) has a genome and Gráphagos translates these four-letter sequences (“CATCGATCT…”) into visual products with typography, lines, shapes, colors, images and filters. The genomes of the first generation are completely random; when the user selects and clicks Regenerate, the program makes a few random mutations in the genomes of the products selected by the user (substituting an “A” for a “T”, adding “GCA” to some place, etc.), translates them into new visual products, and offers them for selection again.
Gráphagos was mainly an academic project trying to tailor a detailed model for the creative process of a designer. In the end, it turned out it can be used as a tool: It can help designers (and some other people) make graphic design. Technically it cannot replace the desktop publishing programs yet (it doesn’t work at 300 DPI, for one thing) but it offers a new process of making graphic design just by doing selection, after which a designer can replicate the result with fine-tuning in a desktop publishing program for print purposes. Gráphagos doesn’t know anything about design (its moves are random), so it creates better design when a designer is selecting.
There are many examples of evolutionary art software in the literature. Gráphagos, however, differs from those in that it aims to generate functional visual design products (which can work as posters, book covers, etc.) with different elements such as text, lines, shapes, photographs and textures, rather than creating good-looking abstract images.
Since Gráphagos records the evolutionary histories in the purely textual format of genomes, it can also be used for an analysis of patterns of sequences that are universally favored by human selectors – or specific demographic groups such as college students or middle-aged housewives, to deduce their idiosyncratic preferences. This may well be a step towards a population memetics of visual design.
Read the thesis here: http://denizcemonduygu.com/thesis/
View the project and try out the software here: http://www.graphagos.com/
Social Distress (Message in a Bottle) | Can Kılıçbay and Tahir Akay (2010)
The project came from the idea of an endless information flow over the internet just like endless waves over a sea that sucks in everyone. But oftentimes the really important messages get lost on their way or are never even discovered. Thousands of social networking sites, billions of tweets, photos, videos overcrowd the information sea day by day.
In the year 2010 the social networks have e-surrounded us. The amount of text that a normal person is abused by today is incomparable to any point of human existence. And yet desperate individuals on their isolated islands are reaching to the sea of social networks trying to be heard. Our goal is to make them heard, catch their cry for help and show them in our social distress bottle.
The bottle is equipped with an arduino, a 2.0 wi-fi shield, an LCD panel and a 9V battery. This setup which is embedded into the glass bottle, reaches twitter and looks for cries for help and shows them over the LCD screen.
Momputer | Deniz Cem Önduygu and Merve Orhan (2009)
We spend most of our time in front of our computers, and for good reason. They offer us everything we need in order to do our job, to communicate, to socialize and to have fun. Today we cannot imagine working in a world without computers; we are dependent on them like a baby is dependent on her mother, yet we think of ourselves as in control of this relationship. If only computers could talk...
Momputer is software that “watches” your activity on the computer and reacts accordingly, helping you organize yourself with bitter remarks, a bit like a mother. With everything on the tips of our fingers at the same time, we usually have a hard time concentrating on our work, frantically jumping between chat programs, web browsers and media players. We even get so lost within windows that we forget that we are organisms with vital functions such as nutrition and excretion. The "surveillance" of Momputer, ironically, helps us keep track of the time we spend and remember our true nature. It is in fact a kind of self-surveillance since Momputer doesn't share the information about your computer activity with third parties.
When designing Momputer, at first we thought that the user activity could be represented with:
• a little 3d face model of the user,
• an avatar that the user chooses,
• or a virtual pet or plant (like Desktop Pet or Google Desktop Flower) changing according to the user's computer activity. For example, the plant would start to die out if the user doesn’t eat or work enough.
We then realized that representing user activity with avatars or virtual plants was not in accordance with the original idea (which is the personification of the computer as a mother-like, funnily annoying supervisor) and decided to stick with the original one. Therefore, there is no iconic representation of the user in Momputer. We preferred to keep the interface simple and cold to maintain a contrast with the content and to emphasize our main idea.
Momputer shows you your live statistics with seven bars, reminding the Sims:
Productivity increases as you use Adobe CS programs, MS Office, etc.
Fun increases as you use media players like Winamp, iTunes or play games, etc.
Social increases as you use MSN Messenger, Google Talk, etc.
Energy decreases as you keep on using the computer.
Eye fatigue increases as you keep on using the computer.
Hunger increases as you keep on using the computer.
Bladder increases as you keep on using the computer.
The first four bars are the stats that we want to increase, and the second group are the ones we want to decrease. The little square buttons next to Hunger and Bladder are reset buttons, letting you inform the software that you have eaten your lunch or gone to the bathroom. Momputer can detect that the user is actively using the computer by watching the mouse/keyboard activity. The user can be in front of the computer without touching the mouse and the keyboard when watching movies; for that case, the software will also track media players. This tracking system is essential for our second group of bars: eye fatigue, hunger and bladder.
Momputer warns you when you must eat or when you have too much fun without doing any work (or the opposite: when you work too much without a break). It can adjust its severity according to your honest input (you can inform the software that you are on vacation or you have to work hard for a certain deadline) or according to an analysis of your activity. For the latter, detecting inconsistencies can work: if you have MS Office, Photoshop, Illustrator and MSN Messenger open at the same time, it can deduce that you have to work but you waste time chatting. You may well be talking to someone about the work you are doing (or use Messenger to send files, etc.), so the software will display "annoying" questions like "Oh, you're using MSN Messenger to share files for your project, right?".
It can be more annoying by directly rebuking you ("You’re wasting time!") or by popping up quotes like:
“If we did all we were capable of doing, we would literally astonish ourselves.”
- Thomas Edison
“You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.”
- Henry Ford
“A man is the sum of his actions, of what he has done, of what he can do, nothing else.”
- Mahatma Gandhi
"Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men."
- Colossians 3:23
Pop-ups appear in the middle of the screen to make sure that the user sees them, and there is a feedback mechanism allowing the user to interact with the software: to close the pop-up window, the user either clicks on the "What?" button (letting Momputer understand that it was an irrelevant warning) or the "Ok, I got it." button (letting Momputer understand that it is on the right track and continue to display similar messages).
The content of the warnings is determined according to the types of open programs. For instance, if programs belonging to the Productivity and Social categories are open together, the user gets messages like "I hope what you talk about is relevant to your work." The messages get harsher with time (e.g. "Do I have to send you a 'nudge' to get your attention?") if the user keeps on using the same programs. Momputer is no different from a real mother in appreciating too, saying things like "Attaboy. That's the right decision." if the user listens to it and closes the distracting program (belonging to the Social category).
An important thing to keep in mind is that Momputer doesn't always and solely want you to work; it looks for a balance. If you use only the Productivity programs for a long time without a break, it goes on to remind you that "all work and no play make you a dull boy." Similarly, when your Energy bar is low, it displays messages like "You need some rest and some food, seriously. I'm the computer here."
We computer users often forget to eat when we are in the middle of a project or when we have too much fun chatting, etc. Hunger warnings are different from the rest in that they consist of photographs of food without any text, getting bigger as the user gets more hungry. These visual stimuli are designed to act directly on the primitive parts of the user's brain, thus being more dramatic and effective.
Warnings for eye fatigue are arranged according to Dr. Marc Grossman’s recommendation: "Short, frequent breaks are better than longer, less frequent breaks. Try 2-3 minutes every 15-20 minutes, 5 minutes every 30 minutes, or 10 minutes every hour." So Momputer reminds you that "you may suffer from eyestrain, headaches, blurred vision and even glaucoma if you don't give a 10 minute break to relieve the eye strain" every hour.
The Bladder and Eye Fatigue bars increase at a constant rate whereas the increase rates of Productivity, Fun, Social, Energy and Hunger are all dependent on which programs are being used. For example, Hunger increases more quickly if you work, or Productivity increases more slowly if you have MSN Messenger open. All cases can be seen on Table 1. Additionally, Energy and Bladder increase when you click the Hunger reset button after eating.
CS450 | ART AND COMPUTING @ SABANCI UNIVERSITY @cs450artandcomputing - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
