WEATHERIZE - WHAT'S YOUR WEATHER LIKE
A project by Roberto Fazio (www.robertofazio.com) in collaboration with Gianluca Macaluso (http://www.deep-bo.com)
Weatherize is a simple data visualization installation that allows an immediate visual representation of meteorological data come from any city. Users can interact choosing by Twitter their favorite cities using the hashtag #wtrz NameCity. In real time, the system returns the representation of weather conditions regarding temperature, humidity and wind speed at that precise moment, which change according to the city selected by the user. It 'can' map 'objects or structures that follow the regularity of a grid, using a simple dedicated interface for the Ipad. The patterns generated by triangles create unique colors that vary at every selection of cities in computational way. The vertex of each triangle are anchored to the grid and follow the path with random behavior.
Triangle represents a mysterious basic shape used in symbolic patterns across cultures and times. It shows the four Elements: Earth, Water, Fire and Air also representing the regularity of a stable element and the irregularity of a more elusive and intangible thing. The triangle as the time: mysterious, uncertain and uncontrollable. This shape is the most important factor in Weatherize, which is able to visualize meteorological data coming from user selected cities. The amount of triangles represents local temperature, the color represents weather conditions, the degree of opacity represents the local humidity and the speed of movement represents wind speed. The code was entirely written in Processing 1.5.1, an open source programming language.
It consists of six main parts:
-The composition of the grid through keyboard commands or interface IPAD build with TouchOSC. The grid informations are stored into two text edit file, lineV.txt and lineO.txt -Receiving data from Twitter. We used the java library for the Twitter API ( http://twitter4j.org/en/index.html ) . With Twitter4J, you can easily integrate your Java application with the Twitter service.
- Detection-time data via RSS feeds from Yahoo (http://developer.yahoo.com/weather/) The Twitter API functionality uses an oAuth system, which allows people to authenticate applications through a login at twitter.com. More info here ( http://blog.blprnt.com/blog/blprnt/updated-quick-tutorial-processing-twitter ) . It's recommended to replace the right authorization codes in order to run correctly weatherize -Creation of triangles with different attributes -Upload screenshots of the remote server triggered the arrival of a tweet. We used a DataUpload java class developed by Philippe Lhoste - PhiLho(a)GMX.net ( Weatherize online : www.robertofazio.com/weatherize/online ) -color palette for the moment decided arbitrarily.
DOWNLOAD :
Weatherize is available as source code, and it has been tested on mac and windows 7 Source code (git repository) here : https://github.com/robertofazio/Weatherize If you don’t like git, you can find a zip file here : https://dl.dropbox.com/u/10907181/weatherize_ver_0502.zip
KEY COMMANDS:
'i' - show info details 'f' - fullscreen 'g' - show / hide grid 'n' - create horizontal line 'N' - create vertical line 's' - select horizontal line 'S' - select vertical line 'r' - delete horizontal line 'R' - delete vertical line 'ENTER' - save to txt file the parameters of the grid arrow key - move the line
TO DO:
The development of Weatherize is not yet completed (we're currently in a late Alpha and we'll release a stable Beta a.s.a.p) but have been conceived various possible uses thanks to its adaptability. It could be thought as an interactive projection on a particular object or building or you could create an installation in a room that allows the user to enjoy an immersive experience, as if he were in the city he has chosen. After this experience, user can be gifted with a printed postcard, his unique personal "weatherize".
CONTACT:
write us to studio@robertofazio.com www.robertofazio.com