Syllabus

SCHEDULE

Oct 4
Oct 11: Telegraph presentations (influences, proof of concept)
Oct 18: Junction final crit
Oct 25
Nov 1
Nov 8: Telegraph prototype
Nov 15

Nov 29
Dec 6: Final crit

LABS

• Sep 27 Browse Download
• Oct 25 Browse Download

• Connect to ernie.art.yale.edu, as networks user, networks volume
• Browse to Sites/nt2/labs

DOCUMENTATION

• Flash
  • Learning ActionScript 2.0. See the “Working with Text and Strings” chapter
  • ActionScript 2.0 Language Reference. See the following ActionScript classes:
    • TextField
    • TextFormat
    • MovieClip class’s createTextField method
    • String
• Openfire (our Jabber protocol chat server)
• Xiff (the ActionScript library we use for talking to the Jabber server)

• Stina Carlberg -> Video telegraph
• Tomas Celizna -> Predictive chat
• Daniel Harding -> One liner
• Ken Meier -> Studio presence
• Kyungmin Oh -> Paper conversation
• Bethany Powell -> Speech/pause
• Nicholas Rock -> News board
• Stewart Smith -> Word value?
• Fan Wu -> Harkness
• David Yun -> Difference

BOTS

Here is an interesting architecture to think about: a “bot” running on the server, listening to yr chat room, and taking actions & sending responses based on all messages or specially-formed messages. Can be useful (although probably not the only solution) for things that you can’t do directly in Flash, such as database access, text-to-speech, or other heavy processing.

Here are bots written for Jabber (what we’re using) in Perl (good article), PHP, and Ruby.

• Stina Carlberg -> Construction site music
• Tomas Celizna -> Hull’s camera
• Daniel Harding -> Architecture printer
• Ken Meier -> Hotspot landing page
• Kyungmin Oh -> Murder mystery
• Bethany Powell -> Hey
• Nicholas Rock -> Gas pumps
• Stewart Smith -> Ghost balloons
• Fan Wu -> Everyday memorial
• David Yun -> Bike maps

CREATE A TEXT FIELD WITH SOME GOOD OPTIONS

No need to specify a depth or a height- this function gueses them, sets some good options for the textfield, and returns a reference to the new textfield instance.

Put this function at the bottom of yourChat.as (or however you’ve called it):

function easyCreateTextField(instanceName, attachToWhat, x, y, width) {
attachToWhat.createNewTextField(instanceName, attachToWhat.getNextHighestDepth(), x, y, width, 10);
var tf = attachToWhat[instanceName];
tf.embedFonts = true;
tf.multiline = true;
tf.wordWrap = true;
tf.autoSize = true;
return tf;
}

Then to use it, e.g. within displayMessage, you might do:

var newTextField = easyCreateTextField("message" + messageNum, attachTo, xPosition, yPosition, 400);

ADD TEXT TO THE END OF A TEXT FIELD WITHOUT OVERRIDING THE FORMAT OF PREVIOUS TEXT IN THE TEXT FIELD

Put this function at the bottom of yourChat.as (or however you’ve called it):

function easyAppendTextField(textField, text) {
textField.replaceText(textField.text.length, textField.text.length, text);
}

Then to use it, e.g. within displayMessage, you might do:

var newTextField = easyCreateTextField("message" + messageNum, attachTo, xPosition, yPosition, 400);
newTextField.setNewTextFormat(myFormat1);
easyAppendTextField(newTextField, "Some words ");
newTextField.setNewTextFormat(myFormat2);
easyAppendTextField(newTextField, "and some more words.");

READINGS

For discussion 9/20: Flaming and the Design of Social Software

For discussion 10/4: Bow, Nigger (and if you like that here is another good one, although not required: All About Eve)

For discussion 10/11: Street View

NETWORKS & TRANSACTIONS

Film festival (unrealized)!

Thursday evenings, in the computer lab (room 209)

Sep 27: Blue
Oct 11: Red
Oct 18: The Conversation
??: The Boss of It All

AGENDA

10/25 class

1:30-3:30: Tutorial: Typography in Flash
3:30-6:30: Charette in the lab

GRAPHIC DESIGN, Art 752a, Networks & Transactions 2
Green 107 Th 1.30-5.30

Some of the most exciting possibilities in design, arise when design’s job is to connect multiple networks of information and of people, all of which are in motion. This class asks each student to complete two assignments: Junction and Messenger. Together, the assignments focus on exploiting and activating network connections in the city, in our studio, and online.

Students are expected to tailor the given assignments to support their own thesis, and the assignments are designed to facilitate this. The Junction project does not require programming (although programming can be supported); the Messenger project is programmed in Flash and builds on the skills you learned in 742b. Previous experience with Flash is not required; Flash’s language (ActionScript) is very similar to the PHP we used in 742b.

We will also discuss how to site, show, or publish work tways that are appropriate to each student’s thesis. Dan Michaelson.

Open to all departments but perhaps most appropriate for second-year graphic design grad students. Prerequisite: Art 742b (Networks & Transactions 1) or permission.