Over the last few months, I've been getting back into an old hobby. In case the computers and the comics weren't dorky enough, I've taken up fish-keeping to make sure my dork level stays up near 10. I have three aquariums running, with a mix of community fish. One of the tanks is in my office, about three feet from my computer. As it turns out, three feet is just enough space to run the cable for my webcam, so I can digitize the little suckers and do what I want with them.
On the weekend, I hooked up the camera to Processing, via the marvelous JMyron library, and coded up a little system to render the fish in a 3D space. It's pretty rudimentary for now, but it works, and it's fun to watch.
I think it is the movement of fish that most attracts us to them, and it is interesting to see that movement abstracted to the screen. I've pushed that abstraction quite far, replacing the fish with symbols and visualizing their movements with dynamically-generated shape-streams. It's really quite pretty. Unfortunately, the MovieMaker library isn't cooperating for me, so right now you'll have to be happy with some screenshots, via Flickr. Hopefully, I'll get a movie up soon.
I am sure this project will change over the next few weeks, as I poke and prod and change things here and there. I will keep you posted…
