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Interactive design of cognitive pattern animation
Middle East Peace Potential through Dynamics in Spherical Geometry (Part #4)
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It should be stressed that the approach taken here is a "proof of concept" with respect to such an animation and the possibilities of its design. The result demonstrated has a variety of inadequacies. These can be variously attributed to:
- technical incompetence in making full use of the scalable vector graphics (SVG) coding
- design incompetence of optimizing parameters to enhance the elegance of the result
- contrasting views on what viewers might variously consider "elegant"
- political implications consequent on some of the design choices, possibly interpreted as favouring one perspective or the other
- preferences for the "story" to be told by the dynamics of the animation
The advantage of the approach taken in using SVG is that -- with a minimum of skill -- the code can be readily modified to change the animation. SVG code can be changed using any text editor. It does not need to be compiled. Whilst modifying the structure of the animation as a whole may require more skill, parameters such as the following can be readily changed (as discussed more systematically below):
- colour attributed to various elements, including filling an area (or not)
- width of lines ("resistance")?
- duration of certain phases and of the animation as a whole
Changing duration means that the rates of one phase relative to another can be modified, offering the possibilities of:
- accentuating a degree of pulsating rhythm
- accentuating a degree of randomness
- changing the pace of certain phases in relation to others
Clearly these changes may serve primarily to suggest:
- more complex changes to the coding to reflect subtler insights
- possibilities of "tuning", especially in the final form
- improvements to the software to facilitate such experimentation
- addition of music and/or commentary
The design context is usefully clarified by the information in the following box insert -- which may be readily ignored, but is useful to enable others of greater competence to improve on the approach and the design.
| Technical issues regarding animation production and modification: SVG Phase | |
| Although SVG code is relatively easy to modify, correctly defining an SVG file is somewhat challenging. It is easier to use some kind of SVG editor to supply the code framework. There are a number of special SVG editors offering many facilities. The above animation however involved a certain amount of "cheating" to bypass levels of complexity calling for higher competence. | |
Steps in the process were:
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Note that the animation as presented is cumbersome and inefficient. There are many refinements that could be introduced -- although some might make it more difficult for the less competent to modify the animation subsequently. More explanatory comments could be embedded in the SVG file. Groups of objects could be defined in more significant ways. It is possible that a subsequent stage in the evolution of the Stella Polyhedron Navigator would enable direct export of polyhedral nets to SVG, avoiding the need to use Adobe Illustrator to trace the pattern -- but provided the export included the contextual coding (binding to namespaces, etc) NB: Modifying the SVG portion of the animation: The current version of the Opera browser offers facilities to control the SVG animation (right-click) and view the source code. Upgrades envisaged to other browsers are expected to offer this facility. The code can be easily downloaded for experimentation by any user. The animation can be magnified to any size screen without loss of resolution -- useful for presentation and discussion | |
The note above shows how the Stella Polyhedron Navigator was used to facilitate production of the first phase of the animation using SVG. There is a case for considering how this application could be used by itself to experiment with useful animations -- avoiding the issues with respect to technical competence in SVG and the inability of some browsers to handle SVG animation.
| Technical issues regarding animation production and modification: Stella Phase | |
In retrospect SVG was used because of the facility that it offers to control details of disparate features of the animation, especially timing (as noted in discussion of the design options below). The Stella application offers far greater control of the global form and was used for that purpose as shown in the video above. Many design options implemented in SVG could however be explored in Stella in order to avoid the complications of using both applications -- especially since use of Stella is far more intuitive and user-friendly, offering a vast range of polyhedral resources and manipulation possibilities. Key issues are how experimentation is to be done and how any final product is to be rendered available to others. The constraint with SVG is browser compatibility (as noted above). The constraint with Stella is that it is a proprietary application so that its output can only be made available over the web in a non-interactive mode, typically as images or in any standard video format. | Stella Polyhedron Navigator can therefore be used to:
Of particular interest is the ability of Stella to add "tabs" to unfolded polyhedral nets so that when a net is printed it the net can be cut out and folded into spherical form with the aid of adhesive on the tabs. It thus enables three dimensional forms to be constructed and marked experimentally or permanently. |
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