{"id":5466,"date":"2010-10-05T17:38:16","date_gmt":"2010-10-05T16:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.firedbydesign.com\/"},"modified":"2017-04-28T10:58:21","modified_gmt":"2017-04-28T09:58:21","slug":"abstract-ar-with-james-alliban","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/firedbydesign.com\/?page_id=5466","title":{"rendered":"Abstract App Art with James Alliban"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Alliban is fast becoming a name to conjure with in technology-driven art. The magical allusion is not misplaced, as you’ll agree if you’ve seen some of his colourful augmented reality (AR) projects. Now this interactive designer has been developing a range of applications with the central theme of cubism. They \u00a0include\u00a0Self Portrait? and the\u00a0WiiMote portrait generator.<\/a> His first iPhone App is Fracture, which allows the user to paint cubist images using their photos.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Splash Screen All rights reserved by FractureApp<\/p><\/div>\n

James Alliban<\/strong>:\u00a0In my previous life as a traditional artist, I tended towards still life, landscapes etc. Although I admired Abstract art, and Cubism in particular, I never quite took the step to actually adopting the style. Once I started to learn how to program using Actionscript and Lingo I quickly started to build abstract generative compositions using images and video. I particularly enjoyed building painting tools that used images as the source or ‘paint’. This work quickly evolved and resulted in the first Cubism based application ‘Self Portrait?’.<\/p>\n

FBD: <\/em><\/strong>Can you give a brief recap of the design development process behind the previous applications?<\/em><\/p>\n

[JA]<\/strong>The first step is to acquire an image, this could be from a live camera feed or a randomly chosen image from a collection. The brush (or shape) is then chosen, rotated, adjusted accordingly and then used as a mask to apply to the source image. The resulting segment plus an outline\/shadow are then drawn to the ‘canvas’ in the specified position. Repeat the above over and over and you achieve the fractured Cubist aesthetic.<\/p>\n

This was fairly straightforward for ‘Self Portrait?’ which is a self container Flash application. The ‘WiiMote Portrait generator’ wasn’t quite so simple. It required me to install the WiiFlash server, connect the WiiMote to the server using a bluetooth dongle and to position an infrared light by the monitor. The images where then retrieved from the webcam. As a result of this complex setup, I didn’t release the application and it remained an experiment.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

FBD:<\/em><\/strong>What was the inspiration for Fracture app? When did you think of it?<\/p>\n

[JA] <\/strong>I’ve been following the openFrameworks community for a few years now and started learning the toolkit about a year ago. It was about this time that I learned that oF could be used to build iPhone apps which got me thinking. I wasn’t interested in learning Objective-C for iOS app development but being given a ‘way in’ via oF seemed too good an opportunity to miss.<\/p>\n

One of the main complaints from my previous Cubism applications was that you either couldn’t add your own images, or that it was too difficult to set up (see above). I saw this app as the logical next step in the series and an excellent learning experience.<\/p>\n

FBD:<\/em><\/strong>How much did your work on the previous applications contribute to Fracture?<\/p>\n

[JA] <\/strong>In terms of the concept, a great deal. In terms of the code, very little. Whereas Flash takes care of a great deal of the underlying pixel-level operations, openFrameworks can require you to take care of much of this yourself.<\/p>\n

FBD:<\/em><\/strong>What were the challenges involved?<\/p>\n

[JA] <\/strong>By far the biggest challenge was building the interface which required learning some Objective-C. I found that I couldn\u2019t take advantage of many of the tutorials and standard Apple interface approaches. This was due to the fact that oF projects are set up differently to standard iOS projects.<\/p>\n

FBD:<\/em><\/strong>Has the reaction to your apps provided any new opportunities or inspiration for new projects?<\/p>\n

[JA] <\/strong>I’ve had plenty of great feedback and have been featured in some big blogs and magazines. I’ve also been given the opportunity to talk about iOS development with openFrameworks at a couple of events.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

James in the Garden All rights reserved by FractureApp<\/p><\/div>\n

FBD:<\/em><\/strong>Where should people go to find out more about your work and similar artists?<\/p>\n

[JA] <\/strong>I’ve collated my research into a Vimeo channel<\/a> and you can find a bunch of my work<\/a> here:\u00a0\u2028http:\/\/vimeo.com\/jamesalliban\/videos<\/a><\/p>\n

There’s also iPhoneart.org curated by LIA at\u2028http:\/\/iphoneArt.org<\/a><\/p>\n

See more by James Alliban<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interactive designer James Alliban has been developing a range of applications with the central theme of cubism. 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