‘Processing’ Open-Source Programming Language

“The medium is the message,” meet: ’Processing’ [download for free], an open-source programming language. A tool for our generation and their [my] obsession with data, documentation, and representation.

“Used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production…Processing is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool.” -www.processing.org

Upon downloading Processing, I was immediately pre-occupied by the dozens of 3-D samples, renderings, and themes. The possibilities are endless. Know the program and the tools can be used for both good and evil, but most likely the latter, because all data is somewhat evil in nature.

Processing deals with mostly graphic elements, though one can implement their Mac’s camera to create ridiculous images, light, and color.

Personally, I am using Processing to manipulate data and represent it in a really slick way (perhaps extensively documenting the negative externalities of BP oil in the Gulf?). But, it could be implemented for making data inputs, for instance, in Meteorology. The implications for architectural design are obviously astounding. 

The above project using Processing, titled “Just Landed” cleverly represents the flight patterns from unassuming Tweeters. “Data that is hidden in various social network information streams – Facebook & Twitter updates in particular. People share a lot of information in their tweets – some of it shared intentionally, and some of it which could be uncovered with some rudimentary searching. I wondered if it would be possible to extract travel information from people’s public Twitter streams by searching for the term ‘Just landed in…’.

The project’s thesis: “Find tweets that contain this phrase, parse out the location they’d just landed in, along with the home location they list on their Twitter profile, and use this to map out travel in the Twittersphere”.

Data from Twitter users was harnessed using API keys, Metacarta, and a custom written Classes file to extract the location of a user and implement it into a graphic using Processing, then rendered into video.

Further reading: Predicting Flu With the Aid of (George) Washington [NYT]

Listening: MP3 — Kyoto Gardens by Vega (“Can you show me around?”)

-C.S.