A most interesting article I’ve found which compares the intrinsic ressemblence between the common database and the narrative text form as the new form of expression.

It’s particularly interesting to see the comparison being made between a database and a collector that gathers a new piece accordingly to it’s proximity to a certain theme.

“Both the choice of theme and the inclusion of objects demonstrate authorship, with narrative arising involuntarily and inexplicitly between the selected objects. These objects tell the story of their selection from a universe of objects

Even though the end conclusion is that “It is therefore incorrect to regard the database itself as a form of expression” and that “the database is simply a vessel or medium”, still I find it interesting to be able to look at such an undervalued part of my work (and everyone who goes online daily life) as a canvas of the new-media-world in which we live in.

Kinda like what happened with graffitis in public places, databases might very well be themselves the recordings of daily life for modern age societies.

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(…) The four “promises” of Seadragon:

1. Speed of navigation is independent of the size or number of objects.
2. Performance depends only on the ratio of bandwidth to pixels on the screen.
3. Transitions are smooth as butter.
4. Scaling is near perfect and rapid for screens of any resolution.

The Seadragon team is currently tuning its DirectX implementation, making the most of the new Windows Media Photo format, and cranking on the Photosynth Technology Preview.

http://labs.live.com/Seadragon.aspx

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Another AS3 experiment, this time using curves. I’m still developing the algorithm for the tree branchs themselves which up until now kinda look all the same.
One of my main objectives was trying to integrate a few branches with different types of line style but that seems to have been forgotten by the AS3 team.

Now I’m thinking about integrating some animation or interactivity features such as bezier control or a faux-3D movement.

Keys:

• “1″ key toggles the static beziers and labels;
• “Space” key creates a new tree;
• “Left” and “Right” arrow keys create a new tree, by removing or adding another 10 branches.

Fullscreen version.

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