It's alive!

It is a small step from design machines to interactive design, animation and games. Moving images consist of a series of still images with small changes. Sounds like a job for program, no?

A design machine with a few parameters can produce alternatives for regular, still, two dimensional design. But connect one or more of its parameters to time (by making the parameter increase a certain factor for each frame) and it becomes an animation. Cycle through the frames fast enough and the image comes to life.

The flipbook animations on the right side of this book were generated this way. The animations are programs that produce an image for a particular page. The movement is put into code.

But there are more applications for this, for instance interactive images. Instead of just altering a parameter, we can connect it to other forms of live input. The design machine looks for new values a couple of times a second (a process called Ôpolling’), and when the value changes it can draw a new image. It's interactive! The source for live input data can be almost anything. For the live-animation system for TypoMan and Crocodile, called PoppeKast, we use small analog to digital controller boxes that generate digital values according to the position of a simple slider. The PoppeKast program then converts those values to the positions of the actors.
The step from live animation to games is small: add some independent characters, some narrative and competition and the games can begin.

It doesn't hurt to think up weird stuff either. How about this one: imagine a computer with a small camera which reads the expression on the face of the user. Typography was always aimed at making a configuration of type which guides the reading eye around in the structure of the text. But if the computer can see which part of the text, or which letter you're looking at it can respond to that. The typography can change according to the way it is read. It is obvious that a lot can go wrong — but it would turn typography upside down.