I propose to create a large projection of seismic data mixing archived and real-time sources that will present different views of the data based on user interaction.
It is based on the piece i put in the year end show at OCAD. The piece had some problems but i got it to work enough that I see real potential in it.
Even though it is not going to primarily be a web project, I’m going to modify it slightly to put a version of it on the web so that I can get some feedback. I’ll post a link here when I do. 
This project presents a number of challenges. The primary platform will be Mac OS X since the installation will contain many thousand (currently 28,685) separate points (each one animated). The problem is I don’t currently have a very good grasp of the required programming language: Objective-C.
I will also have to learn to use the OpenGL framework (which is written mainly in the C programming language: another language which presents me with some difficulty.
I also plan to have an interactive component wherein the user will be able to point at a part of the projection and it will zoom into that region and display some secondary information. I have to figure out how to provide that level of interactivity. The difficulty will be creating an interface that is both intuitive and non-intrusive. I don’t want to use a mouse.
[I may have access to a Microsoft Surface and may create a version of this app for that platform but the thought of learning another markup language makes me shudder.]
When the work on the installation (code, design, interface) is completed I want to explore the interesting differences between this project as a large scale interactive projection and the same concept and data on the multitouch interface of an iPhone/iPod Touch. I may not get to this part of the project before the final presentation of my thesis so it may not be completed ’till the end of summer next year. I anticipate having my interactive projection completed by the end of December so that I can spend much of the Winter semester working on my thesis paper and fine tuning and testing and tweaking and re-writing the code.
Yum.
