Python: 24 ao?t 2012

(probably the last post written last year which I never got around to publishing)

Well there was a flurry of activity in processing, and then grant proposal written and submitted. Before and after the grant proposal, have been learning Python from the Google Python course. This evening I worked on the exercise of taking Social Security’s baby name data (popularity ranking of boy and girl names for the US, for each year http://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/) and writing a Python program to use regular expressions magic to convert the html pages into cleaned up simple text files containing only:

2006
Aaliyah 91
Aaron 57
Abagail 895
Abbey 695
Abbie 650

Most of the work is done by the line

(please select english version; I can’t get the formatting right on both copies at once…)

thus ignoring all the chaff, zeroing in on the lines of form

(please select english version; I can’t get the formatting right on both copies at once…)

and converting them to (1, ‘Michael’, ‘Jessica’) tuples and the like.

Then in the command window  one can enter

  python babynames.py –summaryfile baby*.html

to convert many files all at once. The instructor (three cheers for Nick Parlante! ) then suggests seeing patterns over time using shell commands:

  grep ‘Juliet ‘ *.summary

gives an output in the command window like this:

… baby2007.html.summary:Juliet 519
baby2008.html.summary:Juliet 453
baby2009.html.summary:Juliet 318
baby2010.html.summary:Juliet 285
baby2011.html.summary:Juliet 252

showing the evolution of the rank of Juliet as a baby name per year. I was inspired to download the baby name rank files for the top 1000 names for the last 100 years (saving each year’s file one by one by hand as I haven’t learned how to automate such a process yet; it took 20 minutes), and then write another python program that would, for a given name, give a text file with the summary

2007 519
2008 453 etc.

I then turned to Processing since I do not yet know a quick way to deal with graphics in Python, and similarly used Photoshop as the quickest way to add labels. I found to my surprise that Paula, which I thought was an uncommon first name, actually was at rank 38-100 in the years 1943-1974. It has declined greatly since then though. Juliet (my mother’s name), which I hadn’t realized was a rare name, was much more uncommon than Paula through most of the 1900’s, but pulled ahead in this century. Ahmed (my husband’s name) first appeared as a top 1000 name in the US in 1974, and also pulled ahead of Paula around 2000. Finally, for some time around 1980, Misty (our cat’s name) was the most popular of all. Unfortunately, neither Paolo (my father’s name) nor Tortoiseshell (their cat’s name) were ever in the top 1000 in the US. Here is the graph:

namegraph

Another thing that would be interesting to do is to integrate this information over time, to see, over a century, the popularity of names. One couldn’t do it with the data I have used so far, since how do you aggregate when you know rank, not number of ppl with each name. However, I have revisited the site, and found that in addition to the top 1000 ranking data, they also release the yearly data (in one nice zip file with all the little files from 1880 thru 2011 neatly packaged together, with far cleaner formatting… oh well, nice exercise Nick, but this is much nicer data) of NUMBER of people for each name, for all names with at least 5 (for privacy reasons; and apparently this accounts for about 70% of the population) ppl in that year. So in that case Paolo’s appear (85 in 2000, for example) tho still no Tortoiseshell’s…

Images couleurs avec Processing — 24 juillet, 2012

(again, a post written last year which I never got around to publishing)

Color images created along the same lines as discussed in the previous post:

jul24Var1Sample jul24Var2Sample jul24Var3Capture1

Dessins avec Processing: 18 juillet, 2012

(again, a post written last year which I never got around to publishing)

jul18Var3Capture1

Lately I have been revisiting Processing (http://processing.org/) and reading and thinking about generative art (see for example

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_art

http://www.philipgalanter.com/downloads/ga2003_paper.pdf

http://www.manning.com/pearson/)

and making a concerted effort to get to the point where I am including generative art in my work. For the moment I am working on « expressing the codification of information, from handwriting and calligraphy to drawn traces hinting here at writing and there at representations of sound waves » (from my new artist’s statement). The idea is to first come up with algorithms to create these lines computationally, and then to see where the new medium takes me. Here is another screen shots from today’s work, where I am starting to create some graphically interesting interaction between the lines, by drawing a series of circles between each pair of lines.

jul18Var4Capture1

Here are a couple snippets from a few days ago, where I was exploring the production of various forms of lines:

jul4b jul6

Matrices 2012 Budapest: 18 Juillet, 2012

(Posting a few posts I wrote last year but never got around to publishing)

Franzini_dream1

A few days ago I created my images for an international art competition in Hungary. From the announcement:

The aim of the organizers is to give the opportunity of presenting small-sized electronic artworks created by foreign and Hungarian artists, making a survey of diversity and presenting their works at Hungarian and international level, within the size of 20 x 20 cm. We expect special technical solutions synthesizing new procedures, original ways of expression, raising topical techniques and contents, high-standard works: electrographs composed on different layers, digital installations, virtual and 3D creations, objects showing the artistic potentials implied in computer technique.

I made some new compositions because

(a) most of my pieces are meant for much larger formats (and aren’t square, which would be ideal if not required here)

(b) I wanted to submit pieces that were markedly « electrographic » (more layering, etc, than usual).

They are layerings of:

— a night office building photograph, with dream catcher in the window

— a macro shot in transparency of a leaf

— a greatly enlarged scan of an engraved plaster plate

Together the series is titled: Dream of Life

These pieces were exhibited in a group show by the Hungarian Electrographic Art Association, under the title MATRICES 2012 International Electrographic Artworks of Small Forms /3rd part/, from 10-28 December 2012, at the MTA (Hungarian Scientific Academy) Jacobin Hall, Budapest, Hungary.

dream2 dream3 dream4

Exposition ? venir

Du 9 juillet au 16 août 2011; vernissage le samedi 9 juillet à 13h

Duo Paula Franzini – Claire Lemay

à Le Centre d’artistes Voix Visuelle

81 avenue Beechwood  Ottawa ON K1M 1L7

613-748-6954

Heures d’ouverture: du mardi au samedi, de 11h à 16h

 

Une annonce plus détaillée suivra bientôt.


© Copyright Abstract Digital Art | Estampe Numérique Abstraite – Paula Franzini