Empowering Collaborative Art with Technology

Rami Sayar – FITC Toronto 2014

Empowering Collaborative Art with Technology

Rami Sayar (@ramisayar)

Technical Evangelist

Microsoft Canada


Social NetworksPhoto Credit: Andy Lamb

https://www.flickr.com/photos/speedoflife/8273922515/in/photostream/


Wisdom of the CrowdPhoto Credit: Sir Francis Galton

http://digitool-b.lib.ucl.ac.uk:8881/view/action/singleViewer.do?dvs=1398520660078~71&locale=en_US&metadata_object_ratio=15&VIEWER_URL=/view/action/singleViewer.do?&DELIVERY_RULE_ID=10&application=DIGITOOL-3&frameId=1&usePid1=true&usePid2=true


Wisdom of the Crowd – Mathy• Classic wisdom-of-the-crowd; assumes independent

individual observations, assumes enough data points• Insight: crowd’s individual observations can be

modelled as probability distribution with the mean (average) is assumed to be close to the true mean.


Wisdom of the Crowd – Conditions• Diversity of observations• Independence of observations • Aggregation toward a single result

• E.g. there is an assumption that everyone’s observations are equal and bring us closer to truth, therefore the more the merrier.



Design

Tech

Art

Media

ME


Crowdsourcing.


Crowdsourcing – Powered by the Web.


Crowdsourcing Art?Photo Credit: Bhavna Sayana

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bhavnasayana/6820251598




GraffitiPhoto Credit: Ariel Charney


Nuit Blanche Toronto 2013

The [RE] GENERATOR Project interactively explores the concept of “RE” (REcycling, REmixing etc) using fashion, visual art, social media and projection. The audience can contribute to the live installation using social media. Share your examples of “RE” with #regenerator2013 on Tumblr.


HoliPhoto Credit: Steven Gerner

https://www.flickr.com/photos/sgerner/8629525424

https://www.flickr.com/photos/sgerner/8629525424


Photo Credit: Boegh

https://www.flickr.com/photos/boegh/6085347780/


Shared Knowledge.


Idea: Using Social Networks to Create Art

Open Collaboration. Crowdsourced. Wisdom of the Crowds. Shared Knowledge.


Let’s Experiment!


Once upon a time….


TEDxHEC Example.


Fail.


Collaboration doesn’t guarantee a useful outcome.Neither does crowdsourcing, nor is there always a wisdom

in the crowd.


"When you have trouble with things it's not your fault. Don't

blame yourself: blame the designer.“

Donald Norman, Design of Everyday Things


Constraints + Creativity: Michael JohanssonPhoto Credit: Michael Johansson

http://www.michaeljohansson.com/works/tetris-notodden_bok_og_blueshus.html


Hmmm… RandomnessWisdom of the crowd ignored.


What else can we do?


LET THE WORLD DECIDE.

Trees.


Other examples…


Strategies for Scaling Creative Collaboration


Simple.


Randomness.


Trees.



Voting.


Combine Them Together.


How to Build?


Technical Considerations• Performance• Accuracy• Storage• Aggregation• Scale


FITC Experiment - System Architecture


FITC Experiment - Input


FITC Experiment - Output


FITC – Message Queue• Scalable Topic-Based Publish Subscribe Message Queue

FITC – Database• Needed for Observation Persistence


FITC – Detailed Architecture

Flexible Open Solid

Using Microsoft Azure

Azure Websites Build with Node.js or PHP or ASP.NETDeploy in seconds with FTP, Git or TFSStart for free, scale up as your traffic grows


Azure Websites• Node Express & Socket.IO apps fully supported.• Enable WebSockets in Azure Websites configuration.• Connect with GitHub repository. Redeploys app on

every Git push to master.• Metrics and monitoring dashboard.• Web endpoint monitoring.• Configuration values passed as environment variables.


1shared reserved

SHARED INSTANCES

:-)

shared

Web sites

2SHARED INSTANCES

:-)

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Web sites

SHARED INSTANCES

:-)

1shared reserved

RESERVED INSTANCE

:-):-)

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Web sites

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RESERVED INSTANCE

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Web sites


Azure Websites WebJobs• Run background jobs (continuously, on demand or on

schedule).• Node scripts are supported with local node_modules• Configuration values are passed as environment

variables.• Logging supported.




Service busSecure messaging and relay capabilitiesEasily build hybrid appsEnable loosely coupled solutions

ServiceBus Connectivity

Service RelayProtocol Tunnel Eventing

Rich options for interconnecting apps across network boundaries

Integration RoutingCoordination Transformation

Content-based routing, document transformation, and process coordination.

Svc Management Naming, DiscoveryMonitoring

Consistent management surface and service observation capabilities

MessagingQueuing Pub/SubReliable Transfer

Reliable, transaction-aware cloud messaging infrastructure for business apps.

NotificationMultiplatformEasily Scale out

Push notifications to large number of mobile devices.

TopicsTopic

SubSubSub

Message DistributionEach receiver gets its own copy of each message. Subscriptions are independent. Allows for many independent ‘taps’ into a message stream. Subscriber can filter down by interest.



Blob storageHighly available, scalable and secure file systemBlobs can be exposed publically over httpContinuous geo-replication across datacenters

Azure Storage

Storage in the CloudScalable, durable, and availableAnywhere at anytime accessOnly pay for what the service uses

Exposed via RESTful Web ServicesUse from Azure Compute or WebsitesUse from anywhere on the internet

Table Storage Concepts

EntityTableAccount

contoso

Name =…Email = …

Name =…EMailAdd=

customers

Photo ID =…Date =…

photos

Photo ID =…Date =…

Table Details

InsertUpdate Merge – Partial update

Replace – Update entire entity

UpsertDeleteQueryEntity Group TransactionsMultiple CUD Operations in a single atomic transaction

Create, Query, DeleteTables can have metadata

Not an RDBMS! Table

Entities

Querying

FIRST LAST BIRTHDATE

Wade Wegner 2/2/1981

Nathan Totten 3/15/1965

Nick Harris May 1, 1976

?$filter=Last eq ‘Wegner’




FITC – Frontend• IE11 + WebSockets: Receive All Data including a

Database Flush OnLoad.• D3js: Render data into story.

Azure application building blocks

Storage Big data

Caching CDN

Database

Identity

Media Networking

Traffic

Messaging

Cloud ServicesWeb Sites

BizTalk Svcs

MobileVirtual Machines

Open source

http://github.com/windowsazure


Conclusion• Strategies for Scaling Creative Collaboration

• Simple• Randomness• Voting• Trees

• Azure Websites + Message Bus + Table Storage <3 Node


Get Creative!

Thank You! Questions?Follow @ramisayar