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I’m working on an interesting project– I’m writing programs that convert text to images based on the key strokes. It’s turning up some unusual results! My plan is to create a program that turns 140 characters into an image, so that people can tweet art! Ultimately, I would like to be able to upload a text file and have it turned into a png file, or even better, upload a png file and turn it into text! It’s not really an encryption scheme, since it can be easily deciphered, but I think it might be interesting digital artwork. For instance, Mike and I could upload the source code from our websites and create images from them– unique embodiments of our technical work!

I recently read an article on steganography- the art and science of hiding messages inside of images, and it got me to thinking: “what if the message wasn’t hidden in the image,but instead the message defined the image?” Now I’m not the artistic type- the kind of art I am interested in is methodical (read… paint by numbers). But I am a computer scientist, and I know that a color as understood by the computer is a 4 byte unsigned integer that defines an ARGB value (Alpha, Red, Green, Blue), where each byte represents the quantity of each part. I also know that a character like the lower letter case a, is defined by one byte when encoded in UTF-8, which represents a number between 32 and 126. Therefore, 4 characters, like the word duck can actually be translated into a unique ARGB value (or for opaque colors, three characters like the word ben can be translated into an RGB value).

Thus began my experiment. I wanted to see what a translation from text characters to colored pixels would produce, and if potentially there would be meaning in art created algorithmically. The quote above is from an email I sent to Jaci describing on what I was working on. The quote has one unique feature- it is 675 characters long. If you divide 675 by 3 (the number of characters you need to get an RGB value), you get 225 – which is 15 squared. This is perfect for an image of 150 x 150 pixels, where each RGB value makes up a 10 x 10 pixel square (or 100 pixels). Here was my first result:

First Attempt

So when you take the above quote and translate the byte sequence into RGB values, you get this colored, kind of grey, very dark image. The reason for this is because the characters American keyboards use (and we regularly type) range from between 32-126, while colors are defined with values between 0 and 255, where 0 is black, and 255 is white. When you put an RGB value together, the amount of each value determines the color, so (255,0, 0) is red. (0, 0, 0) is black (no color), and (255, 255, 255) is white (all colors). If the values are even, say (64,64,64) you get grey, darker grey is numbers closer to 0 and lighter grey is numbers closer to 255. So because the alphabet we normally use is so close together, and very low numbers- you get a grey, dark image. Especially since the most common character we use is the non-breaking space: ” ” which is 32.

To fix this, I shifted the values for the characters by distributing them evenly across the range 0-255 (for the nerds out there, I used the formula: Math.ceil((charCode – 32) / 94 ) * 255)). This had the effect of spreading the values of characters farther apart, and making them less grey, it also lightens the image, because the top values are closer to white again instead of black, and I got this:

Shifting the colors to a full range

Much, much better! And actually, an interesting result because all the colors are there- reds, greens, blues, yellows- that is what I was hoping for! I was afraid that a direct byte by byte translation would produce uninteresting results (monocolor, shades of the same color, etc.). There were still a lot of greys and whites, and I thought this could be the fault of the most common character, the non breaking space, which my shift gave a value of 0. So I made the non breaking space 255 (all white). This was a failure, because it lightened the image up too much:

Making space, " ", white

I had been hoping that maximizing a color value might make the color more vibrant. But as it turns out, spaces are only one of two other values, that probably are also high. so, instead a 0 value actually makes the other two colors more vibrant, while the the 255 value, just makes things whiter. Blocks might not be the most interesting result, so I tried random scatter of the 1o0 pixels:

Scattering the pixels randomly

But this has a problem, when you inject randomness into the formula, you can’t translate the image back to text. So my original idea of an algorithmically generated piece of art, whose meaning could be read in plain English, would be lost. This image could be translated into any text, not just the paragraph that you read in the beginning. Blocks are boring, so next I tried 100px lines, I hoped that this would give me the fluidity I was looking for:

Lines instead of blocks

Alas, it did not, it gave me three columns because 100 is 2/3 of 150, so the images was broken into thirds. I am now currently experimenting with some other manipulations including spirals, alpha gradient overlays, gradients, frequency histograms, etc. If you have any ideas, please comment them, so I can try them out!

So what is the end result? As you read from my paragraph, I’m thinking about making this mainstream by creating a web application for tweets. Of course, now that I’m posting this as a blog, anyone can steal that idea and run with it. Maybe I should grab the domain tweettoart.com! But I’m thinking this could have bigger implications. I also mentioned that I could uniquely turn my web pages into graphics, or even bigger- I could take the entire New York Times website on a particular day and turn it into some sort of graphic! If you have ideas for applications of this, please comment below and let me know!

Also, I’m hoping that using these methods, we could find interesting images, where text can be written specifically to produce an image. Then both the image and the text would have meaning! Imagine creating poetry that designed an image (hint, hint, Devi and Bethany!) That would be really cool.

If you want a copy of the program in its current format to install on your computer (It’s Adobe AIR), so that you can play around… email me or comment below. I’d be happy to share, just keep in mind that it is experimental, so you might be able to break it.

So guess what everyone…I have made my first (maybe) debut in a Bollywood film! I was not, unfortunately, an official “extra”, but I tried really hard to get in the background of the shot and think I probably succeeded for at least a few seconds .

So guess what everyone…I have made my first (maybe) debut in a Bollywood film! I was not, unfortunately, an official “extra”, but I tried really hard to get in the background of the shot and think I probably succeeded for at least a few seconds .

Here’s how it happened. Amy left Rome on Saturday, so we decided to get together for lunch last Wednesday to bid our final farewells. Amy got to Rome several hours before I finished classes, so we decided to meet at 1 on the Spanish Steps. While I was in class, Amy texted me to say that what looked like a bollywood film was being shot on the Spanish steps! Moreover, they were interviewing people to try to get them to be extras in the shot, but the people had to prove they were Italian (by speaking italian and showing some sort of identification). Regardless of the fact that I’m not actually Italian, I was pretty psyched, and a friend and I rushed over right after class. The second I saw the Indian actor, the Indian cast and crew, the wardrobe and the dance moves, I knew it had to be a bollywood movie (or at least a music video). Hannah, Amy and I squeezed our way into the background of the shot, and marveled at the extent of the scene. They even had an Indian gladiator!

After grabbing some gelato, sitting on the steps (which are beautiful now by the way, covered in flowers) and watching for a while, we decided to finally head over and get lunch. In honor of our exciting bollywood morning, we decided to go to this nice Indian/Pakistani restaurant (Himalaya’s Kashmir, I highly recommend it to anyone reading from Rome and getting a little tired of Italian food), pretty much the only ethnic food in Rome. They were closed when we got there (we got a little lost for a bit), but after seeing as mope around at the door let us in and said they could cook us something really quickly. They made us some amazing food right away, and the host sat down and talked to us for a little bit. He mentioned they were shooting a bollywood movie in Piazza di Spagna, and excited to find out a little more about it, we inquired further.

It turned out that this restaurant was the one who was catering to the cast and film crew, and they were all coming to the restaurant for dinner that night. They actually had to close the restaurant to feed the film party because the actor(s) (Raj Kapoor’s son-in-law?) were concerned about security. They said, however, if we wanted to stay for dinner they’d be happy to have us there, and we could meet everyone in the cast (and maybe see if we could finagle some jobs as extras)!

More to follow…