Text Net Art ZUI Research and Related Art

I had some ideas about using 3D interfaces for text art, net art and general use with search and files. I did a Masters in Electronic Arts at the John Landsdown Centre, Cat Hill, Middlesex University UK (Professor Stephen Boyd-Davis was my master of ceremonies). 

This ended up as a working zooming interface with animation made with Macromedia Flash MX (7800 lines of code spread across many scenes). I also made 3D text art CALM AS A DEAD CLAM.

ZUI research zooming 3D

Creative story board apps for Mac and PC arrived later from Story Software – Story Lite (text), Story Turbo and Notes Story Board (text and images). These creativity apps, with unlimited zooming canvases, are still in use today, but are now not supported.

All research is in the pages available below.

1/ AFFINITY SOFTWARE ZOOMING UI. Original notes on the zooming interface research, and the demo AFFINITY SOFTWARE. It was called Affinity as things can be grouped near each other in 3D space, by affinity on any scale eg size, colour, file type, arbitrary connections etc. This had controls for selecting items, and also animating groups. (It was first called ‘A Bit Like‘ as this was also one of the grouping methods, loose sets, with user categorisation.

CALM AS A DEAD CLAM is shown here too.

2/ NON-LINEAR NARRATIVE – FICTION OR FILING? Dissertation. If you read non-linear narrative, you soon realise it needs some sort of organisation (that’s a joke btw).

This NLM Fiction is Filing dissertation is also available as a PDF, with the most controversial section removed. Click here for PDF:

Geoff Davis FICTION OR FILING NLN Short version

I have left in the non-academic section Computer Use and Abuse which is a discussion of filing and evolution, Black Bag Theory and other unsupported digressions.