Having spoken to my mum on Saturday night, I think it's best to find another printer. Sounds like getting it done at her (old) work would put her in a difficult position and she really doesn't need that.

Have emailed Will Barker at the Print Unit of campus to ask for a quote so should hear back from him sometime later today.

Will be spending serious screen time today developing my final image, hoping to get it done by the end of the day, then we're off to see Ju just after 3:00.

I cannot believe my luck this week.

My mum has just been made redundant and so her firm may well not be able to print my project! Will find out more Monday/Tuesday, but it's really the last thing I need on top of the loading bay disaster!

Have been mapping code all afternoon. Am really pleased with the image so far, and feeling pretty positive about the project.

Hope to finish up on Monday morning, before we head over to see Ju Row Farr at Blast Theory HQ. She came in and gave a lecture earlier this term and we've been invited to go and see her to discuss her, and our, work. Should be good.

These are two images I've produced as part of my 'Exhibition Plan'. Made on a 3D home design package, I'm really pleased with how they look and plan to Photoshop in my work for submission.

Had a brief pay around with Illustrator to begin my final image. Trying to fit the swarm into the space is not going to be easy. I may have to overlay several swarms as I can't run the programme with more than about 500 boids (it goes a bit mad).

I want to put all the code from the hex editor (ie. the whole programme which runs the swarm) into the final image. I feel this is important conceptually, as I am trying to create a visualisation of the programme as a whole, not just a few elements of it.

Practically though I may have to use a rectangular canvas and just cut off what I can fit into the space. It's annoying, but the project was conceived for a square space and I am having to work with an area with very different dimensions.

I am not very well :( so I'm going home now to bed. It means I wont' be able to go to Rachel Beth Egenhoefer's talk. I'm gutted because it sounds so relevant. The exhibition is up until 5th April though, so I should be able to go along another day.

Have been having a play about with Illustrator, working out how to map the image using it as a 'template' for the text tool.

Having trouble visualising the project in its new space though so am going home to make some mock-ups.

I've spent the whole of this morning panicking about my project. I am so furious that Estates have done this without telling anyone.

Mary, who is in charge of the whole Arts complex only knew when the builders turned up this morning and Peter, the Head of MSU, wasn't told either. Both knew about, and had okayed, my project, so would have known to bring this up with Estates if they'd had any warning. I just can't believe the lack of communication.

Anyway, I have reverted back to my original location - the stairwell, and will be covering only the lower section, removing the practical and health and safety problems I had before. I have already asked Peter about it and he has okayed it from both a wall-covering and a H&S point of view.

I have just received the following email from Mary Harrison:

Amy,

i have just been informed by estates that a new shutter is being fitted in EDB loading bay where you were hoping to put your display.

They have started work on this today and will be finished by the end of next week.

It cuts down on the room available for you and you will probably need to change your plans.

Mary.

I cannot believe this.

After a few days off over Easter, I wrote the first draft of my 'Short Critical Introduction' today. Needed some inspiration for how to approach it, as it's not something I'm used to writing.

Had a look through the Brighton Festival brochure and went down to Brighton University's Grand Parade building, where they hold a lot of exhibitions, to pick up some more resources.

While I was there I saw this flyer for an exhibition by Rachel Beth Egenhoefer. She 'creates tactile representations of intangiable data codes' - hugely relevant to my work. She's speaking at an event on Thursday so I'm going to go along.

There's also another event at the same place in a fortnight on 'The Collaboration Experience: Working across Disciplines, Borders and Attitudes' - how relevant is that?!

I met up with Anil Seth this afternoon. He was really interesting to talk to and had some strong views about the intelligence of computers and their consciousness, which will be excellent for my critique.

He also advised me to contact Maggie Boden to discuss creativity and computing, so I've sent her an email to try and arrange a meeting. As the the founding-Dean of the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences she should be an amazing person to talk to.

I have had a major breakthrough!!!

This amazing code is by Mike Blow, who is super lovely and incredibly helpful. The code is amazingly clear and really easy to manipulate. It runs in two versions - 'Angels' and 'Dots'. I'll be using the 'Dots' version for my work.

From the top here you can see my exploration of the code, playing with swarm size, velocity, canvas size and the size of the 'boids' (the dots). I can now start working on my final image - hoorah!!

Mark Bishop sent me through some code today, by a graduate student he is supervising, Mohammad Majid. The swam it creates is amazing (see bottom pic from Mohammad's website (only runs in Internet Explorer) but it's all Java (see top pic) and I don't know how to run it!

Have emailed him to ask for a bit of a guide and will have to experiment on the back of that.

Jamie Matthews from Informatics has sent me some great swarm code which I'm playing with today. It goes a bit mad when you add more 'boids' (little buggy things) like Jamie warned it would, so I'm going to have to work out how to sort that

I've also just learnt how to add libraries to Processing!

Neil Mather sent me some code 'written in C++ using the Qt application framework'. Not sure how I work that but it is sooooo pretty!

Got sent an email which mentioned 'Senster'. Looked it up and it's a drawing robot! The website has an excellent overview of robots in art.

Have gone through the emails I got sent yesterday with offers of code, and am just waiting for the actual code to be sent through. I've kept my options open, taking up all the offers, and will now see what filters through, and how relevant it is to the visual I want to create.

Have also arranged to meet Dr Anil Seth on Thursday. He has been working in swarms, flocks and emergent behaviour for the last few months so should be able to give me a pure AI slant on the work I am looking at.

I have had so many responses to my request for code! I love the Informatics people!

Going to go through it all tomorrow and see what is suitable - hooray!

Today I met up with Anna Dumitriu, Director of the Institute of Unnecessary Research and Artist in Residence at Sussex University's Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics. She was really inspiring and gave me some interesting comments on the boundaries between art and science.

She has offered to act as a contact between myself and the team at Informatics, to see if any of them have a swarm system I can map over. I would really like to have a system from within the university to build a link between the science and art sides of the campus, as well as merging the two in my work.

This afternoon I have also been to a talk given by Lizbeth Goodman, Director of the SMARTlab Digital Media Institute. She spoke on the technologies the lab has developed for minority groups, including the severely disabled, to access digital media. Though not wholly relevant to my project it was interesting to hear about the scope of digital technologies, especially in relation to inputs such as eye-tracking.

I've spent most of today's session looking for a swarm system to map my code onto. No luck thus far - will have to talk to Anna about it tomorrow.

Find these sessions really interesting though because we all talk about our ideas and help each other out. There's a good atmosphere of collaboration. Aaah - how sweet!

Saw this in the paper this morning.

Good example of sci-art bringing something that is difficult for the public to understand into a visual format.

Specifically liked that the project is recursive like mine, using the code of something to produce a visual representation of it: 'An internet security firm worked out the programming code for some widespread viruses which a specialist computer artist then turned into 3D shapes'.

More pictures here.

I am ill so haven't gone to class :(