I’ve been doing a lot of thesis research for what seems like forever at this point. I’ve known from the start that I wanted to do something that I was really interested in both technically and conceptually (seems like an obvious thing but its very easy to get sidetracked by the thesis process….). The easy part of the process was identifying exactly what I wanted to explore, which is the subject of baseball. I have been interested in baseball since I was young, and to this day I am borderline obsessed with the sport (and the Phillies in particular ). I also knew I wanted to explore the emerging technology surrounding multitouch and tangible interfaces, so I thought that I could combine these two ideas and a concept would emerge. After a month or two of going back on forth on exactly what I wanted to do with baseball and multitouch (Data visualizations, augmented baseball cards, media center, etc) I finally had a revelation that I was trying to fit a concept into a box that I had voluntarily made. After freeing myself from the focus/necessity of designing exclusively for a multi-touch installation, which was severely limiting my thought process, I finally feel like I have come up with a concept that is

1. Totally unique
2. Interesting to me
3. Can incorporate multitouch but does not rely on it
4. Can be appreciated by fans of baseball
5. Allows people who hate baseball to get an abstract form of enjoyment out of the game

So what is my concept? My concept is to use existing historical (1950-present) baseball game data and investigate the rhythmic, cyclical nature of the game. Furthermore I want to show the factual, hard evidence that remains after a game has been played (box scores, statistics, etc) and from that attempt to recreate the emotional experience of a fan that existed at that moment in time.

My investigation will be materialized as an audio/visual system that will allow users to select a historical game and play it back in a condensed form. The events of the game will serve as individual beat tracks upon which audio samples can be assigned, either by individual event or entire tracks of similar events. The user will then be able to play this game back and see the action of the game in abstract form, both audibly and visually.

Some further ideas I have for this are splitting the game based on fan allegiance (home team, away team, neutral) and allowing the user to switch between these views during playbook. I’d also like the user to be able to physically “scratch” or scrub the playback, simulating a DJ scratching a record.

As far as the how/what of the actual project, I intend to develop the project in C++/openFrameworks which will allow me to develop across multiple platforms (Desktop, iPhone, Touch Table) while keeping the core code the same. I’m really excited to attempt to develop for multiple platforms, but at the same time this will add a large amount of complexity (and work!) to the project, so I need to get moving fast.

I still have a LOT of work to do, but I’m happy that I finally feel like I at least have a direction  and can start to develop prototypes and code non-stop. Hopefully I’ll have a first basic prototype up soon ( I’ve started already but I’ll put that in a separate post)

Anyone who actually reads this and have any feedback on the concept I’d love to hear it, please feel free to leave comments!