Ian Truelove

This is a selection of art and design work by Ian Truelove, Principal Lecturer, (Technology Enhanced Learning) at the Leeds School of Contemporary Art and Graphic Design, Faculty of Arts & Society, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK.

Current work
Second Life
The majority of my time since May 2006 has been spent working on stuff in Second Life. I've developed tools and gadgets, exhibited my 'holograms' at the Aho museum, and got some funding to investigate the learning potential of virtual worlds. For more information on my lastest exploits, visit my blog at:
http://iantruelove.blogspot.com
See my snapshots at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cubistscarborough/
My avie's site is:
http://www.cubistscarborough.com/

All the work below dates from 2005 or earlier, just before Adobe messed up Director and Shockwave. It was probably for the best...

Bioinformatic Art
The work in this section is concerned mainly with DNA, which I have been downloading and visualising in various ways.

mammal mitochondria This Shockwave piece reads DNA sequences and converts them into continuous line drawings. It reads the DNA one base at a time. If the base is A, a pointer moves up and traces a line; T traces the line down, C left and G right. The complete transcriptions of mitochondrial DNA sequences of several mammals are synchronized, and can be compared for similarities and differences.

mammal mitochondria 3d This used the same format as mammal mitochondria, but maps the mitochondrial DNA into 3D space. Bases were read two at a time and used to shift a point around in space. This vector list was then converted to Shockwave3d format and presented in a form that allows the user to show, hide, rotate and zoom in on the DNA shapes.

ape gallery These images are also generated by mapping mitochondrial DNA into 3D space. The vector list was rendered as surface hypervoxel in Lightwave. Click on the images for a close-up view.

the story of foxp2 This story is an abstraction of the protein sequence of the gene FOXP2, which has been proposed as the genetic precursor to art and culture. The proteins were analysed to draw up a table, which listed the proteins from the most frequent to the least frequent. This was then matched against a table which listed the most frequently used letters in the English language to the least frequently used. This formula was then applied to the FOXP2 sequence to produce a string of text. This text was run through a spell and grammar check in Word. The final stage was to manually re-write the text as little as possible to produce a story that makes some sort of sense.

the y chromosome This Shockwave3D piece uses the same principal as mammal mitochondria, but offsets the points on a helix to create a winding tunnel, which the viewer flies down. The colour of each point is generated by multiplying the base read with the next three bases, to yield a number between 1 and 256, which is mapped to an 8-bit colour table.

Interactive Design

inspiration engine This Shockwave piece is intended to aid creative thinking by providing lists of words related to a user input word. The user clicks on the 'strongest', or most relevant word from a list, and a new list is then displayed. The user keeps clicking until a sentence is formed. The user can then search for books, images and websites related to the sentence, or start a new search.

bebigger life coaching This site gave me the opportunity to investigate the design and scripting capabilities of Flash. I accepted life coaching session as part payment for this site, and it was the best thing I have ever done. I now use some of the coaching techniques that I learned in tutorials, and have coached friends and colleagues with some remarkable success.

theoryB.com One of my first commercial shockwave sites, created in the days before Flash was a viable option for complex interactive content. I benefited from an open-minded and creative client, who also subsequently employed me as a creative management consultant, working on accounts for Orange, Sainsbury's Bank, Scottish Water and B&Q.

Games Design
The 3D capabilities of Director are spectacular, especially when combined with the . The following pieces of work explore the possibilities of Shockwave3D content, and all exploit the power of the Havok Physics Xtra.

the gene pool This Shockwave3D game explores alterative methods for manipulating objects in 3D space, and employs principals of inheritance drawn from Evolutionary biology theory. The aim of the game is to stab to death five of the ten organisms using the 3D cursor. Each organism has a set of randomly chosen 'genes', which control movement, size, avoidance of the cursor, surface appearance etc. At the end of the level, the five surviving, and therefore 'fittest' organisms mate to produce ten new offspring, which inherit a combination of the surviving genes contained in their parents. Random mutations are also incorporated into the new generation. The game gets progressively more difficult as the weaker combinations of genes are culled.

evolaxia Based on the principal of Galaxians, this piece is an attempt to simplify the mouse/cursor/3D space interface, which is often problematic in 3D games.

ore-struck An adaptation of the y chromosome, with baddies to shoot.

Photo-Cubist Art
Digitally manipulated photography, exploring multiple perspective, glimpsed over time, combining to represent the experience of an location or person.

photo-cubism Later cubist work, following on from my masters work.

masters by research My original research work in this area.

Programming
Creative programming in Director.

interknit I programmed the kitting game to Liz Noble's requirements.

Contact
Please get in touch if you have any comments or enquiries.

info[ at ]iantruelove.com