4 ms·

Turn Mouse Events into Art

51 points by fsyscall 4y ago

willcipriano 4y ago
Cool idea, I'd like to see different types of users output. Say a programmer vs a call of duty player vs someone browsing Facebook.
- JetAlone 4y ago
  Yeah, or what composites of them tend to look like. Maybe a computer vision program given a map like this could generate a guess for how much time the user spent on which program.
n3k5 4y ago
https://iographica.com/ https://iographica.com/ is a similar application that makes prettier pictures. (Anti-aliased rendering, more sophisticated visualisation that maps ‘mouse stops‘ of different lengths to disks of varying sizes, and maps time to colour.) Hacking Karbon to teach it similar tricks could be a fun project; maybe Pycairo would be suitable for better rendering?
nittanymount 4y ago
nice, thinking if could generate more variants other than dot line...
Archelaos 4y ago
How much information can we extract from images like this, such as, which programms were used by whom? Let us play a little Sherlock Holmes: At the right we see the usage pattern of a scrole bar. So the user is operating at least one programm in full screen mode. There are no clicks in the upper right or lower right. So the scroll bar was quite large and the user seems to prefer the upper third of the scroll bar for moving it. There are no clicks to the upper right corner, but several to the upper left. Mac style interface? Or just one application running in full-screen all the time? The pattern at the top indicates a menu or tab row. So probably no gaming? Not many clicks at the left few inches, but quite a few in a vertical pattern thereafter. Browsing HN? Or an application with a little used side bar or side menu? Coding? Can we identify the IDE? Several click to the same spot towards the upper right indicate either a closing button of a re-occurring modal dialog or a button (unlikely) at this place. The pattern at the centre seems to indicate text processing of some kind, where the user tends to prefer a line a little below the middle of the screen. Some other patterns in the center seem to indicate secondary windows: dialogs or sub-frames of the main application. There is no indication of switching application via a task bar at the bottom of the screen. So there is none, or only a single application was used all the time, or the user prefers another method of switching applications, such as ALT+TAB. Anything else?
- SuchAnonMuchWow 4y ago
  > At the right we see the usage pattern of a scrole bar My guess would be the dock from MacOS (or the one from unity) instead of a scroll bar: its too large for a scroll bar, and clicks are grouped in chucks which could be centered on applications icons. So this identify the OS to be either Linux+Unity (ubuntu ?) or MacOS. By looking at the groups of clicks on that docks, we can see that three applications have been opened 8-10 times each.
splitbrain 4y ago
Interesting how this idea resurfaces every few years again. I dabbled in it 12 years ago: https://www.splitbrain.org/blog/2010-02/13-creating_art_by_doing_nothing https://www.splitbrain.org/blog/2010-02/13-creating_art_by_d...
- klez 4y ago
  Also https://www.deviantart.com/samhainvenom/art/Mousepath-159163562 https://www.deviantart.com/samhainvenom/art/Mousepath-159163... Everything old is new again, apparently.
lelanthran 4y ago
Is it just me or is this simply a heatmap of the mouse events? Hardly "Art" with a capital 'A'. It's more "a good set of data for a paper" than "Art".
- theWreckluse 4y ago
  Not mutually exclusive :)
5041us 4y ago
But is it Art?
Tenoke 4y ago
I tried this one yesterday and my results looked so much worse that I wondered if they specifically tried to make it prettier (which amusingly would make it more 'art' as some people don't agree with the label).
jmprspret 4y ago
Turning mouse events into art is just what illustrators and digital artists do every day :p

51 points by fsyscall 4y ago

Cool idea, I'd like to see different types of users output. Say a programmer vs a call of duty player vs someone browsing Facebook.

JetAlone 4y ago
Yeah, or what composites of them tend to look like. Maybe a computer vision program given a map like this could generate a guess for how much time the user spent on which program.

n3k5 4y ago

https://iographica.com/ https://iographica.com/ is a similar application that makes prettier pictures. (Anti-aliased rendering, more sophisticated visualisation that maps ‘mouse stops‘ of different lengths to disks of varying sizes, and maps time to colour.) Hacking Karbon to teach it similar tricks could be a fun project; maybe Pycairo would be suitable for better rendering?

nittanymount 4y ago

nice, thinking if could generate more variants other than dot line...

Archelaos 4y ago

How much information can we extract from images like this, such as, which programms were used by whom? Let us play a little Sherlock Holmes: At the right we see the usage pattern of a scrole bar. So the user is operating at least one programm in full screen mode. There are no clicks in the upper right or lower right. So the scroll bar was quite large and the user seems to prefer the upper third of the scroll bar for moving it. There are no clicks to the upper right corner, but several to the upper left. Mac style interface? Or just one application running in full-screen all the time? The pattern at the top indicates a menu or tab row. So probably no gaming? Not many clicks at the left few inches, but quite a few in a vertical pattern thereafter. Browsing HN? Or an application with a little used side bar or side menu? Coding? Can we identify the IDE? Several click to the same spot towards the upper right indicate either a closing button of a re-occurring modal dialog or a button (unlikely) at this place. The pattern at the centre seems to indicate text processing of some kind, where the user tends to prefer a line a little below the middle of the screen. Some other patterns in the center seem to indicate secondary windows: dialogs or sub-frames of the main application. There is no indication of switching application via a task bar at the bottom of the screen. So there is none, or only a single application was used all the time, or the user prefers another method of switching applications, such as ALT+TAB. Anything else?

SuchAnonMuchWow 4y ago
> At the right we see the usage pattern of a scrole bar My guess would be the dock from MacOS (or the one from unity) instead of a scroll bar: its too large for a scroll bar, and clicks are grouped in chucks which could be centered on applications icons. So this identify the OS to be either Linux+Unity (ubuntu ?) or MacOS. By looking at the groups of clicks on that docks, we can see that three applications have been opened 8-10 times each.

splitbrain 4y ago

Interesting how this idea resurfaces every few years again. I dabbled in it 12 years ago: https://www.splitbrain.org/blog/2010-02/13-creating_art_by_doing_nothing https://www.splitbrain.org/blog/2010-02/13-creating_art_by_d...

klez 4y ago
Also https://www.deviantart.com/samhainvenom/art/Mousepath-159163562 https://www.deviantart.com/samhainvenom/art/Mousepath-159163... Everything old is new again, apparently.

lelanthran 4y ago

Is it just me or is this simply a heatmap of the mouse events? Hardly "Art" with a capital 'A'. It's more "a good set of data for a paper" than "Art".

theWreckluse 4y ago
Not mutually exclusive :)

5041us 4y ago

But is it Art?

Tenoke 4y ago

I tried this one yesterday and my results looked so much worse that I wondered if they specifically tried to make it prettier (which amusingly would make it more 'art' as some people don't agree with the label).

jmprspret 4y ago

Turning mouse events into art is just what illustrators and digital artists do every day :p