Treasure Island
0. Background and Inspirations
This week in our Creative Coding Class, we were given the following task:
Create a sketch that calls an API, processes the data, and visualizes it somehow. A non-exhaustive list of publicly available APIs can be found here
I searched online for public APIs for a database of artworks and found that the Metropolitan Museum in New York (MET) has one with an impressive list of works. The documentation is also created in a user-friendly format. Since I have not been to the MET since I moved here, I was curious about what was on display there. So I decided to use this API to create an interaction to generate and browse random works of art.
1. Process
Every item in the museum is assigned a unique objectID. To generate images of artworks using API, I need to input the unique objectID inside the URL every time I initiate a fetch. Although I could create an array of random numbers to flow into the objectID upon a trigger of some sort, I decided to create an input bar to input random numbers by hand. This would transform the experience into a treasure-hunting- like game.
When thinking about what might fit the concept of luck and treasure hunting, I recalled the mini-games like The Wheel of Fortune at one of the fairylands in Neopets. I looked to the aesthetics of Neopets, which was a huge part of my childhood.
3. Final Work
I added background images from Neopets and a Fairy to fit the theme. The player is prompted to input a number ranging from 1–60,000. This number flows into the request URL as the objectID to fetch the image data from MET’s public API. If the number inputted corresponds to an item with a publicly available image, the image will display on the right side. If it doesn’t, a “Next Time” message will appear.
Here is the link to the experience! Try your luck! https://editor.p5js.org/amytiffanyloo/full/5WtMX8WEd
