Blueprint for EquityBot

For my latest project, EquityBot, I’ve been researching, building and writing code during my 2 month residency at Impakt Works in Utrecht (Netherlands).

EquityBot is going through its final testing cycles before a public announcement on Twitter. For those of you who are Bot fans, I’ll go ahead and slip you the EquityBot’sTwitter feed: https://twitter.com/equitybot

The initial code-work has involved configuration of a back-end server that does many things, including “capturing” Twitter sentiments, tracking fluctuations in the stock market and running correlation algorithms.

I know, I know, it sounds boring. Often it is. After all, the result of many hours of work: a series of well-formatted JSON files. Blah.

But it’s like building city infrastructure: now that I have the EquityBot Server more or less working, it’s been incredibly reliable, cheap and customizable. It can act as a Twitterbot, a data server and a data visualization engine using D3.

This type of programming is yet another skill in my Creative Coding arsenal. And consists of mostly Python code that lives on a Linode server, which is a low-cost alternative to options like HostGator or GoDaddy, which incur high monthly costs. And there’s a geeky sense of satisfaction in creating a well-oiled software engine.

The EquityBot Server looks like a jumble of Python and PHP scripts. I cannot possibly explain it excruciating detail, nor would anyone in their right mind want to wade through the technical details.

Instead, I wrote up a blueprint for this project.

For those of you who are familiar with my art projects, this style of blueprint may look familiar. I adapted this design from my 2049 Series, which are laser-etched and painted blueprints of imaginary devices. I made these while an artist-in-residence at Recology San Francisco in 2011.