Elements of SoftCrime

Software visualisation make the intangible tangible. To do so, it uses metaphors which translate abstract and complex structures of code into graphical representation of entities and their relations. We create narrations through generating interactive environments; with the help of narrations we can talk about systems. The first system mentioned here is a software system, its patterns and anti-patterns. The second one is represented through the cultural techniques of VR and IT work, the techniques of cognitive capitalism – commercialism, digital labour or playbour (labour as a play) and creative expression – another “system” in need to discuss.

The application demo “SoftWorld” has also another level of visualisation, the staging of its presentation in form of “Innovation Show”. In this show, the audience is forced/carried through a group meditation in order to create a collective brain to be able to enter SoftWorld. All of the set phrases used in the intro of the live presentation are completely based on the real slogans of existing software engineering startups and technology trend agencies. Here, in the broader socio-technological sense, we can talk about commercialism, about the fascinating PR of VR (promo language of virtual reality and other new technologies) or discuss the material aspects of virtual and mixed-reality technologies (it is even more fascinating how invisible they tend to stay)

Programs or frameworks needed to open or use the component content: 

You can download it as a blender file, as an fbx or obj, print in in bronze, brass or aluminium, do whatever you wish to. Open in most visual programs, from Blender, 3DS Max, Maya, Cinema4D to Photoshop or even Windows 3D paint. You can also import it to Unity3D as well.

The example objects – Giant Dwarfs - are a 3D representation of Java Classes. Exactly they are classes in a UI layer of a software running a huge warehouse optimisation for one unnamed but big wholesale German company. The only think you can see here is an abstraction of the class without the exact lines of code, or any concrete information. To see more information or to make a sense of the representation, you would need to open the SoftWorld Application itself. But sadly, you can’t - as in most of the close corporate system we live in. In this way the objects are relics of the lack of transparency, empty vessels, distant symbols of anesthetisation of black-boxing. Elements of soft crime. 

SmellyUIClass *the yellow hexagons are identified and reported smells in the code. In the VR SoftWorld they had all information about when by whom any why the smell was detected. The shape of the red peak represents the code metrics, line of codes, amount of methods and functions in this class as you see at the schema beneath.