This is what 200 x 1g packets of silica gel looks like.
It’s been painfully clear over the past couple of weeks that I need to start testing the physical side of my project. Although I’ve been spending quite a lot of time banging my head against the wall with Max/MSP/Jitter coding, it will all be for nothing if I’m not prepared for whatever the physical input may be.
The sprawling nature of my work has also led me to take stock of exactly how much time I have left this semester, and just what I’m capable of outputting over the remaining weeks. In short, I had my biannual freak out and have changed tack for this project. The biggest change comes in the form of moving away from architectural projection and using the surface of the interface as a projection area.
Just a quick catchup on this subject, as it leads into posts I’m about to put up about my major project… I grabbed an infrared LED electronics kit a couple of weeks back from Jaycar. The assembly was surprisingly easy – considering my soldering experience amounts to about 30 whole minutes – but my lack of knowledge fell down when I realised that I couldn’t get power into the circuit board.
Fortunately, there’s a unit (I’m not even going to pretend I know what it’s called) at uni, which can send varying volts and amps into pretty much anything. This trusty box told me that I needed to get around 12V or so at 300mA pumping through those invisible diodes, to get it going. Back to Jaycar.
Unlike Professional Portfolio, I won’t be keep a weekly journal for this subject – only occasional updates where necessary. Electronic Technologies is a class I’ve taken to support my major work in Professional Portfolio: somewhere I can learn not to electrocute myself as I build the hardware component to my work.
As the diagram above shows, I’ll be mostly working with sensors in Arduino, to pass information to the patches I’ve been building in Max/MSP/Jitter. I’ll also create an infrared floodlight to work in combination with my PS3 Eye camera, giving me the ability to track in low-light conditions.
I began work on motion tracking in Max/MSP/Jitter this week, by way of blob detection. Using the PS3 Eye that I replaced the light filter on last semester, the plan is to use it to track how much light is passing through a translucent table top, giving an impression of how much interaction is taking place.
Blob detection is common practice for camera-based-interaction and there are quite a few methods out there, depending on what your software of choice may be. For this project, I’m using some of the OpenCV objects for Max/MSP/Jitter created by Jean-Marc Pelletier. These provide much of the functionality of OpenCV, without needing to get your hands too dirty with code.
A new mockup design for my major project. That’s dirt on the table, not Mr. Hankey.
After presenting last week‘s work in class, I received some valuable criticism on the direction of my work. Not levelled at the function or technology of my project, but the content I’m choosing to present. It was suggested that rather than focus on the exhibition inside of CarriageWorks, I look at the history of the building and area around CarriageWorks, from a long-term perspective.
This idea of ‘long-term’ was suggested through the lens of archaeology, or chronology, which started me thinking about how the audience might interact with my work. Removal of the interface is something I was initially very keen on, but the thought of someone ‘digging’ through the history of an area definitely has it’s own appeal.
Thankfully, my MacBook stopped short of this. Image: 9to5Mac
It happens to everyone at some point: your computer will die. Depending on which way you look at it, I have been through this experience before and fortunately now keep a thorough backup of all my work on an external hard drive (I’ve even been considering off-site backup of late).
Unlike my last exploding computer, via God smiting me with a lighting strike (seriously), my MacBook took a more subdued approach and quietly refused to turn on one morning. I knew right away that it wasn’t one of those problems that would sort itself out after a few well directed whacks to the unit, so I booked it in at the Apple store and took it in that same day. It took all of 20 seconds for the tech at the store to inform me that the logic board had failed and they will replace it.
After all the work that Lukasz, Eli and I put into Dusk, I thought a quick video about the work was in order. In the artist talks at Underbelly Arts, I often found it difficult to explain to people concisely just how the project works – hopefully this video fills in the gaps somewhat.
Although we were proud of what we accomplished in the short space of time we had at Underbelly Arts, this first incarnation of the Dusk project does feel unfinished. A huge benefit of taking part in Underbelly Arts is the opportunity to document our work in this way, so that it might have another life at sometime in the future.
Dusk in action on the opening night of Underbelly Arts.
Underbelly Arts kicked off last night with an opening party and a successful launch of Dusk. We were all happy (and relived) to see the project come together, and it was especially nice to watch people playing with the work.
Today marks the final day of Underbelly Arts, with a public festival event. We’ll be on site for an artist talk at 4pm, but if you can’t make it along, I’ll be putting together a wrap up of the whole project in the coming days. In the meantime, there are more videos on Flickr.
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