During one of my escapes from work and surfing youTube I found this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u46eaeAfeqw

Gaming was handed in last thursday - woooooooo!!! Steve had to do an all nighter to finish the programming and we were all pretty darn stressed with it all. The presentation and game testing went ok but there were a few bugs in the programming. Oh well - it can all be checked out on www.absent-caller.co.uk

Due to gaming being a week on slaught of work my other projects sort of have hit a back burner and this week I am trying to bring them back to life.

We had a 4D presentation on Friday, which we actually got some good feedback on and we had only made it that morning. So now were basically turning internet talk into a poem some how! That should be fun and stressful.

Project is slowly driving me insane. I get one thing working and another fails. It runs quite slowly at the moment which is annoying as one of it’s perks is to be real time and if it doesn’t have that it sort of goes down the sh*t hole.

I have been applying for quite a few jobs and had to make up a portfoilo today to send off to a couple of companies. Hopefully it will give me some interviews and in the long run a job!

I think thats a bit it!! Project report due soon and my dissertation draft! argh.

I created this today when my stress levels were over the normal and my ‘in’ pile of work was getting no smaller!

worse01.swf

Well it’s been two days back at uni and it’s all starting to kick off again. Over the christmas holiday I managed to develop a starter of a programme for my final year project, develop a dissertation outline and finish the graphics for gaming and provide a flash file to show how they all link. 4D sort of lost out on my time, so need to catch up asap with writting a script.

Today I had a Expo meeting with Anna at the Plymouth Music Zone (http://www.plymouthmusiczone.org.uk). It was mainly just a initial chat so we could both see what our skills were and for me to get to know the place and I am really looking forward to working there mainly because they have a lot of very cool musical toys for me to play with.

Gaming: Me and Michelle are getting set to in making a mini gaming site, which will be made in flash and in a very similar style to the lost website.

Project: I have two week (ahhh) to create a total working model to show to conductors so I can continue onto phase two which is to get it working with a orchestra.

We had our first meeting for the Expo festival. It was mainly just an informal breifing as to what is to be expected of you. I also had to get my criminal check underway to check I haven’t killed anyone and won’t aim to murder all the kids I will have to work with.

I am really excited about working on this as it will give me hopefully some links to the art world and also be a good learning oppurtunity (not to mention the money!!).

A ‘call for students’ to participate in the research and development of a young peoples sonic arts commission, which will coincide with the SAN (Sonic Arts Network) Expo 07 which (Plymouth 22-25 June 2007);

It is envisaged that undergraduates will work in a paid capacity with experienced artists and practitioners to help develop and realise groups of young people’s ideas. These ideas will then be submitted to a commissioning panel and up to four of the proposals will be commissioned to be exhibited at the Expo Festival in June 2007.   

My name is on the list to partcipate…. should be a good experience.

Friday evening we saw the launch of the I-DAT project Noogy on the Portland Square building as part of MotionPlymouth. Noogy is a virtual pet with can be seen on a large LED display which uses data from Arch OS as his nervous system and gets his personality from interaction with the public through text messages.

Chris O’Shea reccomended EyesWeb a peice of software provides a different way of motion tracking.  The software looks great and would be such a help to my final year project but as most things in life it’s not MAC compatible and I can’t afford a new PC laptop anytime soon. But I thought I would mention it as another form of software that I could of used to acheive my aim instead of flash.

Ok - it’s all been changing again. I keep on reading articles and keep on getting more inspiration but this is the FINAL idea as I can’t afford to keep changing it about. So here it is:

First of all the webcam and blobs will still be used but instead of the blobs being to do with colour I have changed them to sound. So imagine it the user stands infront of the webcam - presented to them is a number of blobs. The user can activate them by selecting one and moving it - this will trigger a sound clip (i.e drums) the user can then start activating other blobs via moving them. Each blob will pulse to it’s rythme and the user will have no way of telling with blob produced what sound until they have tried them. To stop each blob playing the user will just hold out their hand over the blob. This is the basic level.

The more Advance stuff:

The blobs will use gesture recognition as a control mechinism. This project is a music application that is stripped of all normal interface mechinisms. Each blob can be copied from a parent blob to double the selected sound and the user can create different rythmes by combining blobs together. The hardest part is to come.. the user will be able to control the volume of the application by how far they are away from the webcam. The further away from the webcam the queiter the sound will be. The closer they move the louder the sounds will become.

The really hard stuff (Will only be done if it is possible and I have time)

It would be REALLY cool if the user was able to stretch out the blobs and as the blobs got pulled apart the music slows down and if the user pushes the blob back together it becomes faster. Also is the user twists their hands it could fast forward and rewind what ever beat the user it making with the blobs.

I know that the advance and really hard stuff will only be possible if I have the time as it will require a lot of programming with gesture recognition but also the flash application may get too large for the processor of my computer so some of these ideas may not even be possible. I will only know as I start to play with it all

Ok - it’s all been changing again. I keep on reading articles and keep on getting more inspiration but this is the FINAL idea as I can’t afford to keep changing it about. So here it is:

First of all the webcam and blobs will still be used but instead of the blobs being to do with colour I have changed them to sound. So imagine it the user stands infront of the webcam - presented to them is a number of blobs. The user can activate them by selecting one and moving it - this will trigger a sound clip (i.e drums) the user can then start activating other blobs via moving them. Each blob will pulse to it’s rythme and the user will have no way of telling with blob produced what sound until they have tried them. To stop each blob playing the user will just hold out their hand over the blob. This is the basic level.

The more Advance stuff:

The blobs will use gesture recognition as a control mechinism. This project is a music application that is stripped of all normal interface mechinisms. Each blob can be copied from a parent blob to double the selected sound and the user can create different rythmes by combining blobs together. The hardest part is to come.. the user will be able to control the volume of the application by how far they are away from the webcam. The further away from the webcam the queiter the sound will be. The closer they move the louder the sounds will become.

The really hard stuff (Will only be done if it is possible and I have time)

It would be REALLY cool if the user was able to stretch out the blobs and as the blobs got pulled apart the music slows down and if the user pushes the blob back together it becomes faster. Also is the user twists their hands it could fast forward and rewind what ever beat the user it making with the blobs.

I know that the advance and really hard stuff will only be possible if I have the time as it will require a lot of programming with gesture recognition but also the flash application may get too large for the processor of my computer so some of these ideas may not even be possible. I will only know as I start to play with it all