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!!).

Today my housemate Steve brought a new game for his PSP that uses “3D googles” where the user is shown 2 images on the screen and using a cardboard box/goggle things that you look (about 2 inchs from the screen) through it merges both the images into one making a 3 dimensional interactive gaming experience. It’s great that Sony have cottoned onto an idea that was thought of in about 1538!

But at least I finally got to see an example of it….

This morning our gaming group travelled to polperro (for all those who don’t know where it is - it’s a tiny small town in cornwall) to take photos of a barn that is set in some cliffs by some the sea. Last time I visited the place I wasn’t allowed to walk down to properly see it and so didn’t quite realise how much of a cliff it was on!

HOLY CRIPS walking on slippery rocks after it had been raining the group tred carefully around and were disappointed to see it all locked but but we got some good shots of the outside. Steve who is not so scared of heights managed to climb up around and take some good over head shots and I stuck to the ground where there wasn’t a shear drop down both sides!

We got all the photos we needed and a cornish pasty on the way back but I think we deserve bonus points on for dangerous tasks. Now all I need to do is go home for christmas and take photos of the inside of a barn.

Have changed my mind one more time and have decided to use Processing for this project. Mainly because after a couple of days of abuse and swearing my apple mac finally decided to get my camera and processing talking to each other which means now all I need to do if figure out how to program in it! YAY!

Also take a look at the new PS3 Eye Toy - I am never too excited about gaming but I want one if it lives up to the adverts.

You Tube

Reccently I have been talking to quite a few developers and artists who focus in webcam technology. After talking to these people I have decided that it is for the best I actually change my project that will give me more stance in the theory side but also will remove some of the technical pressue.

Why the change?

Gesture recognition in flash is very advance and for my knowledge would require more time than I have to master it. Also the user would not be able to stand directly infront of the webcam as the motion tracking would monitor the users body movements as well which is unwanted data. Also looking at the new PS3 Eye toy - my project would be virtually working along the same lines of this so this would not make my project anything special. Theory wise it would just be a piece of motion tracking.

Future of the project?

I am still working within sound but instead I am exploring the relationship between sounds and shapes. The project will use colour tracking (using some sort of coloured wand/paintbrush) and the user will be able to draw shapes infront of the webcam.

The shapes will then be translated into sound. The sound is dependant on say how many corners the shape has as to how many beats it plays. Or different instruments can be represented by the colours in which the user is drawing with.

This is still within it’s very early stages and am focusing on finding some other artists that have perhaps done things similar and hitting the books as usual!

Holly crips I never knew writting 2,000 words on the Eye Toys interactivity, playability and immersion could be soooo long and also sort of boring. But here it is two days later… I thought I would post it up just in case anyone in the world needs to read about the greatness of Sony. Not too sure if it is really a critique right now and may need some tweaking at some point but for now I am happy!

http://www.all-thumbs.co.uk/Critiques/katy/katylilley_critique.html

The evolution of art illusion

The evolution of art illusion has a long history. Towards mid-century, it was technological advances in film and video that were adopted by artists that launched virtual art. The computer made possible a new type of art in which the audience could participate. This form of art began attracting attention in the late 70’s and 80’s. The computers ability to perform calculations at high speed made it possible to create interfaces that linked the human body to the images and sounds used in the work of art.
If however, you examine the creative behaviours of artists themselves, you find that works of virtual art emerge from a dialogue between the artist and subject. The audience exercise their own power of imagination to absorb the meaning and emotion the painting conveys thus creating their own signifier. An example of signifiers within art can be found by looking at medieval art. Here you can find examples of illusion and hidden meanings that can only be understood if the user actively works at deciphering them.
The relationship between the observer and the observed has always played a crucial role; artists have always been fascinated with devices that allow the artist to immerse the observer into a virtual world. Claude Monet for example, spent decades searching for new ways to fuse the observer and the image. The triptychs, Iris, Saule pleureur, Agapanthus and Nuages were painted between 1915 and 1917 and were painted to create the illusion of a single continuous canvas. The stereoscope invented in 1838 by Charles Wheatstone utilized our physiological ability to perceive depth, providing an escape to physically inaccessible places. “A thousand hungry eyes were bending over the peep-holes of the stereoscope, as if they were the attic-windows of the infinite” (Charles Baudelaire). As a tool of visual perception, the camera obscura was the result of a long process of scientific discovery and development. Since the seventeenth century, the view onto reality has been gradually liberated through developments in science. The camera obscura represented a pioneering achievement in the history of cinematographic modes of perception because it introduced a restructuring of possibilities for visual experience through optical techniques.
Tracing the cultural significance of illusion and the dominance of vision has been a major focus of many analysts and looking back at artists behaviours towards illusion and immersion it is possible to state that the virtual has always existed within art but as artists adopted new technologies, the virtual was enhanced by the medium in which it is presented on.

I intend to look at the signifiers of the immaterial and the virtual in art to identify the virtual dimension in interactivity so as to amplify the design process.

Chapter Outline:

Introduction to Virtual Art

Art and its Virtual – representing the material and the virtual:
- Spiritual art
- Medieval art

The virtual and the material – The observer and perception

The virtual as material

Examples in contemporary life of the virtual as material

Findings and Conclusion

For my project I have two technical options:

1. Is to program it in flash but this has it’s problems. Mainly Flash does not do well at manipulating Sound and I would have to do the mjority of it in MAX MSP which I don’t have experience in. Also after talking with an experienced programmer/designer they are a lot of technical issues that I may not be able to over come like with gesture recognition - there is also hardly any examples out there of gesture recognition. So I would have to change parts of my project. But do already have some motion tracking working.
2. The second option is to use a open souce piece of software called Processing. There are alot more demos of motion tracking and gesture recognition which would give me a starting block but I am not too experience in programming in java. This software gives me a bit more freedom to do what I want but still has it’s limitations.

I am swinging towards using Processing but need to talk to Geoff before I make the switch. I am still actually having problems installing the correct java and quicktime to actually get the video tracking working. My main worry is I am not technical minded enough to think through every aspect of this design.
But for now through I think I need to actually concetrate more on the theory side of this project as all through I have a basic argument for this it’s not the most secure one and I need to really start arguing why this should be done, why I am doing it and why sound? As there is no point in having a technically sound project when the theory is shot!

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.