My projects aim is to be a truely interactive art installation that depends on the interaction of the observer. At the moment the program creates its own sounds but I am going to modify the program so the sounds created and manipulated by the observer are generated by the observer such as talking or noises from around the room.

Stage one is complete!!! After a couple of days of swearing I have the starting of my final year project. Built in processing it currently tracks a white ball that the user holds in front of a webcam. Two audio channels are created and depending on the location of the white ball it can change the frequency or tempo shift of the audio.

Demo 1

I have started the long task of programming my project using processing. Luckily there are a lot of tutorials online so I can learn whilst creating my project at the same time.

The aim of this project is to look at the relationship between the virtual and the observer and how artist strive to immerse the observer through technology. Interactive art is ever changing and relies on the observers interaction and constantly changes according to the observers interaction. This problems asks the question: When a observer stops interacting with a virtual enviroment does it not exist anymore? Is it only art when there is interaction?

First of all yay for the fact am at home for the next 3 weeks, which basically means i’ve moved from sitting infront of my uni desk all day working to my parents sofa working all day.

I had a meeting with Mike P on friday and discussed my dissertation and it’s progress. I have decided not to do anymore on my abstract as it should come at the end of a dissertation anyway and I don’t think I can right a clear final one until I have finished all my research and created some sort of conclusion. I have written my chapter outline in more detail and keep updating it with bullet points to write about as I read more. I am still looking for more books to read but as I am away from the uni library I am going to have to raid Colchester libraries resources - I don’t hold out much hope.

I sort of changed my argument again but this time I think I have made it stronger and am really excited about writting it and Mike P seems positive about it. So here it is:

Virtual art has always existed. The observer and the observed play a crucial role in the development in virtual art in combination with the advances in technology. Artists have always seeked new ways to immerse the observer into art and developing technology has been a tool to the artist to acheive this.

Artists paintings are a collection of signs designed for the observer to interact with and create their own signifers and virtual demension. This can only be acheived by the observer being placed at a distance away from the painting to critically analyse the peice.Interactive computer art seeks to destroy this distance between the observer and the observed in an attempt to create a more immersive experience for the observer but by removing the distance this can remove the observers chance to create their own virtual demension and instead have the computer create it for them.

In this dissertation I will argue that art has always been immaterial as it exists within a demension of the observer and by artists removing the distance needed to create this virtual dimension artists are producing less immersive and more materialized peices of art.

I made this for our gaming presentation a while back but as like anything with flash it went a bit wrong in parts so ended up having to leave it out but I thought I would post it up here so you can get a feel for our game. It is in no way perfect this trailer but it is a good start.

Trailer

Well am just getting ready to hand in my assignment for action scripting but am disappointed as I couldn’t get my final bit of code to work and was stressing about it all yesterday and in the end had to comment it out and have placed it as one of my bugs. Am uploading it on here for people to view as well butthe two player section will not work unless it’s operating over a flash comms server.

SWF file

But thats the last of action scripting! Next term graphics. whoop

At the moment my project is sort of on hold until the christmas holidays as I have some tight deadlines and a heap of reading to do for my dissertation it is easier to put it on hold until I have the 3 weeks holiday to really get my teeth into it. After christmas I hope to have the majority of the programming actually completed so I can really spend the rest of my time testing for bugs and improving it. A little scared of the programming right now.

Well my action scripting project is almost there I am just struggling at the final hurdle where I need the values to be stored into a variable and compared to see which one is the highest number. I ended up getting a bit bored yesterday and was looking at how much code I had (which was not alot) and decided to add a bit more on so now you can draw your own bunny and use drag and drop assets and then print the picture off. Will hopefully complete it all tomorrow when I go into the labs in the morning to test it on the server. If it doesn’t then arghhh panic as it has to be in on tuesday.

Link:

http://processing.org/learning/examples/brightnesstracking.html

Woo hoo after a weekend of programming my actionscripting is almost complete. All I need to do now is get them communicating over the COMS server, which I am going into uni tomorrow to figure out. I have all the code and now I just need to adapt it to suit my game.