Well it’s taken all weekend and some serious reading (of about 6 different books) BUT chapter 4 is complete for my dissertation. I am working backwards with this dissertation by completing my last chapter first but it was the easiest one to get done. In the end it totalled to just over 2,000 words so only another 6,000 or so to go1

This week I was on a mission to create a light wand for the computer vision to track easily. I ended up in Maplins and they were actually helpful (for once!!) and I brought a 5mm bright LED, a resistor and a 9V battery. The problem came when I was trying to find a suitable peice of pipe for all the wiring to sit in. In the end I managed to find a toy magic want and adapted it to have the LED at the top with the battery placed at the bottom.

Right  now it doesn’t look too great as it’s been held together with selotape until I can find a more suitable way of doing it but for now it works well and processing tracks in the dark.

Today our group submitted a mini presspack of ourselves to advertise our game and if we are lucky we are hoping that it will get submitted into Feb’s addition of Computer Arts magazine but we are up against the rest of our gaming group so I am not holding out much hope that we will get in.

I have been working on our mini site for the past week or so reccently trying to get it up to scratch but am having issues with the pre-loader not actually working at all or it’s not loading the mini site SWF. So am bugging people from my placement to help me out with it. Soon you will be able to find it on www.absent-caller.co.uk

The programming is finally starting to kick off but am still worried that we won’t get it completed because it not a easy walk in the park with what we want to do.

I have started to string together my dissertation. I built up a template for my dissertation with the chapter outline and then under each chapter writting the topics that I want to address. Now I am writting up all my notes under each topic and slowly starting to string together a dissertation and hopefully by the 26th I will have the firdt draft chapter!

I have managed to get my project to be able to draw shapes and store them within an array. I created this via the openGL library, for the moment I have had to use bits of other people (who have done a similar thing) code and build mine on top of it but I hope to change this to later on and improve the code that I am building on. So far the only problems I have encountered is the speed of capture for the camera whilst drawing the shapes. The next stage is to transform these shapes into a manipulating different sounds.

Am having some stressing problems with processing. I have managed to build the majority of my project within processing but now I have come to trying to form some form of pattern recognition I am stuggling greatly with developing a way in processing. So am facing the decision of maybe having to switch to MSP and Jitter for my project. The only problem with this will be that I have no experience with the software and it maybe too late in the stage to start learning a whole new language.

Help!

There are 4 stages to my project:

1. Identify the user’s hand in each frame of the webcam stream
2. Trace the hand movements in space
3. Categorize the gestures the hand is making
4. Transalte the categorized gesture into sounds

So far I have stage 1 and 2 complete and the X and Y locations of the users hand are stored in a array but not I am having problems trying to create a way in which the movements can be translated into gestures.  Dynamic Time Warping seems wise route to travel down but trying to find a starting point is proving harder than I thought.

Luckily I do have the sound manipulation already working so all I have to focus on it the manipulation.

Since my first report (16th November) I have made a number of changes to my project.

The concept of the project has developed into looking into interactive art installations and their relationship with the observer. Asking what makes interactive art immersive? Considering the technological aspects and phenomenological – the sense of presence through which the user feels corporally connected to the virtual world. But fundamentally asking the question that is art that exists on a computer still art where there is no observer to interact with the piece?

Interactive art is always changing depending on the observer’s interaction, creating a constant narrative with audience participation and if there are no set rules as to how to interact with the system then no experience will be the same for an observer creating a unique personal experience for each person who comes into contact with the piece. It transcends conventional genres of art because it is connected with the broader human reality and the benefits of discovery but because the art only becomes meaningful through participation by the observer, the value of the work and the artists become obscured.

In this project I am addressing the technological and phenomenological aspects of what makes interactive art immersive and incorporating this into my design of interaction. The navigation of this virtual space is dependant on layers of interfaces. One of these layers is constituted by the input device and the virtual structure that represents the information.

In particular I have looked at the interaction between a conductor and a orchestra. For this project I intend for the program take the movements of a conductor and translate them to manipulate the different aspects of sound such as the: Tempo, beat, volume and frequency. I have chosen to study a conductor for this project because of their ability to communicate real-time information to the performers through a series of gestures. The hand of a conductor traces a shape in the air every bar depending on the time signature.

To understand the concepts and techniques of conducting I am getting in touch with the head of music at university and hopefully I will be able to test out my program to examine any weaknesses or how it can be improved on and used in a real life performance.
Technological Changes

I decided to change the software that I would use for this project from Flash to Processing, this was because of Flash’s problems coping with sound inputs and being able to manipulate them. Processing offers a wider range of possibilities for manipulating sounds through the use of colour tracking.

Currently the program tracks the colour red around the screen but can easily be drawn to background colours. To compensate for this I plan to make a light wand which the program can track and for the installation environment to be dark and controlled so that the program will not be drawn to any other colours.

The program developed now changed the frequency and volume of a series of audio channels according to the location of the colour it is tracking.

Future Objectives

The next stage of this project is to get the program to recognise different movements of the conductor and translate these movements into different sounds. I also need to then decide on what sort of audio input there shall be and how I can use this in a real life performance.

I also will be developing a light wand to be used within the performance. Using a high voltage LED at the tip of an adapted baton.

Schedule

There are two important dates approaching. Firstly is my assessment review on the 22nd in which I hope to have the gesture recognition working and some sort of sound being produced. The next is my meeting in which I will start to discuss phase two of the projects development.

Risks/ Problems

My main concern for this project is to get the movements of the conductor translated into music because there is no set example on how to do this within processing it will be quite complicated.

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.