Dream Director 20 – 23 Nov 2008 (ICA)

I recently visited the ICA to see an art installation produced by Luke Jerram. Dream Director is a very interesting investigation into the realms of sleep and dreaming. The work builds upon work already out by psychologist Chris Alford at University of west England.

I am particularly interested in the technology around this project. People were invited to stay over night in a gallery theirs beds were custom designed pods.  Each pod was loaded with it own set of sounds and the sleeper was asked to wear an eye mask designed to measure rapid eye movements. As the sleeper entered the dream stage of sleep the different sounds stored in the pod were used to try and shape the way the person dreamed. In the morning everybody that took part in the investigation was asked to fill in a questionnaire about the dreams that occurred while they were in the pod. I thought this investigation/installation was very interesting. The exhibition is very worth visiting as the whole thing has been well documented with a documentary moving image piece screened at the ICA as well.

A little more info on sleep:

“rapid eye movements occurred periodically and in conjunction with a number of physiological changes. For example the brain waves exhibited low voltage and fast activity, and heart and pulse rates seemed to speed up. As Kleitman later described it, “These changes suggested some sort of emotional disturbance, such as might be caused by dream.”

quote and table found here

I would be very interested to know how the rapid eye movement detecting goggles are actually made if anybody out there knows!

To find out what else is on at the ICA go here

webcam processing

I am starting to get quite obsessed with procesing at the moment its a very addictive framework. I have been experimenting with the video class library. Processing allows for individual pixel comparison of each capture from a webcam. The code from the video in this post compares the current webcam capture to the previous capture from the webcam. The code scans from left to right top to bottom when it finds the first pixel that is different from the previous capture it draws a circle on the screen at that point. One of the interesting problems solved from this code was converting the linear array of pixels from the webcam capture to the 2d space on the form.

xPos = The modulous or remainder of pixelnumber / width.

yPos = the result of pixelnumber / width ignoring the remainder.

ps. ignore the quality of my very very old webcam its just impressive it still works

Man paper

I’m not just an interactive designer I’m a man as well (well.. lad). I enjoy beer, episodes of top gear and and the occasional scratch of of my manhood. This being said and already with too much information i should get to the point. I am working on a project at the moment based upon the passing of time. While researching clocks and other mechanisms i came across the ultimate in man origami and here it is…

behold the Origami V12 four stroke engine

for more images of this manly wonder go here or check out the video below to see the v8 version of the paper engine in action.

The engine was designed by a canadian artist named Yee. If you are interested in the rest of Yee’s portfolio check out his website here. There are some amazing papercraft examples including two other engines; a V8 and  a v twin engine.

Fireworks

I ran through the tutorial i posted a while ago on projectile motion, This post is just to show a quick example of how to apply this theory in code. I wrote the code for this animation in processing which is a java frame work for graphic designers. I have touched on processing in previous posts. Animation was created by allowing the code to run and saving every frame as a .jpg.  Here is the final animation :-

I am no moving image expert by a long shot. The animation was compiled in final cut pro. I am very pleased with the out put from my code it look very natural and the particles all fall taking into account gravity. I now am working on a fire work class so i might post that up soon.

Any spare time on your hands?

Just found a really nice blog on automata which documents some fantastic and ingenious mechanisms. There are some beautiful diagrams and clear explanations of how the mechanisms work.

heres the link

Tactile time

I found this watch for the visually impaired while stumbling through vast content found at neatorama.com. The watch was designed by Matthew Wagnerfield. The first thing that grabbed me about this watch is the beautiful craftsmanship; its well designed and well made. The second thing that really impressed me was that the watch can be read by the blind or visually impaired. The clock face is based around a standard 7 segment digital character display but instead of using light to communicate the message this watch uses mechanically animated segments to convey the time. The segments lower and raise by a difference of 1mm so the time can be both seen and touched.

Alright… Scared now!

Jules’ – a disembodied androgynous robotic head – can automatically copy the movements, which are picked up by a video camera and mapped on to the tiny electronic motors in his skin.

It can grin and grimace, furrow its brow and ’speak’ as his software translates real expressions observed through video camera ‘eyes’.

The project, called ‘Human-Robot Interaction’, was devised at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL), run by the University of the West of England and the University of Bristol.

freaky stuff i like my gadgets to look like gadgets. The whole project is ridiculously impressive though.

There is a lot more on this subject at the dailyMail site

It is also seriously worth while checking out the robot gallery on the BRL website as well.

Rhythm bug

After my post on subconscious tapping a while ago i have been pondering over my own version. I have been developing a very simple robot that bounces back and forth between two objects; the further apart the objects the slower the beat. I plan to make quite a few of these little bots so that different beats can be made by having each robot bounce between different distances.  Here’s a quick mock up of how the robots will be made -

I have nick named him Gaz the destroyer i made a mock up out of cardboard before this one who was not quite so successful. He was called Baz the racing slug! i do in fact need to get out more.

I am quite happy with the over all performance of the mock up. There are a few things to take into consideration. The robot produces a slight wheel spin on the return journey. This is because of bad weight distribution. I have decided to counteract this by making the robot 4 wheel drive. I also want to consider what material to construct the mechanism with so that when the robot bashes against an object it makes a good noise.

Projectile motion

Recently i have been working alot with processing which if you have not tried i really guarantee it for image manipulation, real time web cam tracking and general interaction experiments. Part of an applet i recently wanted to produce involved shapes flaying out of the bottom of the screen. These objects must obey gravity and act like real objects when you throw them in the air. These sort of behavior is know as projectile motion. I am no mathematician by any standards but i found this brilliant tutorial on the subject of projectile motion. I worked through from the very beginning and was easily able to produce this effect. Its a very very good tutorial and i went through a lot of complicated mind boggling sites to find it. So if your interested in this subject the try this:

Projectile Tutorial

Don’t rush through it because the beginning parts are vital to understanding the last parts.

image from the Kitty throw game; bored try it!

Beautiful eyes transcend to music

This is a very poetic project and a very beautiful idea. The author and creator of the program decided it would be nice to have a way to convert the beauty of the retina in an eye in to music. He’s Using Processing as the backbone and creating OSC which are then picked up by SuperCollider.

I have not looked at SuperCollider yet but it does look like an excellent piece of software for producing real-time audio synthesis and algorithmic composition. So watch out in the future for experiments on my blog using this software.

heres the video showing the EyeSequencer:

this project was found on Makezine.com

Makezine found this project on: http://blog.califaudio.com