mga/blog

GIF made with the NYPL Labs Stereogranimator

Publico esta foto hecha con el Stereogranimator como abrebocas para un post que publicaré más adelante sobre mi trabajo en la Biblioteca Pública de New York.

Leyendo un post comentando sobre la compra de Summify por parte de Twitter llego al sitio web del primero:

Notarán el video que se insinúa arriba. No es un error. Ese detalle motiva a “buscar” el video, ya sea haciendo scroll vertical (que no funciona, pero sería elegante que sí) o dando clic en play. Al dar clic aparece el video:

Me pareció una curiosa forma de “mostrar el video sin mostrarlo” sacando provecho de la tendecia que tenemos a completar las formas.

–Texto en inglés como parte de mi estudio en Carnegie Mellon University. Eventualmente haré una versión en español.–

2D <3 3D is a Kinect-based online multiuser interactive environment. The project is still under development and currently allows multiple web-based users to interact with and augment the physical space of the Kinect participants with virtual objects.

Background

3D is the talk of the hour. From cinema to the living room, 3D is becoming simultaneously a selling and a divisive point. The point of this project is to mesh both points of view and make a commentary about the banality of this “issue”. The project is inspired by many previous works including:

The Bauhaus school of art, architecture and design also explored theatre. I was mostly interested in its highly geometric and formal qualities.

Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer video demonstrated an interesting optical phenomenon: human shapes may be inferred by the sole movement of points.

UYUYUY is a short film by Santiago Caicedo which, while designed to be watched with 3D glasses, is mostly composed of 2D elements.

The web has always been a medium of my interest. I try to include web-related functionality in my projects. The Red Agency website has an interesting chat functionality mixed with navigation and 2D parallax scrolling interface.

Technical exploration

I wanted to have a multiuser conversation between the physical and the virtual; 3D and 2D. This was my first C++ project so the learning curve was quite steep and full of obstacles. I started exploring the networking possibilities in openFrameworks including ofxOsc and ofxNetwork deciding upon the latter communicating with the web via a Java-based XMLSocket server (I know “basic” web sockets perform better but not enough time to explore that).

The project also uses ofxOpenNI for skeleton detection and ofxBox2d for physics/collision detection. An initial attempt was made to use ofxMSAPhysics but for some reason I could not make it work well with ofxOpenNI. The web interface uses Flash.

One challenge was how to visualize and represent the activity in either end (Flash being the 2D environment and openFrameworks the 3D). Further exploration must be made in order to have a more interesting visual representation in both ends.

Interdependence

The two main components of this project are mutually dependent: the 3D-interacting users require that web users are present and creating objects they can interact with. 2D web users require the “presence” of 3D skeletons for them to observe and affect. This “conversation” between 2D and 3D is the main element of the project.

Download the code (ZIP 20 MB) which is completely unsupported. Contains:

• Flash CS5 .FLA file (for the web-based interface)
• Eclipse Java project folder (for the socket server)
• openFrameworks project folder

Presentation (PDF 471 KB)

This project was done as part of the requirements to complete the Spring 2011 Interactive Art and Computational Design course with Professor Golan Levin in Carnegie Mellon University.

–Texto en inglés como parte de mi estudio en Carnegie Mellon University. Eventualmente haré una versión en español.–

Description
Social network services[1] enable people to communicate with each other in ways that would be considered science fiction only a few years ago. This enablement has been welcome by people at large, with some criticisms concerning personal privacy and how well (or not) the networks they model reflect real life (offline) relationships. socially nervous is a commentary on how these services have affected our way we perceive these relationships.

The object

An electronic “pet” with movement and audiovisual actuation capabilities. The pet will communicate wirelessly with a host computer which in turn will receive information from the owner’s personal “identities” in two social network services: Facebook and Twitter. Only incoming information to these profiles will be taken into account (information generated by the user’s “friends”).

This information will be manifested physically by the pet’s behavior (movement, sound, light). As information is accumulated by the pet manifestations become more intense and erratic. As soon as someone touches the pet, it “forgets” any information stored and “sleeps”. The process begins again as soon as physical contact is lost.

Awkwardness
The pet’s shape is informed by the awkwardness inherent in the process of virtual socialization. The object could easily be a teddy bear or some other more familiar shape which would make the observer want to interact with it. Instead, I decided to create a non-familiar, even agressive, shape with sharp edges and non-symmetrical. An observer would notice an erratically-behaving object wandering about in response to virtual interactions. By touching it, the user “calms” the pet; physical interaction “defeats” virtual interaction.

Behavior states
Any information received by the pet will provoke behaviors in any of these types: physical, visual, auditive.
The stimulus is always represented in the 5×7 matrix as an icon followed by the username/alias of the person who provoked it. Below is a table of the different stimuli the pet receives along with the type of behavior it provokes:

A video of the behaviors working (indirect stimulus received via Bluetooth from a computer not in video). Initial/passive message was later changed to “please hug me”:

Part list

• 1 x Wiring Mini
• 1 x Generic PCB Protoboard
• Several Break away headers (straight)
• 1 x Capacitive sensor board
• 1 x 3.3V regulator
• Lots of F/F jumper wires
• 2 x snap action switch
• 3 x super bright red LED
• 1 x 100 microF capacitor
• 2 x standard LED
• 7 x 100 ohm resistor
• 2 x 10 Kohm resistor
• 1 x BlueSmirf antenna
• 2 x DC motor
• 1 x Lite-on LTP 747 5×7 LED matrix
• 1 x vibration motor
• 1 x buzzer
• 9V battery (although I later learned this battery should be avoided for this type of project)

I used 3mm laser-cut acrylic for the box (Sketchup 3D file).

A Processing-based visual interface will be developed to manage Facebook and Twitter profile settings.

Code
The Processing code uses random stimuli to show all possible behavior states. Modifications must be made in order to accomodate a particular social network service user. The Wiring code is quite elaborate (~2k lines of code) but you are welcome to look into it.

This project was done as part of the requirements to complete the Fall 2010 Making Things Interact course with Professor Mark Gross in Carnegie Mellon University.

¿Le gustan las caras?

No. No se trata de la banda de Rod Stewart y Ron Wood. Es un nuevo proyecto que hice y del cual escribí un breve post en este otro blog. Si quiere saber qué tienen en común Python, Processing, OpenCV y Flash, debería darle una leída y jugar con la interfaz.