exploring

I’m still fairly new to the world of video and find it hard to both focus on making and documenting my work.  As a result a lot of the work that I do occurs and disappears without representation on here, in my portfolio, and sometimes anywhere else.  I’m trying though, and accordingly, here’s my latest attempt which I threw together for my Interactive Art class.  Its a slightly cut down single take improvisation based upon a song off my (what is quickly becoming elderly) record ‘Waxing’ called ‘Exploring the Obvious.’

More Spinning Blobs…

Here’s a random animation I created while at Frog. To view the first in the series of blob-animations I did check out the disco version on my myspace page.

Tools used: python, vtk, adobe illustrator, flash

Scapegoating Demonstration II

I uploaded some footage taken of my performance at the ‘Touch My Project’ Interactive Art show at the University of Georgia here.  Thanks again to everyone who made it out, it was fun to finally have all the pieces in place.  I’m hoping to do some more official documentation highlighting the new features of the munome sometime in the future, so peel those eyes.

Also feel free check out Scapegoating Demonstration I.

Sound Drawing V1

Sound Drawing is an interactive study meant to explore what sound might look like were it to be visually represented as it comes out of your mouth.  It is a miniature offshoot of a larger project that I’ve been working on which utilizes both face-tracking and sound visualization.  Though unrelated, it coincidentally came about during Zach Lieberman’s short residency at UGA.  Along with Golan Levin he created a similar project with the Hidden Worlds of Noise and Voice.  With Sound Drawing, though, I wanted to make the study accessible to a larger audience and to give the user more control so it can be used more as a drawing tool than a self contained work of art.

With Sound Drawing V1 the sound that you make controls aspects of the drawing tool.  The loudness determines the height, the brightness determines the width, and the pitch determines the color.  Its fun to do it with multiple people because it draws in front of the mouth of all of the faces in the frame.  Be careful about how close you get to the camera though because if part of the face is chopped off the software doesn’t recognize it and won’t draw.  So if you want to draw real close to the edge of the frame you’ll have to move back.

I’m hoping to push the project onto the web before the end of the summer, but for now, if you have a web-cam and a microphone, you can download the apps and play around with it.  Be sure to leave comments if its not working.

Download Sound Drawing Version 1.0 For Mac

Directions:

1) Click the download link above.

2) Unzip the folder containing the applications.  Double Click OpenCV.dmg and install.

3) Open the sound_analysis application.  Select “Audio” in the menu on the top left to start reading the audio.  You can control the volume with the fader on the right if you need to.

4) Open the facetracking1.app.

5) Make noise and draw pictures!

Controls:

O – Outline

S  – Save A Picture

F  – Toggles Fullscreen Mode

R  – Switch between an elliptical versus a rectangular drawing tip

C  – Clear

Esc – Closes Program

Technical Jargon:

The facial tracking and drawing parts to the program were written in Processing.  Thanks to Stephane Cousot for helping make it possible with his newest java port of opencv.  The sound analysis is driven in Max/Msp by Tristen Jehan’s analyzer~ and Miller Pucket’s fiddle~.  The two communicate with osc.

The Box

Over the course of the time I’ve spent putting together my live show for Aman Amun I’ve been compiling a massive list of things that might or might not go wrong during a performance. The technicality of the show that makes it unique and interesting also makes it unstable. I don’t particularly feel like working in an unstable climate, though, and I hate having to triple check everything to make sure things will run smooth.

Midway through the development of the project I stumbled across this tutorial on building a custom stompbox. I had been wrestling with how to get around the instability of the wii whiteboard software, and didn’t like having to always run back to the projection to activate/deactivate a sample and so forth. Having a stompbox controller therefor seemed ideal. It would give me an additional layer of functionality besides whats displayed, and I could do all of it while playing an instrument or singing at stage front.

With the help of Andrew Ferrer I built this equilateral hexagonal stomp box.   Its built from a blue tooth wireless keyboard I bought for $25, the sides are made from some nice extra wood Andrew had lying around, the face with some random galvanized steel thrown out in the sculpture department of UGA, and the buttons were bought online.  I spent a total of about $50.  Not bad for a one-of-a-kind wireless controller.

The bulk of the project actually lay in the software I wrote to accompany it.  I use it for everything from setting the tempo (with a tempo tap) to triggering individual rows on my sampler to changing patterns on my sequencer.

Spin the Coke

Summer of 2008 I worked for an interactive company in Atlanta called Sapient. While I was there one of my main projects was development of an iPhone app for Coca Cola. Download Spin the Coke for your iPhone.  Its as free as those cream containers they offer at IHOP which i always pop all over myself with a fork.

Fractals Exploration

In highschool I spent some time in an independent study exploring fractals, l-systems, and in general the aesthetics of numbers in nature.  These images are some of the results generated in Apophysis.

Scapegoating Demonstration

This is documentation for an interactive-art piece I call the munome which I am using as the backbone of the Aman Amun performance.

It is meant to be a conceptual exploration of taking something that is open source (the monome) and making it even more flexible and open. The monome itself is only a grid of buttons, but this very simplicity also opens up room for almost endless functionality. For this piece I have virtualized this instrument in Max-Msp and added ways to dynamically control it both functionally and visually.

Note that this is only a small fraction of what the Aman Amun performance entails, but it illustrates some of the other ideas I am actively experimenting with. The performance seeks to explore the gradiated region that sits between “live performance,” “djing” and “vjing.” The monome is clearly an instrument, but the use of pre-recorded samples is very reminiscent of the practice of Djing rather than live performance. The active control of the visual display enters the realm of Vjing, but the visual information (as you will see more clearly in future documentation) is largely controlled by the music itself.

Technical Details:
The Munome is running MLR and tr256 alongside Reason for the drums sounds. I am using Johnney Lee’s Wii Whiteboard to take the performance from behind the computer screen and place it out in front of the viewer.

I apologize for the video, audio, and performance quality. Expect more of all of the above in future documentation when time and equipment permits it. Thanks to midimeek, stretta, tehn, and the others of the monome community for helping make this possible. Thanks to Eric Marty and the others of the ARTX Dept. @ UGA for help with equipment and technical details. More to come.

http://www.amanamun.com
http://www.monome.org
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/project…
http://www.cycling74.com/

About Waxing

Waxing documents the beginning of my experimentation with the idea of taking traditionally composed and heavily lyrical music (ie. composed with a piano or guitar) and combining it with the heavily process oriented and explorative composition approach of electronic music. Most of the songs were written and recorded over the summer and fall of 2008 in my home studio in Athens. Real drums, some vocals, and some guitars were recorded at Rockvale studio in Murphysboro Tennesee with the help of Zac Litwack. The drumming is done by Nick Curtis.

Like the stage of the lunar cycle for which its named, ‘Waxing’ is meant to be the beginning of the process of revealing Aman Amun. It is the beginning of my exploration with electronic music, and is, certainly, the first attempt that I’ve ever made of putting my emotions right out on the table with my artwork.

See if you can sympathize, download it for free at bandcamp or contribute to the man at iTunes. If you want a tangible copy shoot me an email. Maybe I’ll set up a system for offering tangible copies if they’re requested.

Direct Manipulation Video

Here are three approaches I took when experimenting with the idea of the letting the viewer directly manipulate the flow of image frames in a browser with the mouse. The photos were taken with a Fujifilm S700 on a timer and batch processed through Photoshop for color.  The interactivity was done with javascript using onMouseOver on cells of a table to call an image changing function.  The images are pretty big so give each one a minute to move before attempting to interact with them.

The Unicycle Stream attempts to give the viewer the ability to control the time.

The Silo Stream attempts to give the viewer the ability to control space.

The Climbing Stream attempts to give the viewer the ability to manipulate both.