Maxence

Fingers crossed...

2011-11-10T08:58:00.000-08:00

Talk (Spain) - Power of Making

2011-10-31T09:24:00.000-07:00

Being one of the only designer invited to the Campus Party Milenio in Granada (and the only one exhibiting) was a great honor. My talk was about augmented realities, power of making, opensources technologies and DIY in front of an audience of hundreds, broadcasted live. Scary experience.

Helmet Design - Part 6

2011-05-17T12:30:00.000-07:00

I just spent the last two entire days at the workshops sanding the two parts of the mold with three differents grains of sand paper and correct any anomalies with resin filler. However, the molds are now finished !
I had to reinforce the inner structure to resist to the vaccum pressure during the forming which took me also quite a while but at 2pm this afternoon, the two parts of the helmet were now formed in the 3 mm width sheet of plastic. I'll have to re-cut them, sand them, glue them with epoxy, re-sand and finally paint them with at least 2 layers and a maximum of.. 6 layers which I'll try to avoid if possible..

Helmet Design - Part 5

2011-05-11T17:09:00.000-07:00

All the pieces of MDF are now cut at the right shapes, at the right angles. 21 differents pieces for a total of 65 angles... and everything as to stick together with no more than a millimeters of gap for the whole helmet.
The helmet is now divided into two differents pieces, the bottom and the upper part, which will be vaccum formed separately then weld it together to create the final helmet.
The bottom mold is now done, I just have to correct it with filler then re-sand it before creating the final plastic mold. The upper part is a bit more tricky to acheive because it has to be done according to the shape of the lower part. The two has to stick perfectly together with no gaps possible. That's why I'm waiting for the first part to be completely dry to make any correction on the upper part.
Picture below, more to come tomorrow.

Helmet Design - Part 4

2011-05-09T10:54:00.000-07:00

Another day at the wood workshop at CSM. I finished the 2 parts (upper, lower) of the prototype made out of cardfoam. It had to be very precise because the vaccum forming process doesn't allow any mistake, even a millimeter, into the wooden mold. I cutted every single piece of the helmet into 16mil MDF and I started to sand each side at the right angle to assemble them. This was super difficult to measure and to sand hopefully CSM has great facilities, ressources and staff and I'm quite happy about the work I've done (thank you digital angle measurer). I hope I'll have enough time to finish to sand each piece of wood and stick it together before the end of the week.

Vaccum forming will definitely be the easiest part of the work.

Glove - pattern cutting + electronic

2011-05-09T10:32:00.000-07:00

Still working like an octopus : 2 days are dedicated to the helmet at the workshop (next post will show the progress of the mold before the plastic vacuum forming).
After working on the electronic embeded into the glove, I started the making process of the glove itself in collaboration with Anais Bordier, student in Fashion Design with Marketing at CSM.
I started with very simple sketches. The glove has to be as simple as possible and has to be uni-size. From the final sketch we started the pattern cutting of each piece.
The making process of a glove is actually very complicated and need a lot of differents parts which has to be extremely precise to fit anyone's hand.
We started the prototype which is meant to be finished this week. I feel quite happy with the actual design. I'll go to the "fabric shop" on friday to choose the differents materials which will consititute the final object to provide a nice glove, resistant enough to support the Arduino board and the electronic. Once again, I'm trying to extend my original field of design into a multidisciplinary project by taking into account other considerations such as fashion designer's one to create a nice object, appealing, breathable and wearable, meanwhile communicating well with the helmet and the other parts of my project. Exciting stuff.

Workshops are back!

2011-05-03T02:14:00.001-07:00

The final term start today, the wood & plastic workshops are re-opening after a long month being closed. I started cutting the wood mold for the vacuum forming from the very precise cardfoam model. Next post this week.

Control module - electronic Part2

2011-04-28T03:58:00.000-07:00

Short post again, this is the final electronic circuit using two FSRs connected to the arduino board.
The arduino sketch is still very basic at the moment and only evaluate the force applied by the finger on the sensor on a scale of 0 to 1000.
I now have to connect the live datas to processing or openframeworks.

//FSRx2 test sketch.

//Connect one end of FSR to power, the other end to Analog 0.
//Then connect one end of a 10K resistor from Analog 0 to ground

int fsrPin = 0;
int fsrPin2 = 1;
int fsrReading;
int fsrReading2;

void setup(void) {
// We'll send debugging information via the Serial monitor
Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop(void) {
fsrReading = analogRead(0);
fsrReading2 = analogRead(1);

Serial.print("Analog reading = ");
Serial.print(fsrReading);

if (fsrReading < 10) {
Serial.println(" - No pressure");
} else if (fsrReading < 200) {
Serial.println(" - Light touch");
} else if (fsrReading < 500) {
Serial.println(" - Light squeeze");
} else if (fsrReading < 800) {
Serial.println(" - Medium squeeze");
} else {
Serial.println(" - Big squeeze");
}
delay(1000);

Serial.print("Analog reading2 = ");
Serial.print(fsrReading2);

if (fsrReading2 < 10) {
Serial.println(" - No pressure");
} else if (fsrReading2 < 200) {
Serial.println(" - Light touch");
} else if (fsrReading2 < 500) {
Serial.println(" - Light squeeze");
} else if (fsrReading2 < 800) {
Serial.println(" - Medium squeeze");
} else {
Serial.println(" - Big squeeze");
}
delay(1000);
}

Last version of the circuit using 2 FSRs

Control module - electronic

2011-04-25T06:38:00.000-07:00

Short post about the electronic which will be embedded in the control module : the glove.
I'll post a selection of drawings / rough design soon. The glove will be constituted of two fingers, leaving the thumb free, and a structure half rigid around the hand. The palm will allow some flexibility and an Arduino Duemilanove board will settle on the top of the hand (probably in a small box, something similar to the helmet in terms of design).
From the Arduino, four flexible wires will go through the fingers and will be connected to two flexible force/pressure sensors, one for each finger, which will be activated thanks to a pression with the thumb.
Even if I'm not going to create different kind of sensors for the glove, I wanted to make the whole system able to evolve easily. The two sensors will not be solded to the wires, there will be a small plug on the top of the nail allowing different kind of physical sensors/modules connected to the Arduino board.
Finally, the glove will be connected with a USB cable to the computer. I can't afford an IR or Bluetooth wireless data transfer but, at least, if someone ask : it's possible.

Very basic picture of my circuit using only one force sensor

Sound mapping - holistic vision and blind experience.

2011-04-21T04:23:00.000-07:00

I decided to put aside for a while my whole idea of constraining one's senses. This concept is still totally valid for my project, meant to enhance the user experience by enabling new behaviours. However, constraining the user is also, at the moment, constraining my critical thinking and creative practice.

At first, I thought speaking with Thor (sound designer) during his talk/workshop at CSM couldn't be very useful for my project. Not because of the man -who's doing a great work and was very enthusiastic with our projects- but because I was already focusing on replacing the vision. Indeed, the last thing I needed was to complexify even more the project.

Most of the ideas we had during our... let's call it brainstorm, were not realistic or even useable because it was involving another painful branch of the project : designing sound, designing multiple sound emitters, and finally designing the environment/rules/signage with coherency.

Thor gave me lots of fresh ideas inspired from video games to curation. We had a short talk about the vision of blind people and the importance of taking sound into account at a brand new level. He gave me multiple literary references dealing with propagation of sound in space, sound mapping, sound frequencies, interferences and finally, a very sensible approach to a blind experience, recounting in a very positive way the world as seen through sounds and other senses.

The ''vision'' of blind people was already a main part of my research. Do you remember Daredevil's vision, both in the comic and the (poor) movie ? His sense of hearing is so well developed that he's able to properly see his environment.This vision called shadow vision, or more often radar vision, is an evolution of the ability described by many blind people to locate very precisely the origin of each sounds around them, then mapping them in a coherent mental image.

When it starts raining, Daredevil hears the sound produced from each drop impact on the environment to create a cloud of points surrounding the person with a very similar render to my 3D scan, except I'll not scan Jennifer Garner's body.

Daredevil's vision from the movie.

Leaving Daredevil aside, I found numerous novels or studies about visually impaired vision and experiences. When it's not directly from a blind author, either it becomes very scientific or really intriguing. You can find tons of articles on the internet about this famous shadow vision made from souvenirs, imagination and sound perception. How do blind people dream ? Are they able to see things ? This is indeed very intriguing questions which, in my opinion, traduce the fear of losing our major sense, everything which deal with eyes is utterly scary for most of the people.

How are we supposed to imagine that blind people are able to see things differently when we're diving in a scary ocean of darkness as soon as we close our eyes ?

« The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. »

Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream.

It takes time to develop new senses and new behaviours - connecting this part to my original idea to constrain one's senses to enable new behaviours. This is indeed what it is all about, pushing the boundaries of vision by replacing the eye as our major and unique sense : we have to believe in our extraordinary capacity of adaptation and evolution.

A blind experiment, which has to be differentiated from a blind experience, is a medicine term in which some of the persons involved are prevented from knowing certain information that might lead to conscious or unconscious bias on their part, invalidating the results. The experience I would like to provide with my helmet is quite similar, displaying a new environment, with a brand new point of view, catalysing one's conscious and unconscious.

All these ideas involving the unconscious are intriguing, certainly because of their unpredictable and creative mechanisms. I asked the question below, how do visually impaired people dream ? I made some research on the subject and it came out that those who are born blind or become blind before the age of five do not see in their dreams. Nevertheless, their dreams are just as rich in narrative and detail as in sighted people. If one's sight is lost after the age of seven, dreams will still brim with visual imagery.

Despite the grey area which occurs between five and seven years, we can differentiate two different sides. By making a connection with the blind experiment below, the sooner a person lose his sense of vision, the sooner the unconscious will be involved in the making process of an alternative vision of reality based on the other senses.

My project is not based on a blind experience, a single band of fabric in front of the eyes will do the job better. I'm taking into account this holistic idea of fusion the senses into a brand new vision. The helmet is not meant to blind the user but to immerse the person into an alternative reality inspired from this radar vision described by many vision impaired people. The live 3D scan allows the user to rotate around his environment, deconstructing the ideas of perspective, texture and surfaces by placing undifferentiated objects and mental images into a cloud of points, leaving the imagination of the user free to create his own experience.

I'm working on the next evolution of the software which will modify the live-scanned environment according to environmental sounds, a bit like an equalizer. Blind people will remember a place according to sounds : two different noisy spaces will certainly have more in common than the same place at two different time of the day for example. My new vision will allow different users to experience the same environment in very different ways according to both uncontrolled sound emitters such as human activity, rain/thunder, wind. And controlled ones such as user's own sounds and he's own choices to be surrounded by sound emitters and experience a blurry, rich environment or, at the opposite, he has the possibility to hide and protect himself from sounds, leaving any possibility of discovering and interaction aside. This is all about making decisions.

The next post will be focus on the software development and why not a demo if I'm ready for it. I'm also working on a special feature allowing to record the datas of the scanned environment. This way, I should be able to map the user experience which could be a great record to compare each person's behaviours once placed in the same place with their vision modified.

" Hellen Keller, who became blind at the age of 19 months, claimed to have "visions of ineffable beauty."

Hellen Keller. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellen_keller

Relevant link : Blind people and their dreams - http://psych.ucsc.edu/dreams/Library/kerr_2004.html

Helmet Design - Part 3

2011-03-28T03:51:00.001-07:00

Quick post to show the development of the -almost- finished foam and filler first prototype.
Meeting tomorrow at the wood and plastic CSM workshop to decide what the next step is going to be.
The actual scenario is, as mentioned in the post below, making a 1:1 mold out of solid wood (in two parts) and vacuum form it.

Evaluation report

2011-03-27T15:10:00.000-07:00

Key points : current stage + easter break.

Helmet design : Technical drawings, 3D Model and First prototype (expansive foam and filler) : completed.

After a meeting with the technician of the plastic workshop on friday, I have to come on tuesday with my prototype and certainly make a 1:1 scale mold out of solid wood. Then vacuum form it in the plastic workshop (details on the blog).
What's going inside the helmet : The head support will be acheived thanks to the inner structure of a construction helmet (solid hat). The filling will be done with special foam found in bike shops.

Video glasses : They will be ordered as soon as I find an interesting price according to what kind of device I'm looking for. It has to be done before the end of the term anyway. I'll defenitely avoid using a mini-LCD screen.

I'm in contact with Christine Bieslin Clark, Main Costume Designer for Tron:Legacy. She told me to contact IronHead Studios LA, specialized in costume and creature design for movies (Alien serie, Xmen, Batman, 300, ..). This could be very usefull, and not only on the technological aspect.

Software : I managed to upgrade my laptop to snow leopard with my DVD drive broken so I'm re-starting the experimentations with OpenFrameworks. I'll focus on producing a clean and improved version of a Point Cloud DOF for low-res diplays during the break. Indeed it's something that could be acheived only with an internet connection, my laptop and the laser captor whereever I am. The school workshops will be closed, no technical support available, it makes sense to focus on this part.

Glove : On the design aspect it should be weared by anyone so I bought a pair of unisize gloves for heavy duty works. I friend, fashion designer, is ready to help me to design the final product with the electronic embeded.

I also ordered the missing components on Sparkfun last week, it should arrive before the break if there is no problem with the US/UK customs. The circuit is meant to be basic and upgradable. It'll be first composed of :

Mini force sensing sensors x2
10k Ohms resistors
An arduino card
A dedicated electronic circuit (extremely basic)

Communication Arduino > Processin/OF via PureData ?

Cables, portability : I didn't really work on this specific part yet because I'm focusing on the helmet design. However, I found a project using a portable kinect thanks to a 12V AA portable battery (available on ebay or DIY). They cut the alimentation wire but I don't know exactly how, so I'm trying to get more info about this part at the moment.

In France, I'll also work on a very important point : How to connect everything together. VGA to DVI to Mac ports, Battery/voltage issues, etc..

Scenario : Most of all, I don't want to complexify the project at this point. Every pieces of narrative or scenario should help the future user to understand the project. It has to be simple, efficient and clear. I still have some ideas which could work, Thor was quite usefull and brought new ideas. I'm still looking for the places which could be interesting to experience through the suit's vision than finding a proper scenario without fully taking into account the environement. I'm still thinking of an adaptable/multiplayer exeperience according to the place. I'd like to experiments an live demo and scenarion at the V&A – greek marbles.

Helmet Design - Part 2

2011-03-25T04:20:00.000-07:00

The 3D model is now finish (see image below), the next step is the making of a 1:1 scale foam prototype. The cardboard model was already quite usefull and I think it's one of the first step that shouldn't be missed - especially for an helmet. As I said before, it is indeed quite hard to figure out the perfect measurements according to the size of the user's head, the space dedicated to the electronic/cables and finally the head support and foam filling to make it wearable.

I went to the plastic and wood workshop today, considering 3 differents options for the making process and the choice of materials (order is not relevant):
- According to the 1:1 foam model, take the measurements of each small geometrical shape composing the helmet, then laser-cut each piece out of polycarbonate. Finally, assembly every pieces on the foam prototype using a plastic welder.
- Same scenario but using MDF (thin wood agglomerate).
- Third scenario, create a wood prototype, size 1:1, which will be the mold for plastic vacuum forming.

Well, the conclusion is categoric, I'll go for the third one. It is indeed the proper way to do it but it also require a lot of work to create this 1:1 wood prototype.. the helmet is quite massive.
But, most of all, I can vacuum as many plastic model as I want from the wood mold.
It means that if I break a model I can easily replace it (which is quite important according to the deadline.. I'll never have enough time to make another helmet out of nothing). Finally, it allows me to create a large number of helmet easily which will help me to developp the -beloved- multiplayer scenario. I think I will, technicaly speaking, finish one helmet and present the others as prototypes for a multiplayer experience. Everything makes more sense now ;)

foam 1:1 prototype - raw shape before modeling

Gameplay, user experience.

2011-03-23T04:22:00.000-07:00

I understand that wearing the "vision update suit" (work in progress title...) might be a bit scary for the user. "What's inside this helmet ? How is it going to modify my vision ? Will I still be able to move normally ?" .. There are dozen of questions of this kind and each of them is a challenge for my project. The suit is meant to be fun, the experience at least, that's why I definitely choose to go for the game and movie reference in the design - and also in the user's experience.

After reading articles about Gameplay design and Narrative environments, I tried to formulate the gameplay mecanism of my project (detailled in the picture below).
In order to appeal the user to continue the "game" and fully experience the potential of the suit, I need to formulate clear goals to acheive with objectives increasing in difficulty and finally, rewards after each completed objectives. The basis of game design actually.
Not yet a real narrative or clearly defined scenario but at least key gameplay mecanisms.

On the other hand, I'm also considering using the environment and external devices such as speakers to guide the user through the environment.
The vision provided by the helmet is very simplified and doesn't allow to experience the textures of objects but focus more on the geometrical render of environment.
The user has to be clearly guided to specific areas of interest in the environment. To achieve this, I have different ideas, the one I'm considering the most is providing an external audio experience. A real Ariadne's thread thanks to a series of speakers (or objects emitting sound) separating the environment in 3 distinct zones.
1- The "no-audio" zone. The user is free to discover his environment with no external informations.
2- The "audible" zone. The user hears a sound and is guided to a specific area in the environment to determine where is the source.
3- The "understandable" zone. Once the audio source located, the user is able to understand the content related to the environment, providing objectives to complete using the suit's capacities.
In this context, the user is evolving from one point to the other, experiencing something different at each point.

Vision Update - Helmet + Modules

2011-03-23T03:58:00.000-07:00

Quick updated abstract of the whole helmet + modules suit.
There are 4 differents parts.

1 - The Helmet. This is the major piece of the suit. The helmet has been design to attract the user, with direct reference to SciFi movies and gameplay, it communicates about the concept of the project without any digital experience. Putting something opaque on your head which blind you in not really usual. With LCD video glasses embedded, it provides a the new vision according to the 3 others elements.

2 - The captor. Using the Microsoft's Kinect, the visor will provide a real time 3D directional scan of the environment. The helmet will diplay the 3D environment, replacing our light-based vision by an InfraRed-based vision. This new IR vision allows a new perception of perspective by allowing the user to change is point of view in the scene, to rotate around objects and access to inaccessible places, even in a total darkness, thanks to IR specificities.

3 - The gloves. Replacing your vision thanks to technology is something, enhancing the human vision is something else. The suit is meant to replace the vision of the user - and constrain in a way - but, on the other hand, it provides a new experience. Admitting that the human eye is a much better "captor" than any kind of digital cameras, I had to work on the possibility to reveal something normally hidden. This is the purpose of the gloves which will work very closely with the visor, allowing the user to rotate a camera in the 3D scene scanned in real time and modify is point of view in the environment.

4 - Computer. A laptop is needed to centralize and process all the datas from the helmet, control and captor modules. It will be located in a backpack, also providing an external battery to make the suit portable.

The next post will detail the user's experience and gameplay issues.

Helmet Design - Part 1

2011-03-21T05:49:00.000-07:00

I'm finishing the 3D model of the helmet and - I think - got the right dimensions now.
I mesured different heads and use an "size guide" for motorcycle helmet as a reference. It is actually quite hard to figure out how the helmet should be... I could make it bigger, just to be sure, but it is suppose to be portable.. and cool. A massive helmet is just weird, not cool.
Apart from the 3D model, I'm working on a 1:1 prototype made with cardboard and filled with expansive foam and sanded interior filler to smooth the surface. This one should be finished very soon and give a good idea of how the final object will look like.

Helmet Design - Concept

2011-03-16T09:40:00.000-07:00

I started the development of the helmet !
I'm still at an early stage of the making process which is more focus on drawing the blueprint and material research. I have to determine what I'm going to use to fill it inside, for the outer part, the head support, weight, size, enough space for the electronic embeded, cables and maybe a cooling system due to the heat generated by the electronic.
I'll try to post a kind of "step-by-step" making process from now if anyone could be interested to build his own.
This first post is just an introduction with few drawings and the amazing work of UnitedNude on products design - from shoes to Lamborghinis.
The digital conversion of reality results in a loss of datas, the environment is simplified and new behaviours are unlocked. However, my project is not only about constraining : I'm constraining the user in a playful way, the kind of challenge you encounter in a video game for example. In addition, the user is offered a set of technological tools to enable new functionalities (such as 3D scanning, object recognition and multiple sensors which could be adapted with different modules).

UnitedNude - Lo Res's design statement :

" Lo Res is short for low resolution, with resolution meaning the amount of information per area. Most commonly used to describe two-dimensional information like images or a computer screen. The description is then for instance in dots per inch (DPI). For the United Nude Lo Res project we are looking at three-dimensional (3D) resolutions. Each object can be described by a series of 3D points and when connecting these points describing the shape of an object, triangles appear. When there are many points (speaking of a high 3D resolution) the triangles are so small that they make the shape appear smooth. Lowering the 3D resolution (meaning less points and therefore bigger triangles), the object becomes more fragmented changing its character in the process, we call this Lo Res. "

http://www.unitednude.com/news/2010/lo-res-project-2

Vision Update - Interim show

2011-03-16T09:24:00.000-07:00

How would you act if a computer had replaced your vision ? Constrained, you would learn new languages and new ways of interaction. You would then quickly develop new skills and attitude.
My project is about constraining the user's behaviour by studying and modifying it. Then I am replacing his vision thanks to a set of technological tools. Light, time and space can be distorted, replaced, redefined, having the user experience his own environment with a brand new point of view.

The interim show is always a bit tricky for Digital Media students. Presenting only concepts and early tech demos of our projects is quite difficult compared to graphic design and illustration students for example.
Even if my final project will include an Helmet, replacing the vision of the user thanks to LCD glasses and a kinect module, I decided to present a serie of poster and a video. I'll not use these materials in further development of my project but the idea was to create an atmosphere to engage the visitors of the gallery to give feedback and ideas, kind of brainstorming conversation about the future of vision.
The posters were about the experimentation I did with video (slitscan for example), distorting time and space in video thanks to after effect and processing. The video was a compilation of these experiments mixed with movies, science and technology references in a direct reference to SciFi movies. I made the choice to didn't present the kinect demo for example, in order not to focus the attention of the visitors on this technology given me quite a wide panel of ideas and critiques on the development of my project.

Video Experiments - GoProHD + Processing, AE CS5

2011-03-16T08:12:00.001-07:00

Prior to focus on deep programing with Processing and Openframeworks. I needed to do some basic experiments using processed video. Nothing live at the moment but in order to prepare the final version of my project which will be experienced live by the user, I had to focus on these experiments.
Thanks to my (beloved) GoPro HD camera and Processing and After Effect to process the videos, I try a wide panel of effect to distor scale, space, time, shape,... The results are often quite bad, sometimes amazing but alway interesting for the development of the project.
Everything has to be seen in video (of course..) but I still have some screenshot below.
(Apart from these experiments I did some realtime slitscanning using Processing, working like a kind of digital carbon copy of a real scanner).

Kinect - Processing hack

2011-03-16T07:21:00.001-07:00

Microsoft released his Kinect device just before christmas - which mean, live 3D scan for everyone ! yipee.
In few days, most of the popular communuties in creative coding released an open source driver to hack the kinect.
I did some experiments with Openframeworks (which is quite painful.. still a lot of problem to compile the differents codes due to softwares compatibilties).
However, I lauched and modified successfully Daniel Shiffman's Kinect hack ! The outcome is a very nice live 3D scan @ 30 fps. The camera is rotating around the 3D scene, creating new point of views. This is very exciting stuff for the next step of my MA project which will be an new and more personal and graphic version of this hack, directely embeded in an helmet equiped with LCD screen glasses. Pictures below.

Les éditions volumiques

2011-03-16T04:57:00.000-07:00

I needed to make a post about "Les éditions volumiques", this company founded a year ago by Etienne Mineur and Bertrand Duplat, two talented french designers (and teachers).
This creative and innovative approach trying to push the boundaries of book design is described by themselves as a post-21th century reflexion about book design in our all digitalized world.
All their concepts are fully working and the extraordinary low tech/high tech communication brought by the basics gaming systems and user's interaction deserve to have a look at their work.

http://www.volumique.com/en/

Structured Light

2011-03-16T04:34:00.000-07:00

Most of the articles I posted on the blog didn't appear on this page. I'm reposting most of my research - the date of the post is irrelevant.

At the begining of the year I was really interested in recreating a 3D, virtual environment from reality. Apart from a 3D model, I was looking for a system which could do it live - or almost, and only computer generated.
I knew they're using laser scan in museums for example but apart of being exensive, it's still quite a complicated process et it doesn't allow to scan a moving scene.
At this point, still making some reseach on "future gaming experience", directly embeded in our environment - kind of alternative of augmented reality - , I found the structured light process and started to experiment with it using a projector, a camera, and a computer generating the pattern projected, recording and processing the data with Openframeworks (Kyle McDonald).

"Sructured light is the process of projecting a known pattern of pixels (often grids, colors gradient or horizontal bars) on to a scene. The way that these deform when striking surfaces allows vision systems to calculate the depth and surface information of the objects in the scene, as used in structured light 3D scanners."

Final outcome - Computer generated cloud of points

Color gradient pattern.

Stripe pattern.

3D webcam

2010-10-19T03:07:00.001-07:00

Before the proper installation with the projector and the camera I'm doing some experiments with Processing and this interesting code by Andy Best - inspired by Rutt/Etra.
The code uses the differences of brightness in the image to create relief.
I'd like to know if it's possible to export a 3D mesh to Blender...

Re-opening - YEAR 2 Researches

2010-10-18T10:20:00.000-07:00

I'm re-opening this blog, sharing new ideas and researches I'm doing at the moment.

Here we go :

1 - Live 3D Mapping using OpenFrameworks, Processing, a camera and a projector.
Using homebrew (from Kyle McDonald) software to capture depth images of still and moving scenes.

My own pictures of the installations and first experiments will be pubished in a new post soon.

2 - Sub orbital balloon.
DYI Power = GPS Tracking + Arduino + GoPro HD + Weather Balloon

3 - Eye writer - Game Engine with Blender

I'm really interested in the eye writer technology and working at the moment with Blender's game engine to create a 3D environment controlled without any pad, mouse or keyboard. News soon.
I'm using the Open Source code developped by The EyeWriter Initiative.

Picture taken from The EyeWriter Initiative website.

See you soon. Lot of new&cool stuff in the coming weeks.

Mind hack, gadget for superheroes

2010-04-29T08:28:00.001-07:00

Brain Hack from Mental Block project.
Mental Block was a final project for Tom Igoe's and Rory Nugent's Physical Computing classes at ITP. The project was displayed at the 2009 ITP Winter Show.

lien vimeo

Mobile gesture interface

2010-04-29T08:25:00.000-07:00

The aim of this project is to realize a high-speed real-time vision system by integrating a CMOS image sensor and a massively parallel image processor. We are also developing many application systems in the fields of 3D sensing, input interface and image media, as well as conducting research on new image processing such as high-frame-rate vision and 3D super-resolution.

lien youtube

Mind Control Device

2010-04-29T08:22:00.000-07:00

Tan Le, co-founder and president of Emotiv Systems, gives a live demo of a mind control device that uses a person's thoughts to input computer commands.

lien youtube

Curious displays

2010-02-28T10:59:00.000-08:00

"Curious Displays functions simultaneously as a form of design research and as a proposal for a new product, a future display technology". "The project explores our relationship with devices and technology by examining the multi-dimensionality of communication and the complexity of social behavior and interaction. In its essence, the project functions as a piece of design fiction, considering the fluctuating nature of our present engagement with media technology and providing futurist imaginings of other ways of being."

Julia Tsao did this great piece of work.

Book architecture

2010-02-24T05:49:00.001-08:00

I like the work of Sofia Stevi - Alumnus of CSM - about book binding, "book architecture".
My project will be a crossover between edition, graphic design and digital media. In addition I want to push further the current vision of the book and give my own answer. That's why I won't focus only on the -digital- projected content on the book but also on the book design which will allow to create a new interface, new rules to manipulate it and relevant to the content.

Let's talk about video tracking

2010-02-16T09:19:00.000-08:00

A Few Principles of Video Tracking

The idea of tracking motion on a computer using a video camera has been around a couple of decades, and still is not fully perfect, because the construction of vision is a complex subject. We don't just "see"; we construct colors, edges, objects, depth, and other aspects of vision from the light that reaches our retinas. If you want to program a computer to see in the same way, it has to have subroutines that define the characteristics of vision and allow it to distinguish those characteristics in the array of pixels that comes from a camera. For more on that, see Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See by Donald Hoffman. There are many other texts on the subject, but his is a nice popular introduction. What follows is a very brief introduction to some of the basic concepts behind computer vision and video manipulation.

There are a number of toolkits available for getting data from a camera and manipulating it. They vary from very high-level simple graphical tools to low-level tools that allow you to manipulate the pixels directly. Which one you need depends on what you want to do. Regardless of your application, the first step is always the same: you get the pixels from the camera in an array of numbers, one frame at a time, and do things with the array. Typically, your array is a list of numbers, including the location, and the relative levels or red, green, and blue light at that location.

There are a few popular applications that people tend to develop when they attach a camera to a computer:

Video manipulation takes the image from the camera, changes it somehow, and re-presents it to the viewer in changed form. In this case, the computer doesn't need to be able to interpret objects in the image, because you're basically just applying filters, not unlike Photoshop filters.

Tracking looks for a blob of pixels that's unique, perhaps the brightest blob, or the reddest blob, and tracks its location over a series of frames. Tracking can be complicated, because the brightest blob from one frame to another might not be produced by the same object.

Object recognition looks for a blob that matches a particular pattern, like a face, identifies that blob as an object, and keeps track of its location over time. Object recognition is the hardest of all three applications, because it involves both tracking and pattern recognition. If the object rotates, or if its colors shift because of a lighting change, or it gets smaller as it moves away from the camera, the computer has to be programmed to compensate. If it's not, it may fail to "see" the object, even though it's still there.

There are a number of programs available for video manipulation. Jitter, a plugin for Max/MSP, is a popular one. David Rokeby's softVNS is another plugin for Max. Mark Coniglio's Isadora is a visual programming environment like Max/MSP that's dedicated to video control, optimized for live events like dance and theatre. Image/ine is similar to Isadora, though aging, as it hasn't been updated in a couple of years. There also countless VJ packages that will let you manipulate live video. In addition, most text-based programming languages have toolkits too. Danny Rozin's TrackThemColors Pro does the job for Macromedia Director MX, as does Josh Nimoy's Myron. Myron also works for Processing. Dan O'Sullivan's vbp does the job for Java. Dan has an excellent site on the subject as well, with many more links. He's also got a simple example for Processing on his site. Almost all of these toolkits can handle video tracking as well.

There are two methods you'll comm,only find in video tracking software: the zone approach and the blob approach. Software such as softVNS or Eric Singer's Cyclops or cv.jit (a plugin for jitter that affords video tracking) take the zone approach. They map the video image into zones, and give you information about the amount of change in each zone from frame to frame. This is useful if your camera is in a fixed location, and you want fixed zones of that trigger activity. Eric has a good example on his site in which he uses Cyclops to play virtual drums. The zone approach makes it difficult to track objects across an image, however. TrackThemColors and Myron are examples of the blob approach, in that they return information about unique blobs within the image, making it easier to track an object moving across an image.

Tom Igoe from tigoe.com

Gamebook / Livre intéractif (fr)

2010-02-15T12:06:00.001-08:00

A gamebook (also sometimes referred to as choose your own adventure books or CYOA books, not to be confused with the series by that title) is a work of fiction that allows the reader to participate in the story by making choices that affect the course of the narrative, which branches down various paths through the use of numbered paragraphs or pages. The genre was mainly popular during the 1980s.
At the end of a text section, the reader is usually presented with a choice of narrative branches that they may follow, with each option containing a reference to the number of the paragraph that should be read next if the option is chosen. The reader may eventually reach a concluding paragraph which will bring the narrative to an end. In most gamebooks only one (or if more than this, a distinct minority) of the concluding paragraphs will end the narrative with a "successful" ending, with the others ending the narrative with a "failure" ending.

In the context of my project it could be a very interesting narrative base directly linked with interactivity and user-experience.

Heat-sensitive paint

2010-02-15T10:44:00.001-08:00

Heat-sensitive paint.
http://www.yatzer.com/1052_design_with_life

Bestiary

2010-02-01T04:34:00.000-08:00

vimeo link

Bestiary is a large, seemingly empty book that displays a new fantastical creature each time someone turns a page. The animals are assembled from an array of parts in processing, given a name reflecting their make-up and projected onto the blank pages. Camera input notes each page turn and triggers the creation of a new animal.
Caroline Brown and Bryan Lence 2009.

Where books come to life

2010-02-01T03:55:00.000-08:00

youtube
An animation by Andersen M Studio. Not directly linked with my research but an interesting piece of work using the book and the story/content together as a physical object for telling stories.

Happy new year E.M.

2010-01-31T14:18:00.000-08:00

Prototype of interactive book with self-turning pages.
Bertrand Duplat & Etienne Mineur

http://www.volumique.com/2010/

Les toiles humaines

2010-01-25T02:39:00.001-08:00

"The stake was to develop the emotional intellect delivered by some computing tools and functions. All that on other, from virtual to manual. This shake was to provide a work based on the affect provided to the human being and it's various mutations. Since it is huge, i've chosen 5 themes that make easily their link to mankind according to their names: compression, screenshot, copy/paste, use's profile and code."
Sarah Khan

The Book - Raphaël Bastide

2010-01-24T18:24:00.000-08:00

video The book

Digital installation of Raphaël Bastide.
opensource code available for processing.

Lost Found

2010-01-24T18:17:00.000-08:00

From a medium to another. From moving image to typography.
http://lust.nl/

Index - Céleste B-M

2010-01-24T17:51:00.000-08:00

video 1

video 2

This selection of the work of Céleste Boursier-Mougeot is a serie of interactive installation playing with sounds and noises.
The project Index (video 2) is a perfect example of mixing media : a software "read" and traduce the text into is own music score and play it. This deconstruction of our own vision of an object, a text or a caracter manage to reveal it on a different point of view through this experiment.

Intersection Web 2.0

2010-01-24T17:45:00.000-08:00

Domus 932, Nicolas Bourquin & Thibaud Tissot
Deconstruction/Reconstruction

Holborn Viaduct experiment

2010-01-19T06:49:00.000-08:00

The "Holborn Viaduct experiment" is a visualization of datas in a flow using sounds and motion graphics. I separated my working process in 3 steps proper to information design :
RECORDING (live datas) > ANALYSIS (feedback) > VISUALIZATION (outcomes)
The first part is a video record of 1 minute of the flow of cars at the crossroads of Holborn Viaduct, Newgate st., Old Bailey and Giltspur st. using 3 stripes recording the datas according to the size, the speed and the nature of the different vehicules.
The second part is the analysis of this collection of datas. The differents types of vehicles are classified and ranked according to the sounds and the video.
Finally, differents outcomes using sounds and motion graphics (2D/3D) or either a printed version which summarize the analyze of datas.