Helsinki - some interactive art

I visited a museum, with some semblance of interactivity. Forgot to post about this last week. It's not all been *work work and more project work* throughout this month. I did take a bit of a weekend away, just to clear my head, but keep in touch with the arts and culture and explore new ones in different countries. In this case, Helsinki, Finland. 

I went to the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, and found some very good pieces of work as part of a long-term collection by the museum, which they decided to display when I was visiting. This one in particular, stuck out: 

It felt like I was walking through what seemed like a hundred ribbons. I guess the colour helped in a psychedelic traversing, but what really strikes me is the tangibility of such an installation. This is the point I myself am exploring with Tangible Projection: eliminating that boundary of static and purely visual art for the viewers; not necessarily to compel them into the artwork, but to extend the option of immersion. 

Coniglio Trial, now at the Bohunk Institute

My Isadora piece was selected for Bohunk Institute's second annual open exhibition, so I've taken to cleaning it up, chopping its annoying edges off and making the tapered compartment at the base a bit easier to access. I've also got new effects that tie around the certain black & white line aesthetic I've been using for my Tangible Projection piece.

This is how it turned out in the workshop:

I also hired a van to transport it across town on the weekend. The unit is now resting at the Bohunk Institute, where it will be set up properly next Sunday, with the canvas piece that I've been working on attached to it.

Tangible Projection - morph!

Those horizontal lines I've been harping on about are finally becoming playful via Processing. Now to translate that to the Kinect. 

Tangible Projection - second experiment

Today has involved searching for an unused studio space, sourcing the same projector and working out the right distances of the Kinect's inferred capture. There's a bit of a struggle for corresponding screen resolution at the moment, and finding the most ideal ratio for the Kinect to pick up movement, which is further complicated by the level of light in the environment.

We're getting there, slowly...

The issue here is size and correct mapping. It has been suggested that a taller canvas be made to match a ratio of 640 x 480 pixels, as there was essentially a height problem in terms of Kinect's motion tracking. 145 cm in width is fine, but height could be taller. In fact, it might not even be a case of making a taller canvas, but rotating the Kinect 90 degrees, because it wasn't so much the width that was problematic, but the height. If that's the case, then I should look into a way of elevating and suspending the canvas itself. 

I'm also unsure at this point whether the Epson TW480 might be suitable for rear projection, unless it has a mode for that function, which I've yet to find out by playing with its settings a bit more. If not, then I need to find another projector with such a mode, and one that might be vertical if I do make a taller canvas. 

I can safely say that I've not really done anything like this before, and my departure from traditional Fine Art mediums has been a lot harder than I anticipated. I've had to get my head around programming languages for a start, tap into physical computing, take further considerations for the environment and use other, technological methods to apply an effective visualisation.

Tangible Projection - first experiment

A couple of days after making the screen, and playing around with the coding, I arranged a dark studio space in order to test the projection and map it out.

The set up consisted of a laptop, projector (Epson HD 480TW), Xbox Kinect and the screen itself. I was borrowing a laptop from my tutor at the time, before my friend arrived with his own laptop, which had all the necessary bits already installed to accommodate Processing. 

I wasn't surprised to find that there were issues in terms of projection rendering and screen synchronisation with the laptop, especially with Processing itself. We were scratching our heads as to how you full-screen the damn thing and have it render accordingly through the projector, but no; they have to be awkward with each other. This will continue in a different yet similar space, most likely in the now-vacant Fine Art studios.

A few problems that should be addressed for the next testing:

• Sort out screening/projector synchronisation
• Pinpoint exact distance of Kinect vs. captured motion appearing through spandex.
• Clean up the coding, especially dimensions if alternatives can't be used for the screening. 

More on this space on Monday, hopefully.

Tangible Projection - screen is ready

Here is an image of the screen in the workshop. One of the technicians made the frame, and I've attached the spandex material. It was done on Tuesday this week. Big enough to serve its purpose, as well as flexible.

Dimensions: 145 x 145 cm

Kinect and Processing - coding and set up.

I've figured that to achieve my projection idea is to use a Kinect, hence my earlier post on how it works. I've had trouble with admin rights and permissions with the university computers, so I've borrowed a Kinect from my tutor to take home with me and try it out on my own pc, which runs Windows 7. I also referred to Daniel Shiffman's guide to configuring the device to suit Processing. I had a friend, who works at Lockwood Ltd as a coder, help and take me through this. Didn't take him long to figure out Processing, which I was surprised to hear he had no awareness to.

For future references, this is basically what I've done to get the two working together:

1. Installed the Kinect-for-Windows SDK and Developer Toolkit applications - first and foremost thing one needs to do in order to install the hardware properly

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2. Set up the necessary codes and sources/libraries OpenKinect - a few problems arose out of this, like the imported library SimpleOpenNI which didn't work at first, and compatibility issues between different versions of Processing itself, which were already factors of Mac vs. Windows. but luckily, said friend from Lockwood

3. Set up the pixel and depth resolution settings for the Kinect on Processing.

4. Translated the Processing sketch to the Kinect.

So far, so good; albeit a few brain farts and headaches. A lot of what I had to do now was to build the screen, source the projector and set it all up in a space I've organised at Trent.