Plastic dollar-bin ($1) white table cloth, unaltered, 137 cm x 274 cm (BIG):
(The quality of the photo doesn’t do it justice)
Easy to hang, most likely sewable, light-weight, transportable, no ironing required!
(I’m going to go back and buy at least 10… maybe 20, how big do we want this thing?)
Hey guys thought you might find this interesting:
http://vimeo.com/282083
From what I can tell (and what we’ve discussed), one of the bigger technical challenges that I think we will face will keeping track of where each user is within the space. Assigning emotions to an id in a database is fairly straight-forward, as is projecting emotion rings around a person from above. But I think knowing which person belongs to that id (so as to project the correct emotions around the correct person) might be tricky.
Some ideas for possible solutions: Colour tracking or some other video-based tracking (probably our best bet, would likely require more cameras to view from the side, and might affect how we choose to handle lighting within the installation), Give users something to help us track them (something with a specific colour, rfid, sound..).
That’s pretty much all I’ve got, but hopefully one of you will have a better idea. Please post anything you think of.
PS. My arduino board arrived and I made an LED blink.
I was talking to Eric about the limitations of accelerometers — we’d only be able to use a few suits. This would severely limit the fun of the installation. One possible solution I thought about was to divide the installation into phases. In the first phase, users would be given instruction to put on the accelerometers and go in. They would see various poses displayed on the screen to represent emotions. They would mimic said emotions and acquire the emotion-rings as seen in Eric’s sketch. Once they’d had their fun and acquired many rings, they would take off the suit and leave - sort of. They would go out the exit door and through some kind of hallway (I had visions of dark hallways with graffiti-style light following the user as he/she went through (through the use of another web cam or arduino sensors - which could also light up some floor panels or something cool like that). Then bam! the user enters a whole other installation.. they still have their emotion rings (somehow.. this we’d have to sort out). On the wall, since we probably wouldn’t have to show the emotion poses, we could instead display the whole web-inputted network of emotion compatibilities. It would be cool if people could visit the site, upload a photo of themselves and choose their emotions - then the circle would be generated and interact with other people’s representations (much the same way as the live-installation ones do on the floor.
I sketched it up very roughly as I was thinking it through so it might not be that clear, but I’m including it anyway. Ask me any questions.
Obviously it’s just one of many possible solutions so feel free to tear it apart or suggest other directions!
Not sure if you guys checked it out but yea this is pretty sweet. I don’t think its new but good for ref: touch screen
We could incorporate a web component (and perhaps another component to the installation) by allowing users to define the compatibilities. So users can decide whether happy belongs with sad, or sad belongs with confused. If that makes sense?
I think the idea of the rings around the user on the ground is awesome, probably not too tough either from what I’ve been looking at (haha, relatively…). I think we could definitely create a simple installation around this, or work it into something more complex, although I even like the idea of just simple white panels, with all of the focus being on the floor. The biggest unresolved issue is how do we assign an emotion to each person. Is is based on their movement? Something they touch or they type in.. or say .. or position their body (which could be difficult, but super cool if it worked.. alternatively, we could define poses for each emotion and flash them/display them in some other way so that people would know to “do a pose” in order to acquire an emotion ring.. which would be totally doable with current accelerometer code) or it could be based on where they walk initially when they enter, or the colour of their clothes? Or some combination of these, or something else entirely! What are you guys leaning towards? I’d really love to work in the accelerometers as I think the pose detection is still sort of novel and it works surprisingly well.. I’m also keen on RFID and/or touch/light/sound sensors with Arduino in some kind of subtle way (embedded into the floor or wall panels maybe or something..) It would be cool if we could use some combination of things (it would also help our project come across as less “simple/easy” but I think it’s easier said than done to combine them.
What does everyone else think?
Hey guys, I’ve done some sketching of a concept I’ve been thinking about in regards to our interactive installation. Click the images to enlarge.
The idea is about compatibility. The user walks into the room and a halo surrounds them with different emotions or perhaps descibing their profile. When one user approaches another, there could be an attraction or rejection symptom. If two emotions attract then the halos of each user become joined. The more users together the more attraction / rejection.
This is just an interesting take on compatibility between users. Of course we are still using text as our visual element.
Let me know of your thoughts.
BTW, I just got JMyron up and running on my Mac Book Pro (MBP) hehe and played around with some simple motion tracking stuff. Pretty cool.
Safari: If you haven’t already heard about/used it - it’s amazing. Many many technological books available to read online. If you can stand reading off of your computer screen, it is well worth it.
I’m currently reading a book called Physical Computing: Sensing and Controlling the Physical World with Computers by Dan O’Sullivan, Tom Igoe. I think it could be verrrrry helpful for getting into the microcontrollers and sensors and stuff.
I know I already posted about Arduino, but I found a booklet online that describes how to get started using it. I know I’ll end up going through it and thought some of you might also be interested. I found some Ultrasonic Range Finders that are basically like bats (haha). They can detect the exact distance of objects that are a couple of cm to several meters away. They are a bit more expensive than other sensors (in the $30 each range) but could come in handing in a low-light environment. I’m in the process of tracking down an Arduino microcontroller and some sensors that I can start playing with. I will post what I find!
So after a WinXP reinstall, complete with a new version of Processing, WinVDig, and Myron, I’ve now got some of the Myron video tracking samples working with my webcam. Things worth noting: It is sooooo light-dependent. Granted, my camera isn’t very good, but I still think it might be tricky in a dark installation. I’m thinking about solutions.
In the meantime, I’ve been looking into Arduino - A sister project of processing. I think it’s worth taking a look at the site. Essentially relatively inexpensive microcontrollers that allow the use of a wide variety of sensor input (temperature, light, movement) with USB interface. The programming language is all open source and apparently works well with Processing. It sounds pretty good.