Receipt Racer

Receipt Racer — undef and Joshua Noble

Receipt Racer is an OpenFrameworks game played with a PlayStation controller, a projector, and a receipt printer. The course is printed out ahead of your “car” and you must move your light based protagonist to avoid the tangible printed obstacles.
I found the blending of tangible and ephemeral entities quite nice. The fact that the entire history of game play persists as a pile of thermal paper at the feet of the player is also quite striking. Playing the game likely seems more serious and important as one copes with vague eco-guilt as they play.
There is room for improvement in the very typical controller. Some kind of slider or single-axis joystick would be less distracting to me. It wouldn’t tke much to bring this from tech demo to clean and sturdy installation, but it needs a cabinet.

Graffiti Analysis: Sculpture — Evan Roth

Graffiti Analysis: Sculpture

This Graffiti analysis sculpture is presumably a 3d printed version of an interpretation of the movements of a particular instance of graffiti. A laptop running OpenFrameworks-based program tracks the movement of the artist using an LED attached to the inking device. The computer presumably interprets luminous intensity as depth and exports a 3d model. The model is refined in blender and printed in white. It is then put in a gallery to be admired.

I found the form striking. Very interesting source for 3d data. The final piece more than vaguely resembles the aesthetics of graffiti.

Audience

Audience — rAndom International

Audience is a really humanist piece involving many mirrors and many servos.
All of the several dozen mirrors will orient themselves in such a way to show the audience several copies of their own reflection. They follow the audience using computer vision.
I love the idea of being unable to escape yourself. The mildly antagonistic, yet kind actions of the robots really interact well with the audience.
The work of rAndom International is quite good and worth looking at if you are not familiar.

Discover and discuss three projects that were made in openFrameworks (OF). As a suggestion: For diversity, choose one project which seems like an important contribution to the field, and one project that seems like a quick but interesting sketch or experiment.

Making of “Nikola Tesla in Sound and Light” – Marco Tempest

Forms (2012) – Memo Akten and Quayola

 This is a project that transform body movement into digital abstract digital visual form as in the description: it explores techniques of extrapolation to sculpt abstract forms, visualizing unseen relationships – power, balance, grace and conflict – between the body and its surroundings. However I feel the best part is that they chose sports videos to study and generate the forms rather than real-time capturing random movement from random passers on the street.

Hand from Above (2009) – Chris O’shea

This is a relatively “old” but very classic installation realized by openFrameworks and OpenCV. I like the playful way he designed the interactions which give people a very strong sense of involvement. I remember the first time I watched it I was kind of mind-blown when seeing passer being picked up and entirely removed from the screen..

Electricity Comes From Other Planets – Marek Bereza, Fred Deakin, Nat Hunter, James Bulley

This is a light&sound interactive project, well done but not impressively but one of the few sound-related projects by openFrameworks.

It’s my OpenFrameworks looking outwards project!

A great contribution to the field: iQ font, a font developed by motion-tracking the four corners of a car with an overhead camera, and documenting it as it drifts and swerves in the shapes of all the letters of a font. I love everything about this project. The idea is far-reaching and interesting, the execution is brilliant, and the documentation is interesting and well-done throughout. I whole-heartedly admire this project; the only downside is that the link to download the font seems to be broken.

Quick and dirty project: Subdivide a Tetrahedron to a Sphere. I chose this project just because it was super random. How many people do you know have had the problem where they couldn’t create a sphere when given four corners of a tetrahedron? Never fear! This guy solved it! His documentation is pretty, which also helps his project seem interesting despite the fact that it doesn’t seem to accomplish any major milestones in art or math. A well done quickie.

Three: European Researcher’s Night. This project impressed me primarily because I’m not super sure how OpenFrameworks was involved. European Researcher’s Night is a tabletop surface with small semi-transparent rocks on top (quartz?). Based on where the rocks are located on the circular surface, the surface lights under the rocks glow in different colors, which creates this beautiful and useless tactile experience of moving the rocks around the table and watching the colors change. I would like to see an evolution of this project, maybe incorporating water or a larger surface, but the accomplishments here are worth noting.

1. Second Surface by the Tangible Media Group at MIT
Second Surface is a project that creates an interactive virtual environment layered over-top everyday environment. It allows the user to generate content to add to the environment in real-time and this content it shared across devices so that other users can view and add to content created before them and further, that users can collaborate on this artwork in real-time. What is really cool and innovative about this project is that AR recognition technology is used to determine the pose of the user’s device, so that the content one adds is embedded more smoothly into the virtual environment. Personally, this project is really interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, I envision users utilizing this project as a kind of graffiti that could create really interesting dialogues across users. Secondly, and this stems from my background in architecture, I find that the project is a response to an open-ended question I’ve had since switching into BCSA which is how to bridge or intersect physical and virtual space. In one of my studios, we spent a good deal of time dealing with differences on the range between private and public space and it seems to me that this project works to overturn these distinctions and allows any space to become a new sort of public space.

Second Surface from Tangible Media Group on Vimeo.

2. Playmodes by Eloi Maduell, Santi Vilanova, and Jordi Teixidor
Playmodes is a cool tool/installation that acts as a sequencer for your body movements. It allows the user to specify certain parameters to capture their movements and piece them together in different ways. So far it has been used as an installation for multiple users to play with and enjoy and for a performance piece, as shown in the video. I think that this project could be extended to be used in conjunction with music sequencing and allow the user to use their body to create music in a way that I have not seen before.

3. Optical Flow by Denis Perevalov
This project is an experimentation that has not yet been applied to a project but that I think is really cool and has a lot of potential to be used in interesting projects. It basically allows the user to manipulate a grid using his body movements but the grid has an elasticity to it that causes it to bounce somewhat as it responds. I see a lot of potential for overlaying the grid with images or environments that can be instilled with an immersing dreamlike quality. The creator provides a link to the source code so I may try using it for a future project in the the class.

heliOscillator / visualdisplayunit, 2012

An audio visual installation that visualises the oscillations of sunspot size and density in a 7 part modular screen made with Arduino, openFrameworks and Max/MSP.

I like the overall execution of the installation. Especially how each hexagon has sub-sections of light rather than lighting the entire thing. The sound generated by the measured color and intensity really creates a sci-fi ambiance, as such you would be like in a spaceship. I think this piece has a nice balance between data visualization of light and sound. Adding a 2-layered visualization makes the installation very interesting. According to one of their videos, the artists we inspired by science fiction and the installation is a homage to movies such as Solaris (1972) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
 

Disrupted Cities / François Zajéga, 10-2012

An abstract visualization of wandering in a superstructure, 6 logs with dates and hours, made in openFrameworks.

The black & white contrast and the motion in this visualization is a wonderful depiction of wandering in a superstructure. I like how cluttered the black lines are, and yet you’re able to distinguish the silhouettes of buildings. I wished the artist would provide more information on his intentions. There’s literally no description or anything on his website about this research project.
 

Toccatatouch, Fabrica, 2012

The illusion of playing with the forces of a physical environment. A digital textile reacts to touch, changing its form and generates synthesized tones and noises.

I like how dynamic the generative art is and how it allows a user to modify and experiment different settings and dynamics with the app. Additionally, the generated sounds really complement the motion and form of the digital texture. Although, it’s not clear whether the sound changes based on the visual. I think there’s an opportunity here to create outputs for fabrication. Users can define their own form and aesthetic, which they can materialize through methods such as 3D printing.