yuvian-telematic

click here to play

note: webcam does not work in the embedded iframe below. please click the above link to play in glitch

Trace/sketch from your webcam. See webcam sketches from other people. Can you understand where they are, what they're doing, what they look like from their tracings?

So this project turned out a lot different than what I originally had in mind. First, I played around with clmtrackr.js because I wanted to make a multi-user sketching game where clmtrackr would generate a very simplified outline of a user's face from their webcam feed and other users would be able to add features such as facial hair, hairstyles, etc. That didn't work out too great because although I got clmtrackr.js to work in p5, I couldn't figure out how to draw on it. So then, I decided to retain the webcam input idea but without facial tracking. Eventually, it got to the point where it was very simplified - use the webcam feed to capture snapshots of the user's environment, ask them to trace/sketch over it, and show that sketch within a shared environment. I wanted the webcam snapshot to only be seen by its user because I wanted to retain some anonymity. The purpose of tracing/sketching over the webcam is to simulate a video call while forcing users to rely on their creativity and artistic ability to "show" themselves rather than reveal everything about them from live video. Because of this, this project is synchronous, because it requires users to be active and drawing at the same time. It's pretty anonymous because although you're trying to represent yourself through tracings of your image, it's unlikely that other users will be able to tell who you really are. In addition, you can manipulate your features at will.