October 31, 2003
max workshop
seems like there might be some demand for a max workshop - susana expressed interest, and a couple of the 1st years just posted some stuff about wanting to go to the c-level max workshop.
I'm willing to hold a max workshop, if people are interested. I'm not sure exactly what the construction schedule for the zml is on monday, but maybe we could start around 8pm and go for a couple of hours. Does this work for anyone? Is anyone interested? I can bring my iSight, and we maybe could get a couple other firewire cameras to play around with. But I think it might be best to just go over max fundamentals. Perry has been giving good instruction and examples of Jitter and softVNS, as well as communication using the serial port. Maybe the workshop could compliment that fun stuff with some of the more boring max stuff like data structures, common control objects, etc. Any thoughts? I know we were planning on doing max stuff in class too, so maybe doing the nuts and bolts basic stuff is best, and then we can take it from there.
I may be able to come to campus earlier monday afternoon and try and move a couple of the PCs over to the ZML, if we need more machines...
my first processing exercises
done in class on thursday.
October 30, 2003
SoftVNS up
I installed the keys for Max/MSP/Jitter and SoftVNS yesterday at around 7:00 PM, so we are ready to rock and roll with that. Maybe we should purchase a couple of iSights for people to play around with since getting cameras from those production (explitive omitted) will not be that big of an issue. I've had pretty good experience with all of these tools, so for those of you who are interested in doing something with any of these objects to create your final project, or any other projects, please comment on this post and express your interest, and I will be more than happy to hold a workshop that compliments the stuff that perry is teaching in class.
October 28, 2003
Max/MSP vs Panther
Read this and this before upgrading any Mac running Max/MSP to Panther.
October 27, 2003
panoramic cinematography
After the workshop on Friday, trying to think through what we can do with the panoramic camera...
It's certainly possible to treat the camera as a passive disembodied viewpoint and just record what goes on around it. But without interactivity, this isn't in any way the kind of viewpoint that we can associate with a human being - it doesn't 'face' anything.
This was made painfully clear in the first music video we watched, where you have these insanely cheery japanese pop girls dancing around. Obviously you're supposed to feel that they're singing TO you, but instead they're singing AT you, whichever way you happen to be facing at any given moment. The test video shot at USC (where everyone pretty much ignored the camera) worked much better.
In other words, it's more effective to treat the camera as a kind of 'fly-on-the-wall' (except that in this case it's a 'fly-in-the-middle-of-the-room') viewpoint then to think of it as representing any kind of character or avatar.
It could therefore be argued that the panoramic viewpoint is inherently passive or anti-interactive. If it corresponds to anything, it would be the omniscient camera of much Hollywood cinema, which often (usually) represents a disembodied POV.
So unless we augment this viewpoint with some fairly robust interactivity it will be difficult to treat the panorama as representing any narrative POV whatsoever. At a minimum, we'd have to know which way the user is looking, and we'd have to be able to respond to this information.
October 26, 2003
john oswald
John Oswald makes music. he makes music from the music of other people (for the most part). John Oswald has been in trouble w/ the law for this (see the Plunderphonics website). His stuff is great. He is able to capture the essence of his subjects (james brown, public enemy, metallica, the beatles...) construct pieces from that core. He is a Lawrence Lessig example, and should be championed by the EFF and Creative Commons. He has been forced to take his stuff offline (or at least, it's not where it was before), and since I'm doing a more automated oswaldian system for my simulation project, I figured it might be good to get a taste of him. So I've temporarily put some stuff of his up on my server:
Net is my favorite. I have more, so if anyone wants, email me and I will put them up.
October 25, 2003
October 22, 2003
Proce55ing example
My first proce55ing exercise. There are some similar kinds of kinetic typography stuffs.
http://www.saitatsu.net/projects/softwares/kinetictype/
I also blogged about this on my site.
October 21, 2003
CTIN532 assignments
These are the six assignments from the original syllabus for CTIN 532.
• Assignment 1: Feedback system. Design and implement something (but not mouse/keyboard/screen-based) that responds to user input in an interesting way (ie., in an unexpected or unpredictable way)
• Assignment 2: Interactive structures. Choose a narrative (fiction, news story, personal experience, etc) and define an interactive structure (based on navigation or choice or something else) for it. Make a diagram of this structure.
• Assignment 3: Simulation. Make a simulation of a real-world object. Bring both the object and the simulation to present and compare in class.
• Assignment 4: Superimposition. Design an alternative reality and come up with a method to superimpose it onto the lab. Coordinate your project with the rest of the class so that all superimpositions are able to coexist simultaneously.
• Assignment 5: Blind Interactivity. Design an interactive project that is entirely non-visual. The project can use any of the other senses for input and output.
• Assignment 6: Group Interaction. Design a project that simultaneously engages three or more users.
By this point in the semester, we're supposed to be on the fourth assignment, but we're just finishing up with the second one.
We're running out of time. Here are some ideas for getting through the rest of the semester.
A. Each student completes 3 of the 4 possible assignments. You can each choose which one to drop.
B. Whenever possible, assignments should be documented and presented via blog (rather than in class). Everyone would be responsible for viewing the projects outside of class so that class time could be devoted mostly to discussion. Obviously, some projects would be difficult or impossible to present this way, and these projects would still be shown in class.
Other ideas?
October 20, 2003
Pumpkins in 3D
An seasonably appropriate example of the technique I demonstrated to make an anaglyph (red/blue) stereoscopic image in Photoshop, using Layer Sets to keep all the image data intact.
click to view [flattened] 640x480 jpeg image
right-click or ctrl-click to download & save 320x240 layered Photoshop image
October 19, 2003
Photocell Input
Here's a circuit diagram, Max patch, and Basic Stamp code for a little project we did in class a few weeks back in which we monitored a photocell and sent the reading to MaxMSP.
Included in the Max patch is an embedded patcher that reformats the incoming signed bytes (-128 to 127) to unsigned bytes (0-255).
Plus the patch demonstrates how to convert the photocell reading into sound.
It also reheats coffee and does the dishes.
The Zombie Survival Guide
We need this.
Zombie Survival Guide @ Amazon
October 18, 2003
Super Bonus Points in the Extra Hyper Zone/Round
Discern the identity of the motion blurred human on the far right.
processing / QT 6.4
bug update:
people, including myself, have been having trouble running processing since upgrading to quicktime version 6.4 for mac. The entire discussion thread is here.
But apparently there is not java support for QT on 10.2.x, according to this document which says, and I quote:
f you use Mac OS X 10.2.x and require QuickTime Java support for Java 1.3 or Java 1.4.1, do not upgrade to QuickTime 6.4.
is anyone else experiencing this problem?
if so, the easy fix is to downgrade quicktime to version 6.3 Link
October 14, 2003
Processing
The home page for Processing is:
http://www.proce55ing.net/
and the download page the alpha version is:
http://www.proce55ing.net/download/alpha.html
Please take a look at it before Thursday's class.
October 10, 2003
Zombie Sim
I just created the topic 'tangents,' because I think sometimes we get off on some interesting ones in class.
So Todd did bring Zombies up in his presentation on Tuesday, and specifically the zombie simulator. So I guess this isn't a true tangent, but we talked about it at some length, and did break off into other zombie-related tangents. ok, enough.
the zombie sim (created in processing) lives here. Check it out - it's quite nice. Perry, Todd, Tripp, Kurt and I spent the entire break on tuesday having great fun watching all the pathetic humans try to avoid the inevitable. it's actually quite a compelling experience.
October 06, 2003
wiring
quick question:
I feel like I've got the reading of wiring diagrams down ok, or at least to the point where I know what's going on. However, I'm looking to try out some more complex stuff, and I'm wondering where one goes to get wiring diagrams for, say, a rotary switch, or whatever - something we haven't covered in class. I'm guessing I should probably go buy a electronics book, but if anyone has any suggestions, I'm more than welcome to them.
thanks.
October 02, 2003
A little history...
Here's some material on W. Grey Walter, the guy I mentioned on Tuesday in relation to Sam's Mindstorms stuff:
http://www.epub.org.br/cm/n09/historia/turtles_i.htm
And this guy is rebuilding Walter's 'turtles' using (what else) Lego & Mindstorms(!):
http://www.plazaearth.com/usr/gasperi/walter.htm
Aacck
What type of box is the one that displays the output "lightOFF" ? i can't find that one and I can't get that to work. Everything else "seems" to be okay. And the fpic. So I get that box and I option click on it to get the settings. I change those to display the image, but then what? How do I cycle it with another image? I hook up a bang to it and then....what?....where do I put down the other image name? Maybe I am just tired.
~Mike
fpic
Woo hoo!
I got the image to change using fpic just like Will said...
All you have to do is send the output from the last two streams on the bottom right (the ones that both feed into the final box... sorry for the shitty description) to two different messages:
"read light_on.gif"
"read light_off.gif"
I used gif's but it will also accept jpg. Make sure the image files are properly named and in the same directory/folder as the patch you are editing.
Then send the output of both those messages to an fpic object.
Ta da!
It's fun.
I'm so very tired now. Good night.
K
first Max/MSP assignment accomplished
kind of exciting to turn a light bulb on and off.
how're you doing there Mike, got the new BS2 yet? you can use mine if you need to.
g'night,
susana
Tripp and Kurt...
Tripp and I got everything working tonight using his wiring (shoddy at times but ultimately sufficient!) and my computer. The Max/MSP patch that we made works fine and I am in the process of making an image for it. After Tripp left I did all my own soldering and wiring (although I am still using his light bulb setup...) and am happy to report that everything is fine. I'm quite happy with my serial cable actually. So after ditching lab last week, albeit for a sublime Radiohead concert at the Hollywood Bowl, I am caught up.
See you all Thursday night.
K
October 01, 2003
situation/downloads
so there seemed to be a lot of confusion about the state the iml, and rightly so. It's pretty jacked now. I guess we have to suck it up until we get the new lab. Sigh.
So:
we can use full versions of Max on 5 of the machines in the iml. the keyspan drivers can be downloaded here if needed:
mac os 9 : Download Page
mac os X : Download Page
It's probably just as easy to download the demo for your own machines. Max is out for windows, but not jitter. Might be worthwhile to download this just to get used to it, if interested, that is.
All the downloads can be made from:
Cycling '74. Just follow the appropriate links to download a fully functional 30 day trial.
that is all. this will most likely fall on deaf ears.