Installation Report

So now my installation is over, and WOAH that was super stressful, so much work goes into a full installation.. I think next time it may be better to focus on one object unless in a team situation - so much technology and other factors to rely on..Some snaps are below..

Poster

This is my poster I have emailed out to invite people to my exhibition..

Technical Difficulties

On Friday I tried to hold my exhibition but due to technical complications it wasn't possible.. So it has been postponed until Tuesday :)  I will be re-inviting everybody - not sure when to start or finish due to having overdue equipment etc and I don't want to hog it for those others trying to exhibit..  I hope that I can get stuff together and exhibit early to make for a quick pack down..

New Clock Sensor

So after feedback from the alpha presentation I decided to swap my sensor over to Ultrasonic so it could take the entire room into account - I found this website to implement it :) So I have that working great! Everything's on its way to coming together!

Final (Before Testing in Room) Face Display

So this is kind of the final image of my face mirror - I will adjust when in the room fully.. but for now it looks something like this :)

It makes the face ultimately paler while adding dark circles under the eyes ..

Eye Tracker Progress - Touchy!

I have done some more on my eye tracker - with adding a layering effect of the eyes.. It is quite interesting because it sometimes recognises and sometimes doesn't but here's a picture to show progress

On the left is the tracker finding my eyes and painting spheres over them.. then the right is the feedback in the mirror, with two dark circles altering the colour of my eyes..

This is a close up but its not quite as obvious as I would like .. Still attempting to make it to darker without making it look fake.. Left it captured image and right is altered image.

This one is slightly better but the circles are quite wide it looks like shadow casting - I am going to work with the shape a little tomorrow to try and get it more precise yet the colour contrast is quite nice..

Quiz # 4 - Report

The work I have chosen is Crossfire by Geoffrey Mann.  This work has stuck in my head since one of the first lectures.


To summarize, this work is by an industrial designer who decided to use audio to mould and shape everyday objects.  The waves ripple through each object and at the end creates the actual distorted object.  I enjoyed this work because I thought it was bizarre to let audio determine the shape of physical 3d objects.  They become unique and have endless opportunities.  For example, someone could say they liked a certain song and the song could determine the shapes of their plates, cups, knifes, forks and spoons.  If it was commercialized it could become a very unique yet individual market.


This work was apart of Geoffrey Mann's series called Natural Occurrence, which he explains as, "The Natural Occurrence Series renders the impossible through encapsulating the beauty that exists above and apart from the material world."  I think he has a unique look and perspective about how objects can be formed differently, each piece individually is as intriguing as the next.. Together the series outputs many different objects, that are familiar yet distorted in a beautiful way.  I really enjoy the videos because it just helps visualise the processes and methods he went through in order to get his final products.


If you want to find out more, visit his website Studio*Mrmann

Recorded Audio Hallucinations

Have recorded four audio clips that move from left to right creating a surrounding feeling..

Why Cant You Sleep?
I Know Who You Are.
What Are You Doing?
Did You See That?

These will triggered at random points with in the room ..

Eye Tracker Stuff

Okay so this a tad awkward.. as I track my eye and try to place a circle on it - it only recognises one eye and offsets it - I feel like its only set to one I may be able to fix it - I'm definitely going to try :) - only made it that dark on the face to show where it is - it will be more subtle than this.

Heartbeat Background Audio

So today I have been working on getting the basis of my audio completed - just for the background.. It'll be a calm heartbeat that moves from left to right..  If I have time I would love to make this get faster and slower according to triggered elements - but for the moment it's just in my patch - I'm sure I will have time :)

Triggering Eye Shading

Today, I got a face trigger to work so when the face is forward facing the shading goes on :)

Face Tracker Research

Okay so today I have spent a hardcore 7-ish hours on facial and eye detection and tracking research and have found a possible path...

So first of all my previous post about Robin Hewitt's pdf articles and website, seemed to be a dead end when further researched, she works directly and only with C++ which can not be converted into Max MSP as I discovered recently they cannot even externally be connected...

Secondly, I have been looking through Open CV libraries because turns out I can load multiple files for recognition.  The particular files are called "Haar Cascades" and they have particular algorithms which have many possibilities for each kind of shape of feature - they contain eyes, nose, mouth, profile and frontal face.  These are good except when they are tracked they are done as a square when I want the nice eye cut out and mouth cut out - so that would be the next step. (example below)

The third option would be Viola Jones with a flash external file, which is quite easy to implement into Max MSP except they seem to have a similar sort of outcome as the Open CV files that I researched earlier, so I just stopped looking at this...

There were a couple of others that were briefly viewed like softVNS, Eigenface algorithms etc..  but these were only briefly touched on and not in depth - I'm going to have to work harder on the Haar Cascades and Open CV sources and just get the eye field narrowed down - it has been done I'm just unsure on how...

Other Links:
http://www.quasimondo.com/archives/000688.php
http://www.computer-vision-software.com/blog/2009/11/faq-opencv-haartraining/
http://note.sonots.com/SciSoftware/haartraining.html
http://www.cycling74.com/docs/max5/refpages/max-ref/lcd.html
http://note.sonots.com/?cmd=htmlinsert&page=haartraining

Face Tracker Progress

Okay, so face tracker progress is not moving on as quickly as I would have hoped, but I can now draw ontop of max live video and am currently discovering how to set it to a tracked point...

As far as face and eye tracking goes, I have tried 8 different coding styles, each has kinda appeared harder than the previous - but I hope that by the end of tomorrow I will have worked out one far enough to be happy with the result - and be able to start tracking objects, definitely need to have my poster done by end of tomorrow :)

Room Booked Take Two

YAY MOVED ROOMS TO 3.08 :) SO I HAVE IT FOR A WEEK STARTING MONDAY YAY :)

Recently Determined Timeline

This timeline must must MUST be stuck to - otherwise I will not be able to achieve the greatest version of my installation...

Face Tracking Article

Found this face tracking article which talks about how to map and detect the face by colours, it uses camshift tracking features and Open CV to recognise the face.  I am going to research further into this and put it together in Max - the quicker I get my clock and hallucinations done the more time I will have on this...

The author of the above article has a website and she has done many studies and other publications which look directly into facial tracking, detection and recognition through Open CV.  I am going go through all her articles and hopefully end up with a nice face tracking that allows me to manipulate faces as well as perfectly detect them.

Clock Demo Video

Just a quick demo of the clock working - in a video..

Clock Mechanism Working in Max MSP

YAY I have got the clock mechanism working in Max MSP code, I converted it from Arduino into Max in order to make everything in Max! Just took the entire day so I'll pop the clock back together tonight and bring to presentation - I'll also have a hallucination projection to show - I'm not sure about the face eye status for Thursday but I will try to get it to work :)

This is the image of my converted Max patch from Arduino - it works with a counter and every 1500milli-secs it turns it on and then off quickly...

Photo's a bit blurry but this is the clock mechanism connected to the computer and spinning the little dial :)

Tearing Apart Clocks

Decided to buy like 3 clocks just incase I cut anymore wrong wires, had some fun ripping them to pieces to get the mechanisms out - because I already have the clock aesthetic I wanted saved up - just need to add the hands..

Hallucination Trigger Working

This is my hallucination trigger working, I just need to put my content into this to show it working for Thursday presentation, but yay trigger works.

Minor SetBack with Clock

I BROKE THE CLOCK! Have to buy a new one today and going to buy a spare just in case :)