SimpleText

Pictures from SimpleTEXT peformance @ Vooruit 5/14/04, Gent, Belgium.

ABOUT SIMPLETEXT SimpleTEXT is a collaborative audio/visual public performance that relies on audience participation through input from mobile devices such as phones, PDAs or laptops. SimpleTEXT focuses on dynamic input from participants as essential to the overall output. The performance creates a dialogue between participants who submit messages which control the audiovisual output of the installation. These messages are first parsed according to a code that dictates how the music is created, and then rhythmically drive a speech synthesizer and a picture synthesizer in order to create a compelling, collaborative audiovisual performance. SimpleTEXT was originally funded by a commission from Low-Fi, a new media arts organization based in the UK.To date, SimpleTEXT has been shown 12 times in 8 countries across Europe and North America. BACKGROUND The modular organization of SimpleTEXT relies on pieces of subverted and repurposed software to be linked into a performing whole. These include several custom applications that we have designed that enable various types of audience input in both mobile and stationary environments. The project is informed by, and makes use of components developed for projects such as ‘AudioBored‘, ‘Falken’s Maze’ and ‘Octree.Faces‘ A vital aspect of this lies in creating feedback between these systems which can be delicately balanced in order to allow audience interactions to trigger spectacular, unexpected chains of events. MOBILITY AND INTERACTION IN PUBLIC SPACE SimpleTEXT focuses on mobile devices and the web as a bridge between networked interfaces and public space. As mobile devices become more prolific, they also become separated by increased emphasis on individual use. The SimpleTEXT project looks beyond the screen and isolated usage of mobile devices to encourage collaborative use of input devices to both drive the visuals and audio output, inform each participant of each other’s interaction, and allows people to actively participate in the performance while it happens.Our purpose with the performance is to create the possibility of large-scale interaction through anonymous collaboration, with immediate audio and visual feedback. SimpleTEXT encourages users to respond to one another’s ideas and build upon the unexpected chains of ideas that may develop from their input. SimpleTEXT is a rare example of an interactive piece that works in crowded public spaces such as social and unruly atmospheres where heckling, irony, criticism, and sarcasm are common modes of communication. We are unaware of such a large-scale interactive piece in terms of scale of audience interaction, where the interaction is as tangible, direct, and therefore individually satisfying.

Blender Manual Wiki

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Main_Page

Cintiq Device Build Log

Here’s a step-by-step log for a roughly $150 Cintiq interface device

http://www.bongofish.co.uk/wacom/wacom_pt1.html

About PuppetShow

What is PuppetShow? | The PuppetShow Manifesto | How it Works | Using PuppetShow | PuppetShow in Action

What is PuppetShow?

Puppet Show is an interface plug-in for Epic’s Unreal Tournament 2004. Puppet Show uses an external Java program to feed visual input from a webcam onto the character animation of customized Unreal game avatars. It adds computer vision as another input device for physical puppeteering of the virtual game characters. Computer vision allows for an intuitive mapping of body movements onto virtual characters and gives human actors better access to an expressive virtual performance. We argue that this exemplifies an interface trend towards more expressive input options that support a higher level of expression in video games.

PuppetShow was built with Processing and runs within the Unreal Runtime using a custom gametype. PuppetShow can track up to three unique colors and relay there transformations onto a 3D character. The puppet show interface is intuitive and allows for users to customize how the system modifies the 3D character, be it the affected bone, the range in which it moves, or how the puppet is tracked.

To download the different alpha packages of PuppetShow visit the downloads page. To see puppet show in action, check out the pictures and video below.

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The PuppetShow Manifesto

Ok, manifesto might be to strong a term.

PuppetShow was created to liberate Machinima actors and expressive gamers from the shackles of the mouse, keyboard, and other abstract middleware. The mouse and keyboard cannot project the human figure�s true expressive range into a virtual environment intuitively. To do so, an interface must be able to understand motions from the whole human body, not just complex motions on a plane (mouse) or keystrokes.

PuppetShow�s goal is to provide a simple, open-source, expressive interface for the Mahinima and expressive games community. It is the hopes creators that it will allow for more expressive interactive experiences to be forged. Intuitive and expressive interfaces are the future of human scale computing. PuppetShow is gimlpse of that future.

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How it Works

PuppetShow in truth is actually two separate systems that communicate over a TCP link: the puppet tracker and the Unreal puppet animation system. Below is the overall flow diagram of how PuppetShow works.

Puppet tracking is accomplished by using a puppet, a webcam, and the PuppetShow color tracking applet. The color tracking software uses a refined blob tracking algorithm to track solid colors on a puppet. Since the tracking is based solely on color almost anything can act as a puppet: origami, gloves, socks, shirts, pineapples and so forth! The tracking color can be set easily with the dynamic color calibration system. Based on a user defined scheme, the tracking software then takes the blobs and translates them into usable information which is subsequently sent to the Unreal Runtime running the PuppetShow animation system.

The PuppetShow gametype takes in values from the color tracker and translates them into bone translations and rotations. These are then applied to the character controlled 3D mesh (in the above diagram: a ducky!) which is subsequently displayed on the screen. An important note: PuppetShow does not interfere with the standard input devices of Unreal. This allows players to move and manipulate their characters as they would usually be able to with the added PuppetShow animations.

That’s it in a nutshell! Please see the faq for step by step usage instructions.

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PuppetShow in Action

The current system at work:

The original character demo video:

InsertSampleMovie();

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And some images of the system being used!

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Check out videos at http://egl.gatech.edu/puppetshow/

VirtuSphere

It’s the ultimate virtual interface for your feet. I want one. VirtuSphere is what I’ve been waiting for in video games since my first kapow in Bungie’s Marathon. It’s a hollow ball about three metres in diameter. You put on your virtual reality headgear, you get inside it and you run, walk or whatever in any direction you want. It’s the wide screen experience for your feet. All I need is a house to put it in and the “green” to buy one. I believe they’re still expensive at the moment but the construction is so elegantly simple I can see the price coming down so we can all have one.

It’s probably a good idea to wipe your feet before you use it otherwise whatever you trod in outside might end up in your hairdo.

VirtuSphere
http://www.virtusphere.com/

Why Machinima is Different (article)

Why Machinima is Different

Posted by Peter Rasmussen on April 29th, 2007

The Machinima Advantage – continued

To understand the potential of machinima we need to understand what has gone before.

Ancient history:
Even at the “independent” end the film industry has systematically been reduced in it’s scope. Like a “mini me” of the studios it has become intensely corporate in its workings if not in the actual budgets. There was a time when there was more balance. Big budget films employed a lot of people and payed for the infrastructure of the industry while independents kept the fresh ideas coming. Even big studios would occasionally put out films that could draw some critical acclaim. Now it has become much more homogenous.

At the moment the making of films has become so strictly regimented. Everyone has gone to the same “how to make a movie” seminars to learn that you have to have two clips to hold the script together not three. There is no room for descent. The result being that they cost so much and that they’re all the same movie.

Maintaining and expanding a profile in the industry has become such an art that there is a sense of reward that comes from being good at that alone. This contributes to a kind of decadents. It has become more about working the room and less about making the film.

Hal Hartley once said
“If I’m serious about film making
I have to get out of the industry.”

The emphasis has been on impressing the industry with your value to get its support to make your projects possible. Now there is the potential to get that support directly from the audience you are making the film for.

Now we have digital video. Anyone can afford cameras and editing software that is capable of producing a film that at least has image and sound quality acceptable for commercial release. Now we have the Internet. Anyone can self distribute. Anyone can show their film to anyone who can find it.

Machinima is not a branch of an earlier kind of film making like video from celluloid. Machinima is a completely independent eruption. It is not just a new image recording medium. What used to be a video game add on is now a new approach to story telling that has it’s own community and culture. It’s a movement that is currently free of most of the intrinsic encumbrances of conventional filmmaking.

The greater population of machinima makers come from outside conventional filmmaking. Machinima was born out of the chaos of the warfare of first person shooters and the anarchy of excited gamers and hackers who were not restricted by filmmaking conventions or industry etiquette.

A great deal of machinima so far was made in existing games with no regard to copyright. This may actually have contributed to its growth. Not having to make the locations and characters made the process much more quick and fun at that early stage. Without copyright clearance the only way this work could be seen was for free. So the popularity grew. And other sources of revenue were explored. Like talking about how it is done at seminars like books on machinima like merchandising.

The feedback loop between trying something out and seeing the result is so much shorter. This is true of the day to day production and of the turnaround on entire projects. Techniques like real time puppeteering fuel spontaneity. The immediacy of machinima is a very powerful substance.

The best way to learn filmmaking is to do it. The budgets for conventional films these days have become so bloated filmmakers just don’t get the same amount of practice. Starting out in the black and white era Alfred Hitchcock Made fifty films in his career. The ones he is most famous for are the ones in his later years.

With less time taken up by development and the raising of production money the turnaround for machinima is much faster. There is much less of a gap between having an idea and seeing how it actually looks on the screen. And straight away you can see if it works for the audience.

“Do what you like.
And If the audience doesn’t like it get off”
– Noel Coward

It’s not just the speed of production. It’s very much about the attitude people making machinima bring to what they do. Machinima is propelled by the same sense of hands on discovery that drives the video game modding community.

Skills and practices drawn from conventional filmmaking can be applied but this must be done with care. With Main stream filmmaking you get development hell. There are so many people you have to convince that what you are doing will be successful. This environment rarely produces things that have not been seen before. Machinima seems to be in a position where it can avoid much of this at least for a while.

With conventional film making there can be a strange gap between the filmmakers and the audience, the “demographic” as they are sometimes called. With machinima it is much more fluid. There can be a conversation between the audience and the filmmakers even during production via blogs and forums. This doesn’t mean that the work has been modified for the lowest common denominator it’s more like an overture before the main event.

Fans of machinima are not looking for photorealism. The spectrum of kinds of machinima being made is quite broad. From popular entertainment to extremely conceptual art pieces. So broad that a vigorous debate continues to attempt to define machinima.

The 2006 Machinima Film Festival in New York ran for two days. The quality of entries had grown since previous years. Most entries ran for less than ten minutes. Two had a running time of more than an hour. Short titles rule at the moment. The most successful films at a festival of mostly short films are gag driven. A single clever concept well delivered with a strong punch line.

It’s like Machinima is in the first few microseconds after its big bang. The particles are basic but very powerful. I expect that over the next few years we will see more long form productions as serious machinima makers settle in for the long haul.

There is an opportunity to, refine is the wrong word, to bring this new medium to a state where it can be produced for a return of revenue that allows the machinima makers to continue to deliver to there audience something fresh and original in a sustainable way without outside interference in the creative process.

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