Process

Keys:

This is a demonstration model of what we have exhibited at University of East London in the AVA building. It was displayed at the 3rd year degree show, my end of 2nd year degree show and for the university's combined showcase show. It is a joint project between myself, John Holder and Hedley Roberts with sound by Rob Flint and Chris Sullivan. The idea was to take a time-lapse recording every 30 seconds of the construction of one of our university's new buildings and explore digital processes that could be applied to the series of frames. We settled on adaptation of v3ga's blob detection library. Taking the idea of frames and time and applying edge detection and blob detection repeatedly. The show has initially presented blob detection trails from real-time processing the frames (over 6000 of). Along side this is the compiled movie running at 25 frames a second.

At the show case we switched to just a webcam view and viewers were able to try out different settings through the use of pressure mats. The pressure mats (basically large switches) were detected by the code as key presses. A keyboard was pulled apart and some ethernet cable ran from the mats to a VGA socket in the ceiling of the immersion space (the immersion space is designed to allow easy transfer of data from a hub room to the space). Then some wires were soldered onto the keyboard switch matrix from our corresponding contact in the hub. Amazingly you can still get a keyboard signal from at least a 100 metres away.

Working collaboratively means leaving a lot of the junk in place for when people change their minds. The user interface for this project just grew and grew and nothing was taken out. So the source had the feel of being held together by bubble-gum but was a very entertaining exhibit and demonstrated what could be done with the immersion space at East London University. More images and revised code will be posted.

Exhibit source package (awaitng update) Current source Download compressed sound file (Mp3)

Built with Processing

Some photos are from the opening night of the time-lapse movie projection. A screen shot from the program has been super-imposed because the low light levels required a flash and drowned out any clear image of the projection.