Telepresence

In another iteration of the concept introduced in assignment 1, I decided to further refine the lazy son project.

The link below leads to quick video clip captured while I was up in the middle of the night making progress on this very project.  The long name of the .mov file was one new feature that allowed for better tracking,  organization, and delivery of the video content.  Each video is tagged with the users unique user name followed by a time stamp based on server time.  At the moment the video was captured, I was logged in as a test user by the name of ’steph’.  I believe the video is quite effective in translating my mental and physical state at the moment of capture.  The video length is also quite short due to testing conditions.

http://itp.nyu.edu/~aam423/telepresence/img/steph_1209455047957.mov

Another major improvement was the deployment of my Java server onto a dedicated machine.   This truly allowed me to test the socket connections in a non-local setting allowing me to confirm that the individual users were able to effectively relay messages between each other in a controlled and logical way.

The implementation of a graphical user interface  on the client side was another substantial upgrade that improved the overall experience of using this system.  Please find a screen shot of the client side application below:

The above screen demonstrates how a user with 4 friends would interact with the system.  By clicking on one of the name buttons, a request would be sent to the given user.  The text field below the friend names displays any messages or updates that the particular user might need to see.  Every message sent through the system has a defined recipient.  Incorporating a high level of control on the server side was a very important challenge I was quite happy to address.

The large capture button found at the bottom of the GUI initiates the video capture and is then followed by the automatic upload.

I am hoping to further develop this project in the near future.

Baby is a visual project that I tried to create a presence of my niece (-5 months old) (yes it is a fetus) in the world that I am living in. Having received the sonogram videos, I played with the video to scale the 12 inches fetus to the large screens in ITP, and tried to add some meaning to its movement. In the project, fetus moves from left to right slowly in a poll of balls of the number of hours that the fetus would be spending inside  (some 6 thousand).

a video documentation of the project can be seen on http://www.vimeo.com/1004020.

Our information-driven societies are producing and archiving more and more data than ever before. It’s difficult to grasp the cumulative, collective role we all have in producing this relentless information surge, to understand fully its scale and volume. How can we interact with mass data as an entity, how can we experience its shifts, patterns, moments of order and of chaos? With the DataSex project, we aimed to transform what’s global, collective, and abstract into an immediate, intimate physical experience. Our original intention was to cull constantly fluctuating data sets the internet– stock market data seemed the perfect test case– and try to translate this data into physical– specifically sexual– feedback. At first, we planned to create a sex toy– a small, wearable vibrator– that would read data wirelessly and interpret it into a vibrating patterns. This approach presented the following problems: would the device be more effective if worn all day, for real time updates? If so, how to access data constantly? What are the best sources for streaming all this data, and how to read it all in? Would it be more user-friendly to be able to choose to use the device at the end of the day, in private, and play back the day’s data? How could the device best be demonstrated? Eventually we gave up on the sex toy idea, mostly because it developing an decent prototype would be a very long process, and would be really awkward to demonstrate in class.

We settled on interpreting data– we used readily available earthquake data– via film clips. We correlated dips and rises in data sets to action in film sequences, coding in Open Framworks for better video performance. We wanted to keep our original idea of the data creating an intense physical experience, so we first experimented with dynamically editing porn clips together using the data set as a template. Eventually (but not before we watched a mind-numbing amount of porn!) we concluded that showing hardcore porn in class, even in very short clips, might be disturbing to our classmates. We settled on re-editing the fabulous 1960s Russ Myer sexplotation film Faster Pussy Cat Kill Kill! Graphic, but much classier than net porn… I collected time code for clips grouped according to their level of sex or violence, the program skipped through arrays of timecode to display the clips. The result was an ultra-fractured, baffling narrative– still riveting because of the subject matter, but not exactly a cohesive, well-realized project.

DataSex did evolve into our final project, FeedBack PlayBack, where we tried inverting the equation, using physical input from the user to transform the media and attempted to solve the problem of the fractured narrative…

(Che-Wei and Zannah)

Che-Wei and I revamped our FeedBack PlayBack project (which was a revision of our assignment 2 DataSex project). We’ve ditched the narrative structure– the length of the scenes we needed to use to maintain narrative continuity (about 30 to 40 seconds) made it impossible for the system to react quickly enough to the GSR input for the user to detect a meaningful connection. Any explicit narrative is a distraction– we decided to go for the most essential, stripped down representation of the action-movie formula when selecting the our material. The clips in the “low” category are primarily snappy dialog and witty retorts; the “medium” category clips are mostly chase scenes, and the clips in the “high” category show fights. We’re still working with every film in the Die Hard series, and with less narrative detail in the shorter clips, the re-edited product often feels more cohesive. We have ten clips each for low, medium, and high, 30 clips per movie for 4 movies, is 120 individual clips– the permutations of possible movies is, according to my rather fuzzy math, out to eleven digits. At any rate– it’s a lot! Here’s the new write- up:

FeedBack PlayBack is a dynamic film re-editing and viewing system. The users’ physical state determines the visceral quality of scenes displayed; immediate reactions to the scenes feed back to generate a cinematic crescendo or a lull. We use material that is rigorously narrative, formulaic, and plentiful: the action movie series Die Hard, starring Bruce Willis. Individual clips fall into high, medium, and low action/arousal categories. The user is seated, and places his or her hands on a Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) detection panel (GSR readings are the same kind of data collected in lie detector test). After calibration, the movie begins showing, and clips are displayed depending on the user’s level of arousal and engagement. Although the clips are pulled from any of the four movies in the Die Hard series, an implicit action narrative is maintained.

In FeedBack PlayBack, the cinematic converges with the physical present, exploiting the power of fiction to manipulate and alter our state of being at the most basic, primal level. We attempt to synchronize the media and viewer– whether towards a static loop or a explosive climax.

(Che-Wei and Zannah)

There are many open APIs in the Internet and they are still being developed. In the Telepresence class, we have learned about presence and ambient technologies. From those studies, we supposed to make an installation project which can represent images and atmosphere of the places far distance.

A globe might be a good method, which can be controlled by a user and also appropriate to the information that we supposed to show.

We chose three different information, weather, feeling and web camera data.It is really easy and simple to control these data when we use general computer with a mouse and monitor. However, the web images and geographic images in a monitor do not always reflect emotional distance. Is it always good? When we are watching a live image from opposite side of the earth through 2D flat monitors? Even further, does it necessary to show a vivid image that is happening a mile away like as a HP halo center? Maybe it does. But we wanted to describe digital data to more natural and intuitive way. We cannot tell a spinning globe reflects more meaningful live data though, however we found some interesting points at a physical globe that shows information.

We set a glossy plastic sphere as a globe onto a box that includes laser mouse inside. So when the globe moves around, the mouse detects the globe positions and sends the data to the computer. In the computer side, we used Processing code to set mouse position back to the center of screen in order to move the globe constantly. And ran flash application, getting data from API, over the processing code. So the mouse cursor positions can be moved back toward center wherever mouse moves.

We used a processing code with robot Java library from Che-Wei. Also we used API from ‘Webcam.travel,’ ‘Yahoo weather’ and ‘We feel fine’.

-Okada Noriaki
-JaeYoon Kang

more about this

Here’s a link to There Chair.

Here’s a brief description:
My parents always sit in the same chairs at home, leaving two empty ones at the table where my brother and I used to sit. So, there’s an empty chair waiting for me at the table in my parent’s house, but there is also a chair in my apartment in New York that is usually full–I do everything there, I eat there, I work on my laptop there– I am even typing this explanation from that chair right now. There Chair is a project which connects me to my parents through these two chairs. Whenever I am sitting in my spot in my apartment in New York, a light glows in my chair back home– conveying my presence to my parents as they go about their day. For me, the most interesting thing about There Chair is that it allows my parents to feel connected to me in a way that is more subtle than, for example, a phone call or instant messaging. In seeing the light at different times of the day, my parents will get a sense of where I am and what I am doing that is reminiscent of the simplicity of physical presence which people take for granted when they live together.

insights and concept:
after the tele-bench project, i’m very obsessed into bench, such a shared personal space in public places, e.g subway station, parks, gallery, waiting room, etc. people seating themselves on the spots, consiously or not, they have seperated the space and take it as a personal space, relax mentally, puting stuff on physically, even sharing with others. that could explain why i always forget stuff, cellphone, wallet, my paper… etc on the bench. in this way, public bench is similar to public restroom (i know, that may bring bad association… that’s why I’m also obsessed into restroom) but that’s really true. and also similar to texi, public phonebooth, buses, cafes, etc.

so i just can’t help sitting on one bench, staring at the other bench, observing what’s going on in the subway.

the intersting things we could take away are:
1, two strangers seat on spots not next to others, leaving a blank spot in between, (even dog followes the norm).

2, strangers don’t touch each other (though there could be exceptions…)

by sgis in flickr. under CC.

So, keeping space in between, and no interaction between strangers on bench. that’s very normal, how about breaking the norm, see what will happen.

after the spring show, there will be more information here.

Tele-Tourist is an application for the web. Using the camera of the computer, the user takes a self-portrait picture and selects a specific location in the world. The application takes a landscape picture from the database and makes a composition after removing the background of the original self-portrait.

In addition, the application grabs weather and times data of that same location from the Internet, and modifies the resulting picture according to those data. For instance, it saturates the colors for a sunny morning, or it darkens and slightly blurs the image for a foggy evening.

At the end of the process, the user receives an image of him/herself as a visitor in the selected place. Besides, the program shows some main information of the site, which adds and informative dimension to the project.

The final picture can be sent to friends via email or printed with the size of a small Polaroid.

Tele-Tourist is a new way of having fun through the photo-collage. It uses real data in the process, which adds an unexpected dimension to the result. It is also very immediate (no need of Photoshop) and it can help to raise the curiosity on a particular location or simply take a tour around the world with an only mouse click.

when crickets are away from home. video:

(cricket 1 & cricket 2, inc.)

FeedBack PlayBack is an interactive, dynamic film re-editing/viewing system that explores the link between media consumption and physiological arousal.

This project uses galvanic skin response and pulse rate to create a dynamic film re-editing and veiwing system. The users’ physical state determines the rhythm and length of the cuts and the visceral quality of scenes displayed; the user’s immediate reactions to the scenes delivered, feeds back to generate a cinematic crescendo or a lull. This project exploits the power of media to manipulate and alter our state of being at the most basic, primal level, and attempts to synchronize the media and viewer– whether towards a static loop or a explosive climax.

In a darkened, enclosed space, the user approaches a screen and his or her rests fingertips on a pad to the right of the screen. The system establishes baseline for this users physiological response, and re-calibrates. Short, non-sequential clips of a familiar, emotionally charged film– for example, Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror masterpiece “The Shining” –are shown. If the user responds to slight shifts in the emotional tone of the media, the system amplifies that response and displays clips that are more violent and arousing, or calmer and more neutral. The film is re-edited, the narrative reformulated according to this user’s response to it.

Feedbak Playback is by Zannah Marsh and Che-Wei Wang