For the last three weeks we have been wearing alternatively among the three members in our group a fitbit device.
We collected all the data and these are some visualizations obtained with the results:
Looking at the graphics the only thing that stands out is the fact that the calories decrease when we notice a pronounced pick in the steps measured knowing that it was the same person wearing it.
Since I was wearing the fitbit for the first 4 days I did some calculations about myself.
Apparently my average stride length is 0,7075 m; calories burn per stride are 0,2517; I am very active 49,5 min average every day and 19 hours sedentary which sounds either incorrect or very scary.
As part of his work in the IDMIL in McGill University he belongs to the Gesture Description Interchange Format (GDIF), being developed for streaming and storing data of music-related movement. Current general purpose motion/gesture formats developed within the motion capture industry and biomechanical community focus mainly on describing low-level biomechanical properties. We are more interested in describing gesture qualities, performer-instrument relationships, and movement-sound couplings in a coherent and consistent way. A common musical gesture format will simplify working with different software, platforms and devices, and allow for making more flexible NIME and sharing data between institutions.
He has developed interesting exercises of sonifications of human movements:
One of his most recent projects, part of the fourMs – Music, Mind, Motion, Machines, is the Oslo iphone ensemble. A project explores the future of mobile music performance in a collaborative setting. Last semester I took a course in Electronic Music Performance and most of the students used their phones as their instruments, but their approach to those interfaces and the way the apps they used were designed impoverished the performance considerably and made it quite difficult to improvise with them since they were shut themselves up in themselves and their devices, and the whole visual aspect of the performance was quite static.
This project brings in my opinion an interesting alternative in the use of those devices involving gestural expression.
For the first assignment proposed in class I observed the following social situation/behaviours interacting with the urban landscape, and how this could be eventually improved according the needs.
The first example is very related to the reading of the week, “The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body and Design” by Galen Cranz:
All around the city people is using uncomfortable little shelves sticking out the wall, fire hydrant or random boxes to have a little rest or waiting moment. So I thought about spreading some pop-up seats, like the ones placed in buses and trains, in some key areas far from parks or benches, that certainly would be a better place to rest, but not always so handy.
The second situation was observed under one of the very frequent rainy days we have had lately:
As we observe in both pictures pedestrian not provided with an umbrella look for shelter under the eaves so I thought that interactive (or manually operated) awnings along some streets could be very useful and not extremely harmful for the urban landscape since they would be just unfolded when it rained:
The last situation observed takes place in the Terrace of the AMNH. I was working there during last Summer and my favorite place to have a break was going out there and watching children play with the fountains coming out of the concrete floor:
For the Midterm in COMP I presented a little exercise I had develop with the new technology Kinect, using the Pointcloud representation for an exploration of body movement in 3D.
There have been interesting past uses of technology to explore choreography in a new way: Capturing Dance – Exploring movement with computer vision, A Study in Choreography for the Camera from Maya Deren , Merce Cunningham in his piece “Biped”…which inspired this further exploration. In the case of working with Kinect the abstraction of the representation of body movement through little points and the way it could be manipulated through Processing became really interesting.
At this point I contacted Mimi Yin and Christine Doempke form ITP that I knew were very related to dance and choreography and we all started meeting periodically to develop a set of modes that could be implemented in a whole performance.
This is an image that includes all the modes we found interesting to explore and develop:
As we see in the image we played with freezing stills of a movement and playing them back in sequence in a loop, or just displaying the frozen stills one on top of the other, or making the stills breath…always everything with live image of the dancer that could interact with this representation of her own movement in the past.
We also explore different ways of controlling/activating these modes: controlled by the dancers, control through the voice of singers in the performance or by an external agent that could act as “live-choreographer”.
All these combinations gave a range of tools to create an interesting performance of about 45 min.
For testing the different modes with fixed conditions (kinect position, audio control, large space for movement) we set up a space we could use several days trying, recording and tuning the different modes. Here some images of the work in progress there:
And here is a short video with some of the modes performed:
The idea is to take this project further turning it into a performance where dancers and musicians (probably singers) interact with each other and with the Kinect representation. This is a possible set-up for the performance:
But we were dicussing also the possibility of having all screen, dancers and singers in the same line in front of the audience and showing the interaction between them by lighting different combinations: just dancers, kinect-screen and singers, kinect-screen and dancers, just kinect-screen…The fact that the sensors in the kinect don’t need stage light to work would let us play with it.
After spending some time looking for interesting applications of the use of cameras with artistic purposes and as assistive technology recently done and I selected three diferent works.
The first one is the work of the video-artist and naturist Sam Easterson. It’s not exactly recent though, is more a work in progress. As a way to increase the public’s awareness of animals and plants in their native habitats and to gather a collection of new perspective on these creature’s daily lives he straps tiny helmet-mounted video cameras onto everything from buffaloes to tarantulas. I particularly enjoyed these two pieces:
He started seeking out different perspectives had him setting up equipment inside clothes dryers and popcorn poppers. Then in the spring of 1998, Easterson was commissioned by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis to create a new video project. For that project, which he titled “A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing”, he outfitted a flock of sheep with helmet-mounted video cameras. The video footage captured of the perspective of one of the sheep was then showcased in an exhibition that he had at the Walker Art Center. I love the conclusions he took out of this:
“I was shocked to realize all the other animals in the flock could tell that this one sheep with the camera had been ‘altered’ in some way. She kept trying to enter, and they kept treating her as an outcast. I also learned sheep can run very fast and fences are not as sturdy as you think.”
Since then, he has been designing helmet-mounted video cameras that attach on to all sorts of animals and plants.
By allowing animals and plants to be the documentarians we are shown their daily battles with the landscape, their interactions with other species as well as their intimate gestures and sounds. “Take the armadillo. You can listen to its breathing patterns. You can watch closely the rotation of its ears as it encounters new things.”
The second work is the Looktel’s Money Reader. This is an augmented reality app for the iPhone, iPod Touch (with camera) and iPad (with camera) for the visually impaired that counts US dollar bills ($1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100 bills). As soon as the app detects the bills, it starts counting. There is no need to place the bills in front of the phone camera in a certain orientation. The app detects the bill artwork and immediately recognizes the denomination. It does not require an internet connection which makes it usable everywhere.
I couldn´t find anything extremelly interesting in the use of cameras in art installations recently done, but I came accross this piece that reflects about the extreme state intrusion in the UK that we commented in class, in a way I liked. The project is called Stop and Scan and the the mind becomes a new site of interest for the state, requiring new protocols of ownership, access, protection and transparency. Police carry out random stop and search scans near crime scenes. Using a special scanner, people are shown images that only the criminal could know about. The device is based on brain fingerprinting technology where a scanner detects a characteristic electrical brainwave response whenever a person responds to a known stimulus. If the person being scanned appears to recognise an image, a light glows and they are taken away for further processing. Domestic versions are used by parents on their children. Employers use them on employees.
My initial idea for this exercise was to be able to conduct an imaginary orchestra, either triggering audios or videos of sections of an orchestra playing. The problem arrived trying to implement that in Eclipse. I tried with different sound libraries and video ones and there was no way to run the program without errors when I had to call those files attached, so I came out with this “visual concrete-orchestra”
1. I´m allergic to the hair of animals, specially cats. My parents used to have two of them but they have to take them to the countryside because my brother and me were having serious asthma problems. I missed them so much, just the fact of having them around or noticing something scratching against your leg when you got home. So my first idea would be to have a virtual shape of a cat projected i your living room, for example, interacting with the elements there..
2. A very useful application for me would be that if I pointed to a space with a camera (cellular) it would tell me where I left my keys last time.
3. In general I hate going shopping because I need a pair of winter shoes or my jeans are completely broken, but I don’t really trust buying online if I cannot picture the things on myself. So that would be another AR application I would enjoy.
4. Also, and in the same direction, I would love an app where I can design an outfit and I could test it over someone just pointing with the camera, and it even told me how to do it (patterns)
5. An application that told you when you arrive to a new city and you are taking your first night walk if there are (and where) any bands playing around
6. If there is someone you really don`t want to come across for some reason, it would be a handy app that recognized if it was in a crowd that you pointed with a camera or not
7. I would really like to develop one that allowed a conductor of an orchestra play its own virtual one just but standing and moving in front of the camera
