ITP Blog

Nature of Code Final

Maria Paula — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:15:21 +0000

[POST INCOMPLETE]
Light forest is an interactive installation where users interact with a flashlight to explore an animated forest at night. Birds, fireflies, squirrels, owls and rabbits react to the light and to each other, either being attracted or running away.

The main code was built in Processing, exploring steering behaviors. Animations were made as png sequences and sounds added with minim library. Computer vision was written in openframeworks, sending data to the main sketch through OSC.

Code is here. Video coming soon.

Nature of Code Final

Maria Paula — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:09:08 +0000

My proposal to NOC final is a playful interactive installation. The idea is to project a scene of a forest with some animals. When someone points a flashlight to the projection, animals get frightened by the light and run away (or fly, in case of birds).

During research, I found the work of Theo Watson who successfully explored forest environments and interaction with kids. Night Bright is actually pretty similar to what I proposed. I also found this Interactive Forest where users apply forces in the environment by their body movements. Pretty sweet and very naturely of code.

I’ve sketched my idea and realized I might have a problem with the light produced by the device. It should be a very focused instead of diffused. But to begin with, I’ll make my idea with mouse input. Any suggestions for interaction are welcome. Thanks!

Shy Self Portrait

Maria Paula — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 00:31:31 +0000

Shy self portrait is a year long film about shyness. The piece shows a sequence of mirror-style recordings (~ 5 seconds each) of myself throughout the year. Time change can be noticed not only by the clothing but also by the mood (winter = sadness, summer = happiness). When someone approaches the screen, it turns into a shy version of me, that is turned back, waiting for the person to leave.

The project is made in openFrameworks and it uses the open TSPS for getting data from a kinect.
Below is a sample of images. Video is coming soon.

Nature of Code Midterm 2

Maria Paula — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 02:09:32 +0000

For my midterm, I created an environment where is possible to explode things with the mouse click. My living-room is full of objects like books, cushions, shoes and so on, that can turn into many many pixels. After a while, they return back to their original place.

Video:

Code is in my github.

Another cool sketch I did with the same concept:

Harvest Shake

Maria Paula — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:09:05 +0000

As continuation of our project, we built the tube and connected to a circuit with 4x more capacitance. We were able to light up 6 LEDs easily. =)

Starting voltage: 0 V
Ending voltage: 8.5 V
Capacitance: 4 x 4700 microFarad
Starting energy: 0 joules
Ending energy: 0.5 * 4 * (0.0047 F) * (8.5 V) * (8.5 V) = 0.68 joules
Time: 20 secs
Power: 0.030 Watts (it is the same power we got in the previous alternative – YAY!)

Last, but not least, we transformed our circuit into a wearable (work still in progress)

Shake shake

Maria Paula — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 01:16:09 +0000

For our midterm project, we decided to make a wearable/mobile system that produces energy either shaking or beating it.

First, we thought about using piezos, but they produced almost no current with high voltage peaks. Inspired by shake-lights, we proposed to build a shaking system with copper coil and magnet passing through it.

Our first attempt was a failure. It produced something around 0.06V (60 mV) and 4 miliAmps.
Problem was: the coil was too small. We needed a LOT more wire.

We tried other coils and started getting some more interesting numbers. The coil on the left in the first picture produced a bit more than 10V! The middle one 5V and the smallest reached 2.5V.

To calculate Power, we measured the voltage difference when charging up a capacitor. Doing the math, we reached the following numbers:

Starting voltage: 1.5V
Ending voltage: 6.5V
Capacitance: 4700 microF
Starting energy: 0.5 * (0.0047 F) * (6.5 V) * (6.5 V) = 0.0992875 joules
Ending energy: 0.5 * (0.0047 F) * (1.5 V) * (1.5 V) = 0.0052875 joules
Difference: 0.0992875 – 0.0052875 = 0.094 joules
Time: 3 secs
Power: 0.031 Watts

I believe our next step is to build a tube in order to get more out of the magnet movement.

Nature of Code Midterm 1

Maria Paula — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 19:21:29 +0000

For Nature of Code midterm I decided to make a image deconstruction system. Basically it explodes images (or part of them) in particles. First, I did it with a png black and white image. Result is below (shot from my iPhone b/c screen capture makes it slow).

Later, I implemented the same code to a video grabber. I like the effect and I’m thinking about how to explore it further. Maybe 3D? Maybe deconstruct only few colors? Create a box2D world so the particles fall over each other? All of them together?

OpenCV

Maria Paula — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 18:39:26 +0000

For this week sketch, I did brain signal that follows your head.

Fireworks!!!

Maria Paula — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 15:07:50 +0000

After struggling a lot with Particle Systems in oF I did this Fireworks show. Love blending modes!

As usual, code is in my github with others translations.

Pixel by pixel effect

Maria Paula — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 01:50:52 +0000

I explored circles as a way of drawing a video. However, I changed their size according to a perlin noise input. This created an effect of malleable grid. After that, I diminished the size and added a blending mode to create an effect of light.

Malleable grid:

Malleable light:

After that, I played with the mouseX position controlling the size of the circles. In this way, we can actually see the black walker, which I think it is nice, especially when he is kinda of hiding my face.

And finally, with the positions of the pixels, creating a randomness in the image. I love the visual effects on this one.