Open Source, Computer Vision and More November 25, 2008

Onyx

There is a open source VJ software Onyx:
http://www.onyx-vj.com/?page_id=10

Which is require Adobe AIR

Pure Data

http://puredata.info/

http://www.the-demos.com/2008/03/25/pure-data-gem-visual-demostration/

http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=ipzVmMcQPd0

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thedemos/sets/72157605174502653/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thedemos/sets/72157604103867273/

http://www.the-demos.com/pure-data-and-gem-links-for-sm1205/

Processing

http://www.processing.org/

Arduino

http://www.arduino.cc/

ARToolkit

http://www.hitl.washington.edu/artoolkit/

Reactable

http://mtg.upf.edu/reactable/

Face Detection

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdvaanQ2yYk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CGLao3xe6c

Computer Vision, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality November 17, 2008

Computer Vision

“Computer vision is the science and technology of machines that see. As a scientific discipline, computer vision is concerned with the theory for building artificial systems that obtain information from images. The image data can take many forms, such as a video sequence, views from multiple cameras, or multi-dimensional data from a medical scanner.” – wikipedia

Volume, UVA, 2005

Volume in Hong Kong

Face Detection

Virtual Reality

Johnny Lee

Surface Tension, Rafel L.Hammer

Bubbles, Wolfgang Muench/Masaki Fujihata, 2001

http://hosting.zkm.de/wmuench/bub/video
Small Fish, Wolfgang Muench/Masaki Fujihata, 2001

Messa Di Voice, Golan Levin and Zach Lieberman, 2003 (ars electronica, 2003)

Manual Input Session, Golan Levin and Zach Lieberman

Drawn

Augmented Reality

“Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data. At present, most AR research is concerned with the use of live video imagery which is digitally processed and “augmented” by the addition of computer-generated graphics. Advanced research includes the use of motion-tracking data, fiducial marker recognition using machine vision, and the construction of controlled environments containing any number of sensors and actuators.”

levelHead, Julian Oliver, 2007 (ars electronica 2007, interactive art)

Total Immersion

Total Immersion

[yourube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5ytkOgEaMU]

Illusion / Perspective with Digital Media

OLE Coordinate System, 藤 木淳, 2006 (japan media art 2006, ars electronca 2007, interactive art)

PSP game of OLE Coordinate System

Web version:
http://www.nhk.or.jp/digista/blog/works/20070517_fujiki/index.html

Halluici

Hypertext, Cybertext: Generative Arts November 17, 2008

Let’s VJ first!

Master do it: DVD

• D-Fuse
• Light Surgeon

You do it: 

Tiction, music sequencer
http://www.tinkthank.net/software/tiction/

Game of Life Sequencer (run with processing)
http://ruinwesen.com/support 

Hypertext Fiction

Very basic Hypertext Fiction

Judy Malloy: Revelations of Secret Surveillance
http://www.well.com/user/jmalloy/gunterandgwen/titlepage.html 

8 Minute, Martha Conway
http://ezone.org/ez/e7/articles/conway/8min.html 

ebbflux: machine text
http://www.ebbflux.com/ 

Eastgate Hypertext
http://www.eastgate.com/ReadingRoom.html# 

Writing Machine Collective
http://www.writingmachine-collective.net/news.html

Virtual Exhibition
http://www.writingmachine-collective.net/virtual/index.html

Digital Media Interface November 11, 2008

I try to divide the interactive digital media interface into two types:

1. Tangible
2. Intangible

Interaction – Interface

In between this the interaction, no matter human-human or human-computer interaction, we need a medium in between to connect both parties together and having the interactive relationship.

MEDIUM that we are talking is Interface.

Last week we have gone through a lot of the examples, both tangible and intangible.

But what is a good Interface? And how a good Interface design related the interaction?

Good interface design can enhance the interaction between the computer and human, think about the following issues:

• Immediacy (feedback, response)
  
• Learning Curve (ease to use)
  
• Extension ability (collective?)

Immediacy
Some time the audience give up trying to interact with an interactive digital media. For example you might not want to stay in a web site that need to wait for the feedback even after only a single mouse click. (especially those stupid animation transition effects).

We are not saying the interface should provide a very straight forward feedback to the audience/user, but giving the immediate feedback to the audience’s action. At least, the audience/user know he/she still on the track, the system is responsing the action. That’s why we have loading bar. Because we know it may take sometimes to load everythings, we tell our audience “yes we are processing your request” IMMEDIATELY.

Pong Mechanik

The Art and Science of Baby Names
http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager

Learning Curve
Sometimes an interesting interaction, especially those with intangible interface, may enhance the interaction process and giving the audience/user a memorable interaction process. But the interface (interaction method) may be new for the audience or the user, they may need sometimes to learn how to interact with.

Remember the Uniqulo Grid? That is playing the gesture. You need to learn how to control it.

That’s why we have menu to teach our audience/user to control the interface. But we all hate reading menu. Especailly in the exhibition, it is so stupid to let the audience standing for 5 mins to read the instruction and use another 10 mins to learn how to play. I probably will give up and skip this work.

Familiar interface control sometimes work. For example if you see a pen, you ASSOCIATE that you can pick up the pen and draw something.

Dune 4.0 , Daan Roosegaarde

Mario by Hand

Shadow Monster, Philip Worthington
http://www.worthersoriginal.com/viki/#page=shadowmonsters

levelHead, Julian Oliver

Royal Appointment, Moritz Waldemeyer

Extension Ability
Digital Media has a very amazing ability that is the life cycle. It may becomes totally different piece but with all the system behind is the same.

A good interface design can even seperately and becoming the interface of another application/game/work/etc.

Reactable

London College of Fashion Graduate Show, Moving Brands

Khronos Projector, Alvaro Cassinelli

Graffiti Research Lab

http://fffff.at/fuckflickr/HONG_KONG_2007/
http://fffff.at/fuckflickr/QUEENIE_DOES_HONG_KONG/

Dialtone, Golan Levin

Multitouch, Jeff Han

JazzMutant

Kanye West x Daft Punk @ Grammy 2008

Web Authoring 2 November 4, 2008

http://sweb.cityu.edu.hk/sm1001/tutor/lab9/

Network Media October 21, 2008

Something good looking

中村勇吾
http://yugop.com/
http://tha.jp/

Highlight Projects:
FFFFOUND!
Ecotonoha / NEC
Kaze to Desktop
Design and Elastic Mind (MoMA)
Softbank Hello World
Uniqlo Grid
UT Loop!

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd5iNYAnqL4]
Uniqlo Explorer

Francis Lam
http://db-db.com

Something play with the original of the network

net.art
http://www.net-art.org/

Telegarden, Ken Goldberg and Joseph Santarromana, 1995~2004
http://www.usc.edu/dept/garden/

The World’s First Collective Sentence, Douglas Davis, 1994
http://www.whitney.org/arport/collection/index.shtml

Listening Post, Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin, 2002
http://www.earstudio.com/projects/listeningpost.html

The Dumpster，Golan Levin with Kamal Nigam and Jonathan Feinberg
http://artport.whitney.org/commissions/thedumpster/dumpster.shtml

Something extending the network

Web 2.0

Google Map as ARTS?!
http://googlemapsart.wordpress.com/

Google House
http://googlehouse.net/

Newsmap, Marcos Wekamp and Dan Albritton, 2003-2004
http://www.marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/newsmap.cfm

Shredder, Mark Napier, 1998
http://www.potatoland.org/word/

Hate Book
http://www.hatebook.org/

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Tutorial 2 – something related to Hardware September 19, 2008

Again:

“One day artists will work with condensers, resistors, and semiconductors as they work with brushes, violins and junk today”

– Nam June Paik

That’s why there are thousands of artwork/creative work related to Hardware, especially related electronics.

Sonic!

Maywa Denki 明和電機

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Zz9c6dpMS0]
Air Guitar

Tenori-On – by Toshi Iwai

dj64 for Monome – by Bitbasic from simon on Vimeo.
Monome

What about DIY Sonic?

Felt Button Enclosure for the Pocket Piano – critterandguitari

Lunch Box Self-made Instrument!!

Installation

Pixel Roller – Random International

Kinetic sculpture at the BMW Museum – ART+COM

Dune 4.0 – Daan Roosegarde

LISTENING POST – Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin

Optical Tone – Tsutomu Mutoh

Reverse Engineering

Circuit Bending, Homebrew, hacking…..

Bent Festival
http://www.bentfestival.org/

Cassette Tape Sequence – Gijs Gieskes

Experimental Devices For Performance
http://experimentaldevicesforperformance.com/

SCM Students Works

Workshop

With Junk, Garbage, all those non-functionable stuffs!

Assignment Again

You’ve got some idea about how a hardware can do something crazy. What you guys come up with an idea about this?

1st Tutorial – Class introduction September 14, 2008

“As comprehensive a coverage of work could be expected in such a new and burgeoning area, it introduced many artists and designers to computers for the first time.”

– John Lansdown

---

• Who am i
• Using FTP provided by SCM
• Submit your assignment via ACS
• Excitement of digital media

---

Who am I?

Keith Lam
http://www.the-demos.com/about-thedemos/

– graphics for sawaya & moroni, detail

“To doing with one media/medium, you should know the media very detail, exploring the possibility and the ability of the media you are using.”
– John Medea

As John Medea said, you need to understand media in order to make the best work with the media. In my sessions of tutorial, I will show you how’s other people doing work (both artwork and commercial work) with digital/electronic media, and how’s the media working, with different kind of possibilities and abilities.

– Nam June Paik, TV Cello (1971), with Charlotte Moorman

“One day artists will work with condensers, resistors, and semiconductors as they work with brushes, violins and junk today”
– Nam June Paik

This statement by Nam June Paik has already became exactly the truth now. Artist working with Microcontroller, Mechanics, etc nowadays.

Using FTP provided by SCM

First of all, let me introduce you the filing system of SCM:

X and Z drive are only for Maya users, that is only students who are taking animation courses can use these drives.

For your personal drive U:, it has 600MB per user. You can put your files in U:, and the files are accessible once you put files in the folder “public_html”. That means, you can put the web page/site in this folder.

You can access all the drives by using FTP software application. In the labs of SCM, every computer has the FTP application named “FileZilla” would do this.

FTP is a method/protocol for you to upload/download files in the remote server/computer. It just like there is a big harddisk remotely and you are going to upload/download files there.

FileZilla

This is a Freeware, you can download it even at home for free.

In the lab of SCM, you can find it under the start menu > Programs > FileZilla FTP Client.

(click to enlarge)

The interface is very simple:

Left hand side: your computer
Right hand side: remote computer/site/server

Now you have nothing in Right hand side because you have never connect to the remote computer.

Connect to remote site

Type the information and click “Quickconnect” button in the menu like this:

(click to enlarge)

Host: sweb.cityu.edu.hk
Username: your EID
Password: your password in SCM (not the email password)

Once it connect successfully, it will show you something like “Directory listing successful” and FileZilla will shows you the remote computer list in the right column. This is U: drive.

And in the U: drive, the folder “public_html” is the folder that you can put your file open to public over the internet.

Simple Try on FileZilla and public_html

Now let’s make a very very stupid and simple try to test whether you can upload or download files via FileZilla over the FTP.

We are going to create a text document on your desktop:

Step 1:
Right click on the desktop, and select New > Text Document in the menu

Step 2:
Then you have a new text document on your desktop, rename it whatever you want the name.

Step 3:
Double click into the text document, type something.

Step 4:
Upload it to the U drive, public_html. You can just drag and drop from left column (local computer) to the right column (remote computer). Done.

Step 5:
Now check it out in browser (IE, firefox, etc). In the above example, I can see the result at:
http://sweb.cityu.edu.hk/youraccount/stupidTry.txt

By the way, if you name the file as index.txt or home.txt, it will become a homepage of your web site/public html.

That’s a fast and dirty try, but you have already learnt how’s the SCM filing system work with you and how you can publish your web with SCM server.

Submit your assignment via ACS

This is a very important session because SM1001 (or other classes) will request you to submit your assignment over the ACS.

Official instruction on submitting assignment to ACS from you:
http://sweb.cityu.edu.hk/scm.it/show.jsp?path=10023&faq_id=00000242

But it is using the old FTP application to demostrate.

It just simple. In your U:, or public_html, there should be a folder with the course code.
For example SM1001, there will be U:\public_html\sm1001

Once the teacher create an assignment request, there will be a sub-folder in the course folder.
For example I opened an assignment request named “assign1”,
then the path should be like this: U:\public_html\sm1001\assign1

Then you can just use the FileZilla I show you before to upload the assignment.
But remember, teachers may request you to name your file in a certain format.
For example: yourEID_assign1.doc
You MUST need to follow the instruction from teachers.

YOUR FIRST ASSIGNMENT

Just like what you have done before, upload a file, text, doc, whatever you want. Just tell me your feeling on digital media and stupid introduction on yourself.

Deadline: 20 Sept 2008, 23:59:59

Excitement of digital media

Digital Media is our “second skin”. You should know the way you work with it from NOW.

What about just take a look on some of the famous digital media works first.

Messa di voce – Golan Levin and Zach Lieberman with Jaap Blonk and Joan La Barbara (Honorary Mention, , Interactive Arts, PRIX Ars Electronica 2004)

Moving Mario – Keith Lam (Honorary Mention, , Interactive Arts, PRIX Ars Electronica 2008)

Reactable – ergi Jordà (ES), Günter Geiger (AT), Martin Kaltenbrunner (AT), Marcos Alonso (ES) / Music Technology Group, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Golden Nica, Digital Music, PRIX Ars Electronica 2008)

Flow – Han Hoogerbrugge, Wiggle (Honorary Mention, Net Vision, PRIX Ars Electronica 2004)

Kudan – Taku Kimura (JP) / Links DigiWorks inc. (Award of Distinction, PRIX Ars Electronica 2008)

Other Links:
http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/maeda.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nam_June_Paik

Nam June Paik’s “Warp around the world”

John Maeda on the simple life: Talk in TED

SM1001 – Introduction to Digital Media September 2, 2008

This is an introductroy level class SM1001 – Introduction to Digital Media in School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong.

The class shows different kind of digital media, in the sense of creativity.

Now is fall semester, 2008.

Schedule:

Lecture:
C02, Tuesday, 13:30 – 15:20 (P4302)
C01, CA1, Tuesday, 17:30 – 19:20 (P4302)

Tutorial:
L03, Thursday,  15:30 – 17:20, R2131 (GPL1)
L04, Tuesday,   10:30 – 12:20, R2131 (GPL1)