theoreticalplayground.co.uk : 2007 : January

bliptronic3000

by det on January 31st 2007 to audiovisual

BlipTronic3000 is an audiovisual installation that plays sound depending on the location of user controlled ‘pucks’ and small autonomous robots. The ‘pucks’ and robots have red & blue lights on them, which attract projected green software agents towards them. Sound is generated in realtime when the green agents pass through the red & blue attractor lights.

A webcam is used to detect the position of the blue and red lights and a projector is used to display the green software agents. The system uses OpenGL, OSC, processing, STK and v3ga’s blob-detection toolkit.

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livePic

by det on January 30th 2007 to interfaces

A drawing system allowing users to draw and then interact with their own drawing. livePic uses a brush and pallet, users can change the colour of the brush by touching the colour of their choice in the pallet. Multiple users can draw and interact together.

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i_AM

by det on January 25th 2007 to hardware

Created by Ramon Schreuder i_AM is an interactive audiovisual media installation. The project was a result of research and collaboration with industrial designers, djs, music producers, vjs, animators and software developers. Users interact with objects to create audio and visuals in real-time. The system uses the opensource reacTIVision software developed for the reacTable project.

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Audio D-Touch Drum Machine

by det on January 25th 2007 to hardware

A tangible drum machine developed by Enrico Costanza at MIT’s Media Laboratory. The Audio d-touch uses wooden blocks to sequence the music and a computer is used to map the location of them via a webcam. The position of each block is used to control a digital audio synthesis process.

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On the Edge: Improvisation in Music

by det on January 24th 2007 to music

[edit: looks like they have been removed from dailymotion]

A four part series from 1992 produced and directed by Jeremy Marre and presented by Derek Bailey. It looks at musical improvisation from around the world and across all genres. There is some information about the series at European Free Improvisation pages which I’ve quoted before each clip:

1 – Passing it on
Douglas Ewart at Haynes School in Chinatown, Chicago; improvisation in Mozart with Robert Levin, piano and the Acadamy of Ancient Music with Christopher Hogwood; John Zorn and Cobra; improvisation in religious and devotional music and communities with: Naji Hakim – organ improvisations in Paris; Gaelic psalm singing on the Scottish Isles of Harris and Lewis; and Indian singing with Pundit Hanuman Misra.

2 – Movements in time
Tracing the effects of migration on improvising links across continents and the production of new styles from the combinations: qawwali from the Sufis in New Delhi, Northern India; Hindu music of Rajistan with Ram Narayan; early medieval music performed in Andalucia by Symphony (Stevie Wishart, Mark Loopuy, Jim Denley); improvisation in dance with: Mario Maya, flamenco; Indian kathak mime and movement; and Egyptian gypsy music; the mixture of Cuban music and jazz with Eddie Palmieri.

3 – A liberating thing
Broadcast 16 February 1992, concentrating on jazz based and free improvisation. With Max Roach at the Harlam School of the Arts; Butch Morris conducting (with, among others, Shelley Hirsch); Sang-Won Park and Korean music; Max Eastley’s sound sculptures; Derek Bailey (solo and fleetingly with Phil Wachsmann, Steve Noble and Alex Ward); Steve Noble and Alex Ward duo; Nashville musicians including Buddy Emmons; Eugene Chadbourne.

4 – Nothin premeditated
Broadcast 23 February 1992, with Jerry Garcia and The Grateful Dead; Buddy Guy; George Lewis and computers (and in quartet with Douglas Ewart and sound and video generation); mbira music from Zimbabwe; music of the Tonga people; concluding with a house party on the Lower East side.

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Smart Laser Scanner for Human-Computer Interface

by det on January 23rd 2007 to hardware

Researchers at University of Tokyo’s Ishikawa-Namiki Laboratory are developing a Laser Active Tracking system for human-computer interaction. The system uses a laser diode (visible or invisible light), steering mirrors and a non-imaging photodetector – used to track the laser real-time in a three dimensional environment without image processing.

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Graffonic

by det on January 22nd 2007 to audiovisual

Graffonic is an interactive audiovisual installation by 3kta using max/msp & jitter. A user’s movement is feed to the computer which responds using cognitive algorithms to produce generative audiovisuals.

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Multi-Touch Interaction Research

by det on January 22nd 2007 to hardware

In Februray 2006, Jeff Han presented a new multi-touch interface screen at the TEDTalks – see the video here. Here’s a new video with Jeff Han and Phil Davidson demonstarting an updated version of the interface – [source].

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5+1 Weird Chemicals

by det on January 21st 2007 to science

In case you missed the stuff of dreams article in the New Scientist Technology Blog here’s a quick overview, with one addition.

Dilatants are fluids that get more solid under stress. There are videos of people running across it and even dancing! This video shows sound waves at 80Hz producing interesting shapes using Cornstarch.

Auxetic materials get thicker when stretched. Pull them in one direction and they expand in another. A video demonstration from Bolton University.

Superfluids are made by cooling Helium down to a couple of degrees above absolute zero and can flow endlessly without friction. This article has an audio example of nano-whistles as helium-4 is pushed through nanometer-sized holes.

In the case of superfluids, a pressure difference across a tiny hole would cause a vibration in the superfluid at a frequency – the Josephson frequency – that increases as the pressure increases. The fact that the fluid oscillates back and forth through the hole rather than flows from the high-pressure side to the low-pressure side, as a normal liquid would, is one of the many weird aspects of quantum systems like superfluids.

Ferrofluids are made from nanoscale magnetic particles suspended in a liquid. Sachiko Kodama‘s Protrude Flow sculpture uses ferrorfluids with electromagnets.

Dry ice is Carbon Dioxide in its solidic form (frozen at -78.5 °C). A video showing patterns produced when dry ice is dropped into water.

Aerogel a low density solid, semi-transparent in appearance and feels like Styrofoam. Used by NASA to trap spacedust particles aboard the Stardust spacecraft.

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Tele-Kinesthetic Interaction

by det on January 20th 2007 to hardware

Tokyo Institute of Technology developed a tele-kinesthetic interaction environment, using MyKinSynthesizer and SPIDARmotion, allowing a user to remotely interact with a physical object by moving and straining their hands. MyKinSynthesizer approximates the hand motions by synthesizing EMG signals and SPIDARmotion is used to display the 3D motion of a hanging ball within a cubic frame. It was featured as an emerging technology at SIGGRAPH 2006.

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