Nearly as unique and irreplaceable as the men and women who designed them, the analog machines behind early animation produced in idiosyncratic circuitry pre-digital visuals. The fingerprints of those designs are all over familiar animation from decades past. And one of the most extraordinary of those machines must certainly be the Scanimate. Built by the Computer Image Corporation of Denver, Colorado starting in the late 60s, only eight models were made, of which just one survives. That one remaining unit is in Asheville, North Carolina, near the home of Moog Music and our friend Chris Stack at Experimental Synth. So, of course, we wind up seeing this analog-powered machine driven by Control Voltage from a Moog, at top.

What makes the Scanimate worth revisiting above all else is the fact that it was real-time – pumping out a consistent 60 frames per second, or more than a lot of the digital devices we see today. As a real-time animation device, in fact, it still edges out a lot of the sophisticated digital tools today, from those employed by pros down to the “render it first” workflows of software like After Effects. I wish, indeed, that computer software designers would look back at how these tools worked; even though the hardware is almost impossible to find, the design notions introduced here still could inform new software. They may seem even more relevant today than when they were new, particularly with software’s ability to quickly produce new tools.

Do watch the video here, but you’ve seen the output of this gadget before:
The Electric Company, Logan’s Run, Star Wars, Sesame Street, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, and countless station idents and commercial spots used the tech.

I could say more, but there’s enough information at the site of the remaining machine’s owner, one Dave Sieg, to ensure you don’t get any more work done all week. So I’ll leave it to Dave – and let the Scanimate speak through its eye candy.

Productivity, die!
http://scanimate.com/

Here’s a fantastic vintage news report on the tech, as seen through the eyes of the time:

I’ll close with what I think may be one of the best visualizations of periodic waveforms and wave physics I’ve ever seen. Note to self – I need this a lot.

And the rest is history.

To skip to the punchline: Final Cut Pro X appears to at last do multi-camera editing, and do it right, as seen in the video posted by our friend Nilay at The Verge.

To anyone who read deep conspiracy theories into the release of Final Cut Pro X, perhaps it’s time for a gentle reminder. When building massive, complex tools, sometimes developers get it wrong – even if they happen to be Apple. Final Cut Pro was desperately in need of a rebuild, constructed as it was on deprecated, 32-bit-only libraries. That rebuild, charitably, didn’t go as smoothly as some might have hoped. Final Cut Pro X was missing critical features and adopted a user interface paradigm for editing and file management that at best required adaptation and at worst left users looking for alternatives.

But I’ll go out on a limb here and say anyone who believes Apple wanted to alienate their pro market is simply off their rocker. Now, the effect may have been to do just that, but it was unintentional.

It was also clear from the release of Final Cut Pro X that some of those features were to be added back – made even clearer when Apple representatives publicly said as much explicitly in the days following X’s release.

To put it another way: Final Cut Pro X was bold, entirely new, and just plain unfinished. Some folks out there are using it, but in its initial release, Final Cut faced stiff competition not only from rivals like Premiere, but from Apple’s own, trusted Final Cut Pro 7.

With 10.0.3, we get a first look at what a finished version of Final Cut Pro X might be like. New in this version come both features that users found sorely missing, and some new ideas that we haven’t seen in desktop Mac editors before. In brief:

• More complete XML import/export
• Multi-camera editing, with up to 64 cameras and independent resolution, framerate, etc.
• Enhanced chroma-keying (especially nice, as you really don’t want to have to move over to Motion or another tool to do this)
• Sync via audio
• Import layered Photoshop graphics.
• Monitoring over Thunderbolt (this starts to get really, really cool – especially on those Mac laptops

Apple seems not to be content just to add back those missing features, but to do them better than competitors’ implementations. Let us know if you’re testing 10.0.3, and we hope to do the same.

But wait — there’s more.

Reconnect media and exchange files with third-party applications using a robust relink interface. Select media that has been moved or modified, or locate clips that have been transcoded, trimmed, or color graded by third-party tools. Then easily relink to your Final Cut Pro X project or Event.

Yes, by “robust,” this really means “now actually usable.” Media relink was for me the biggest deal-breaking issue in X, causing maddening file management headaches as Apple tried, apparently, to reinvent how locating files work. I’m eager to try this particular fix more than any other.

Also, crucially, Apple is now pointing to a third-party migration tool for FCP 7 users in the App Store:

7toX for Final Cut Pro brings your Final Cut Pro 7 projects forward to Final Cut Pro X so you can use Apple’s powerful new professional editing tools to update or finish your older projects. The lightweight application is simple to use, with drag-and-drop support and progress information. 7toX translates important metadata from your Final Cut Pro 7 Project — including bins, clips and sequences — to a new Event in Final Cut Pro X with the highest fidelity of any translation application for Final Cut Pro. In addition, the application provides clear, detailed reporting after every transfer.

In a relatively rare move, Apple even has a page explaining what they’ve fixed improved:
http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/software-update.html

And check out the migration tool:
7toX for Final Cut Pro

True to their roots in metal, stone, and wood, typography is generally imagined to be fixed in place. It’s hardly the sort of thing you’d imagine transforming in time, the way you would a musical utterance. Yet the Meek FM Typographic Synthesizer defies that convention.

The 2007 project, designed by Rob Meek and Frank Müller, was recently exhibited at Berlin’s Letters Are My Friends. That makes it a perfect time to revisit the project, and its notion of typography as something fluid, malleable, and temporal in the way synthesized music would be.

From the description by Letters Are My Friends:

The combination of a custom built hardware controller and software generates new shapes and sounds out of pre-installed typeface vectors.

Like a real musical synthesizer, the Meek FM can shape and modify forms (+ sounds) with several parameters. This device shows that there are still a lot of untouched possibilies in realtime graphical instruments.

Music by Flying Lotus: Breathe Something, Stellar Star

meekfm.org/
lettersaremyfriends.com/

Letters Are My Friends is a story in itself. Located in Berlin’s Kreuzberg neighborhood, it’s a typographical gallery and laboratory. It comes a long way from dry type description pages on the Web. One feature is “a cosy showroom where letter relationships can be experienced in a physical space and progressive way.” There’s also a research lab and production label run by Ingo Italic and Bärbel Bold: “We share an interdisciplinary and experimental approach to services and products related to typography, motion- and interaction design.”

Expect a visit soon.

Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque Projections from Obscura Digital on Vimeo.

Illuminating the facades of United Arab Emirates mosque and historical architecture with extraordinary imagery, Obscura Digital transformed these structures with visuals both decorative and cultural. It’s a visually-rich celebration of Arabic and Emirati culture, and one of the developers – absurdly-prolific artist and geek virtuoso Barry Threw – walks us through some of the details of how it was produced, all using TouchDesigner software.

The mosque, top:

In celebration of UAE National Day 2011
Projection and design by Obscura Digital

44 projectors with a combined brightness of 840,000 lumens
were used to cover a surface 600ft wide x 351ft high

Barry explains in detail how this lavish projection project came into being – and get ready for some nerdy vocabulary, folks, which is part of why we love what we do:

All of the mapping is done with TouchDesigner.

The first step in the pipeline is getting some sort of model of the structure involved. In this instance, we used a laser scanner to output a 3d point cloud of the building. This point cloud then needs to be turned into a mesh, and then we re-topologize it into a simpler mesh that can be easily handled in realtime. There is a high degree of skill necessary in this process.

At the same time, the physical projector locations have to be decided upon. This depends upon the actual map of the building and surrounding area, where we can get access to, and what kind of structures we are allowed to build. This particular job was easy in terms of obstructions of the surrounding area, but difficult because of the sacred nature of the site. All of our projector towers had to be well designed with facades to match the mosque architecture.

The projector placement and physical production aspects are a behemoth tasks in themselves. Number and placement of projectors has many variables, but in general, maximum brightness, full area coverage and optimal resolution are the major ones.

The art design process is another concurrent pipeline. After the 3d model and general projector spec’ing is complete, a template can be made to render the content, which has previously been put through an extensive creative process. This is output as video, in our case using a currently-proprietary codec called FireFrame, which are then textured onto the 3d model.

Projector calibration is basically a two-step process.

We typically use stacks of projectors to achieve higher lumens over the projected area. So the first stage is converging stacks of projectors to make a single, clear image.

Secondly, physical projector extrinsics must be calculated to match a virtual camera in our 3D world. We are currently using a technique that I’m lovingly referring to as “Sain-O’Neill Extrinsic Trilateration,” or SONET. Basically, it involves triangulating the projector and projection centroid placements based on other known onsite architectural features.

This gets you fairly close with careful application, but a number of post-3D and 2D transformations are used on the geometry to account for the fallible nature of the physical world to which we are chained. There is also a separate group of procedures that are used in the instances where a blend between two channels are necessary, and the one that we use is dependent on the architecture.

Equipment used / number and types of projectors / lumens / power:
44 projectors on the mosque (24 x 20K lumens + 20 18K lumens) = 840,000 lumens
5 projectors on the fort (5 x 20K lumens) = 100,000 lumens
940,000 lumens total
49 projectors x 3.2kW x 60 hours = 9,400kW total show (Mosque and Fort)

CO2 Offsetting plan:
9,400kW = 12,878 lbs of CO2 = 6 tons of CO2
(1.37 pounds CO2 per kW / 2204 pounds = 1 ton of CO2)
6 tons x 5 trees per ton = 30 trees
Equipment rigs:
Custom-built projector enclosures based on floral designs that match the mosque

Architectural mapping / scanning components:
Obscura laser scanned the surface area of the mosque to generate 3D models.
Incredibly complex geometry: flat walls with intricate hand carved details (all mapped); arcades with rows of columns; domes ranging in size from the “small” 7m ones on the sides of the main gate to the 37 and 46m main domes of the prayer hall; all four of the 107m minarets.

I’d like to mention Dorian Orange (http://www.dorianorange.com/), a NY based shop who helped us immeasurably with the media on this project.

More information:

http://obscuradigital.com/
http://www.derivative.ca/ [developers of TouchDesigner]
UAE National Day Grand Mosque Architectural Projection Mapping [barry threw blog]
UAE National Day Fort Al Jahili Architectural Projection Mapping [barry threw blog]

A massive team worked on the project. Credits:

Technical Direction
Andrew Plourde
Eugene Dowlen
Simon Ransom (theRansoms)

Creative Direction / Media
Travis Threlkel
Marta Salas Porras
Ron Robinson
Nathaniel Ruhlman (Dorian Orange)

Production
Gaston Albanell
Nick Lynch
Diego Novoa
Rainen Janes
Joe Vigorito
Nathan Houchin
Eric Knuble

Interactive Development
Mary Franck
Grady Sain
Imran Nabhan

IT
Sean Holt

Photos / Documentation
Josh Brott
Block IPDelete

In code and 3D models, in live visual performance and augmented architecture and dance, in VJ sets and futuristic 3D demos, shows and games, visualism extended to new ways of transforming perception. For just one slice of what happened this year, entirely by the numbers, here are the stories that scored the most page views in 2011 – not necessarily the most significant stories, but those that ranked largest in traffic, which to me is at least an interesting metric in terms of what garners the greatest attention and audience.

Let us know your favorite stories from 2011, too, on CDM or elsewhere. And see where your musical counterparts’ eyeballs went, too, on Create Digital Music.

The countdown to the most-read story starts … now:

10.

Make a Building into an EQ, More MadMapper Projection Mapping Tutorials

While here it ranks at number 9, it’s tough to overstate the importance of projection mapping generally, and the MadMapper tool here – seen even as stories from past years soared to the top readership on the site.

8.

Codify: Elegant, Creative Coding Directly on the iPad – No (Other) Computer Needed

7.

Survey: Which VJ – Visualist Software Do You Use Live?

And the results: What Visual Software Readers Use: Some Clear Favorites, Plenty of Diversity, in Census Results

Summary:
1. Modul8 (28.5%)
2. Resolume Avenue 3 (25.6%)
3. Vidvox VDMX (19.4%)
4. Apple Quartz Composer (19.3%)
5. Max/MSP/Jitter (16%) *
6. Processing (15.4%)
7. vvvv (10.2%)
8. ArKaos GrandVJ (8.4%)
9. Resolume 2.x (8.1%)
10. Isadora (6.9%)
11. OpenFrameworks (5.8%)
12. Pd/GEM (4.3%)

6.

Open Source Match Move: Camera Tracking in Blender, Plus Tutorials on Mac Builds, Compositing

By the way, I ran into a core Blender developer in Eindhoven, NL in November. We’ve got a lot more Blender talking to do in 2012, as this year wraps up with a big new Blender release.

5.

Scanning the Universe in 3D: The Hottest Kinect Video Yet?

4.

Running Live Visuals for The Glitch Mob: An All-Access Pass Behind the Scenes

Probably an easy reader favorite, and certainly one of my favorite stories this year, thanks to Momo’s in-depth reporting of what made the tour tick.

3

New TouchDesigner Goes Gold, with Free Sharing, Ableton Live Sync, More

Side note: clearly one of the tools of the year, TouchDesigner touched many of our biggest stories.

2.

Kinect-Augmented Reality, as Projection Mapping Meets Depth Sensing (Hint: It’s Awesome)

1.

Gameduino is a DIY, Open Source Game Platform Built on Arduino That’s Ridiculously Awesome

VIDEO-SL is the video plug-in for Serato’s Scratch Live, extending the turntablist / virtual vinyl metaphor from sound to the realm of video. Once loaded, you can manage video clips and control them with vinyl or CD as if they lived on records, a clever rendition of something that would technically be impossible (or at least difficult) in the non-digital world.

Ed.: A reader notes that in fact there are encoded “video vinyl” records; I’m not sure the behavior, however, would be the same as audio – that is, what’s unique here is treating the vinyl video signal as exactly analogous to audio on a turntable. Maybe there is a way to do that, though, if someone can enlighten us.)

You can manage, mix, add loads of effects and transitions (many audio-responsive), for instantaneous audiovisual DJing. The only catch is you need some specific elements in your setup: a computer with a capable graphics card, and a copy of Serato with a Serato-capable interface from Rane. (Clarification: An early version of VIDEO-SL worked only with the Rane TTM-57 SL mixer. Now, you can use a number of Rane mixers and interfaces, and via a supported Rane interface, a non-Rane mixer. There’s also now MIDI support for performing from any MIDI controller you choose.)

But for Serato users with that setup, adding video powers just became a no-brainer. The software is on sale through the end of December for only US$99 (half off the usual price). And if you don’t have a hundred bucks but do have the rest of the setup, CDM can get you one of a couple of copies we’ve got for free. So we can be equitable, just write in comments a brief explanation of why you deserve to get the freebie and what you’ll do with it. If we find an answer compelling (hint: promising to help us share what you do with it on CDM would be a big help), we’ll announce you as one of the winners.

If you’re curious what all the fuss is about, see the video at top, in which French gentleman Joachim Garraud shows you around how he’s using Serato and VIDEO-SL on tour.

Free loops from that project: http://sera.to/-bx9

Invasion Box 2011:
http://sera.to/-bxd

More on the product (including requirements):
http://serato.com/video-sl
Download a free demo

Against the sun-streaked, palm-silhouetted skies of Miami, Florida, generated software murals create a layer of intricate virtual architecture atop a flat canvas of Frank Gehry’s hall for the New World Symphony. LA-based Casey Reas (known to many as co-creator of Processing) worked with Tal Rosner to product shifting generative murals in what I think is a triumph of digital expressionism.

As the architecture itself is collapsed into cubist/abstract fractions of time, the building itself echoes ever-shifting structures, a silent but vibrant commentary on the urban landscape.

The images themselves are stationary in the sample, but Casey shares with us some video that captures those stills in the 365-composition montage. More images and statement by the artist below.

Chronograph [Video] [Update: fixed; now public!]

I love that the word “choreography” comes up, as it seems fitting, a kind of choreography of design scored into the rectangular image.

Created for the building’s 7,000-square-foot exterior projection wall, this large-scale installation takes its inspiration directly from the new building and the surrounding historical art deco neighborhood of Miami Beach. Based on thousands of photographs taken over the course of the construction of the new building and images of local architecture, the ever-changing mural shifts between the recognizable and the abstract, animating and creating new forms on the building’s surface.

Using the same visual source material, the mural is punctuated by hourly videographic events marking the top of each hour, achieved by altering aspects of the work’s choreography – detail, pacing, palette, rhythm, geometry, and pattern. Custom-written software creates not only create hourly cycles, but generate an ever-changing visual experience over time for new and repeat visitors.

REAS > Works > Chronograph

3D developers had real reason to be thankful last week, on the occasion of American Thanksgiving.

Doom 3, after some wrangling, was set free with a GNU GPL open source license. The game data itself isn’t free, covered by the existing proprietary EULA, but you get all the logic and rendering of the game on Mac, Windows, and Linux.

While the game dates to 2004, the visual engine remains nothing to sneeze at, capable of some impressive capabilities. And the way the engine and game themselves behave are compelling studies, too. In a world in which software is disposable, abandoned, and forgotten, it promises to enable the game and engine to live on, and serve as a model for artists and developers.

The only bad news is that John Carmack’s innovative shadow volume technique is omitted.

I’d love to see people make new, creative work from the experience. Even just looking through the code, for programmers with ample skill, could be an enlightening experience.

https://github.com/TTimo/doom3.gpl

More coverage: Doom 3 Is Open Sourced [OMG Ubuntu]

(And yes, I’m a bit behind. Just think – you’ve lost days decoding the entire Doom 3 code base. So get on it, already!)

If you’ve been watching big-league visuals lately, things that made your eyeballs roll out into the crowd, odds are TouchDesigner might have been some of the software in use. The tool, established in years of use but perhaps little known outside a few select circles, has been making waves lately in some very nice shows. Even its interface is dazzling (and, indeed, figures directly in shows by the likes of Berlin label Raster Noton), flying through endlessly-zoomable graphical patching interfaces.

One obstacle has stood in TouchDesigner’s way: accessibility. That Hollywood-sexy interface might leave average musicians and visualists wondering how this would work for them. And a prohibitively high cost for a commercial user kept a lot of would-be users out of the club.

The uninterestingly-named TouchDesigner 077 Gold represents lots of iterative progress on this tool. But with this release, hidden behind that innocuous version number, comes some news that could make TouchDesigner a bigger deal. Sync tools for Ableton Live, developed for the innovative show for Richie Hawtin (more on that soon), bring musical integration. TouchPlayer means you can distribute your creations for other users who don’t have the software. You can add the Player to the three-year-old “Free Thinking Environment.” While a common complaint about TouchDesigner has been cost, the FTE edition brings pricing within reach of mere mortals – non-commercial use is even free.

As new to this edition is an integrated mapping tool, for three-dimensional projection mapping. And tutorials make it easier to learn, atop the nice, out-of-the-box Live integration for Max for Live users.

Here’s what’s new. TouchDesigner 077 adds:

• TouchPlayer, a perform-only player that lets anyone run your software free (provided they use it non-commercially – too bad it’s not just no-strings-attached). It’s included with the software.
• TouchDesigner Ableton Live Sync Environment passes loops, controllers, MIDI, and timing data from Live over to TouchDesigner. I saw this in action both backstage and front-of-house with Richie Hawtin, in the Plastikman show designed by Jarrett Smith and operated by Bryant Place, and … wow. More on this soon. The one catch, as with a lot of Live extension – you need Max for Live, too.
• Cineform (not to be confused with the ancient Cinepak) is a high-quality decode used in film that strikes a nice balance between image and size on new Intel processors.
• HD-SDI input and output with NVIDIA’s capture cards.
• New tools for displaying stats, working with multitouch and audio, and playing, managing, and blending movies.

Full details in the ongoing release note log.

Now about that “FTE” edition?

If you’re using the work non-commercially (“not receiving money or compensation”), FTE is absolutely free to use. (I’m assuming a couple of drink tickets don’t qualify as commercial use.) Resolution is limited to 1280×1280.

Of course, we like getting paid, so in that case, there’s now an edition of TouchDesigner that might pay for itself more quickly. US$599 buys you the ability to use the software commercially, adds GPU-based, real-time movie encoding in H.264, unlimited resolutions, extra operators and power features, and more.

As before, you do need to shell out considerably more cash for everything: the “Pro” edition is US$2200. That gets you direct support (not just forum support), animation sequencing, and other features.

FTE edition information
Comparison of editions, features, and pricing

Lastly, Kantan Mapper is a system for mapping and masking. It’s very, very similar in design to MadMapper – though, in its defense, there’s kind of a common set of features you want for mapping projections. But Kantan is also integrated directly in TouchDesigner; MadMapper uses the Syphon framework to pipe textures from other apps. (The latter gives you more flexibility, the former more tight integration.)

Lots of details on how it all works:
Kantan Mapper

For one example of TouchDesigner in action – here in an interactive installation rather than a performance – check out Obscura Digital’s work for Facebook’s F8 conference:

And lastly, if you’re ready to learn to use all of this, the folks at developer Derivative have organized all the how-to information into a series of tutorial videos on the wiki:
Category:Tutorials

Among the topics: using an iPhone, tilt shift effects, understanding the operators and sequencing, text, audio spectra, and, of course, how to get up and running in five minutes.

Where to go:
http://www.derivative.ca/

Microsoft may be running showy ads that show imagined applications of 3D computer vision, but using technology like Microsoft’s own Kinect, hackers are making sci fi reality, right now. Art && Code, held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was an epic gathering of artists and hackers and hackers become artists and artists become hackers. It was an extraordinary convergence of learning and making, workshop and hacklab, technical brain dumps and creative experimentation. Special to CDM, Sofy Yuditskaya brings us a number of highlights. For her part, Sofy herself presented how to make the Kinect camera work with free software graphical multimedia environment Pd, something I hope we’ll look at more soon. Here’s what Sofy brought back from the conference, so you can see what people are doing and learn yourself. -PK

Last month, Carnegie Mellon University held its now annual conference/festival Art && Code — and this one was in 3D!

Lovingly organized by Golan Levin and a core group of administrators, the gathering created a supportive and productive space for artists, students, hackers, makers, researchers & educators, and corporate developers to have a conversation. Props to everyone involved.

I came in on Thursday at the end of the hackathon preceding the main event. The power of structured light scanning was part of Elliot Woods’ and Kyle McDonald’s Calibrating Projectors and Cameras workshop, documented on an extensive wiki:
4A: Calibrating Projectors and Cameras: Practical Tools

There was a very universal performance by Jason Levine using Kinect tracking, beatboxing and throat singing:
jasonlevine.ca

A media archeology foray into the mysteries of the Meréorama by Erkki Huhtamo was another highlight. Live piano accompaniment by Stephen L. I. Murphy incorporated some little-known and totally enchanting compositions made specifically for the installation by Henry Kowalski. (There’s a private video, available directly via the University of Chicago’s Film Studies Center site.)

Even Jonathan Minard’s documentation used a hack, shot with a rig set up for merging Kinect tracking and DSLR footage, as constructed by James George. [Photo above.]

The presentations were broadcast live, in anagraphic 3d as point cloud data set up by Joel Gethin Lewis, and other festival-as-labratory participants. [Photo above.] Ed.: I hear this wound up being a major focus of the hack sessions, getting this working – so creators, would love to talk to you more about this! -PK

Of those available online, here are my favorite speed presentations:

Kyle Machulis
FC 2009 Point Cloud

Using 3D scanning equipment originally meant for massive geographic scale (cities and larger) surveying to take a scan of 512 fursuits during the Further Confusion 2009 convention. Resulting data released as open source.

Toby Schachman
Time Travelers

Time Travelers is an interactive video mirror installation.

A monitor shows a still image. As the user approaches the piece, her three dimensional form emerges on the screen as a subtle distortion in the image. Upon further exploration, we discover that the image is a time-lapse video, and that the user’s distance from the piece is reflected as a time warp in the video.

Time Travelers uses the Kinect 3D camera to capture a depth image of the viewer. This depth data is mapped pixel-by-pixel to time on a source video. The closer the viewer is to the camera, the later in time is the video.

Time Travelers was created in openFrameworks. Source code is available on GitHub.

http://tobyschachman.com/

Asa Foster and Caitlin Rose Boyle
We Be Monsters

Created in Processing for Golan Levin’s Interactive Art & Computational Design 2011 Spring Semester course at Carnegie Mellon University

by Caitlin Rose Boyle :: www.sadsadkiddie.com
twitter.com/#!/rattusRose

& Asa Foster :: www.fosterthree.com
twitter.com/#!/foster_three

Music :: “Chocolate Milk” – The Two Man Gentleman Band
from “Dos Amigos, Una Fiesta!”, Serious Business Records, 2010

Christopher Coleman
w3fi

The W3FI is a social movement, a philosophy, a path to responsible connectivity between our online/offline lives and to each other.

Every day we find more and more of our lives integrated in the digital world, no longer able to lead separate lives, one virtual and one real. This means that we have to take control of and responsibility for how others see and relate to us in the digital world. We are proposing a new philosophy, a new strategy for our online interactions. It is called “W3FI,” a combination of WiFi, the word “we” and the slang use of the number 3 in place of the letter “e” to reference the digital parts of our lives. Currently people already consider WiFi to be a sort of invisible shared connection that is all around us and shifting it to “We” indicates a new awareness of how interconnected we really are online. The W3FI project is much more than an awareness campaign, it is a movement in social activism to ask a new set of questions for each of us every time we click, text, or share a photo.

http://digitalcoleman.com/#1689034/W3FI

Caitlin Morris
ofxOpenCV + Grasshopper

Frame differencing in openFrameworks, based on ofxOpenCv and ofxOsc add-on examples. Amount of motion from frame to frame is translated to aperture size in a basic Grasshopper model. Ed.: Heh: for the 99% of you who didn’t get that, watch the video! -PK

http://a.parsons.edu/~morrc963/canopy.html

Nick Hardeman
Follow This

Follow This! is a twitter based first person shooter game utilizing the Microsoft Kinect camera. The game gives you gatling gun arms that allows you to pulverize twitter birds.

Thanks for all the help from the OF community!

http://nickhardeman.com/460/follow-this/

Molmol Natura
Building a sculpture with Kinect IR structured light

with openFrameworks and meshlab
CNC routing
Ed.: Translation – a scan from the 3D real world is translated to digital and translated to the 3D real world. Replicators have arrived. -PK

http://www.mamanatura.tv/blog/?p=749
[warning: that Vimeo video autoplays, and the drill is loud Do you know how often "autoplay" is the right choice? Never amount of the time. -Ed.]

James George
DepthEditorDebug

In mid-2005, six weeks after the tragic subway and bus bombings in London, New York’s Metro Transit Authority (MTA) signed a contract with the high-tech defense and military technology giant Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin promised the MTA a high-tech surveillance system driven by computer vision and artificial intelligence systems. The security system turned out to be vaporware and the contract collapsed under lawsuits. As a result, thousands of security cameras in the New York subway stations sit unused.

It is in this technological atmosphere that we chose to collaborate. We soldered together an inverter and motorcycle batteries to run the laptop and Kinect sensor on the go. We attached a Canon 5D DSLR to the sensor and plugged it in to a laptop. The entire kit went into a backpack.

We spent an evening in the New York Union Square subway capturing high resolution stills and and archiving depth data of pedestrians. We wrote an openFrameworks application to combine the data, allowing us to place fragments of the two dimensional images into three dimensional space, navigate through the resulting environment and render the output.

http://www.jamesgeorge.org/works/deptheditordebug.html

Eric Mica
Überbeamer

The überbeamer is a means of making any surface writeable. It was created by Eric Mika as an ITP Thesis project in the Spring of 2011. Development is ongoing.

http://uberbeamer.com/

David Stolarsky

SwimBrowser is a freehand web browser, powered by Kinect.

The following features are implemented:
- Clicking hyperlinks
- Zooming in and out
- Panning
- Scrolling
- Choose text field
- Open new tab
- Open menu (e.g. favorites) and select
- Back/forward

swimbrowser.tumblr.com

Shawn Lawson
Operation Human Shield

Operation Human Shield is a re-humanization of Missile Command. The original game had players shoot down missiles that were on a trajectory to destroy the player’s cities or bases. Subsequent iterations of Missile Command have changed styles, thematic opponents, and attacking/retaliation technologies. My variation puts the player into the game and forces them to use their body to deflect/swat away at incoming missiles. The integration of the body references real-world use of civilian human shields. While war tactic is illegal by any nation who is party to the fourth Geneva Convention (approximately 195 countries), the practice of human shields is still in use today.

http://www.shawnlawson.com/#operationhumanshield.html

Shawn Sims
roboScan

roboScan is a 3D modeler + scanner that uses a Kinect mounted on a ABB4400 robot arm. Motion planning and RAPID code are produced in Robot Studio and Robot Master. This code sends movement commands and positions to the robot as well as the 3D position of the camera. C++ and openFrameworks are used to plot the depth data of Kinect in digital 3D space to produce an accurate model of the environment.

This work was done by Shawn Sims and Karl Willis as the first project of the research group Interactive Robotic Fabrication. This project was also presented in Golan Levin’s sp2011 course Interactive Art + Computational Design. The facilities of the Digital Fabrication Lab in the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon were used in the making of this project.

Karl Willis http://www.darcy.co.nz/
CMU-dFab http://cmu-dfab.org/
CoDe Lab http://code.arc.cmu.edu/
IACD sp2011 Golan Levin http://golancourses.net/2011spring/

http://sy-lab.net/#1102351/roboScan

http://artandcode.com/3d/

Thanks to Sofy for sharing this. If you were at Art && Code and want to share more of your own work, tips, code, art, or favorite moments from the event, get in touch.