Back in Perth this week working on the Prompter development. Finally got sync’d audio and video recording to work in oF, even if it is only for Mac! Had to use QTKit (ie., Quicktime X) as opposed to Quicktime 7 (c/c++) SDK. But the results are WAY better. We’re adding a bunch of features to the Flex application and then using local network/socket connections to communicate between a windowless oF application and the Flex application. By using ManyCam (a utility that allows you to mirror your webcam to multiple applications) we can now stream using Flex and record in Hi-def using openFrameworks. Cool stuff.

If Korea wasn’t exhausting enough now we’re in Shanghai looking for good food, good views, crazy Chinese bars and custom clothes. I'm hoping there's a nightclub as cool as this one I found in downtown Seoul:

Started work this week with Perth’s Sam Fox of HydraPoesis. Sam is developing a performance work set in a tv/online broadcasting studio and wants to create real online collaborative tools for the creation of content as well as develop a system for playing back content (some live, some pre-produced) in the performance itself.

I’ve been looking into Flex/Flash Media Server options as well as FFMPEG/Quicktime/Directshow options for recording and streaming the content. So far I still can’t get oF to do sync’d audio and video recording and since Flex/FMS has streaming fairly well sorted I’ve prototyped the collaborative tool in Flex. Basically (!) it’s a multi-user custom-skype-like interface which allows users to read off a teleprompter and record the content.

I’m off to Korea and Shanghai for a little while but we’ll continue the development in May/June.

It’s one of those things that media art gallerists (or exhibitionists?) are constantly needing to do: sync multi-projector video works. Back in the days of SD DVD works you used to use Pioneer VT7200/7300 DVD players and David Jones sync box. Now…well how do you do it now with HD video in about a million formats. Richard Manner (Performance Space Tech Manager) and I have talked about this on and off for years. So while I was working over at ERTH I took some time out to code up a simple sync manager for video in openFrameworks. It’s not doing sync lock (just a simple offset and ping-to-play-all videos on any number of connected clients) but it does the job within 2 or 3 frames across as many computers as you hook up. Simple fast solution.

This week I’m in Sydney working with ERTH Theatre on their upcoming I, Bunyip show. Combining performaers and puppets onstage, we are developing a system for virtual lighting and set projection. I’m using registered projection with both kinect and cctv cameras to allow us to track and light performers/puppets. I’ll also be writing software that allows as to easily calibrate projectors to the set in order to project Sam James’ video design onto individual elements onstage. 

Eulogy for the Living premiered in Australia at the Ballarat Mining Exchange over the weekend. The collaboration was with Tony Yapp Company, featuring Tony Yapp (director), Yumi Umiumare (creative collaborator), Pia Interlandi (set & costume), Dori Bicchierai (lighting), Gus Macmillan (pre-recorded sound), Kath Papas (producer), Janette Hoe, Geraldine Morey, Daniel Mounsey, Brendan O'Connor, Adam Forbes, Yoka Jones and Ben Rogan (performers). For more info visit the TYC homepage.

I did the video design, performed live sound and video as well as collaborating on the set design with Pia. Here's some video:

The collaboration is one of the best I've had in live performance: given the scale and scope of the project and limited time for rehearsal and bump-in the team worked super-seamlessly to create the best possible outcome. And also given that Ballarat is my home town it was especially awesome for me to see ~200 people cue down Lydiard Street to get in to see a contemporary butoh performance!!

Here's a couple of images of the original set design and the finished installation at the exchange:

It’s been a big week in funding! Firstly, “Stranger Danger” (working title), the new work from Van Sowerwine and Isabel Knowles , for which I am doing the coding and interface design got funded by Inter-arts (projects). Then the Aphids Atelier Eden inter-lab residency for which I’m a lead artist got funded. And then Well got a Theatre board development grant. Wowser! Big year(s) ahead. 

Super happy with the finished work and super pleased to present Mirror Mirage at the second Melaka International Art Festival. Janette and I re-shot the original idea and have got Philippe Pasquier to compose music for the installation. Janette is also going to do a performance with the work. One of the figures in the video will be replaced by her performing the choreography live. Unfortunately I can't make it to the Festival (as I'm driving around in the south of Mexico doing the edit of the work on the road, in hotel rooms and hammocks!) but I'm hoping it all goes smooth. Here's the final work:

After all that crazy fountain music at the Expo Bicentenario it’s time for a well deserved rest. We’re off to explore Mexico, starting with Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, for Day of the Dead and then heading south. Let’s hope we run into cowboys and the EZLN!

And here’s a little video excerpt of the collaboration these solenoid’s were used for. Roberto Morale’s is a world renown  noise musician specializing in generative and physical live composition. He does great things with Wii controllers, flute, piano and any input signal you can throw at him! For the concert I totally re-wrote my VJ software to implement openCL effects and perfect midi and OSC signal routing so that any midi or OSC instrument/signal can control any of the software parameters. Roberto’s software does real-time analysis of the sounds he is monitoring and then outputs this analysis as OSC signals which are then (at various times) either driving video parameters or my drum machine or the solenoids or all three…there’s more info on the Vimeo page too.

Originally we wanted to turn the book into a giant instrument – but time of course got the better of us, and so instead I’ve begun developing a solenoid percussion instrument. Solenoids are very similliar to a DC/AC motor (ie., they have a shaft which is surrounded by wound copper wire), but instead of turning when electricity is applied to the wire, the magnetic force produces lateral movement (ie., the shaft goes in and out ;-). Inspired by instruments like this vibraphone and this hit-anything approach, I’ve set out to do much the same thing. 

The circuit is basically a series of power tranistors operating a bit like a relay – 5v power from an arduino (controlled by an application written in openFrameworks) is used to switch 12v-high amperage power which drives the solenoids. The software let’s me use my drum pads (or any other midi note) to control the solenoids.

The solenoids needed mounting in aluminium as they get REAL HOT when sucking down 1-2A of 12v power!

For the Book of Revolutions I've completely re-programmed the Well's Virtual Book: ported it from Flash to Flex and taken advantage of the new Spark TextFlow features. I’ve improved the page turning, added the ability to load images for intro pages, fixed up auto-page turning when typing, completely re-designed the contents pages and method of leaving a story (previously you had to make up a story title; now you can either make up a story or re-write someone else’s story).

I've also been working on a new Telephone Interactive for the Book. Basically audience members will be able to walk up to a telephone reciever and when they pick it up a voice will let them know that they are about to be asked a question. Around 10 to 20 questions will be recorded and one will be played at random from the database. After a beep the audience member can leave a message. All the messages go into a database and these messages, along with other music and sound effects will be automatically played back through the main PA and several radio recievers placed inside and outside the Book itself. We'll have radio's and headphones so people can wonder around and find the radio signal's (situated in marked box's)... 

 Janette Hoe and I met at the Melaka International Art Festival in 2009. After meeting a few times to discuss what we like and don’t like about dance on/in video we’ve begun a collaboration. Janette is keen to explore ideas about her identity as a Malaysian Australian. I’m keen to continue exploring ways in which physical choreography can be used to highlight inherent properties of digital media (and vice versa). As a starting point we’re looking at ways to create “mirrored” movement without actually mirroring the video – that is creating movement that is as close to possible as exactly the same, but mirrored physically. 

We were intending to just have two images of Janette in the frame, but when we were reviewing the footage we put all 9 takes next to each other and really liked the format. Janette is now working on a physical choreography that better highlights moments of synchronicity and difference as well as changing velocities in order to physically approximate the digital “language” of slow motion and fast-forward. More soon.

After all the work on The Perfect Artist, this somewhat bedraggled and imperfect artist took some time out to visit Japan. This was my third visit to Japan and whilst a lot of time was spent in the hotel room sleeping and recovering, I also visited the Mori Art Museum, ICC (Tokyo), the Yamaguchi Centre for Art and Media (Yamaguchi) and Benesse House Musuem (Naoshima).

The Perfect Artist finally opened at The National Portrait Gallery of Australia as part of Present Tense: An Imagined Grammar of Digital Portraiture. With over 50 hours of footage and close to 2000 clips it’s been a mammoth task. Many thanks to the never-ending help and commitment to detail from Mr Josh Burns: may your mouse-hand recover from this beating!!

In addition to the installation itself the NPG featured the work during the opening, with projections of the participants in the foyer for opening night and images from the work used in promotions and on the fascia of the building.

Circuit is currently (and simultaneously) showing at 8 independent and artist run initiatives across Victoria, including Allen's Walk (Bendigo), Arc Yinnar (Yinnar), Westspace, Seventh, Kings, Yarra Sculpture, Off the Kerb and Bus (Melbourne).

Each Circuit installation is unique. Whilst they all contain a webcamera, computer and projector, the sculptural object at each venue is completely different. Objects include a record cover, cd, book, newspaper, lanyard, billboard and laptop.

When a visitor approaches one of the booths, their face is detected. This triggers a photograph and a series of text and image downloads from websites relating to each of the sculptural 'products'. These are used to construct a personally tailored, semi-random, fake product projection.

All the photographs of visitors are also uploaded to a central server (using FTP) and then distributed back to the other venues. So each visitor not only sees themselves transformed into a product, but also several other products/visitors from other venues across Victoria.

Here are some images from Seventh, Kings, Yarra Sculpture, Allen's Walk and Off the Kerb galleries:

When visitors approach the booths their faces are detected, triggering a photograph, http downloads and a slideshow of previous visitors from some of the other venues.

The CD Cover is generated by searching Flickr for a recent interesting photo (the 'cd'), 10 random Wiki entries (the 'tracks') and a random quote (the 'album title').

The Self-Help book title is generated by searching Amazon for self-help books and then randomly splitting two titles at a colon (:) and putting them back together. And again the cover image is from Flickr (but this time from images tagged 'good textures').

The Newspaper is generated using a front page image from The Age from the last 31 days (Kiosko) and a Reuters search for 'terrorists' to create the headline and intro paragraph.

The Billboard slogan is generated by doing a Yahoo search for the word "Don't". Circuit uses Haar cascades to detect faces, and in the case of the Billboard also allows the "Don't" slogan to be positioned over the eyes, a la Barbara Kruger.

Visitor photographs are shared via server between all the venues.

Circuit opens next week in 8 galleries across Melbourne and regional Victoria...so I'm busy in the lab. Here's some photos and below an excerpt from the catalogue essay.

 OFFICIALLY:

Circuit is a project made for the 2009 Melbourne Fringe Festival, that brings together some of the most exciting young artists working with analogue and digital technologies, to create a unique interactive art project that spans eight independent and artist-run galleries across Victoria.

In this disposable Internet age of the iGeneration, personal technology is wrapped up in designer packaging and marketed to us as a vital and integral extension of our personal and professional selves.

Circuit playfully critiques personalised technologies and adaptive marketing strategies, which are often used to manipulate our desires – and wallets – into believing that some product, site or service has been tailored just for us. In particular the project examines cultural surveillance – the process of gathering information about cultural consumption, choices and inquiries – is often marketed back to us as personally beneficial, providing us with bespoke products to enrich or further our individuality.

The swift emergence of these interactive technologies now give us better searches, more relevant results, and personalised suggestions for other items of interest; the promise of iTunes Genius to ‘create perfect playlists’, Google cookies providing ‘more relevant results’, Amazon suggesting books we might like based on ‘customers who bought this item also bought…’ While these phenomena all demonstrate the ingenuity of technology, they also raise questions about incursions into privacy through the seemingly innocuous gathering of information (or data mining) of our cultural consumption.

Circuit responds to these issues through the creation of a custom-programmed interactive artwork by Matthew Gingold contained inside eight bespoke booths designed by Ben Milbourne. The work inside the booth combines the viewer’s portrait with randomly generated product information from the Internet and immediately projects this onto a sculptural consumer object by Nicole Breedon.

It is this random content shift, of not only the appearance of the work but of your own image, that reflects the context and meaning of supposedly personalised technologies. This is the critical entry point for us as consumers of ‘art product’.

Circuit itself is a simulacrum of everyday consumerism: the displacement of an ordinary consumer object wrapped in imitation designer packaging with the promise of a personalised experience. This inversion of conscious consumption allows us to question not only the nature of consumer objects and desire, but also the way they are sold to us in an attempt to redefine our sense of self.

As each of the eight Circuit booths has a slightly different internal appearance and functionality, this project allows you a unique experience with the work regardless of which venue you may be visiting, whether it’s in the CBD, the inner north, Bendigo or Yinnar. Circuit is also a perfect opportunity to explore other contemporary works on show in the participating galleries from Australian visual artists, and to experience first hand the tremendous talent and energy of our independent arts scene.

Hidden away inside the booths is a computer running custom made software, entirely built using open-source code libraries, in particular openFrameworks (openframeworks.cc) a c/c++ programming framework for media artists.

When visitors approach the booths, face detection software triggers a photo of the visitor and starts a series of Internet searches.  These web searches (from common sources such as Google, Amazon, Seek, Wiki, Flickr, Quotationspage, etc.) are essentially ‘scrapping’ data off the web, providing the raw text and imagery used to create the projected product, or ‘skin’.

These skins are generated by using visual analysis to work out the size and colour of the images, and text manipulation algorithms to truncate and re-combine the text. These are then put through an iterative process of finding the ‘best’ geometric layout for the resulting words and imagery into the projected area of the sculptures.

UNNOFFICIALLY

Circuit will be cool ;-)