The decoded conference stands for the combination of design and code. It combines creative and technological aspects of our everyday life and brings them all together on a one day kick ass event in the heart of Munich. International speakers from the field of generative design, computational art, information visualization and hardware tinkering are teaming up to share some insights of their work and tell their very own stories.

decoded session line-up 2011 include eBoy, Fluid Forms, Prof. Herbert W. Franke, LIA, Kate Hartman, Jer Thorp aka blprnt +more.

Location: Freiheizhalle, Rainer-Werner-Fassbinder Platz 1, 80636 München, www.freiheiz.com
Date: Sat. 15th October 2011
Price: €89.99 (student discounts available)

http://www.decoded-conference.com

We have one ticket to give away! All you have to do is tweet this post as a reply to @creativeapps using #decoded_can hashtag – or leave a comment on Facebook to this post and we’ll pick the best tweet next week Monday (witty always works).

Photos from 2010 below.

Created by The Light Surgeons for the National Maritime Museum in London, the installation “Voyagers” engages with England’s long standing relationship to the sea, featuring thematic images and film from the museum’s collection animated atop a continually flowing ocean of typography across an abstract wave shaped structure. Together with a number of other projects, the installation opens to the public tomorrow. We got a chance to take a sneak peak earlier today and get some insight into the making together with what we enjoy most – the debug info and some fantastic behind the scene images.

Continue reading.... Voyagers [openFrameworks]

The Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors’ Showcase is one of the highlights of the Cannes Lions Festival, and has become one of the most popular events during Cannes week. Again this year, it took place in The Grand Auditorium, with overspill into the Debussy. Saatchi & Saatchi senior creative team Jonathan Santana & Xander Smith came up with the initial concept for this year’s showcase – ‘Hello Future’, a dark, retro futuristic setting with a ‘HAL’-like host. Juliette Larthe – an independent producer (formerly of Warp Films) pulled a creative team together: Marshmallow Laser Feast (Memo Akten, Robin McNicholas, Barney Steel), Aaron Meyers, Jamie Lidell, Clark, Mark Titchner, Gary Card.

The (MLF) directed the visual performance, created all the graphics for the ‘HAL’ character, the titles, and various other ‘interludes’ (such as a special hypnosis moment). The team worked closely with Aaron Meyers who developed the kinect performance software for Jamie Lidell’s section, and the stage + lighting + sound designers to pull together the overall look and feel.

The graphics app used was made in Cinder and there are 3 stage computers each with a Kinect running an OpenNI-based openFrameworks application that sends information over OSC. The software was controlled live with controls mapped to an Oxygen8 midi keyboard and a few little controls on an iPad running Mrmr.

The process of creating images was very analogue utilising found objects such as a step ladder, a couple of broom sticks, rear projection perspex, large metal bowl, bin bags, gaffer tape and glass prisms. These were then filmed with a handheld pointgrey dragonfly2, sending this live feed into a laptop running modul8, playing with a few midi sliders and knobs to deform and affect the image in realtime and project onto perspex, and then film that back with Canon 5D. The show was run using the new VDMX to play content on the 14x8m rear screen, and the side ‘banana’ screens.

Behind the scenes video and images coming soon…

canneslions.com/saatchinewdirectors

UPDATE 01/09/2011 – Making of video added. See below.

Earlier this year we have been thinking about the concept of “curated workshops”, an opportunity to bring people together to work for a very short period of time and share their creations. These would include setting up a team, inviting few high profile individuals and opening up submissions for participation. When I was approached by Héctor Ayuso earlier this year to give a talk at OFFF, instead of talking about CAN, I thought this would be a great opportunity to do something more, a workshop, and use the workshop material as the content to drive the talk. Hector and I agreed, ‘Workshop Collaborative’ was born.

What was the aim of “Workshop Collaborative”?
1. Initiate collaborations between those that share common interests.
2. Create a playing field, both physical and virtual.
3. Allow ideas to evolve by asking questions.

When we announced the workshop back in January, we also opened to applications for participation. In total, 80 applications were submitted and 11 participants chosen by the team including Aaron Koblin, Ricardo Cabello – mr.doob, myself and Eduard Prats Molner.

The participants included:
Marek Bereza, Alba G. Corral, Andreas Nicolas Fischer, Martin Fuchs, Roger Pujol Gomez, Marcin Ignac, Rainer Kohlberger, Thomas Mann, Joshua Noble, Roger Pala and Philip Whitfield.

Programme – Single Day
09:00 – 10:00 Introductions / Teams
10:00 – 13:30 Stage 1
13:30 – 14:00 Lunch
14:00 – 19:00 Stage 2 (Completion)

Total creation time: 6.5 hours

Few weeks before the workshop, Aaron and I decided four themes we should allow to influence the work we would be making. By allowing other participants to comment and feedback on these themes we would discover areas we all want to explore. The themes included:

1. Digital Ecosystem - Build an application, an organism of information, sound and visuals, a digital ecosystem that flows through different mediums and evolves. “living system – travelling through technology and mutates through tools.

2. Analogue Digital - Explores the notions of physicality in code. Using made objects as assets to code. Scan 3d objects, cut paper and cut-out, traditional 2d scans, 3d objects scanned using flatback scanners, etc..

3. Projection Mapping - Address projection mapping conceptually. Moving away from technical demos, time to question what does it all mean; surface, source, angle, point projection, scale, form, interaction, animation.

4. Data re-embodied - Tell stories through the juxtaposition of data sources and their methods of representation. How can we create new meaning, understanding and value from reinterpretation of data.

By no means this ment that we would have to choose one over the other. The purpose was to get the feel where the interest lies amongst the participants and set up, so to say, a ‘playing field’ and allow first ideas to develop. We knew that working together for a single day we would not be able to produce anything of “finish” quality, rather focus on the subjects themselves and see what comes out.

Following the feedback, a number of keywords were derived, to summarise our interests:

ecosystem, data, scan, evolution, input, mutation, osc, node, rhythm, pattern, touch, physical, language, viewport and mobility.

Five projects developed during the 6.5 hours of work. These included Kinect > WebGL bridge, Kinect Image Evolved, Input Device, Data Flow and Receipt Racer.

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Kinect > WebGL

This project was the work of mr.doob, Marcin and Edu although other people were involved also. The task was to create a bridge between the Kinect and browser, allowing the real time feed over the web. Although aspirations were much higher than the time allowed, instead of utilising node.js server – which I understand was 99% complete anyhow, the team setled for feeding downscaled image data from cinder application using standard http requests to the three.js script which was reading the images at about 10f/s. Several rendering styles are presented below. First one is just simple point cloud done by Marcin for debugging while the rest was done by mr.doob using his amazing Three.js engine.

Download .js code here.

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Kinect Image Evolved

Simultaneously while Ricardo was working on the .js part, Marcin was exploring different ways of kinect image representation. In attempt to get away from standard kinect point cloud, we developed idea of trying slitscan effect with the point cloud. What this means is that the kinect point cloud was dispersed along the time lapse, different bands representing different moment in time. Likewise, Macin also was exploring what happens if the point location was reversed when particular depth was reached. What you see in the videos below are both effects.

Code available soon.

Thomas and Andreas were also testing different tools to manipulate kinect image. Meshlab, Blender were used to pull kinect point clouds and convert them into meshes which could then be render, distorted, split, etc.

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Input Device

Marcin was also working on ways to control the input, ie how one could interact with the Kinect point cloud. We were toying with the idea of being able to assign different devices over OSC to different kinect body parts. This would allow for each individual to be assigned unique element of te point cloud and to interact with it. The first step was to use simple gyroscope datam sent from an iPhone over OSC. The video below shows what is happening. Likewise, Rainer and Roger were working on the iPhone application that would send the OSC data. Rather than just utilising gyro or accelerometer, Rainer was exploring different forms of interaction with the device, seeing whether a language could be evolved, one that would somehow enhance emotional attachment the kinect body parts. The videos below show and instrument like application that also has audio feedback.

Code available soon.

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Data Flow

With all the data moving, Marek was wondering if the input and output are in same medium, you can compare them, apples for apples, what would happen. Marek looked at the process of the loop by examining the image obtained by subtracting the initial input from the output so we’re just left with the parts that change. For the loop algorithm, jpeg compression was chosen because it was easily available in oF and ubiquitous enough to warrant investigation. The boxy images are a result of feeding the jpeg “high” quality compression back into itself and subtracting it from the original. The finer images are using the “best” compression setting. Then Marek tried the same thing with sound (using logic), using first the original sound, then the encoded and seeing what is left. You can hear all the sounds below.

Original / OFFFCAN Workshop Collaborative by filipvisnjic Encoded / OFFFCAN Workshop Collaborative by filipvisnjic Difference / OFFFCAN Workshop Collaborative by filipvisnjic

Code available soon.

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Receipt Racer

The receipt racer combines different in and output devices into a complete game. It was made by Martin, Philip and Joshua utilising a receipt printer, a common device you can see at every convenient store, small projector, sony ps controller and a mac running custom openFrameworks application. Print is a static medium, that’s why, Philip, Martin and Josh explain, it was an intriguing challenge to create an interactive game with it. First the team tried to do it only with the printer as the visual representation but that seemed rather impossible. But then Joshua Noble came up with a small projector, perfect to project a car onto a preprinted road. There is no game without an input device. So they were lucky enough as at least one of them always carries a gamepad around. The cables connect back to the laptop running an openframeworks application the team wrote parts of. The app was entirely programmed during the workshop. Internally it runs something like the basic js game. Only a car driving on a randomly generated race track. Then it broadcasts its components to the external devices, prints the street and guesses where the car’s projection is supposed to be to perform the hit test. That’s the trickiest part. Everything has to be in sync and needs some calibration in the beginning. The paper also has a little bit of a mind of it’s own and tends to slide around or curl. But that’s nothing some duct tape and cardboard can’t fix.

It was a lucky day. Somehow everything was just lying around, waiting to be used. Even the stand and this plastic thing you would normally use to put in your name on a conference. Even the timing was perfect. Right at the end of the workshop we finished adding the details like a little score and the YOU CRASHED TEXTS.

Project Page (code available)

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On Saturday we presented the creations. Regardless of the fact that Erik Spiekermann was presenting in the other OFFF room, we had a full theatre (500 ppl estimate) including another room where our talk could be watched on a large screen.

Photo above by Arseny Vesnin

CAN would like to thank all the participants at the workshop as well as Aaron and Ricardo for taking time off their busy schedules to take part of the workshop. For more information on the workshop and all future information/code/links see creativeapplications.net/offf2011

Photos by Jason Vancleave

We leave you with OFFF Barcelona 2011 Main Titles made for OFFF by PostPanic (full screen recommended).

Dancing With Swarming Particles is an interactive installation and performace that explores the relationship between a physical user/performer and a virtual performer the “avatar” which has the physical characteristics of morphing flocking particles.

The avatar’s body is composed by flocking particles that initially float in the virtual space without any apparent order the using user/performer’s movements the particles start to morph into their body.

by Rodrigo Carvalho, performer Tamar Regev
coordinator : Anna Mura
Made in Specs [Synthetic Perceptive, Emotive and Cognitive Systems group] – UPF – Barcelona

Made in Unity3d, using Kinect and Osceleton [vimeo.com/​17966780] the Skeleton tracking.

Fabricate Yourself is a project by Karl D.D. Willis that documented the Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction Conference. Given the tangible theme of the conference Karl decided to engage the community by capturing and fabricating small 3D models of attendees. Attendees firstly capture their favorite pose using a Microsoft Kinect. The depth image from the Kinect is processed into a mesh and displayed onscreen in real-time. At any time they can capture the mesh and save it as an STL file. Dovetail joints are automatically added to the side of the 3x3cm size models so they can be snapped together. This allows multiple models to be connected to form a larger overall model, like a jigsaw puzzle.

The STL files were printed using a Dimension uPrint 3D printer provided by Stratasys.

Created using openFrameworks.

Project Page

(Thanks Karl)

Previously:
Beautiful Modeler [iPad, openFrameworks] – Gestural sculpting on …
Trace Modeler [openFrameworks] – Real-time video to create three …

Created at the workshop with product designer and electronic music composer Yuri Suzuki, the following objects use the seemingly trite sound of a door bell as its starting point to create and suggest alternatives to the generic sound-scapes of everyday life that we often take for granted. Yuri designed the toolkit to make the door bell, which contain several actuators and plastic structure as seen in the photo below. The rest was down to the workshop attendees to make new door bells-sound machines.

What effect would a whispering or moaning doorbell have? How would we interpret bird songs or the sound of barking dogs – as visitor or host? What happens if the first impression is disturbed by an unexpected sound? Can the sound of a doorbell have an effect on the very notion of hospitality?

One day I found great kettle designed by Richard Sapper. The kettles’ beautiful sound plays the notes C and D and sounds like small locomotive. Inspired by this, I made a kettle of my own. A musical kettle, which became part of the series’ re-design sound scape’. As the kettle boils it whistles your favorite tune… I want to contribute to the design of daily domestic noises: alarms, mobile phones, a doorbell; I have the opinion that not enough thought has been given to the noises they produce. Yuri.

This workshop was the last event of Yuri’s residency at the Iaspis in Stockholm 1 Nov 2010 – 31 Jan 2011, a collaboration with Tokyo Wondersite.

More

Building on their previous installation at Coffee Kitchen, Kimchi and Chips created ‘Link’, their latest interactive installation for  Design Korea 2010 where people record their stories into a cityscape of cardboard boxes.

Link was created for the event as an interpretation of ‘Convergence’, the theme of the exhibition. The team presented a convergence of complex, fast moving technologies with low, everyday materials. Furthermore, the audience is invited to take part and “can store their memories inside boxes”.

The installation includes a number of different components. To match the projections to the boxes, the team developed iPad mapping application allowing users to interactively match projected images in the room. App was built using openFrameworks and libmysql (see video demo at the bottom of the post). The iPad interface, allowing users to add information was also built using built using openFrameworks with 2-way communication over OSC. Main mapping playback was created using VVVV with custom plugins for threaded video playback / recording (up to 80 videos playing simultaneously whilst 2 videos being recorded), MySQL for database and a total of around 3000 recordings were taken during the exhibition. The team also used Adobe Flash for designing animations.

Hardware included 3 servers, each Core i7 Quad core (8 threads), Nvidia Geforce 460 GTX, 8GB RAM (for caching video playback), Triplehead2Go x 2, 2xPlaystation eye and 6 x 3000lm projector.

See video below including the making of at the bottom of the post.

Project Page

Kimchi and Chips are a cross-disciplinary art & design studio based in London and Seoul. They create installations, products and services that bridge the gap between people and people, people and technology, people and nature. They are Elliot Woods, media artist, technical designer and Mimi Son, user-centred interaction designer and visual artist.

Created by Keyvane Alinaghi, Simon Lebon and Damien Marchal, Boo! is an interactive installation created using Processing and Pure Data that allows viewers to interact with zombies in the projected scene.

The unusual component of this scene is the strange behavior of the zombies. When the viewer hides his face or turns his back to the image, the zombie who had been facing him takes a few akward steps forward. When the viewer looks again at the zombie, the latter stops dead in his tracks. It is as if a mere glance from the viewer—whether expressing curiosity, disgust, or fascination—were enough to awaken a feeling of shyness or shame in the breast of the blood-thirsty creatures. The esthetics of the installation are those of currently produced video games. The script, however, runs counter to the rules of the genre, providing an unusually negative ending. The zombies end up devouring their victim whenever there are no viewers or when the viewer, horrified, hides his face in his hands, peeping at the screen through his fingers instead of looking at it directly. Once the zombies have finished their meal, the frame of the scene expands, revealing a new victim. The only changing aspect of the action is the time it takes to eat the victim, which depends on the attitude of the spectators.

Technical Direction and Art Direction : Keyvane Alinaghi
3D Infography : Simon Lebon (Meconopsys)
Software development : Damien Marchal

With support from EnsadLab, as part of the school’s research program on relational set-ups. Additional support from the French National Research Agency, as part of the research program Praticables – Dispositifs artistiques: les mises en œuvre du spectateur, and from the Maison européenne des sciences de l’homme et de la société (MESHS), Lille.

Project Page

(Thanks Emilio)

Together with Chris Sugrue and Niklas Roy I will be speaking at next month’s Data Event #46.0. The Dublin Art and Technology Association (DATA) is a Dublin gathering of artists, musicians, technologists, and academia with the intention of promoting, exploring, discussing, and exhibiting art and technology in Ireland and the world.

Supported by The Science Gallery.

When: Thursday, 23rd 24th of Feb, 6.30pm

Location: To be announced

Presenters:

Filip Visnjic. is an architect, lecturer, writer and a new media technologist born in Belgrade currently living in London. Specialised in consulting and directing web, new media and architectural projects, Filip also contributes to a number of blogs and magazines about art, design and technology. He is a director at Working Architecture Group, an editor at CreativeApplications.Net and lectures at a number of universities across the UK.

Chris Sugrue is an artist and programmer whose works experiment with the magical and illusory possibilities of digital technology. She creates fictional worlds that have taken the form of interactive installations, audio-visual performances and algorithmic animations. Her works have explored topics in artificial life, computer vision, electromagnetism, optical effects, and augmented video. She has exhibited internationally in such festivals and galleries as Ars Electronica, Sónar Festival, Pixel Gallery, Medialab-Prado, Matadero Madrid, and La Noche En Blanco Madrid.

Sugrue’s interactive installation, Delicate Boundaries received an honorary mention from Vida Art and Artificial Life Awards and first prize from Share Festival. In 2009, she collaborated to help develop theEyeWriter, a low-cost eye controlled drawing tool for ALS patients. The EyeWriter was honored with Design of the Year award for interactive category, the Future Everything Award, and a Golden Nica from Ars Electronica.

Niklas Roy is a Berlin based artist. He mainly works on mechatronic installations and devices. From time to time he carries out performances in which his inventions play a central role. Roy really doesn’t like to write about himself in the third person. And that is the reason why this little text is so short.

More information can be found on data.ie

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