links:
Graphic Design Festival Breda
openFrameworks
video made by GDFB

Recently apple released a job posting for a User Interface Designer / Prototyper. It was amazing to see that required skills listed were Openframeworks and Processing. Evan a large company like Apple see the need for this new way of creative thinking.

I also noticed that the Magazine featured the Night Lights project. This is a piece I did with yesyesno in New Zealand a few months ago.

The conference was great, there was a good turn out. I was a bit worried about my talk was not being about flash but people really seamed to enjoy it. Joel and I tried to represent OF the best we could. It was quiet funny almost every talk mentioned OF in some way, its really exciting to see the community getting larger.

I am going to post more things that I talk about here, but most of the code that I showed is available here.

Everyone at the event was so nice, I made some great friends and can’t wait to hangout again. The talent was unreal, the minds and talks were great. I hope to do it again. Thanks Dave Schroeder for all the help and hospitality.

Photo of the project party

more photos here.

step 1:
You need to collect a bunch of negative images. Images that do not have the object that you are trying to track. You need to create a .dat file; a file that is just a list of all the images in a directory.

step 2:
There are a couple of techniques for step two. Opencv can generate positive samples from one image of the object you want to track, this is not the best technique but does work.
when you do this you get a bunch of images that look something like this.


The other approach is to have a series of positive images that are cropped. I think that this is the more accurate approach. I needed figure out how the openCv executable was building these samples. After figuring this out I build an app that loads a series of images that you can click all the objects in the image. You can also use a video camera to add more images and save out images. Here is a demo of the app working.

step 3:
Now you just need to train. Running the opencv haar training executable you will generate an .xml file to load in a haarTracking app. I am still learning all the settings for this step. The perfect tweak of the setting will give you the best result for what you want to track.

Here is what I have been able to get so far. The results are not to bad but I need to learn some more. Any help would be great.

We made these four using some colored object around the lab.

Here are some close ups.

Being the Lab that we are this can’t be any old web cam. So Ryan and I grabbed some motors and parts around the lab to built a completely controllable camera. Via the Arduino you can pan and tilt the camera. I used Quicktime Broadcaster which was super easy and free. I had it up and running in about 5 minutes. The only hard part was getting the signal to reach the outside world from inside a corporate network. The next step is to have an interface for the motors and camera for people to control via a web browser. I will post more when we have it online. Get ready for Rock and Roll.

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more to come :)

The app load a series of type images that I created. They are analyzed in realtime in order to fide the whole words and then each individual letter. I created many particle system that react to the each letter. I hope to work on the piece some more and do more of these events. Thanks Josh for getting this together, next stop Boston.


Q6M

0J4I

907

HG8

see all photos here

We rode bikes to get everywhere and anywhere. Paris has this amazing system for renting bikes. You can grab a bike at any station (about every 300 meters) ride for a half hour and then park it for free.

I loved to play in the parks it was a blast.

We found this really really steep hill one day, Dani though it was a great idea to climb. I couldn’t have agreed more. The funny thing was when she got up she couldn’t get back down. Don’t worry though I was there to save her, this was one steep hill.

After a great stay in Paris we were off for Belgium. I couldn’t wait to get there. I was just dreaming of beer and waffles.

We stayed in Brugge right next to Brussels. Brugge was without a doubt the most beautiful place I have ever been to. It was this great little city, so old with the friendliest people. We stayed in this hostel called Snuffel I loved it. We met some of the greatest people, great times and good talks.

The beer was an art there, I couldn’t get enough. It was so fresh, so crisp, so tasty. After a great time in Brugge we were off to Amsterdam. This was going to be the party of the trip, and my last stop. We tried to do it all in the little time we had. At the time we were there it was Europe’s vacation time, so it was packed and crazy.

You could pee in the streets while tons would just watch. They had these urinals only on weekends.

There were more bike on the street the cars, it was great. You had to look all around you when walking. With people walking bikes, cars, and trams running in all directions its busy. Amsterdam was a blast. This was a great trip, I realize that I need to do more. It is essential.

Check out the photo sets with more commentary.
Paris
Brugge
Amsterdam

Thanks to Ryan Habbyshaw and The OF Team.

The trip was amazing though. I got to meet with important people that have been living and working their for some time. I saw the Surface table at Microsoft. I meet with Nokia, studied at a University larger than any other University I have ever seen. Ate some of the best food in my life. Went to a rave were the Great Wall of China meet the ocean. The main things I took from it was that there are other cities than New York. I could completely live in Beijing and work. Living another countries life for a month really puts your life back home into perspective. I will never forget this trip and will be returning soon.

I will post stories from the trip as I get more photos. Cross your fingers I find my camera.

Ryan throw me that wireless router. (toss)

Ouch! ohh man you cut me. Yes the wireless router cut me on the hand.

What?!

Oh mg god! Ryan look I thing its a sign from the heavens above. As I look down at my hand I am bleeding in the shape of the iconic mouse cursor. This is the first official record of the Nerd Stigmata.

1. About 10 -12 LED Throwies
2. A fan – We found one on the street.
3. A power supply outside.
4. A crowded place for people to watch.

First You will need to find a fan. We found one on the side of the street. Remove the front cover of the fan. This is so that you can put the Throwies on the blades of the fan.

Attach the LED’s so that one is on one side and one on the other. They will hold eachother onto the blades.

You know need to find a place that has power and is crowded. Union Square was the perfect place to release the LED Throwie Throwie. Open the cover of a street lamp. You will just need to unscrew the bolt (usually just hand tight) and open the lid. You will find a plug conveniently for your fan.

You are now ready to let the fan rip. Start the fan on low let it start up and then turn it on high. Stand back and watch the Throwies Throw.

There are some setbacks with the Ultimate Throwie Throwie. Due to the times that we live in the general public may have concerns of the appearances of an LED. If you just so happen to find yourself in trouble with the authorities for such an act. Blame it on art school. I running into such a situation found it a safe and cheap way out of jail.

In all seriousness LED Throwies are a blast but not to be taken lightly. They are an interesting take on public space and graffiti art. Granted they can harm the environment, but they are removable. If you choose to explore the public realm or graffiti art with LED’s don’t take it out on the authorities. See where the stand on the topic, put yourself in their shoes. They have no choice but to take the appropriate actions. The real fight should be against the people that clutter the public space with junk; the crude and intrusive advertisements. Find those targets and “Throwie” them.

Video
Photos

Chelsea Art Museum
556 West 22nd St., NYC

Tues-Sat 12-6, Thurs, 12-8

Video
Site

All climbing photos

To think, this was the iPod that Apple recalled but I never sent it in. I have to say this is the indestructible iPod.

I am currently enrolled at Parsons School of Design in NYC. I took a class called Geek Graffiti a couple of semester ago. In this class we worked in conjunction with the GRL to create technologies for urban communication. I was very familiar with the technology and LED art, so I had an idea what this was. By no means was I scared or thought was a bomb.

A couple of people outside the bar saw me climb the bridge and grab the LED Ad. People around said that they liked the Ad. “It has been up for a couple of weeks, its nice. It turns on at night.” They even mentioned some artist that they thought it was. By no means were these people scared or threatened by the LED Ad.

The Ad was far out on the bridge so I had a hard time getting to it. It was attached with magnets and hard to get off. I told Ryan to catch it but he missed and it broke. We brought it back to his place and started to dissecting it, I wanted to see how the circuit worked. After some testing I found out the construction of it.

The LEDS are attached to a circuit that takes an average level of the light using a photo resistor. Based on the level of light the LEDs will fade on or off. It is powered by 4 D batteries. The Ad life is about 2 – 3 weeks.

Ryan and I documenting the constriction of the piece and posted it to Make Blog and Flickr. This was about two weeks ago. The response was good. A little after this the creator contacted me and said:

“I am glad you got one of the adult swim signs, there are other’s out there as well so keep looking up. We were hoping that people would take them.” After this the story was over, well until the other day in Boston.

After speaking to many reporters I have to say the whole situation is getting out of hand. I respect the police and authorities for acting on the bomb scare. The bomb squad needed to sit back and realize what the Ad was. The word terrorist or bomb should never have been released to the public unless they were certain.

Take a look at this photo and this photo, The bomb squad should have been able to figure this out, before it got out of hand.

See the whole piece up close.

Update:
The maker sent me some info. I guess that interferenceinc.com
were the ones behind it all. Good stuff.
Photos
More Photos
video

Blog
Myspace

Jeff Han showed off his magic all over Siggraph. The Multi-Touch Interface stole the show. Many of his works were using his research in LED touch sensors, this technology is amazing. It was so inspiring to see all the work and ideas. I put some photos on flickr.

The swells were unreal, eight feet some days. Skim and surf were good everyday all day.


See all the photos

See all the photos from the weekend.

Wild friends and one hell of a good weekend. Flickr set

Flickr Set

Here is are game concept:
Gym Jungle is a multi-player mobile game played in conjunction with a large-scale, public digital gamespace. Players navigate to the top of a school gym ropes course on the larger screen by catching directional cues from dodge balls launched across each player’s handset.

Instructions given to player:
Catch the balls to plan your path. Three catches updates your location. Find the trophies for bonus points and reach the goal within your allotted (for example, 15) moves.

Additional gameplay information:
Before sending a command to the larger gameboard, the handset stores up a queue of three moves to perform in sequence. Players must catch the moves on their handset via the mini dodge ball game that then govern advantageous positioning/advancement on the large gameboard. Players must reach the top of the gameboard in a certain number of moves to receive points for that trial and are encouraged to pick up trophies along the way. Upon successful completion of a trial, the player is placed at the bottom of the map again, but the interaction on the handset increases in difficulty, i.e. the dodge balls fly faster and the number of allotted moves is decreased. Players compete against one another for points based on number of trials completed and trophies collected. The map remains static, so players may leave or enter the game at any time, competing most closely with those who joined the game within the same timeframe.

Game on mobile phone

Game on large screen

Parts List:
2 Jumbo red LEDS
2 100k Potentiometers
Fancy Knobs or Dials
3 Small push buttons
Various Resistors (used to create pitch bend)
Various Capacitors (used to create pitch bend)
Wire
Solder

Links:
Flick Page
Hack Baby Video * exporting now
Hack Baby Audio

Flickr Photos

Update: Here is a bug, when you export photos your whole HD decides to stop and dedicate everything to exporting. Lame!

The idea was to make a :30 film about yourself. I guess I choose to use a red balloon. The balloon is a metaphor for my travels and routine through the city. I am following the system but observing my surrounds like a balloon. The statement at the end is to make you think just a little more and question your everyday routine.

Flickr Set
Inspired by “The Red Balloon

Update:
I thought that it was cool to get linked up on BoingBoing until my server went down, 28 GB later. All for a little stupid robotic baby. ha!

Other Mentions:
MAKE: Blog
Digg

Taking “Geek Graffiti” this semester, good stuff going on. keep up.
Flickr Photos