Augmented Projection: “Magic Projection” Creates Elegant Moving Screens: “
Where better in the world to introduce elegant moving screens than a country that made narrative on flat surfaces come alive, from painted screens to manga?
Magician, visualist, and technologist Marco Tempest sends this brilliant video documentation of the work he’s been doing with what he calls ‘Magic Projection.’ The technique is simple – and extraordinarily effective. Infrared tracking points in the screen, coupled with extremely efficient vision analysis software on the computer, produce a perfectly-scaled image. Beyond that, everything is Marco’s own ingenuity. (One reason I think we all have a lot to learn from Marco is that his sense of how to do things as a magician is different from how a lot of us with arts backgrounds approach developing our techniques.)
This is, of course, markedly different from manual projection mapping, which requires that you scale your image by hand to whatever surface you’re using.
The tools are all free and open source. Our friend Zach Lieberman, a fantastically-skilled coder and originator of OpenFrameworks, worked to develop the project with OF, Intel’s free vision library OpenCV, free hardware platform Arduino, and Sony PS 3 Eye drivers MacCam. (OpenFrameworks, for those of you just joining us, is the Processing-inspired, artist-friendly C++ coding platform.)
Description from Marco:
Here is my ‘Magic Projection’ system out on the streets in Tokyo. ‘Magic Projection’ is my new Augmented Reality Projection Tracking system created for use in my magic stage performances. Have a look and let me know what you think.
The system works by tracking embedded infrared LED tracking markers in lightweight screens with a modified PS3 EyeToy camera and then fits projected video images onto moving screens at 120 fps.
In addition it features a virtual spotlight to light the performer while holding the screen without spilling light onto the projection surface, real-time 2D particle physics, an electronic whiteboard and a 3D function that rotates 3D objects in real time in relationship to the screen angle relative to the projector.
And yes, I was a bit lazy and didn’t link to Johnny Lee’s work, which inspired this (and is credited accordingly):
Foldable Displays (tracked with the Wiimote)
The Wiimote also works effectively; Marco is instead using the PS3 Eye, which will also work as a camera feed if that’s important. Lee’s creation plays with the idea of folding, but as you can see, the idea is familiar. (Thanks, John Holdun!)
(Via Create Digital Motion.)
Timelapse video of 1st night of #onedotzero HD projections at the BFI on London’s SouthBank showing the evolving festival identity created by Karsten Schmidt (aka toxi) and W+K London
Source: UndoUndo
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Level Green - Visualizing Transport Sustainability: “
Level Green explores the concept of sustainability in relation to the environment, economy and society. Located in Wolfsburg - Germany, the exhibition presents 25 interactive installations renders this highly complex topic tangible.
The series of physical data sculptures and embedded interactive media screens structure the multitude of related themes, while offering users a way of accessing relevant information that relate to one’s common behavioral habits in the context of sustainable living.
By J. Mayer H. Architects and Artcom for Volkswagen. Via
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(Via Computerlove | Connecting Creative Talents.)
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FILE Magazine is a new bi-annual publication edited by Fabio Sebastianelli and Thorbjørn Ankerstjerne and featuring a broad selection of visual communication in the fields of graphic design, art, photography, fashion and moving image. Beautifully presented in a 30×39 cm hard cover with a full colour 52 gsm newsprint stitched inside.
This first issue comes with a DVD containing over 2 hours of short films, music videos and interviews, as well as a limited print by Geoff McFetridge.
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(Via Computerlove | Connecting Creative Talents.)
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Zoom! Squidy Brings Together Natural Interaction, Puts Standard TUIO on MS Surface: “
Ready to evolve past the mouse and keyboard? Squidy helps bind together all the possible ‘natural’ user interfaces by putting touch, ink, speech, and vision and tracking together in a powerful set of libraries. In other words, if you’ve got a novel interface, Squidy will help you not only make sense of it, but use standard protocols to route expressive data from the input to other good stuff. With the power of TUIO, the set of conventions built atop OpenSoundControl, that means your weird input device can get routed to your Processing visuals or robotic bass guitar player or Kool-Aid-squirting fountain.
As the creators explain it:
Squidy is an interaction library which eases the design of natural user interfaces (also known as ‘post-WIMP interfaces’) by unifying various device drivers, frameworks and tracking toolkits in a common library and providing a central and easy-to-use visual design environment. Squidy offers diverse input modalities such as multi-touch input, pen interaction, speech recognition, laser pointer-, eye- and gesture-tracking. The visual user interface hides the complexity of the technical implementation from the user by providing a simple visual language based on high-level visual data flow programming combined with zoomable user interface concepts.
The visual interfaces is fascinating; it brings all these complexity into a single, patchable, graphical interface (pictured at bottom).
And now it means even Microsoft’s Surface is getting a healthy dose of standards, bringing TUIO to Microsoft’s futuristic table. reacTable / reacTIVision developer and TUIO creator Martin Kaltenbrunner writes CDM:
Researchers from the University of Konstanz in Germany created a Surface-To-TUIO bridge for the MS Surface. This means that all TUIO enabled open source applications can now be run on the MS Surface without modification!
Here are some more fascinating interface design videos from the folks at Squidy, showing off their natural, zoomable interfaces.
The development environment itself looks fantastic. Check out the iPhone control and how zoomable interfaces lend themselves to development.
These projects in turn are developing some terrific ideas for zooming around information.
For more:
Squidy Interaction Library
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(Via Create Digital Motion.)
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