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.

Description

This is a project done in collaboration with YesYesNo. The goal was to turn the historic Ferry Building in downtown Auckland New Zealand into a giant interactive playground.

We used 3 different types of interaction – body interaction on the two stages, hand interaction above a light table, and phone interaction with the tracking of waving phones. There were 6 scenes, cycled every hour for the public. The whole experience lasted 6 nights.

Monsters

The monster scene was a full body interaction – as people danced in front of light boxes their contours would magically transform into a playful monster. As groups of people came together they created giant monsters. see more monsters here

Ferns

This scene is another full body interaction – as people made growing gestures a fern would spawn from their contour. Throughout the scene colorful butterflies would flock toward peoples bellies.

Paint

This scene allowed people to finger paint on the entire building.

Constellations

This scene generated large constellations from the motion of people’s cellphones. The more movement people made caused stars to spill from the building.

Photos

Credits

Interaction Design and Software: YesYesNo Joel Gethin Lewis, Zach Lieberman, Pete Hellicar, Kyle McDonald, Todd Vanderlin w/ Daito Manabe sound design

Projection / Staging: Electric Canvas, Inside Out Productions. Production: The Church, Simon Velvin. Production & Art Direction: Hellicar and Lewis

Thanks to NZ Telecom and the Auckland City Council for supporting this, Peter Milne and all the Team, Simon Velvin and all at the Church, Mike Mizrahi, Marie Adams and all at Inside Out Productions, and Takayuki Ito.

See large image here
Original Einstein image here
Original Obama image here

I just ran the app on just numbers interesting results. Its very linear with zero being the most popular.

This project was a collaboration between Ryan Habbyshaw, Brad Simpson, and Todd Vanderlin. We began the project seven days ago when we learned of the competition and developed it from initial ideas to the final foldable posters within the week. Below is a brief description of the process of parsing, sorting, visualizing, and composing the final posters.

The subway data from August 12, 2009 was parsed in openFrameworks and Matlab using custom applications. Statistical analysis was performed in Matlab for subway loading (temporal and geographical including the entire MBTA, individual lines, and individual stations), rate of subway activity, and associated data. openFrameworks was used to generate the central visualizations for the project. Programs were written to interpret data that was processed into several arrangements to emphasize different trends within the data. Linear charts were used to display the activity of stations on a given line to show the geographic relation of activity throughout the course of the day. Circular 24-hour clocks for individual lines and stations were made in order to see the relative activity throughout the day. Pie charts were used to visualize rush hour commutes on each line, showing the contrast of activity during morning and evening rush hours. Histograms were used to show the breakdown of daily activity in a linear fashion. Layouts were done in Illustrator and visualizations were combined in order to create the five individual MBTA line posters and overall MBTA poster. Individual print posters are 33in x 23 in.

Photos

All Lines over 24 hours.

Built around a 24 hour clock each ring is a train station the thickness of the line represent the amount of people on the train at that time.

Orange Line


Red Line

Green Line

Blue Line

Silver Line

More photos here

Credits:

Todd Vanderlin
Ryan Habbyshaw
Brad Simpson

watch HD here

Here is an example to calculate normals for a grid in OpenFrameworks. Obviously this can be applied to any other language.

The image above we have four points on a plane. We need three of those points:

We now need a vector from p1 to p2 and p1 to p3.

We need the cross product of v1 and v2. This will give us our normal vector. Next we normalize that vector scale it and add p1.

Now render from p1 to normal vector.

Download the source

Check it out here
Download App: Mac OSX Linux Windows 

“Graffiti Taxonomy is a graffiti-based study in which characters are isolated from a collection of graffiti tags that were photographed in the same geographic region.”

I built a tag visualizer for all of the graffiti photos taken for the study. The visualizer show the relationships between the letters within the tags. You can investigate the letter down to its location in the original photograph. The project was a blast to work on. The exhibit looks amazing, congratulations Evan!

Video

Photos

Links:

View the Project
Video of the exhibit
Evans work
Fondation Cartier

Credits:

Graffiti Taxonomy: Paris, 2009 by Evan Roth
Consulting/Production: Robert F. Houlihan
Development: Todd Vanderlin

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

Description

I was playing around with some AR markers the other day and came up with this idea. taking just a plain old vinyl record and attaching an AR marker to the label you can track the record in 3D space. The next question was, can you scratch the record?

So by figuring out the velocity of the records rotation and applying it to the payback of the audio you can scratch. There is some digital noise that needs to bee worked out, but sounds pretty good. Its still really hard to scratch, it takes some practice but is super fun. The next step is to figure out some nice triggers for different modes. I like the idea of not needing a turntable but the actual spinning of the record helps with the scratching and playback. I made a couple modes, one where the record is paused and you can just scratch through the song. The other looks for zero velocity for x time and then continues on with the song. If there is velocity you then are scratching and the audio is affected. I think that this project has some legs can’t wait to play more.

Description

The interactive aquarium is installed in store front windows in 6 cities across the US. Using computer vision the seascape will react to the motion of a user, seaweed will sway and fish will scatter. Users can then dial in with any mobile device and create a fish using their voice. As they connect in realtime the sounds they make are analyzed and create a dynamically generated fish. You can then enter that fish into the aquarium and use your key pad to eat various pieces of fish food that will transform and morph your fish into creatures. The application will remember the state of your fish so that when you call back later you can evolve your fish even further.

Technical

The installation was setup in two situations an HD rear projection and a LCD wall. The vision technology was able to track motion and trigger animations. The phone technology was built using megaphone a realtime multiuser mobile phone server.

Credits

Ryan Habbyshaw
Illustrations by Emily Gobeille
Arnold R&D

more photos

update: It even works on cats via: link

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.

We developed custom software using Openframeworks (openframeworks.cc), an open source development environment for C++. The software is displayed on a HD (1080 x 1920) vertical LCD screen, enclosed in a custom fabricated bamboo frame. The interaction is based on motion and presence. As people stand in front of the display a camera captures the them and the software analyzes the movement in each frame of the video. In realtime the users movement is translated in the a wind force. A physics system is the skeleton for all the elements is the environment. This force and physics system is what animates and brings the environment to life. As the user sways and moves the plants will move with you.

The interaction becomes a tango between you and the plants. To encourage growing we are isolating the upward motion and computing that into plant growth. The more someone moves up the more the plants will grow. The application has two modes day and night, at night the sky fades to a black gradient and stars twinkle in the background. When the sun rises the environment transitions back into a sunny day.

Installation Photos

Application Photos

Video

Credits

Todd Vanderlin
Ryan Habbyshaw
Memo Akten

ps: the gui is a new addon im working on download soon, or find it on the OF forum.

About OF Lab
Vimeo Feed
Photo Feed

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.


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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

Description

The app loads a series of type images that I created. They are analyzed in realtime in order to find the whole words and each individual letter. I created custom particle system that react to the each letter. The Triggering of the particles was generated via SuperCollider . The result was a realtime music and visual performance.

Photos

Video of Performance

Credits

Todd Vanderlin
Dave Dellacosta

Description

This installation was done for the 2008 SCMX music festival. You were able to interactive with drifting bubbles that when touched would release smaller bubbles that roll off your contour. Based on amounts of motion you make dust would float upwards and ribbons would burst from your body. The application would export renderings of your interaction for printing.

Technical

The piece was installed under a tent on two HD 52″ LCD displays. The image was a beautiful 1080p and super bright. The application was built in openFrameworks using openCV for computer vision. Using a vector field you were able to paint a motion path for the bubbles to drift across the screen.

more photos

Download a PDF here.